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Well, you still aren't getting it. The subsidies come in the form of rebates, tax breaks, and "bargains", from the state and the county. The only money the state and county have to hand out like this is taxes and use fees. HELCO also adds on an alternative energy fee. This is odd since in the NW, there are alternative energy rate credits given for all customers, and a couple are federal that don't show up on the HELCO bill.
Geothermal gets no tax breaks, no rebates, no. It is a private investment into the plant after getting a contract from HECO. It *pays* royalties to the state, county and OHA. The ACC only goes to HEI. If the federal and state governments stopped subsidizing solar PV, its equivalent rate pricing would go up to 60 cents/kw-hr. Germany has spent $130 Billion of their tax dollars to have 3% solar. They acknowledge the economics are not working and have stopped subsidizing solar PV. Subsequently, several solar PV manufacturers are starting to go out of business.
What you initially were referring to with ACC is added rate pricing, not a subsidy. It is important to understand the differences between the two and how they are not related.
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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Use any words you want, but the bottom line is that there's still a massive disconnect between "cost" and "price". Taxes, licenses, fees, covenants, "purchase price agreements", rebates, royalties, etc are a way of imposing "policy" over an otherwise free market. As a side effect, it becomes impossible to make any kind of informed choice about the cost of a particular solution.
How much would a gallon of gas cost if the price weren't manipulated?
What would the price of coal-fired electricity be if the downstream environmental cost wasn't externalized?
How much would a solar panel cost if the manufacturers had to clean up their industrial waste? (Hint: some countries are willing to poison themselves to win the game.)
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OK, So we all go back to reading by whale oil lamps. Works for me, but the same "enviromentalist" will probably take exception, but thats ok, because anything not powered by muscle is BAD, ops, must be human muscles, not some abused mule.
dick wilson
"Nothing is idiot proof,because idiots are so ingenious!"
dick wilson
"Nothing is idiot proof,because idiots are so ingenious!"
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[  ]Free energy to run the turbines, and the rates keep going up every year. A for profit company with a captive base of customers.
Does anybody but me think HELCO should be turned into a public utility, and then rates set by the actual cost of production?
This is just a thought, I need more input, I don't even live in Hawaii yet, but will in less than 6 months.[:p]
I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.
Mahalo
Rick
I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.
Mahalo
Rick
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Here's a solutions to our Energy & Trash PROBLEMS.
I sent this link to our Mayor, but no response. Of course we all know, that Mayor Billy Kenoi named former HELCO president Warren H.W. Lee as the county's new Director of Public Works.
It's not about finding ways to save the consumer money, or providing them with SAFE alternative energy, it's all about INCREASING THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS![} ]
This is exactly what HAWAII NEEDS, NOT GEOTHERMAL.
A waste-to-energy plant converts municipal and industrial solid waste into electricity and/or heat for industrial processing and for district heating systems – an ecologically sound, cost-effective means of energy recovery. The energy plant works by burning waste at high temperatures and using the heat to make steam. The steam then drives a turbine that creates electricity.
http://www.volund.dk/en/Waste_to_Energy/...QgodtDUAVg
WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS IN HAWAII ALREADY??
GOOD OLE BOY'S DON'T USE THEIR HEART, WHEN MAKING ENVIRONMENTAL CHOICES FOR OUR STATE - -
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quote:
Originally posted by whalesong
Here's a solutions to our Energy & Trash PROBLEMS.
I sent this link to our Mayor, but no response. Of course we all know, that Mayor Billy Kenoi named former HELCO president Warren H.W. Lee as the county's new Director of Public Works.
It's not about finding ways to save the consumer money, or providing them with SAFE alternative energy, it's all about INCREASING THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS![}]
This is exactly what HAWAII NEEDS, NOT GEOTHERMAL.
A waste-to-energy plant converts municipal and industrial solid waste into electricity and/or heat for industrial processing and for district heating systems – an ecologically sound, cost-effective means of energy recovery. The energy plant works by burning waste at high temperatures and using the heat to make steam. The steam then drives a turbine that creates electricity.
http://www.volund.dk/en/Waste_to_Energy/...QgodtDUAVg
WHY ARE WE NOT DOING THIS IN HAWAII ALREADY??
GOOD OLE BOY'S DON'T USE THEIR HEART, WHEN MAKING ENVIRONMENTAL CHOICES FOR OUR STATE - -
Hawaii has had waste-to-energy for almost 20 years, on Oahu.
http://www.covantaenergy.com/covanta-us-...olulu.aspx
If you watched the debate between Kenoi and Kim, you would have seen Kenoi is supporting waste-to-energy, although Kim was advocating it 8 years ago.
Hpower is still an incinerator system. The technology was in its infancy 5 years ago. Plasma converters are now being adopted and they are not incinerators, they do not combust. Plasma converters can also process more varied waste, meaning less sorting.
Waste-to-energy primary purpose is getting rid of rubbish, the secondary purpose is to provide grid power. It is not a replacement for base load power sources like geothermal. Kenoi is against AKP and is in favor of waste-to-energy as an alternative.
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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Financially I liked Yagong's proposal where a WTE facility would pay the county (we taxpayers) instead of the County funding a $100 million project.
How does Kenoi or Kim propose to handing the financial?
Assume the best and ask questions.
Punaweb moderator
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quote:
Originally posted by Rob Tucker
Financially I liked Yagong's proposal where a WTE facility would pay the county (we taxpayers) instead of the County funding a $100 million project.
How does Kenoi or Kim propose to handing the financial?
I am trying to learn a thousand things at once, so can't claim to know every single detail of Hawaii legislative functions. But, HPOWER is owned by Honolulu county, designed, built and operated by a private contractor, Covanta. There is some mechanism for Hawaii counties to own power generation sources (hate to even bring this up but there was a time when Hawaii county was part owner of PGV). Processing of municipal waste comes under county responsibilities and probably paid for with a combination of state and local taxes.
Kenoi has already informally raised this dollar amount with Inouye and Inouye has indicated no problem with the dollar figure.
The driver here is the Hilo landfill is a few years away from being filled up. The county has to do something, so there are funds being lined up with the state ready to allocate the majority. The county council is studying what to do: 1)truck to Kona, 2)build a new Hilo landfill, 3) waste-to-energy. This is being handled by a lame duck county council.
This is the status of the municipal waste study headed by Smart, who goes out at the beginning of next year. The range in cost for waste-to-energy was questioned and a follow-up study was requested:
quote:
The study calculated the cost of hauling rubbish to West Hawaii at $52 to $72 per ton, compared with $92 to $110 at a new Hilo landfill or $80 to $210 per ton at a waste-to-energy plant.
Again, the primary purpose of a waste-to-energy plant is to reduce the rubbish needing to go to landfills. The secondary purpose is provide fuel to create electricity, which can be sold, and to produce an aggregate of recyclable material, which also is sold. The net effect of this is the plant pays itself off fairly rapidly and becomes a source of income after that. Plasma converters make this payoff even more lucrative for the county.
Honolulu considers HPOWER to be a huge success and is expanding it even more. This is incinerator technology, which can't handle large volumes of plastic, old tires, toxic liquids, many other materials that plasma converters can process. Here are just some statements about HPOWER:
quote:
HECO will pay H-Power 6 cents to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on time of day and total power provided, plus 5 cents per kilowatt-hour capacity payment for electricity during peak hours from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The price is linked to an external price index. H-Power is paid the nonescalating capacity fee because it provides firm power when it is needed. Hawaiian Electric takes no mark up or profit on energy purchased from vendors such as H-Power.
In 22 years of operation, the facility has processed more than 13 million tons of waste, reduced the need for 15 million barrels of imported oil, saved 500 hundred acres of land otherwise used for landfills and recovered 450,000 tons of metals for recycling -- the equivalent of four aircraft carriers.
You can't be "AGIN' EVERYTHIN'!", then wonder "WHY THE DANG BLAMIN' HELL AIN'T NUTTIN' HAPPENIN'?"
*Japanese tourist on bus through Pahoa, "Is this still America?*
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My personal opinion is that you either need to make utilities a competitive private industry (which I don't see as efficient or effective due to the infrastructure needed to deliver to a population) or you need to make it a non-profit government run operation (realizing that your going to get government incompetence and inefficiencies as well) vs this incestous for-profit government sanctioned monopoly (the worst of both worlds).
"Government is good at one thing: it knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, 'See, if it weren’t for the government, you wouldn’t be able to walk." - Harry Browne
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1. WTE is working so well for Sweden that they now have to import trash from neighboring countries:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012...your-trash
2. Energy companies leveraged California's "deregulation" into massive profits; all they had to do was game the system to maximize their rates.
Cable/satellite television is the best example of how far "wrong" things have gone: you pay for the service, then you pay extra for the "premium" channels. Meanwhile, the carrier charges the content providers for delivery, and the content providers make money selling advertising. By the time you turn on your TV, that show has been "paid for" 4-5 times -- and they'll make still more money on the DVD release and syndication.
Download that same show over the Internets and you're a filthy pirate, guilty of the worst felonies -- the "content industry" has already bought and paid for enough laws to put you in prison for daring to interfere with their profit margin.
Power companies operate the same way.
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