Is Tesla a Death Sentence for Conventional Power Utilities?

Elon Musk wagered he could build s 129 megawatt battery in Queensland within 100 days or it was free. Tesla built and installed the battery with plenty of time to spare and, with it, just might have served a death warrant on fossil energy electricity.

Alternative clean energy, solar and wind, is already cheaper than coal, oil or gas generated power. The hangup has always been the need for some affordable means to store that power when the sun isn't shining or the wind stops blowing. That's where Tesla and others have come in.

The CBC's Don Pittis has an article today on how solar power is driving down the cost of electricity to levels once unimaginable.

The new price, described by the news site Electrek as the cheapest electricity on the planet, was less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour, "part of a pattern marching to 1 cent per kWh bids that are coming in 2019 (or sooner)," the site declared.

The record was not set in a place where energy is traditionally cheap. Nor is it from a traditional electricity source.

The new low price of 1.7 cents per kilowatt was part of a contract between the Italian multinational ENEL Green Power and the Mexican government agency that administers the country's electricity wholesale market.

Fossil energy bad boy Alberta may be the first to step up in Canada.

Alberta is on the leading edge of an energy experiment that is turning global — and Canadian — markets upside down.

Within weeks, the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), which manages and operates the province's power grid, is expected to announce the results of a bidding process to create "5,000 MW of renewable electricity generation capacity connected to the Alberta grid between now and 2030."

The power will come from wind, not solar, and the prices will be more than double the record prices set in Mexico. But for the first time in Canada, the Alberta agency will use the same market auction system for creating green power that has helped push electricity prices down in Mexico and other places around the world.

Some experts say the prices set in the Alberta bidding process could be as low as 5 cents per kilowatt hour. That's in the same range as the gold standard combined cycle natural gas power plan and just the beginning of a process that will use market forces to stimulate new efficiencies in Canada's electricity market as technology improves.

In 2014 the world's largest private bank, UBS, warned its moneyed investors to steer clear of conventional power utilities.

In a briefing paper sent to clients and investors this week, the Zurich-based UBS bank argues that large-scale centralized power stations will soon become extinct because they are too big and inflexible and are "not relevant" for future electricity generation. Instead the authors expect it to be cheaper and more efficient for households and businesses to generate their own energy to power their cars and to store any surplus energy in their own buildings even without subsidies.

"Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology. The biggest drawback has been its intermittency. This is where batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) come into play. Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further decline of more than 50% by 2020. By then a mass [produced] electric vehicle will have almost the same price as a combustion engine car. But it will save up to 2,000 euros a year on fuel cost, hence, it will begin to pay off almost immediately without any meaningful upfront "investment." This is why we expect a rapidly growing penetration with EVs, in particular in countries with high fossil fuel prices.

These rapidly emerging technologies will show the true colours of our political leadership in the Canadian petro-state.  Trudeau has shown he can always be counted upon to say the right thing and then do something else or simply nothing. Cognitive dissonance is no problem for the diminutive son of Pierre. That apple may not have fallen far from the tree but it rolled all the way down the hill.

Kid Pipeline has broken every promise to commit the federal government in support of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline. What is the justification for that pipeline set to carry the world's highest carbon and toxic ersatz oil in a world on the brink of transitioning to much cheaper, far cleaner alternative clean energy? If bitumen goes bust, becomes a "stranded asset" then the fallout will land squarely on Trudeau. He broke his promises. He made his choice. 

World's Largest Private Bank, UBS, Says Fossil Energy is Toast

The Swiss banking giant, UBS, says renewable energy is the hands down winner and conventional power generation is finished.

In a briefing paper sent to clients and investors this week, the Zurich-based UBS bank argues that large-scale centralized power stations will soon become extinct because they are too big and inflexible and are "not relevant" for future electricity generation.  Instead the authors expect it to be cheAper and more efficient for households and businesses to generate their own energy to power their cars and to store any surplus energy in their own buildings even without subsidies.

"Solar is at the edge of being a competitive power generation technology.  The biggest drawback has been its intermittency.  This is where batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) come into play.  Battery costs have declined rapidly, and we expect a further decline of more than 50% by 2020. By then a mass [produced] electric vehicle will have almost the same price as a combustion engine car.  But it will save up to 2,000 euros a year on fuel cost, hence, it will begin to pay off almost immediately without any meaningful upfront "investment." This is why we expect a rapidly growing penetration with EVs, in particular in countries with high fossil fuel prices.

The expected 50% reduction in the cost of batteries by 2020 will not just spur electric car sales, but could also lead to exponential growth in demand for stationary batteries to store excess power in buildings, says UBS. "Battery storage should become financially attractive for family homes when combined with a solar system and an electric vehicle.  As a consequence, we expect transformational changes in the utility and auto sectors.  By 2020 investing in a home solar system with a 20-year life span, plus some small-scale home battery technology and an electric car, will pay for itself in six to eight years for the average consumer in Germany, Italy, Spain and much of the rest of Europe."

Australia is already going through something like this.  There, widespread adoption of rooftop solar power systems in residential and commercial properties, is savaging the bottom line of conventional power utilities.   With fossil fuel prices rising and solar costs dropping rapidly along with price breakthroughs in battery technology, the writing could be on the wall especially for high cost/high carbon fossil fuels.  Sorry, Athabasca, but you really should have seen this coming.

Let's Hope They Don't Get the Full Mulroney

Within a few months Canadian tax authorities should know the identities of Canadians who've buried an estimated $5-billion in Swiss bank UBS.

So far seven taxpayers are said to have made "voluntary disclosures," paying the overdue taxes plus interest on their holdings to avoid penalties (fines) and prosecution.

When Brian Mulroney was finally forced to come clean on undeclared cash payments he received from Karlheinz Schreiber, Revenue Canada cut him a sweetheart deal, accepting 50-cents on the dollar of what he owed this country. That sparked a lot of anger to which the Canadian Revenue Agency assured taxpayers that such deals are no longer tolerated.

And if the Conservative government is going to allow voluntary disclosure leniency for the UBS account holders there needs to be a clear cut deadline. Once the Swiss hand over names and account particulars tax evasion investigations should be deemed to have been started disqualifying errant taxpayers from applying to be let off lightly.