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Coût réel de l'électricité : l'audition d'Henri Proglio (II) > Electricité. La Commission d’enquête sénatoriale sur le coût réel de l’électricite créée sur l’initiative du groupe écologiste a auditionné le 14 mars 2012, Henri Proglio, l’actuel président-directeur général d’Électricité de France. La liste des questions est répertoriée ici. Réponses de M. Henri Proglio, PDG d'EDF. Monsieur le président, monsieur le rapporteur, madame, messieurs les sénateurs, je vais vous lire les réponses qui ont été préparées aux questions qui nous ont été adressées par écrit. Je vous prie de bien vouloir me pardonner l'emploi d'un vocabulaire technique.

Je serai ensuite évidemment à votre disposition pour répondre à toutes vos questions complémentaires. Je commencerai par les premières questions de M. le rapporteur sur les tarifs régulés et sur les coûts réels de l'électricité. Aujourd'hui, les tarifs régulés de l'électricité, et plus globalement les prix payés par l'ensemble des consommateurs français, sont très largement inférieurs à la moyenne des prix des pays européens. Ground-breaking French Study should stop further expenses on the so-called super-grid.

The purpose of the "super-grid", of which in a very small way the new Irish inter-connector is an example, is that wind power (and PV) surpluses in one part of Europe will find value and be exported to other parts of Europe where and whenever there is a dearth. Hubert Flocard's comprehensive analysis (download here) shows the extent to which the whole concept is invalid. His empirical analysis across all Western Europe, shows that wind power peaks and troughs are pretty much simultaneous. It is disappointing that the EU-sponsored "Trade winds" study, commissioned to promote the idea, did not pick up on this perfectly obvious flaw. Flocard's sources are quoted on his first slide. His data are excellent. His work is not the only empirical analysis of this subject. We at DimWatt very much regret this finding because the super-grid sounds so ...umm...

Hope is no substitute for uncomfortable fact, as current events in the financial world seem to be proving all too clearly. Return of the P-Word.

Transparency

Electricity. Britain may need national 'energy buyer' to avoid shortages, reg. Electric output dips 3.7% in 2009 - Jan. 12, 2010. By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterJanuary 12, 2010: 5:39 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The nation's economic decline led to the biggest drop in electric output since 1938, according to an industry trade group. A new report released Tuesday from the Edison Electric Institute says output fell by 3.7% for its second year of declines in a row. The group said the fall was triggered by the recession and cooler summer temperatures, which were more than 20% lower than normal in many parts of the country.

The report showed that the industry provided just 3.9 million gigawatthours of electricity to the continental United States, the lowest amount since 2004. The highest weekly output during the year was just 88,713 GWh, which is 10% less than the all-time record high of 98,583 GWh set in August 2006. While electric output levels fell across the nation, they decreased the most in the Central Industrial and West Central regions, by 6.0% and 5.4% respectively.

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What is energy efficiency doing to power demand? Maybe something real. Macquarie Equities Research said in a client note several days ago that energy efficiency measures really do seem to be having an impact on electricity demand, and the effect is likely to continue. It’s not just theoretical or wishful, the analysts said. “Unfortunately for investors,” the firm said, “utilities expect this demand destruction to continue or even accelerate.”

A couple of electric utilities said pretty much the same thing. According to a Macquarie survey of utilities, to which 43 responded, most expect slow demand growth, less than 1% a year, significantly less than the historical rate of about 2%. The economy is partly to blame for flat or small growth in demand over the last several years — and some respondents see the economy as the bigger driver — but “more than half of utilities estimate that energy efficiency has reduced their load growth by up to 1% per annum, with nearly an additional quarter estimating a reduction of up to 0.5%.” Patterson agreed. Five big energy problems for the 21st century | FT Energy Source. A piece by academic and author Vaclav Smil in the OECD Observer (undated, unfortunately) paints a gloomy picture of energy transition this century: An impartial examination of some basic principles reveals five factors that will make the transition to a non-fossil world far more difficult than is commonly realised.

These are: the scale of the shift; the lower energy density of the replacement fuels; the substantially lower power density of renewable energy extraction; intermittency of renewable flows; and uneven distribution of renewable energy resources. More on those points: 1. The shift of the scale: He compares the current era to 1850, just before the last large-scale shift of energy supplies. Then, Smil writes, most energy came from biomass (eg woodburning). 2. 3. 4. 5. Lots of interesting points there. We were intrigued by a blog post suggesting he believed climate change hasn’t been visible in the past 10 years. H/T Gregor’s Delicious feed. What It Takes to Power Google. Google is the first major Web company to reveal exactly how much energy it uses—information that will help researchers and policy makers understand how the massive explosion of Internet usage and cloud computing is contributing to global energy consumption.

Google uses 260 million watts continuously across the globe, the company reported on Wednesday. This is equivalent to the power used by all the homes in Richmond, Virginia, or Irvine, California (around 200,000 homes), and roughly a quarter of the output of a standard nuclear power plant. By far, the majority of Google’s energy use is associated with its data centers, according to Jonathan Koomey, a professor at Stanford University and a researcher who focuses on energy and IT.

He says that 80 to 90 percent of those watts are used solely by the company’s data centers, based on estimates he made of Google’s power use in an August 2011 report. Most of this energy is used in powering the IT equipment in Google’s data centers. Super-grid gets super-serious, but does it rely too much on Norw. The plan for a European ‘super-grid’ being proposed today by 10 companies, including Siemens of Germany and France’s Areva , might sound ridiculously over-ambitious.

Cynics are already noting that most of the members of the group would be direct beneficiaries of the vast amounts that would have to spent building the super-grid. But this is a project that has already won serious political backing from nine EU member states and Norway, and, at least in its most modest version, looks like a realistic prospect.

The 10 companies comprising the ‘Friends of the Super-grid’ group would like the connections eventually to encompass most of the countries of north-west and south-west Europe, like this: Super-grid future plan If such a super-grid existed, it would indeed have a dramatic effect on European power supplies, unlocking the potential of offshore wind, improving the resilience of the grid and reducing electricity prices by allowing much more international trading. Phase 1 super-grid plan. Russia Green Lights $65 Billion Siberia-Alaska Rail and Tunnel to Bridge the Bering Strait! In what could certainly be one of the boldest infrastructure developments ever announced, the Russian Government has given the go-ahead to build a transcontinental railway linking Siberia with North America.

The massive undertaking would traverse the Bering Strait with the world’s longest tunnel – a project twice the length of the Chunnel between England and France. The $65 billion project aims to feed North America with raw goods from the Siberian interior and beyond, but it could also provide a key link to developing a robust renewable energy transmission corridor that feeds wind and tidal power across vast distances while linking a railway network across 3/4 of the Northern Hemisphere. Photo by Wikicommons The idea is actually not very new — Tsar Nicholas II dreamed of the railway and tunnel in 1905. Promoting Microgeneration: A Challenge For Europe.

During the EU Sustainable Energy Week hold in March 2010 in Brussels, Europe multiplied conferences on those topics and tried to stimulate concrete actions based on last year’s directives on renewable. Low carbon energy with sustainable benefits is the target objective for Europe. Microgeneration is one of the leading options; the customer base can have quite easily access to it. However, some strategic thinking is needed to define the necessary guidelines so as to maximize the outcomes of potential wider actions directed to the member citizens.

Euro deputies are convinced that a lot has to be done to change the psychological mindset of the European citizens and the next step in the “green revolution” is to convince the population of the conviviality of microgeneration. Not only can microgeneration be fun because people are able to control their own appliance (i.e.: tune your solar panels so they collect more power), but is also attractive because you can measure the financial gains. 1. Smarter Chargers for Electric Vehicles. The Power of the Smart Grid - Environment. Energy Storage. The Sun Rises in the East: German Solar Firms Eclipsed by Chinese Rivals - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. The mayor of the eastern German town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Petra Wust, is all too familiar with booms and busts. The region was a center for the chemical industry in communist East Germany.

Wust experienced at first hand how the industry was wound down after the fall of the Berlin Wall, putting about 50,000 people out of work. Wust was also there when the region experienced rapid growth, earning it the nickname "Solar Valley. " In 1999, as the town's then-treasurer, she helped persuade Q-Cells, a manufacturer of photovoltaic cells, to locate its headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. The town bent over backwards to smooth the way for the company, says Wust, and the effort paid off. The solar panel business flourished, and the company, which began its operations with 19 employees, soon had more than 1,000 people on its payroll.

But now Q-Cells is struggling to survive. Solar Valley threatens to turn into a vale of tears. Assorted Woes The outlook has turned bleak for the entire solar industry. Wind resistance: Analysis suggests generating electricit. Wind power has emerged as a viable renewable energy source in recent years -- one that proponents say could lessen the threat of global warming.

Although the American Wind Energy Association estimates that only about 2 percent of U.S. electricity is currently generated from wind turbines, the U.S. Department of Energy has said that wind power could account for a fifth of the nation's electricity supply by 2030. But a new MIT analysis may serve to temper enthusiasm about wind power, at least at very large scales. Ron Prinn, TEPCO Professor of Atmospheric Science, and principal research scientist Chien Wang of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, used a climate model to analyze the effects of millions of wind turbines that would need to be installed across vast stretches of land and ocean to generate wind power on a global scale. Such a massive deployment could indeed impact the climate, they found, though not necessarily with the desired outcome. Wind Energy: Freedom From Fossil Fuels or Tempest in a Teapot? - I’m a realist.

No matter how many times one wishes snowflakes were dollar bills and soot was green, it isn’t going to happen. Get over it. Soot is dirty and, while technology is likely to make it cleaner, it’s never going to be squeaky clean. Because I am a realist and a long-time energy analyst, I have written some articles about nuclear and fossil fuel energy that had some readers whining that my realistic review of the facts means I’m a “throwback” and “out of touch” and “blah blah blah…” (Reality is tougher on some people than others.)

For that small but oh-so-vocal sector of the audience, the clue bird is about to wend its way through a forest of death-dealing turbines. Solar energy may have been the first energy for mankind as well as for plants and animals. It is today a brilliant solution to use hydroelectric, solar, geothermal, biomass and wind wherever possible. The Europeans are learning this first-hand. Do you trust this author to give you good analysis? Follow Joseph L. Where Wind Power Is Blowing Away Profits. • That in turn "has an effect on investors" and profit On some nights in northern Germany, utilities pay customers to keep their lights on. In a country with deep green roots, it's an odd fix for an odd problem: Local distributors have no place to store wind energy and no way to dispatch it to areas that need it.

That's led to so-called negative pricing, where grid operators pay utilities to take the unneeded power. Then utilities like RWE and EnBW of Germany give rebates to customers who use power during periods of excess. Sometimes wind farm operators are even asked to take their turbines offline to trim supply, lowering green operators' profitability. "We're seeing that wind energy lowers prices, which is great for the consumers," said Christian Kjaer, head of the European WindEnergy Assn., which represents RWE, Spain's Iberdrola, and Denmark's Dong Energy. One solution: Tying power markets together, allowing temporary surpluses in one area to flow toward electricity-poor zones. Mixed messages on offshore wind’s future | FT Energy Source | FT. Mixed reports have been published recently about the current state and future potential of the UK offshore wind industry. While one paper last week suggested offshore wind could provide all our electricity needs by 2050, another recently commissioned report is looking into the threat posed by escalating costs of the technology.

First, the bullish view. This comes from the Offshore Valuation Group, a coalition of government and industry organisations including The Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Welsh and Scottish governments and companies active in offshore wind such as E.on and DONG Energy. Its report says less than a third of the total wind energy that could be practically harnessed could enable Britain to be a net electricity exporter by 2050.

The OVG report assessed the energy potential from five marine renewable technologies: wind with fixed and floating foundations; wave; tidal range; and tidal stream. And that could prove challenging, at least in the near-term. Flying Windmills. Wind harvester: The Makani Airborne Wind Turbine sits on a runway outside of Oakland, California. The craft generates electrical power during flight. In a concrete control tower of a decommissioned naval air base just outside Oakland, California, a team of engineers is building what might best be called a hybrid of an unmanned aerial vehicle and a wind turbine. The 120-pound craft has rotors on its wings to lift it into the sky helicopter-style; a thin tether attaches it to a platform.

Once in the air, the craft begins to glide like a kite, its 26-foot wingspan tracing circles 250 feet overhead. Now the propellers become generators, spinning freely and generating electricity that flows down the taut tether—and, someday, into the local grid. This craft, developed by Makani Power, is a long-shot bid to tackle one of the world’s toughest problems: getting clean, cheap energy.

The company’s project has drawn some interest from funders. Wind Costs: Connecting Some Dots.