Electrical Supply: Time, Scale, and the Need for Decision in Planning Future Power Plants
Posted by Heading Out on November 17, 2008 - 9:45am
As the first gentle snowflakes of winter settled on the windscreen of my car I was reminded, yet again, of the turning of the seasons and our need for power to keep us warm through the coming months. Last week I commented on how jobs might be created as the pattern of power supply begins to change, particularly with the incentives that might be a part of a new initiative. Two factors often get understated, however, in the current anticipation of the changes that a new Administration may bring. The first of these is the time that it will take to get any decision implemented at a scale that can be meaningful, and the second is the scale itself of the problem that now faces us.
It was a recognition of the many years that it will take for any new technology to have an impact on supply that was a critical component of the report written by Robert Hirsch, Robert Bezdek and Robert Wendling. Although their report largely focused on the coming shortage of liquid fuels, the impact of the EPA Appeals Board on the timing of new power plant construction, taken with the upcoming decline in natural gas production, raises additional concerns that adequate future electrical supplies may also be at risk. The Hirsch report was written in 2005, and their conclusion was that the drop in conventional liquid fuels supply could be made up by (1) Improved Oil Recovery, (2) increased production from the heavy oil sands such as those in Canada and Venezuela, (3) coal liquefaction and (4) fuels from the conversion of natural gas. Even from those relatively conventional sources they anticipated that it would take 10 to 20 years to build up the needed capacity.
Just recently it has been suggested by one of those authors that the urgency of this situation be disregarded, since raising concerns might cause more damage than good. Again, that argument ignores the reality of the need for timely action and the future impact of a current failure to address the issue. As someone who talks about Peak Oil at service clubs and to students, the depth of the public ignorance of the true facts, even in the face of long-term rising fuel prices, is overwhelming, and the consequences of inaction largely unknown. One cannot realistically anticipate being able to legislate the new technology that will be needed, but that is not yet invented. If new technology is not now encouraged, then it will not be available when needed. Let me explain my concerns in a little more detail.
There are, at present, about a hundred coal-fired power station applications in process of permitting, prior to construction. Selecting just one of them at random, the American Municipal Power Generating Station outside of Columbus, Ohio was conceived in the year 2000, by the local power company. It is intended to be a 1,000 megawatt plant (pdf) that will provide power to 500,000 customers in the Columbus area. It has just obtained the air quality permit, and is currently on schedule to start delivering power by the end of 2013 (pdf).
How will the EPA ruling affect this schedule? I have no idea – and I suspect that the utility company doesn’t either. And that is the point. Until they can be sure that the permits and processes are complete, the power company cannot proceed with the current plans, since new interpretation of the legislation, or new legislation itself, may cause costly modifications to the construction. The power plant construction will therefore likely be delayed, at the very least for the time it takes for the Bonanza ruling to be clarified in regard to impact on other power station permits. More likely the new ruling will lead to a new requirement for hearings on the air quality permitting, which will delay construction perhaps an additional year, providing that no additional design work is also needed at the plant to overcome new regulations.
Now the Sierra Club has gleefully touted their success, and their perception of the message it sends:
”Instead of pouring good money after bad trying to fix old coal technology, investors should be looking to wind, solar and energy efficiency technologies that are going to power the economy, create jobs, and help the climate recover,” said Nilles (Director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign).
At present Ohio has 7 megawatts of wind generating power. The United States has a total of just over 21,000 Magawatts in operation and 8,500 Megawatts under construction. As best as I can determine Ohio is not particularly suited to providing the inhabitants of Columbus with wind energy of the scale needed to replace the power plant. If one looks to solar power, the installations in Ohio to date seem small, one such cost $41,500 for a house although with the aid of grants the owner was only out of pocket $21,500. This gave him a payback period of 10 – 12 years.
Somehow I don’t see the 500,000 folk that were going to be supplied by the coal-fired station being that excited or that able to make such an investment. And so the message from the Sierra Club to the residents of Columbus, Ohio might be interpreted to be “Freeze in the Dark, and be grateful that we’re looking out for your interests.” And remember that there are another 99 power stations out there, who similarly are now trying to decide what the ruling requires, and putting their plans on hold until such time - potentially over a year – that the new requirements become clear.
Which brings me back to basic problems of trying to get the country to provide enough energy supply for the future. The declining resource base that we are currently discussing in the ongoing review of the IEA report is a reality. But while the shortages of oil and natural gas will impact the cost of living and the strength of the economy during the incoming Administration, it is already too late for them to be able to do much to control such supply positively for the duration of the first term. (It is always possible to do things that have a negative impact).
One cannot legislate technology that does not exist, though one can encourage and fertilize the ground it can grow in. Without those new ideas, and with the supply sources that the Hirsch report relied on not getting that much encouragement at the moment, one can anticipate that the next four years may get steadily worse from the energy supply point of view. In such a case, then it may well be that the new Administration may not get a second term. Also, it might be borne in mind, for those who think that future wars may only be induced by climate change, that history shows that there has been more than one war started over oil.
It may be a reflection of the saying, “Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it,” but the debate over how to heat, cool and power America has likely now moved into a new arena. The situation is similar to that of the United Kingdom, with its creation of a Ministry of Energy and Climate Change, which must now decide whether to continue the construction at the Kingsnorth power station. The United Kingdom has legislation in place that will limit the production of power from the existing plant, and requires that it will close by 2015 (pdf). It is a continuing target for environmental activists. The power levels there are half-as-large-again as the plant near Columbus, but the underlying struggle over the energy future seems similar. One of the primary goals of politicians is to get re-elected, and it will be interesting to see how that factors into these decisions, particularly if the winter(s) are a little harsher than they have been.
Electrical Supply: Time, Scale, and the Need for Decision in Planning Future Power Plants
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Electrical Supply: Time, Scale, and the Need for Decision in Planning Future Power Plants
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213 comments
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Speaking as a solar enginer, architect, builder with 30+ years of experience, seems cheap to me.
cfm in Gray, ME
With all highly efficient appliances, HVAC, and a conservation mindset, the solar PV system for my house cost less that $20k.
Of course, some think nothing of buying a $30k SUV that needs $3000+/yr of fueling. Buying a Honda Insight saved me $10k right up front, and is saving me $30k+ over the ensuing 15 years. I also saved as much or more money by building a smaller house, providing a large portion of the heat with passive solar, foregoing higher end items (e.g., granite countertop, marble fireplace, upscale fixtures, etc). In looking at the big picture, Americans have wasted small fortunes on trivial luxuries and failed to invest in intelligent choices. But that's no secret these days...
I'd say that's rather optimistic. Ignoring the "saved up front" (you could save the entire $30k by walking... does that count as "saved"?), $30k over 15 years is highly unlikely. Even with $4/gal gasoline you would have to put on far more miles than that vehicle is likely to survive... and I doubt you're considering the fact that the battery won't last nearly that long and is quite expensive to replace.
I'm not knocking your choice... I drive a hybrid myself... but they aren't anywhere near that good.
Ignoring the "saved up front" (you could save the entire $30k by walking... does that count as "saved"?)
Can't ignore, as I'm not in a walkable neighborhood (we have a small sheep farm), so the $10k savings (compared to a $30k SUV) is valid. The batteries in my Honda Insight are now warrantied to 10 years, or 150,000 miles.
At $4/gal gas and 15,000 mi/yr, a 2WD Ford Expedition burns through $4286 worth of fuel, while the Insight uses $1132, which is a savings of over $3100. Multiply that by just 10 years (150,000 miles), and that shows savings of over $31,000. Along with the $10k initial savings, that amounts to savings over $41,000, or the cost of a PV system noted in the article.
Of course you can ignore it because you're comparing apples to oranges. Did you "save" fifty million by not buying a fighter jet? (And think of the cost of all that jet fuel you saved!)
Good luck getting the same effectiveness at 100k that you got when they were new... but that hardly matters since you'll have to go much farther than 150k to save $30k... and you've still replacing that battery at least once in the timeframe discussed (if the car makes it that far in the first place).
Again... a poor comparison. Do you compare how much you save over buying a motor home too? The two vehicles simply aren't comparable. Can the SUV owner count how much he "saved" because he didn't have to hire a taxi for the four kids you can't fit in the Insight? How about the U-Haul rentals he "saved" because of the loads you can't carry?
A valid comparison would be how much you save over an otherwise similar car. The Civic hybrid costs thousands more than the non-hybrid Civic... it has the same passenger capacity and better luggage capacity but still gets 30+ mpg. How much did you "save" there?
Heck... you "lost" money compared to the guy who bought a 1990 CRX-HF. He had a pretty close mpg and "saved" $18000 over what you paid for the Insight.
And... of course... I just filled up my hybrid at $1.77/gal.
It may be different where you are, but around here (until relatively recently), commuters bought the biggest vehicle they could afford. The traffic is packed with big crew cab pickups and SUVs with one commuter occupant and no company logo. No fighter jets or motor homes are used as commuters in my area, perhaps you live in an unusual locale. So I made a choice not to purchase a truck, and based my comparison on these parameters.
At 150k miles, I assume the SUV/Pickup is pretty much on it's last legs, so any analysis would need to show the purchase of another vehicle. 1990 CRX-HF was not available when I bought my car. My analysis showed that I assuming an average of $4/gal, I had saved over $41K. Sure, gas is down now, but I don't think there are many here who would believe it to last very long at that price, and certainly not 10-15 years (unless they are from CERA).
You're honestly going to pretend that the decision for you was between the jumbo SUV and the Insight? If no Insight was available you wouldn't have looked at a Mazda 3 or a Toyota Corolla? Please.
Depends on the same factors (make/model/etc) that impact smaller cars. You certainly could buy a reliable SUV if that was on your list. And again... 150k could easily be the lifespan of the Insight. My brother has one and it hasn't been bulletproof.
Oh please (again). There was most certainly a reliable used small car available with a tiny engine that got an mpg significantly closer to the hybrid than to the Suburban and for a small fraction of the cost of a new Insight.
Then your "analysis" was a con game you played on yourself to justify the expense. That's ok... it's how car salesmen have made a living for decades. You spent more than you would have on some alternatives and justififed it to yourself based on some inflated calculation of what you would save.
It did the last time this happened.
There was most certainly a reliable used small car available with a tiny engine that got an mpg significantly closer to the hybrid than to the Suburban and for a small fraction of the cost of a new Insight
An examination of the cost of used vehicles in the year 2000 and their life expectancies is something that perhaps you would like to undertake; I simply showed the difference between the choice a large number of commuters were making and what I made.
It did the last time this happened.
You may choose to believe that gas prices won't go up again for a long time, but the whole purpose of TOD is to alert people to the peaking in oil production and the effect it will have on price, so that we can understand the effect our consumption choices will have on the economy and our own financial wellbeing.
Hence, I stand by my original statement; "In looking at the big picture, Americans have wasted small fortunes on trivial luxuries and failed to invest in intelligent choices."
In looking at the big picture, Americans have wasted small fortunes on trivial luxuries and failed to invest in intelligent choices.
That's a good point and bears repeating (and applies to the rest of the industrialized world too, for that matter). We keep whining that renewable energy and sustainability are too expensive, yet we piss away money on completely frivolous shit.
Just over ten years ago I started developing my own energy system in country NSW,
Australia. Since that starting point, I have bought 18 solar panels, 1 x 8KVa
diesel generator, 1x 4.5 petrol Genset, 36x 2V Deep Cycle batteries (ex Telecom).
2x 300W wind generators 2 inverters and other infrastructure such as heavy duty wire
connectors etc. Toal cost- about US$10000. How you ask? E Bay, newspapers, auctions
and placing ads. I have more power than I know what to do with (no grid here)
and spares to last for years to come. Anyone with practical ability and a sense of
purpose can do the same.
Anyone in your situation can do as you say. Many, perhaps most, people do not live in such an energy rich environment.
Peaking personally, from a flat in Bristol, any energy generating capacity would be negligible, with the exception of solar thermal for water.
A heat pump would do quite a lot to use energy effectively, but the energy would still need to be generated, and that is not going to happen on my property.
On a more general level of discussion, and speaking of the UK with which I am familiar, then protests and so on about coal will happen right up until the first major power cuts, and after that coal burn will go right ahead, and hang GW.
If push comes to shove, the British Government is extremely powerful, and if they can use anti-terror legislation to seize Icelandic assets, then any remaining protesters will get short shrift.
In any case in this country, where the confines of geography mean that it is not possible to get too far away from your critics, once people's mothers start to be hit by the cold, then it would take a brave man to try to hold up power stations.
This does not mean that I think that building coal plants is the best way, I am just differentiating between what I advocate and what seems the probable outcome.
Peaking personally? Good one.
Is the primary heat source in Bristol electric power? What percentage of heat in Bristol is provided by electric power. I also wonder about the preponderance of electric heat in Ohio due to the "freezing in the dark" comment from heading out.
In any event, I doubt that the vast majority of folks in the U.S. (England,too?) have even started picking the low hanging fruit of energy conservation, putting aside any attempts to provide heat and power in a more efficient and/or renewable fashion. With a very modest investment in new appliances and a modest change in life style, I have been able to cut my electricity use in half.
Let's get cracking on all the ways we can use less heat and electricity before we start freaking out about all the people who will freeze in the dark because of a moratorium on new coal. Here in Colorado, coal plants are even being cancelled due, in part, because of the state mandated renewable energy goals.
I still believe there is much truth in the idea that necessity is the mother of invention. Unfortunately, the massive reduction in oil and gas prices lately has probably set back that mother by a few years.
You again are extrapolating up from what an individual can achieve to assume the same level of activity will be practical for all the folk that the power station supplies. I am not sure how you would mandate that folk have to change their appliances, and pointing to an economic gain does not help folk who don't have the money to make the change. Similarly there is a difficulty in imposing a required change in life style - forcing such, either through a lack of power availability, or political concern, is not likely to result in political re-election.
Without a change in subsidies, credits, programs, incentives, and disincentives, I don't expect that a sufficient number of people will cut their energy use. I expect that if we continue business as usual and make no changes in government policies, including efficiency standards, that we will continue to build more coal plants and that global warming will get out of control. I am not extrapolating based upon my own personal decision to save energy; I am extrapolating based on a radical change in government policy. There are lot of things that can be done before we actually talk about forcing people to make changes.
No one forced Coloradans, for example, to mandate a renewable portfolio standard. This was initially approved by the voters and then expanded by their elected representatives. There has not been a negative political fallout. This will lower the requirements for coal fired power plants.
No one forced the people in Boulder, Co. to approve a carbon tax.
It may very well be that the people in Ohio have a very different attitude; regardless, those concerned about this situation should do everything in their power to educate, to lead, and to effect change on the local, state, and federal level. The people may be ready for a lot of changes that they are not given credit for.
The EPA decision is an opportunity. Now is the opportunity to carve out a complex of policy decisions based upon the assumption that we will not have additional coal plants going forward.
Do light bulbs count as appliances? I'm sure the folk can afford CFL's - which will reduce your lighting wattage by 75%.
Most, around 80%, of homes in Britain are heated by gas, which they burn in combination boilers. These are very efficient, so the efficiency of the actual generation of the electricity to supply homes for the purposes of heating would imply a taking a large hit.
To counteract that in the British climate you can use air-source heat pumps which multiply efficiency by 2.5-4 times, depending on whether it is a new build or not.
If you use a notional 40% as the average efficiency of burn at central facilities, against a notional 80% for gas fired central heating, it is around a wash after you have installed a heat pump regarding energy use efficiency for existing housing stock.
The cost of installing heat pumps or moving to CHP systems would be high though.
1kWh of gas in an efficient boiler would provide about 0.9kWh of heat.
The same kWh of gas through a combined cycle power station then a heat pump would create roughly 0.5kWh of useful electric (after transmission) and therefore 1.5kWh of heat (assuming COP of 3 for the heat pump)
Using CHP and heat pumps as a co-generation stop gap as http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3661
1kWh of gas through a small engine generating 0.3 kWh of electricity powering heat pumps to produce 0.9 kWh of heat with the 0.6kWh of waste heat being put to good use also provides a total of 1.5kWh of useful heat from the original kWh of gas.
The most likely use of coal in the future IMO will be gasification and co-firing with natural gas in a combined cycle.
Yeah, there are all sorts of figures and assumptions that are going to produce slightly different results.
I don't think that they are likely to affect my basic point that the high efficiency of combi gas boilers mean that raising the efficiency of burn with central generation is going to be difficult.
Your factor of 3 for heat pumps in existing build sounds high, as they work most efficiently in underfloor heating configurations, and at minimum to get anywhere near that figure for older builds radiators would need replacing to oversize them by around 20% to make up for the lower temperature of the water.
One way to raise efficiency might be to adopt the fuel cells that they are introducing into houses in Japan to provide both heat and power.
To say that the technology is immature and expensive though is to understate the case.
My real point of difficulty though is that short of underground coal gasification or the exploitation of land hydrates, I can't really see where the gas is going to come from, within a few years.
Coal burn or nuclear seem to me to be the only affordable alternatives in large quantity, where land based wind at high speeds is not available.
Hi again, Dave
I've completed my house renovation but have kept my partial underfloor heating from a condensing gas boiler. The trouble with underfloor is it only works on the most modern builds with high insulation and air tightness. I have 18mm wood over concrete screed and have calculated 80w m^-2 output - which is about 30w short so I top up with a convector gas fire. I looked at running additional rads from the manifold but at 45c flow temperature the deltaT is less than half that of a conventional primary flow so the radiator would need to be over 2x bigger, not 20%. ( 45-21 room vs 75-21 ).
I have noted the effectiveness of primary window draught proofing ( especially on the old leaded lights ), secondary glazing, under suspended wooden floor celotex and caulking, sealing over downlighter holes with fibre loft caps ( and replacing the bulbs with Osram Decostar IRC 20/35w which give exactly the same lumen, temp and CRI output but use 40% less energy and project all their heat downwards ). All I need to do now is swap my wife for a low energy version :)
On the control side I have a full weather controlled modulating system. It lowers the rad temps as the demand lowers calculated as a function of outside, inside and target temp in the 4 zones. It learns the response time of the house and will start heating earlier if it's cold and never come on at all if there is a sudden warm spell.
I also chose a boiler that will run off propane if needed and remote pumped showers from oversized tanks in case of intermittent water supply.
I think we need to be careful to distinguish not only between individual and collective actions but the impacts of not doing so on both levels. If there are intermittent power cuts then me having genset/battery backup is a valid option but if power become chronically unreliable then even the most extensive off-grid system won't bring food to your table or stop others coming to take yours.
My experience in South Africa is that communities will stratify by wealth as security deteriorates as a function of employment and resources.
By all means set up for intermittent power outages, even keep a week or two of food and water on hand but realistically if circumstances go beyond that then nothing short of an armed enclave will give you total security.
Having a brightly lit, warm house with food on the table in a cold, dark neighbourhood of people with starving children is not a recipe for success.
There is no option but to be strategic about this and reduce demand. Whether that is ration by price or by smart meter, efficiency grants, programs and leglislation or otherwise across all resource types is a matter of debate.
Unless we abandon any pretence to democracy and revert to an almost feudal society with rent paying serfs maintaining a gated landlord class and avoiding the armed guards.
Like Russia, Brazil, China and South Africa then. Great :(
On your first paragraph I would emphasise that it is 20 years since I have had any building experience, and insulation and efficient energy use were hardly priorities at the time.
As you say, underfloor heating can only be installed realistically in a new build, and that is where you get the efficiencies which can approach 4 times.
My 20% oversized radiators was simply what it said on the tin on a couple of sites that install heat pumps, so your real world experience is very valuable.
Your second paragraph I find depressingly accurate, with the twist that in the UK I cannot see civil war being avoided, as we have all the ingredients of ethnic and religious divide which AFAIK when times get tough have historically always led to vicious warfare.
I would be interested in any counter examples anyone may have.
Although I am not a card-carrying doomer for the world in general, as I feel that it is possible that in many areas such as China and France the technological basis may allow them to pull through in relatively good shape and maintain a technological civilisation, I have a really hard time seeing how anything like the present 60 million population is likely to be kept going in the case of the UK.
It would be a different matter if we currently run most of our electricity from nuclear as France does, but the time is likely to short now to do so, and high power prices will price our goods out of the tough market.
I too have managed to considerably cut my usage recently.
My usage is down 45% YOY.
How?
I purchased a Kill-o-watt for about $30 and started measuring most of my usage.
The wife's rice cooker was using about 33 kw-h a month keeping rice warm. She now puts it in the fridge after cooking and microwaves when needed.
All entertainment systems and computers are now on power strips, which are turned off when not in use. This saved about around 120 kw-h/month.
I upgraded my main workstation computer and drastically cut its power consumption. This coupled with using the "Stand by" mode and turning my dual 24'' LCD monitors off after 3 minutes of inactivity saved me over 150kw-h/ month.
I found a radio that was plugged in in the garage for the last several years pulls a constant 1w when off. The coffee maker in the kitchen pulled a constant 5w when off. These are now only plugged in while in use. These saved ~4 kw-h/month.
I installed a programmable thermostat, which saved me roughly 30% on heating/cooling cost (gas heat, electric AC). This is probably ~200-300 kw-h/month savings in the summer.
Lights are turned off when not in use (every light in the house was already CF).
The second 50-gallon water heater was valved off and the breaker turned off. The label indicates this likely saved ~30-50kw-h/month.
My sister-in-law moved out, which got some significant load off my power bill :-), which wasn't measured.
Going into this recession, I feel good about this very high ROI I shall continue to get from these simple cost cutting measures.
My usage last month was 585kw-h in a 3100 sq-ft house. Not too bad. One year earlier was 1057kw-h.
Since I am in Columbus, OH and do not want to freeze in the dark I see this as a good first step. The wind here certainly isn't going to be economic for wind power generation and my neighborhood restrictions forbid any solar cells or solar water heater installs (lame I know, but I wouldn't put them in with the current ROI anyways).
I just opened my lowest ever electric bill, 73 kWh !
I was gone for 11 days though (although the refrigerator still ran).
Best Hopes for Energy Efficiency,
Alan
The problem is not with the committed individual such as yourself. The problem comes in supplying all those other folk in the community that the power station serves. 500,000 people are a lot of folk, and the solutions that can work for an individual become a lot less realistic when an attempt is made to apply it to the many.
Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy
Dick Cheney
You appear to agree with VP Cheney, I profoundly disagree.
I have seen first hand in Austin Texas (I am a certified Austin Energy energy auditor if my certification has not lapsed), what CAN be done to reduce demand. It is significant and had NOT been done in Ohio. In Austin, the cumulative total in reduced peak demand is over 600 MW FOR ONE CITY ALONE.
www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/downloads/meetings/water_AustinEnergy.pdf
pdf warning
REQUIRE that all ductwork be sealed (with approved mastic & tiewraps). Among 10 y/o and older homes surveyed, 9% of the air conditioning leaked out.
Install gaskets behind light switches & outlets (about 10% of air infiltration).
Insulate attic doors opening into conditioned space, staple aluminumized paper to rafters, etc. etc. etc.
Do what Austin has done, and Ohio can put cutting torches to coal fired plants, not build new ones.
Best Hopes for Realistic Planning,
Alan
Their goal is an additional 700 MW by 2020.
http://www.austinsmartenergy.com/divison.php?page=learn_more&sub=fact_sheet
It's a double whammy.
I agree with you that the implications of WEO 2008 reflect reality. (And it's in fact a lot more serious than that.) I agree with you that the future of electicity is in danger. I agree with you that coal can provide a lot more energy than wind or solar. (And a lot cheaper, too.) I agree with you that peak oil (and in fact peak energy and thus peak everything) is the toughest challange humanity as a whole has faced until now (minus the Thoba supervolcano-eruption). I also agree with you that more wars have been started over oil (in the last 150 years) than over climate change.
For the time being, that is.
As much as I think PO and Peak Everything will turn out to be a disaster for humankind, Climate Change at the magnitude indicated by the new findings can effectively send the planet into a mode it has certainly not been into in millions of years - if ever. That would most certainly wipe out not only humans but like 95% of all living things on Earth. (And for the record: I'm no expert on CC, but I read a lot about it, as it has become a strange 'hobby' of mine recently.)
So my question is this: In case the findings of the IPCC or that of NASA's Hansen or most of the corresponding scienticfic world are even remotely true (and if anything, all these findings have understated the problems as it now seems), what would you suggest?
Peak Oil can (to an extent) be mitigated. A warming of the planet by 6+ degrees on average can NOT be mitigated. (And in fact plenty of places would face 10+ degrees if 6+ is the yearly average.) Are you sure more coal is the answer?
Now let me state this clearly: I don't know the answer, I don't even pretend to know the answer. My gut feeling though is we will do close to nothing to mitigate PO until it really starts to bite - when it will be way too late and we will be in panic mode, burning everything from coal to forests that we can. And as a result, Climate Change will effectively finish this venture we knew as the human race. As a matter of fact I don't feel that bad for humankind, but if there is a way to avoid ruining the whole planet and make it unsuitable for life... we should find that way.
i too believe you're right, but there's one thing i still hope for.
a breakthrough in battery storage. the basic part of an electric car can be built 10 times as faster (just a guess), motor, wiring, battery pack as compared to putting apart an internal combustion engine.
a lot of energy that now is consumed into extracting oil and maintaining today's cars would be available for other uses
regarding climate change, nature has an immense regenerating power, but it needs to be left alone.
the current economic system, together with energy usage and carbon emissions are very much like a house of cards. give a modern city irregular blackouts for 2-3 months, and things start to cool down very fast. missed deadlines, missed sales, supply problems, lay-offs (maybe riots and looting), all these will take economic activity to a minimum in no-time.
No breakthroughs in battery technology are required.
If you design functionality for the job in hand, not to provide the same as an ICE car, then for commuting and shopping needs you come out with very light weight vehicles with limited range at reasonable cost and with virtually nil maintenance.
If you need to go a long distance, on holiday or whatever, then you catch a bus or hire an ICE.
the current EV situation works from a technological point, but not from an economical one. yes, most of our trips can be done with an EV, but it does not make sense economically. The cheapest EV i can buy here is the reva, around 10.000 euros, with lead-acid batteries and about 50 miles range (or so they say). i can buy at least 5 models of new cars with that kind of money
a breakthrough in battery technology would allow for reduced costs for near the limit applications, such as shopping and commuting, and for a range close to what the ICE has, for those who got the money to spend on big batteries.
i'm not nitpicking, but when you get a credit or lease for 4-5 years (the standard here in southern europe), you want to have the most bang for the buck. and ev-s just don't cut it
Better place is trying to run a system where you buy the car and hire the batteries.
Under that sort of system then savings on both fuel and lower maintenance costs on the simpler EV lay-out should mean that savings start on day one.
In fact though die to both the dire economic situation and constraints on battery supply I feel that most people will be downgrading to all sorts of motorbikes, scooters, three-wheelers, trikes and bikes etc.
Typical of these is the Wispa:
http://www.salford.ac.uk/news/details/784
This in turn should leverage the4 battery supply leading to cost reductions, and more common EV's.
The breakthrough in battery technology is ramped up production, and that's well on it's way. You should also consider the amount of money you will save from not having to buy gasoline.
Well I thought about adding this plot to the post, but did not. One of the arguments I suppose that will be put forward in the debate on the impact of carbon dioxide is that it raises the temperature. However if one gets the temperature record for around those parts (I couldn't find the longer term records I usually like so am restricted to the shorter intervals available here ) then there is no indication of a long term warming trend. Here are the records for two stations that bracket Columbus.
Looking at one or two weather station datasets does not provide one with any sort of understanding of the overall global climate. Otherwise, all one has to do is pick station data where the temperature has been rising. Surely you know that...
But if one makes the argument that it is a global change, then that means it applies globally. Given that it obviously isn't happening around Columbus (nor most of the United States) may make the legal arguments more protracted and delay the construction even longer.
I don't actually know what the official records say, but I've lived in the same place for 20 years, and the last 5 years have been undeniably and significantly warmer than the first 5.
But if one makes the argument that it is a global change, then that means it applies globally.
Not sure I understand you. Do you suggest that one could simply adopt the above curves to all weather stations around the world and then presume that to be a global temperature trend? I certainly hope you are not saying that.
No the converse - if you are saying that there is a factor that is distributed around the world and causing the average global temperature to increase, then if it is universally distributed, wouldn't one expect that it would have a universal impact?
I cannot believe you said that ....
I think he is pulling our leg again.
There are stations where they delibertly record a temperature hotter than it really is. Either by blowing car exhaust or air conditioner exhaust on their thermometers or by mounting the weather station on top of black asphalt. Weather stations that do not show global warming provide a check on politically motivated data. Australia for example, does not show global warming and that's hundreds of weather sets. Is it a southern hemisphere thing? Is it because they properly site their weather stations? The burden is on the folks who claim global warming is a fact to show that the temperature data is reliable.
I wonder how those "global warming people" with their great political shenanigans have been able to politically motivate thousands of wild species to migrate to higher latitudes and elevations? Are they running around the planet with fleets of hair driers plugged into portable PV units?
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0809/full/climate.2008.86.html
Are you joking? Well, in that case, we will just allow coal in Ohio since it seems immune from overall global trends.
By now you should know that HO does not accept climate change.
Actually that is not the case, what I am trying to determine, among other things, is how this set of climate changes differs from those which have historically occurred at the end of a Bond event such as the Little Ice Age we are still coming out of.
Why do you believe we are still "coming out of the Little Ice Age"?
Because we haven't reached the conditions that prevailed during the Roman and Medieval Warming periods.
Because we haven't reached the conditions that prevailed during the Roman and Medieval Warming periods.
This assertion has been examined and found completely lacking in substance; it would be best if you provided your source of information.
I'll start off with the National Research Council study on the topic;
As a lot of claims regarding the hockey stick revolve around statistical aspects, the American Statistical Association held a session at the 2006 Joint Statistical Meetings, on climate change with Edward Wegman, John Michael Wallace, and Richard L. Smith[58]. E. Wegman presented the discussion of the methodological aspects of PC analysis by MBH98, and his view that Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science. J. M. Wallace outlined the NRC report and its cautious conclusion that the claims of unprecedented temperatures in the last decades can be considered as plausible (2:1 odds in favor).
Next, visit the NOAA Paleoclimatology site;
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html
The reconstructions used, in order from oldest to most recent publication are:
1. (dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). , The Holocene, 8: 455-471.
2. (blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). , Geophysical Research Letters, 26(6): 759-762.
3. (light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). , Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). , Science, 289: 270-277.
4. (lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). , J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2929-2941.
5. (light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). , Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253.
6. (yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). , Geophysical Research Letters, 30(15): 1820. DOI:10.1029/2003GL017814.
7. (orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). , Reviews of Geophysics, 42: RG2002. DOI:10.1029/2003RG000143
8. (red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). , Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205. DOI:10.1029/2004GL019781
9. (red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). , Nature, 443: 613-617. DOI:10.1038/nature03265
10. (dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). , Science, 308: 675-677. DOI:10.1126/science.1107046
(black 1856-2004): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the w:Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre. Global Annual Average data set TaveGL2v [2] was used.
Documentation for the most recent update of the CRU/Hadley instrumental data set appears in: P.D. Jones and A. Moberg (2003). , Journal of Climate, 16: 206-223.
Hmm, well since one of those lines (the green one) suggests that there has been no significant change over the period , it tends to cast doubt on the others, since - as the example of Greenland alone shows - they went from a condition where, in the 1300's there were wild cattle and grain flourished in contrast to the current permafrost conditions in those regions. (As reported by Ivar Bardson (Ivar Bardson/Bardarson, Det Gamle Gronlands Beskrivelse, edited from handwritten MS by Finnur Jonsson, Copenhagen 1930. )
And going back to the Roman period (from http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,357366,00.html) for example
There was also glacier shrinkage and growth in the Alps (“Glaciers and Climate Change” Dr Sc. Nat. Dissertation, M.Z. von Romoos LU, University of Zurich, 2006) and in Patagonia (Glasser, N.F., Harrison, S., Winchester, V. and Aniya, M.(2004) Late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoclimate and glacier fluctuations in Patagonia. Global and Planetary Change 43: 79-101.)
Making absolute statements (completely lacking) from conditional reports (Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600.) also throws question on the strength of your argument.
Making absolute statements (completely lacking) from conditional reports...also throws question on the strength of your argument.
Let's recap. Your absolute argument is we haven't reached the conditions that prevailed during the Roman and Medieval Warming periods.
You haven't provided much more that a redacted anecdotal journal entry from the 1300s, a student working on their unpublished doctoral thesis saying that glaciers in the Alps in Hannibal's time were likely 300m higher, and a non-linked reference with no supporting statements. And then you make the incredible statement that since one of those lines (the green one) suggests that there has been no significant change over the period , it tends to cast doubt on the others. So not only are you selectively data-mining to pick one dataset that you believe supports your assertion (ignoring all the others that clearly don't), you have completely misinterpreted a simple graph. Look at it again carefully.
My argument is [Your] assertion has been examined and found completely lacking in substance. You haven't provided anything of substance that shows that global temperatures were higher during the "Medieval Warm Period". I've provided references from the highest scientific authorities in the nation that say the odds are 2:1 that the current global warm period is warmer than the global Medieval Warm Period. And then you question the strength of my argument, saying "it's completely lacking"??
You should stick to oil production and reservoir assessments.
My apologies that peer reviewed publications weren't around in the 1340's - tell you what - you've got to watch these monks they 'll lie like troopers just to keep us confused all these centuries later. There are other references I just picked the ones most convenient to hand - by your reckoning we should also disregard the Bayeaux tapestry since the weaver wasn't at Hastings at all.
There are a number of articles about the Green Alp theory, again I took the report that was just convenient, and the dissertation contains a fair number of references, but I did not have time to go dig through them. However the comment on the Roman age glacier being higher was based on the remnants of buildings under the ice. When I have more time I'll dig out more - there are several, and I doubt that either of us is going to convince the other so we may revisit this topic again.
You are missing the point and dwelling on red herrings; this isn't about what a local climate might have been (i.e.North Atlantic),, it is about what the global climate was. Global trends cannot be established simply by looking at one area, like Alaska, for example;
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002AGUFM.A72A0157S
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/record/archives/vol21/vol21_iss3/record2103.3...
http://dwb.adn.com/news/alaska/wildlife/story/8516407p-8409439c.html
Interesting. I'll keep that in my oxymoron chest, right next to "sustainable development".
I know Throstur Eysteinsson (PhD Forestry Univ. of Maine) and Deputy Director of the Icelandic Forestry Service,
He was in charge of the first tree plantings in Greenland (foreign "aid" to Greenland from Iceland) and developed quite a working knowledge of current and past climate (and projected future, important in forestry given time frames). He is of the firm opinion that the current period is warmer than during the Past Settlement era. He has examined physical evidence (old roots among other signs from vague memory), read excavation reports and talked to archeologists, geologists, etc. on-site.
I may give him a call again.
Best Hopes for Facts,
Alan
Well you might have him check on some of the information from the Western Settlement. They were growing flax and Corn Spurrey there . Interestingly they have possibly had problems with sea level changes in the past. The presence of cattle hooves at the settlement is also documented here and remains of a cattle barn are referred to here. I seem to have read somewhere but can’t find the immediate reference that the Western Settlement is still covered in permafrost.
You can take a look yourself at the colony location and see it on GoogleEarth. I don't know when the images were taken for GoogleEarth, so it's difficult to say with certainty about the weather there, though there is quite a bit of greenery where the settlement was. Of course, the big picture is global climate, not just North Atlantic. Here's a short archeological summary.
64°21'35.04"N
50°24'25.75"W
Thanks, I note that it does comment that the archaeology is occurring through permafrost, and does include the Ivar Bardson/Bardarson comments. There is a fair amount of work now coming out, it seems, on the actual tribes that made up the "Skraelings" particularly as it relates to the migration of the tribes (later known as the Thule) who appear to have migrated there from Alaska across the top of Canada somewhere in that time frame. Some recent papers have moved that migration later than the death of the Western Settlement, although the preponderance of the papers I had read until recently had suggested that it was much earlier.
Traditional Icelandic agriculture could raise cattle on permafrost (note permafrost is not on the surface, but deeper). A summer grass crop is all that is needed.
Horses are kept out all winter, sheep are released first in the spring and then cattle (who may spend 7.5 to 8 months in the barn eating hay).
Independent People is probably the most noteworthy modern Icelandic novel, and the protagonist is a tenant farmer/farm hand who tries to homestead a valley in the Highlands to get land of his own. His ultimate downfall is linked to the gift of a milk cow in addition to his sheep.
Throstur's theory is that Greenland Viking colonies failed due to lack of charcoal (note Newfoundland Vikings left an iron smelter, not the first item one would establish in a small seasonal fishing camp on the border). No trees > No charcoal > no iron > no scythes > no hay > no sheep.
Imported iron would last for quite a while, but it would eventually disappear and without new iron from trading, collapse would follow.
Alan
However when Bardson went up there the cattle were wild and living outside all year.
You seem to have some other source that says that the cattle had been outside "all year". Please provide it.
Will Stewart
The statistical validity of Santer et al. doesn't appear to be much better than Mann et al. See:
Santer Method Applied Since Jan 2001: Average trend based on 38 IPPC AR4 models rejected.
i.e., Based on Santer, the IPCC's climate projection of 2C/century is statistically invalidated based on data for the last decade. Thus the rest of the projections appear questionable.
See also discussions Santer 2008 at Climate Audit
David,
You've provided me a link to a blog written by someone named "Lucia". What are the credentials of "Lucia" and why should we pay any attention to this blog?
I suggest you bring the topic up before the American Statistical Association at one of the Joint Statistical Meetings and ask them to confirm to the world the startling findings of this quasi-anonymous blogger.
The other link you provided was a google-search link listing page, hardly anything that we can examine. If you are holding up Steven McIntyre, a former oil/gas executive who has a 1969 B.S. in Mathematics (later added Philosophy/Politics), as your statistics subject matter expert, then I'm afraid you and I have vastly differing opinions on the definition of an expert.
There you go with the ad hominem attacks again. In the search for minerals there is a considerable amount of statistical work involved, and the use of co-variants is a critical part of that, so the underlying math is sufficiently similar that even I can understand the validity of the McIntyre criticisms - but then I got my Batchelor's degree in 1965 so if I understand what you are trying to suggest that disqualifies me from any opinion because a) I'm too old or b) as soon as I got that degree I lost the ability to learn and creatively think.
If you choose to believe a former-mining-executive-now-blogger like McIntyre over the National Research Council and National Academies of Science, then that is certainly your right. Don't be surprised that many others with scientific backgrounds chose differently.
If you want a balanced look at the subject, then might I suggest that you spend at least as much time at realclimate.org (hosted by a number a paleoclimatologists) as you do at climateaudit.org. Seriously.
As a result of McIntyre's work NASA had to admit that 1934 was the warmest year, that he discredited the hockey stick model of the temperature change over the Millennium by Mann, and as the article cited elsewhere in this comments notes just forced the correction of temperature data from Russia , which has even been admitted by real climate . So the gentleman deserves your respect and you need to read his evaluations, then, as I did, you can make up your own mind.
We need to correct some misperceptions here;
As a result of McIntyre's work NASA had to admit that 1934 was the warmest year,
There was a very slight offset caused by the switch to Y2K, and there was a very slight change in the 1998 temperature reading, which made 1934 warmer by 0.02C in the US only. However, this has been touted as meaning global temperatures were higher in 1934, as you seem to imply, which confuses a large number of people who haven't followed the details.
he discredited the hockey stick model of the temperature change over the Millennium by Mann
He pointed out some minor statistical approaches that could have been used, though he has not (nor has anyone else in a peer-reviewed journal) shown Mann's results to be false. Indeed, the NRC performed a study that found that Mann's conclusions were supported by the available data. McIntyre now admits that Mann's answers were roughly correct, but now complains that Wrong Assumptions + Right Answers = Bad Science and has been giving presentations on this topic (as I referenced above).
just forced the correction of temperature data from Russia
This much seems to be true. I await (if it already isn't out) the detailed results of the re-examination of the October data.
Having a second pair of eyes on the data can certainly be helpful. Wanting to tear apart a hypothesis through the re-examination of technique and data is laudable, and that's how science progresses. In fact, this has been the case with erroneous data that suggested the oceans were cooling. I don't deny that McIntyre has actually helped. Always trying to come up with an answer that AGW is somehow inherently wrong is completely unscientific, however, as it introduces the non-scientific bias of seeking a specific answer, instead of letting the data speak for itself. Glad to see that you are also reading RealClimate.org, if that's what your comment implied. At least you are seeing both sides.
Thank you both for a reasoned debate.
I find it interesting, although I have not spent the time to get to grips with it to any great extent, as I was rather turned off by the more typical level of comment on the subject.
Much of it in the popular sites seems to consist of shouting matchs, with on the anti-anthopogenic warming side references to blogs of dubious scientific worth, and on the other side talk of 'deniers' - the use of which term causes me to stop reading the rest of the comment, as it has nothing to do with scientific debate and should be excluded from all discussion which aspires to be more than a polemic.
Anyway, discussion such as you two have provided is always welcome, so thanks again.
If you haven't , you should read the paper "The Mann et al Northern Hemisphere "Hockey Stick" Climate Index: a Tale of Due Diligence" by Ross McKitrick which is in "Shattered Consensus" edited by Patrick Michaels, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005 pp 20 - 49. It describes a fascinating piece of detective work in dissecting what went into the "Hockey Stick" paper and is fairly damning in its conclusions. (I just re-read it while supervising an exam in one of my classes). The explanation as to how to get a "hockey stick" plot by improper manipulation of data is particularly intriguing.
Then you should read Academy affirms hockey-stick graph Nature 441, 1032-1033 (29 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/4411032a;
For more reading material, following recommendations by the NRC, Mann et al published further findings;
Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 105: 132520-13257. doi:10.1073/pnas.0805721105.
If you want to delve further, follow the congressional testimony on "The Wegman Report". It's reminiscent of a soap opera.
Actually I read the report when it came out, if it is the one that I am thinking of. One of the authors had previously reported a higher temperature from ice cores than Mann suggested and it was interesting how that didn't really get much mention in the summary (it is way back in the report). There is a web site, which again I am not immediately able to find, that is now collecting all the peer-reviewed papers that show higher temperatures in the Medieval period around the world. I must chase up those other refs later, but for now must dash off again.
I came across some new information on the rate of release for carbon from soil which I was not previously aware of, and which might cause the rate of global warming to differ from present models:
http://www.physorg.com/news146244148.html
And then there are other factors that are predicted to have vast positive feedback, but not yet in models;
IMPACTS: On the Threshold of Abrupt Climate Changes
The Methane Time Bomb
Hundreds of Methane Plumes Discovered
Yeah, my main feeling when I look at stuff on GW is that I don't put a lot of faith in the models! - they seem to encourage the idea that we know more than we do.
Before I get embroiled in too much debate, I should indicate that since I have not studied the subject, I tend just to more or less accept the scientific consensus.
What seems to pass comparatively unremarked and which really put the willies up me is the fact that it is now clear that the climate is by it's nature radically unstable, and switches states in a very short space of time, even before you factor in man-made inputs.
This is one of the cases where the scientists continual cry that they need more funds to study the issue should be given serious weight.
Will, seriously, why do you read TOD? We are just exactly the same kind of "uncredited bloggers" like the people writing for those websites. Why don't you just get the IEA WEO (the energy “scientific authority”) and go home with their fantasies?
A valid question. The main reason is that the vast majority of global data has been withheld from the petro-geology and reservoir engineering communities, so that no international body has access to it. Hubbert had fairly good US Lower 48 data, and was able to make reasonable projections based on that. For global projections, we have to sort through what the independent petro-geologists and reservoir engineers have to offer from their experience and insights. The articles in TOD on oil depletion are normally well-written, and readers frequently make helpful comments, not unlike a peer-review.
When some TOD writers get off topic on AGW and make pronouncements outside of their field of expertise, then a "peer-review" of sorts helps to clarify matters for both writers and readers. If you feel that this is somehow inappropriate, then please explain why.
To Will's post above, I'd like to add this one:
"Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia"
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.full.pdf+html
Of interest. Do you see that huge anamalous drop at the end of the Delaware, OH data? 2001-2002, right? When the Bush admin. first came in, they mandated the moving of a lot of weather stations from sites which were potentially anamolously increasing readings to sites less affected. Example, one in California moved from a black rooftop surrounded by paved parking, out into the middle of a treed grassy park. Now I agree that the readings at the new site better reflect absolute temperatures, but what the move also did was initiate an anamolous reversal in upward reading trends which had been in the data for the past thirty years.
Very complex.
There are standards for weather station placement. We operate one here where I work and it must be located & maintained according to those standards. A weather station on a black rooftop surrounded by a parking lot is not in compliance for a variety of reasons, not least of which being its excessive elevation above the ground.
"This is hardly the first move of the downtown Los Angeles weather station, but it is by far the largest, and the first to move the station away from the built-up city center. The station was moved from the roof of a two-story parking structure at the Department of Water and Power building near city center at an elevation of almost 90 meters (270 feet), to a park-like environment on the USC campus with tall shade trees and grass at an elevation of almost 60 meters (180 feet).
The National Weather Service moved the station as part of a nationwide effort to locate all official weather stations on ground-level sites in natural settings. The Department of Water and Power site remained operational, however, allowing the direct comparisons used by Patzert and his colleagues."
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=31888
The mandate apparently was initiated in Clinton era circa 1999, but mostly carried out in next admin. Clinton (and certainly not his congress or senate) was not I think a great supported of GW mitigation either.
Interesting that the placement standards for official NWS weather stations were only implemented in 1999. Our weather station has been here since the early 1960s & I guess I just assumed that the placement standards go back at least that far. Ours is located in a nice stand of blue grama & buffalo grass which I would prefer not to mow but must in order to remain in compliance. We operate another 'unofficial' weather station for providing ET data which has two anemometers, one near ground level and another at two meters. The difference in wind speed between them is often substantial. I don't see how meaningful comparisons are possible if station placement isn't kept uniform.
Standards which are ignored. We can compare the actual placement of weather stations to the standards promolgated by NOAA.
Not a problem. New Obama administration can put the weather station back on top of the black roof surrounded by a black parking lot and again prove that it was the current administration that caused global misrepresentation of data. GMAFB
Perhaps you might learn the subject on which you speak, before speaking.
I apologize, I should have done this in a more Oil Drum manner.
Sir, I was unable to find your reference. Do you have a clear and unbiased link to the fact that the Bush Administration ordered the movement of weather stations to negate the cause of Global Warming?
Hansen's numbers were wrong. The earth is probably getting colder not hotter (new ice age in the works). But I don't really think we all have to be worrying about that right now.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml
This problem has many control variables and many free variables. A control variable (eg carbon tax) may get a nonlinear response (eg abrupt powerdown). Being mere mortals I think we can only consider a couple of variables at a time. Here's one .. less than 1% of the population will do like Chickenlegs above and go off grid. Second best solar PV alternatives include feed-in tariffs and utilities hiring out panels. Which is best or will every alternative fall short of expectations?
Here's another one; 'aggressive demand management' by which I mean electrical supply interruption. We've already seen this with thermal comfort whereby air conditioners are turned off by the utility using radio controllers or programmed smart meters. What's next; deliberately shutting off hospitals so they use the backup generator? Shutting on and off electric heating for the frail elderly trapped at home in blizzards? There has to be some crossover point between willing and unwilling participation in electrical demand management.
Like it or not we are going to have to set indicative targets for personal electricity use, dissected into heating, cooking, appliances and maybe plug-in cars. Maybe those targets will be have to be enforceable. If the water cops can restrict litres of tap flow into a property then the electricity cops can control kilowatt hours. When that happens the needs of the grid can be predicted better. That includes the possibility of no new generation capacity until old plant needs replacing.
A horrifying image of course, but that's more scaremongering than reality. In terms of political and economic costs, these are the last people you'll ever switch off the grid. In grids where large industrials have access to imbalance markets, plants will actually voluntarily shut down because the opportunity benefit of doing so is huge. I recently had a talk with a production manager of a large Dutch paper mill who three years ago switched his whole production line off and used all of his 100 MW co-gen capacity to deliver to the grid during a "code red" summer when demand peaked, no wind and conventional power plants were unable to run full capacity due to environmental restrictions on cooling water temperature. Switching off a 100 MW production line is a lot less costly than shutting down the equivalent amount of households. Depending on your political views, you can either set up an imbalance market that will make industrials do this voluntarily, or you can have a government who will switch chosen industrials off by force, but either way no-one will switch off end users unless you really, really have to.
Not true. By your theory, society as a whole would be best off to halt all "productive" activity and concentrate on consumption. Killing our manufacturing capacity to support home A/C is a deadend game.
Nice scarecrow. In most areas residential customers pay the highest rates just to get uninterruptible power. Utilities actually want industrial customers to run at off-peak times.
When times get tough the supply to industry will be cut off to warm homes.
When times get desperate the supply to homes will be cut off to power industry.
You're missing the point, power shortages are all about peak delivery, not total consumption. Shutting down a production line for a few hours only to ramp up again during the night (or, a few weeks later) will not affect productivity of society in the way that switching off homes and offices does.
It depends on why the shortages occur, and how bad they are.
If the problem is a power plant outage, you are correct.
If the problem is a long term one, where gas and coal can't be financed then the overall total has to fall.
For instance, in Leningrad in the Second World War absolute priority had to be given to the production lines, whilst neither the homes nor the factories were heated in a Russian winter.
True, but when you're in a besieged city, being shelled and mortared, the discomfort of losing home heating will start to slide down your priorities list.
The 'trying not to die from cold' bit remained fairly high on most people's priority list though, an endeavour in which many thousands were unsuccessful.
In some of the collapse scenarios possible, many people's choices may be just as stark.
Here in the UK, there seems to me to be a realistic possibility that within 5 years we will not be able to pay for energy imports.
UK consumes the same amount of gas as Germany, where consumers also pay about the same as the UK for gas (actually a bit more). They do not seem to have problems paying their bills and Germany isn't that much richer. Neither are the Japanese, the Italians, the Belgians. Apart from losing some local production (which indeed will hit the state's coffers), what's going to make the UK situation fundamentally so catastrophic compared to other net-importers?
(also, I know this is not connected to anything long term, but there are currently two LNG tankers idly floating around in the North Sea awaiting a buyer from either the continent or the UK - there's no outlet for this gas as all storage is full and (esp industrial) demand is very low even as it's not particularly warm for the time of year.)
The economic fundamentals of the UK are very different to that of Germany, or France.
In the UK we are in substantial budget deficit before trying to print money to buy our way out of a recession.
We also have a balance of payments deficit, at a time when oil and gas production is about to go into rapid decline.
If we are meant to boost exports by devaluation to counter this it would be in the teeth of a world-wide recession, and with financial services as our biggest industry.
Germany has none of the bubble in housing prices that the UK suffers from.
Debt as a percentage of GDP invites comparison more nearly with Iceland than Germany, and in addition the housing stock is far more poorly insulated.
No realistic strategic plans have been made to ensure security of supply, and coal and nuclear plants are rapidly coming to the end of their lives.
We buy gas on the spot market, and have little capacity to store gas so that we can buy it in the summer when it is cheaper - around 12 days storage, versus 90-100 days in France and Germany.
Norway have stated that we are going to be the first to be cut off in the event of shortages, as we do not have long term contracts.
Of the major economies the UK is by far the closest to total bankruptcy, with the possible exception of Italy.
The UK, being the 51st of these United Sates, also is not quite as bright on whole, as the folks in France or Germany......
I think the estimate is that around 1 million died, most of them civilians due to starvation and freezing. I think it's a bit of a combined issue in the sense that as long as you have shelter from the wind/rain/snow and sufficient clothing/blankets/etc., you can survive without heating in a very cold climate. But you need to eat a lot..
How you survive in an unheated environment depends on who the 'you' are.
The population of Leningrad in 1941 would be a great deal younger than the profile of the average Brit now.
Medicines are also likely to be in short supply if the economy fails, and eating if food is not absolutely short likely to consist of cheap and stodgy alternatives.
In addition, in an effort to stay warm unhealthy levels of condensation are likely in many properties, with mould problems exacerbating breathing problems and many fires from the use of all sorts of devices to get a little heat.
If we think in terms of the rocketing death rate of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union we may have a reasonable approximation of the early results of a financial collapse in Great Britain.
Failing an early recovery I would expect that to be worsened by rocketing rates of crime, including violent crime, riots, alcoholism and drug use.
Well, there's two sorts of power shortages aren't there? There's KW shortages (eg. generating station nameplate capacity shortage even with plenty of fuel) and KWH shortages (eg. fuel shortages even with plenty of station capacity). It seems to me that any relevant discussion of shortages to this article's opening comment would relate to KW shortages, though at theOilDrum I'm more accustomed to thinking of KWH shortages.
I'm still of the opinion that in either case productive industry should not be incented to reduce production quantity or efficiency until every rational and affordable step has been taken to curtail home and commercial consumption.
See my articles on load management, conservation and fair marketing at
Independent Market for Every Utility Customer - Preliminary Business Case
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1176
Independent Market for Every Utility Customer - Part 2 - Market Operation
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1181
Independent Market for Every Utility Customer - Part 3 - Alternative Market Operation
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1811
Energy Central Blogs - IMEUC - Independent Market for Every Utility Customer
http://www.energyblogs.com/imeuc/index.cfm/2007/9/18/Introduction
Interesting articles, Len, and I would agree with the thrust of what you say.
However, the fact that supplies to industry should be maintained, which I would agree with, does not alter the probability that, in my view, initially supplies will be restricted to industry in favour of homes, until the situation becomes so self-evidently dire that it will become politically possible to cut homes.
Here in Britain we seem likely to have both shortages of installed Kw, and Kwh from natural gas etc.
This seems likely in my view to hinder industry sufficiently that it is difficult to see where a recovery of any sort will come from, or where the collapse will stop.
No need to cut homes entirely, just financially incent them to move parts of their consumption from peak hours into off-peak hours. A lot of loads can be scheduled for night operation with no inconvenience (dishwashers, laundry, refrigeration, PHEV charging) given incentives and smart systems, especially fair rewards, plus a half-intelligent application of existing communications and digital processing technology. It's not a very complex requirement, comparable to implementing a DSL or cellphone net, certainly easier than a satellite TV system.
Many (most?) homes in the UK already have meters which can be used to charge at different rates for night time use.
Under our old system of unified generation and provision we would be in a much stronger position.
With the present system of incentives the power companies are not too interested, so they up the rates during the day so much if you go onto a low rate for the night that you are no better off.
I think we will have to move onto the much more severe system in Italy, where your draw at anyone time is limited, so that if you are running the washing machine you had better not try to boil a kettle.
The main problem in the UK are the very poor insulation standards and perverse incentives, so that low users and the poor who use key meters are differentially charged much more.
This seems the sort of thing that would be amenable to the same modeling work that Alan Drake has done with the Millennium Institute. Or perhaps it's already been modeled in full and the financial crash we're experiencing was deemed the tidiest way to climb down from our high energy lifestyle.
At a bare minimum I see predictions that up to a third of our housing is going to go empty. This is seldom brought up in the context of new power plants. We have enough power now and we're about to need a bit less for a variety of reasons - tell me again why we'd build anything but renewables?
It's confusing when TOD proposes massive restructuring of the transportation energy sector, then turns around and argues that we should put on short term BAU blinders with regards to the electrical energy generation sector. I'm afraid this article had little substance other than "supply needs to be matched to any and all demand". With the manufacturing sector on the decline in Ohio, demand is certain to drop, if it isn't already.
One cannot legislate technology that does not exist
What technology are you refering to that does not exist? Wind and solar generation most certainly exists today. "Clean coal" plants most certainly do not, after 25 years of throwing countless billions of $ at this mirage. I have no problem with coal plants being held up until they can be built as zero carbon power plants, though I'd much rather see the money put towards wind, solar, geothermal, hydro storage, and HVDC grid infrastructure, frankly.
Stuart Staniford's Powering Civilization to 2050 provides a deeper insight into the issues we have now and how a grand solution could be architected. Having a national (and eventually an international) smart grid means that demand can be reduced/matched to a largely renewable energy supply.
They do, for certain values of "exist".
Oxygen-blown IGCC can be cleaned up to an impressive degree for the usual pollutants (fly ash, SOx, mercury and other toxics). The process of cold-gas cleanup using amine loops for H2S removal captures all acid gases, CO2 included. It is actually cheaper to capture this CO2 than to separate it from the H2S and dump it.
True, that's only a partial solution; the CO and CH4 in the syngas still take carbon to the gas turbine and out the stack. But it's available today. So is fractional distillation of the cleaned syngas, to generate a hydrogen stream and CO/methane stream. There are possibilities for burning the CO/methane stream in an indirect heater, isolating and capturing the CO2 for disposal without having to separate it from combustion gases (one way is using lanthanum-based ceramics). The hydrogen can be burned directly in the gas turbine to reach the standard firing temperature.
All of this either exists at commercial scale or has been lab tested.
Thank you for your thoughtful, informative response; fly ash, SO2 scrubbers, and so forth have been around for some time, as you noted. You mentioned a number of possibilities; Could you tell me which commercial coal plants are now performing the CO2 cleanup you mentioned above, and how they are doing disposing of it? And which are separating out CO and CH4 and how they are disposing of those?
Wabash River has been doing IGCC with cold syngas cleanup since the mid-90's. The CO2 captured in the amine loop scrubber is separated from the H2S and dumped; the H2S is converted to elemental sulfur in a Claus-process unit. Elemental sulfur is so cheap, however, that a few Claus units would saturate the market.
Co-capture and co-sequestration of H2S and CO2 would eliminate the capital cost of both the separation and the Claus unit. However, given recent advances in conversion of H2S to hydrogen, it may still pay to do the separation. If the Argonne/KPM process can also convert carbonyl sulfide to CO and H2, it could replace another part of the syngas cleanup system.
CO and CH4 are fuel, and burned in the gas turbine. The indirect combustion appears not to have been attempted on a commercial scale yet. If it was, the product gas would be a stream of CO2 and H2O and could be routed straight to a pipeline.
Thanks for the comprehensive response, you've addressed the point at hand. So it seems that while these processes are not fully fielded, that they're fielding would be relatively straightforward. Hence, this technology could be required of new or renovated coal plants.
IM<HO, we should be requiring old-technology coal plants to either be given the Wabash River treatment (repowering with IGCC, full cleanup and "hooks" for future emissions improvements) or shut down.
Wabash River went from being a 90-megawatt powdered-coal combustion (PCC) plant to a 252-megawatt IGCC plant with a fraction of the sulfur and particulate emissions. Thermal efficiency went from ~30% to almost 40%. If we can get 180% increases in rated power and 1/3 better thermal efficiency, plus the ability to scrub 90+% of mercury from the syngas with nothing more than filtration using activated carbon, we should have been doing this yesterday. And for each plant rebuilt, we could shut almost two more equivalent plants down.
Unfortunately we pissed away all the low-interest money on McMansions, gas-guzzling trucks and Chinese junk.
Hi EP,
Thanks for an informative post.
Any idea of the energy penalty involved in the various forms of scrubbing and sequestration?
I have seen figures of 25% bandied about, but AFAIK that does not even pretend to any degree of accuracy, and presumably the location of the coal plant, it's distance from the site of sequestration etc., would lead to wildly different figures.
Eliminating the separation of CO2 and H2S saves the energy involved there. Pumping gas down pipelines takes energy roughly proportional to the shipping distance.
Those are old figures for scrubbing from nitrogen-diluted combustion gases. The most recent estimate is 7% using ammonium carbonate capture, but eliminating the mixing of carbon with the air stream gets rid of the entire issue. Oxy-fuel combustion is one possibility, but has a lot of energy overhead for the air separation plant. The lanthanum ceramic tubes I referred to above would do the job without additional energy input.
Thanks EP.
A key post on sequestration would be good, if you can rustle up the time - don't forget to explain things in words of one syllable or fewer though, for those of us not technically trained! :-)
One of the questions I have is about where all of the solar power grants for homeowners will come from, if both local and federal governments are having increasing difficulty raising fund for needed services. If I multiply 500,000 households times $20,000, I get a subsidy of $10 billion dollars. If I multiply that times 100 power plants, I would get $1 trillion dollars. Homeowners would need to come up with somewhat more than that on their own. There would also need to be upgrades to the transmission lines, if the solar were to feed back into the grid--another big cost to be picked up by someone.
You've reminded us that $700 billion divided by $20k shows that 35 million homes could have had solar generated electricity with the money we ended up throwing at banks to save them from their bad decisions. That number is almost half the single family (i.e., detached) homes in the US.
One of the Solar Subsidies I would like to see is one that provides enough assistance to install a PV system that is about HALF (or pick a fraction you like) of the household-average KWH consumption, which would provide the added incentive for the family to figure out (or follow a brochure) how to reduce their remaining billed consumption, in order to get rid of the other half of their electric bill. Two Big Birds, same stone.. and yet, this makes the subsidy smaller than one that might have been designed to build to current (excessive) domestic electrical demands.
Bob
The possibility of reducing electric consumption does not mean that it is possible to eliminate it, except perhaps in a relatively narrow range of situations and environments.
In fact, if society spends too great a fraction of it's resources on relatively minor inputs, such as solar in high latitudes, this may substantially reduce funds available to undertake more effective measures.
That depends on what you mean by "high latitudes". Germany has seen very good results with Passivhaus, which requires little in the way of additional labor/material cost, though has been found to save ~75% of annual building heat costs.
..and Passivhaus would very much come under my heading that the money in high latitude environments could be better spent on 'other more effective methods' than solar PV.
Residential solar thermal is a different matter, too.
But Passivhaus utilizes passive solar thermal, which is residential solar thermal. Perhaps you meant active solar thermal? Or small scale solar thermal power generation?
Perhaps my wording was unclear. I would be in favour of solar thermal, including the variants used in Passivhaus and stand alone water heating.
It is solar PV at high latitudes which do not give you much bang for the buck, right when you most need it in midwinter.
If someone wants to pay for their own, without subsidies, and use it off grid so that they are not making things worse for the grid, fair enough.
But Governments can spend tax monies more wisely by insulating properties etc than subsidising the installation of solar PV in these regions.
Maybe I was unclear.
The point was not to eliminate all electricity use, but just to provide enough PV (share the cost anyway) to cover what might be considered a new 'essential' level, with the assumption that there would be a lot of conservation that the homeowner would be able to engage so as to cut way back on the other half of their electric supply, which is still being paid for off the grid. This would promote 'negawatts', would be a smaller subsidy, and still support the grid with both more distributed generation, AND less demand to meet.
Do I really have to defend this as if I made a 'Silver Bullet' proposal? That's getting tiresome. No, it doesn't have to apply to unsuitable latitudes, it doesn't have to be offered out of proportion to the available assets of the government.. it's not a blanket proposal. sigh.
The thing is, Solar PV is very effective when well located, and is still underrepresented. Solar Heating.. yes, even moreso. Sorry it doesn't apply for you.
Bob
Besides subsidies of buyers of solar modules, there are also subsidies that help the solar manufacturers. (See The Great Solar Shake-Out). In the US, these take the form of tax credits for those investing in the manufacturers. Now with the banks making these investments being less profitable, the tax credits provide less benefit to investors. Lehman Brothers was is this market, but is now gone.
In Germany and Spain, selling prices of modules have been inflated by generous subsidies. According the the article, Germany and Spain are capping or even reducing the subsidies they pay.
The subsidies of manufacturers help to keep prices of solar panels up (and margins to manufacturers up). The subsidies to buyers (mentioned in my comment above) help to keep prices to the buyers down. If a large batch of these subsidies were taken away, the margins of the solar manufacturers would go down, and a lot of the more credit dependent, less efficient manufacturers would go out of business.
The whole system is so heavily dependent on subsidies of one type or another (including required adjustments to transmission lines) that I doubt anyone knows what solar voltaic costs really are. If governments become poorer and less able to back the solar industry, it seems like the industry will greatly drop in scale.
Take a look at the Regional Green House Gas Initiative - http://rggi.org/home.
We've added many jobs and deployed many solar electric arrays based on RGGI.
Calif...
The rebates come from a surcharge on residential and commercial utility bills, about $12 per year for residential customers.
http://www.ucan.org/energy/energy_efficiency_alternatives/solar_panels/s...
I wonder what the cost would be if the there was an order to provide 10kwh solar systems for 75 million homes? It certainly would be less than $41K. If less than $20K then the $700 billion would provide all of the money. Also another $700 billion would double the track in the US and have some left over for rolling stock.
Isn't it amazing how much one can rob the people by waving a couple sheets of paper in from of congress?
Think we are about to spend another big bunch to save the auto industry while the CEO of GM still makes $40K per day.
The system we have is so f**ked up now is it little wonder that some are anxious for peak everything to send up back to 1500 and start over?
Perhaps you should learn more about realistic data before you blame the Bush administration for moving some weather stations.
Residential solar power reduces the stress on the transmission grid infrastructure. This is a savings to the utilities not a cost. If someday we get 100% of our electricity from solar, there might be cost in reconfiguring the grid. But that won't happen in my lifetime. Increasing solar electricity from today's .01% to say 10% of the nation's electricity will let us stretch out the capability of the existing grid infrastructure.
I live in a sunny area where median housing prices are still quite high (around $500,000). A homeowner investing $20 or even $50k would represent less than 10% of the cost of the house, and would pay for itself over a number of years. Also, the bailout bill contains an extended solar energy tax credit.
Rooftop PV installations are becoming more and more commonplace, as seen with my own eyes!
Unless the peak back-feed was greater than today's peak load, the lines and transformers would be perfectly adequate as-is. The only changes required would be to control systems (IIUC they are not designed for bidirectional power flow, and anti-islanding is an issue).
In addition to the point you make, except in the case of large solar thermal installations the distributed nature of solar power should mean that load on the grid is actually reduced, with power usually only going short distances and in limited amounts, as for instance if you have a PV array on your home then your own peak air conditioning load is taken care of, so most of the power is going nowhere,
Sure, if we continue BAU, make no attempts at conservation, make no attempts at efficiency, forget all renewable energy like solar, wind, and geothermal, forget nuclear, forget more efficient appliances, insist on using electric dryers, keep all our lights on, and pretty much continue the profligate life we lead, then places like Ohio will freeze in the dark.
More coal is unacceptable, especially considering all the ways we can reduce our fossil fueled electricity usage.
So how would you ensure that the 500,000 people around Columbus get their power in 5 years, and do so in a way that ensures you get re-elected? I am not forgetting wind and solar, I am trying to point out that they won't be able to provide a realistic answer at scale in the time available. Putting in a nuclear power station will take a lot longer than the coal station, so that in the time frame that is not an answer either.
Institute demand management. One simply way that could be started fairly soon would be to tax monthly electricity use at an additional $0.01/kWh for consumption over 250 kWhs, and additional $0.02/kWh over 500 kWhs, and an additional $0.04/kWh over 800 kWhs (the exact thresholds could be different). Rebate the money collected evenly over all customers (i.e., all residential customers receive a $297 check). Or institute a carbon tax on electrical generation, also with a feebate. Watch Ohio demand drop far more than that single coal-burning plant could provide.
Great, incentivising efficient large production facilities to break themselves up into less efficient smaller units.
How is reducing energy demand to remove the need to add another coal-burning plant somehow inefficient?
Many Good Solutions are Quick
Conservation Last week and this weekend:
- I (really plumber I work with) finished up the installation of the seventh natural gas tankless water heater I have been involved with (this one ideally located to work with solar water heat later). Outside combustion replaced inside combustion of the gas (mounted on wall opposite bathroom), and the hot water run from water heater to bathtub faucet was reduced from 55' to 14' (up, down, across) (Kitchen also saw shorter runs, but less significant) so less energy is stranded in pipes with each use.
A SWAG is that this reduces energy used for hot water by more than half (no tank losses, outside combustion air, shorter runs) and another half (or more) later with solar hot water.
- Insulated my sixth attic door. Glued silver reflective
"bubble wrap" to upper side of door (much better than 3/8" plywood and air films for insulation). This also serves as weatherstripping as door (good strong hinges) compresses the "bubble wrap". Next is to build a Styrofoam box (one 4' x 8' sheet, likely 2" thick) over the stairwell.
R-30 for 1,400 ft2 and R-0.8 (SWAG air films) for 7 ft2 has the attic door with 15% of the conductive heat losses (add air leaks around door). Worth doing !
Previously installed foam rubber inserts around outlets and switches (behind face plates) to reduce air infiltration.
- Replaced 1930's gas heater in bathroom (unused due to safety concerns) with modern 6,000 BTU (max allowed in bathrooms) ventless gas heater in bathroom (Rinnai, Made in Japan). 99.9% efficient (assuming extra humidity is desired). This weekend, they left door open from bathroom and one electric space heater in bedroom over night instead of using central heat. They are now discussing another ventless gas heater (max. 10,000 BTUs = 1.9 electric space heaters) in bedroom.
- Replaced 27 25 watt & 40 watt incandescent bulbs in restaurant with 2250K (yellowish color restaurants like) dimmable 8 watt CFLs with glass cover (hard to tell they are CFLs). Also cold cathode (no life lost when turned on, but 1 minute to full bright) and $9 a piece.
Moral is that significant conservation savings are possible with good to superb paybacks. And quickly !
Wind 18 months from financial decision to operation for expanding an existing wind farm and 30 months for a green field are schedules often quoted. Slight additions of Murphy can stretch that out to 36 and 42 months.
Combined Cycle Natural Gas Significantly more efficient (pushing 60% even in real world applications) than coal (30% in USA standard coal plants, pdf download was bad so unsure of Ohio plant) AND much less carbon/BTU from natural gas ! (1/5th from vague memory).
Install a combined cycle plant in a district heating complex and real world efficiencies of 75+% are possible.
That Ohio utility would serve society FAR better by
1) Taking those wind turbines reserved by T Boone Pickens (or others) and installing, say, 3 to 4 GW of new WTs (take some existing coal off-line part time)
2) Massive energy conservation program that will free up significant amounts of NG (and reduce electrical demand)
3) Aggressively look for opportunities for combined cycle NG driven district heating and cooling
4) Build some more combined cycle NG plants for system reliability when the wind does not blow.
All of the above could be completed and on-line in less than 5 years. Net savings of NG (conservation > new low load factor NG generation).
Although I would prefer new nukes, I can accept new coal power plants ONLY if they replace older in-efficient coal fired plants (one Danish plant is 44% efficient, none in USA as good AFAIK). Same power, 40+% less coal burned.
Pumped storage and more transmission will take more than 5 years, but utility should be working on those now !
Build 1 GW, tear down 1 GW coal fired plant.
Otherwise no new coal fired plants are needed.
Best Hopes for Lower Carbon Emissions,
Alan
Um! Where are you going to get the Natural Gas?
Since my program would net LESS natural gas (and less electricity) that question is somewhat meaningless. The world will not suddenly have have NO natural gas, but less (perhaps, see below).
As Jeffrey Brown and others have noted, the one good energy surprise in the last 18 or so months has been unconventional NG production. Barnett Shale et al. Not cheap, but available, in considerable quantity, at a price.
NG used to supplement solar water heating is a "highest and best" use and I suspect landfill gas could do the trick VERY long term. (Note that latest unit is set up for future solar add-on).
Room space heating is very close behind for "highest and best" use.
And building pumped storage and more HVAC & HVDC will allow wind to supplant both NG and coal generation, at least in large part (nukes need pumped storage too when >50% of grid).
The tankless gas water heater and ventless gas space heater have expected lives of 20 to 25 years. NG supplies for domestic use are secure in Louisiana for at least that long.
BTW, my attic door calc was for ceiling only. Total home conductive heat losses may be only 6% through old attic door.
Best Hopes for Rational Analysis,
Alan
You are more optimistic about the continued availability of that supply than I am.
The world of North American natural gas supply has changed, in a positive way, in the last 18 months. Unconventional sources (mainly shale) have exceeded reasonable/conservative expectations of two years ago.
My proposal would REDUCE both natural gas and electrical demand in toto, so as long as there was some reasonable decline (see above), there would be no problem.
Additional pumped storage would allow fuel shifting as needed to meet peak demand. Pumped storage is a bit of a cure-all.
Best Hopes for Realistic Evaluations,
Alan
Not all wind turbine installations are massive farms installed by power companies. You can pick up a small wind turbine that produces 400W for $500. That's a lot of energy bang for the buck.
http://www.mrsolar.com/page/MSOS/PROD/sww/Air-X_Land_12V/SESSION_ID/448ff16eddf48e6e9fe547c9bbe31141
Your link does not seem to work, but my guess is that your 400W for $500 refers to installed capacity, not average output.
It is by no means unusual for these set-ups to generate less than a tenth of their rated output on average per hour.
In addition, presumably some form of battery set-up is required, and conditioning.
Watch it if you install a vertical turbine on your roof, as the vibration can be unpleasant and can do structural damage.
Free standing turbines on a farm or whatever, where the wind speeds are high and it can be built to d decent height are a different matter, but you won't be getting much power for $500.
As noted, those turbines won't do much good in Ohio. It would make much more sense to put them in Iowa and lakes Michigan and Huron, then run 1.1 megavolt HVDC lines around as part of a regional joint venture. A single ± 1.1 MV line running at 2500 amps could carry over 1% of US average electric power by itself.
HO,
I like and agree with most of your post having crunched the numbers for my own (1930's) house and life style. I have however aggressively gone the reduced consumption route (insulation, windows, passive solar, high efficiency utilities, hybrid car, car pooling, etc.) as a way to cut costs now in order to afford alternative energy capture in the future. I would do mass transit but it isn't available. Hard to replace fossil fuel use after all the infrastructure was built to consume vast amounts of energy, in inefficient ways. I have been doing this for 5 years and only now am I getting close to putting up solar hot water and solar voltaic.
All of this is ROI difficult as long as fossil fuel costs are low, as I still deem them to be. Want to speed up and make alternative energy more competitive? Tax the existing fossil fuel production more and provide incentives (reverse tax) to the renewables. Yes this is picking winners and loser. Yes this is regressive. Yes this hurts existing energy companies more than wind and solar. And yes this will likely raise energy prices across the board. The key though is to follow the money. Where will all those extra tax dollars for buying energy end up? Is the goal to get off fossil fuels or not? If yes, it will take incentives to build the competing energy capture systems, even if they are not as energy dense today as fossil fuels. If no, than let the market work and we will get off fossil fuels only when they are depleted and there is no choice.
I know of no other way to force a level playing field, other than this cost shifting approach. It will take decades to get off fossil fuels, just make them artificially expensive early on. Same concept as a gasoline tax when prices are low. As fossil use declines there will be less tax revenue to subsidize ever larger build out of wind and solar, which should generate their own economies of scale in the interim. By the time ~50 of the energy supply required (which should be much less than today, due the drive for efficiency under high prices) is from renewables, those industries should be based on themselves for manufacture and distribution.
I even see a need for Biofuels in heavy equipment and the Midwest to a limited degree. At present essentially all renewable manufacturing is built on top of the fossil energy base and this puts them at a competitive disadvantage with those established industries. Any change in pricing automatically shifts to the upstarts, making them uncompetitive when prices fall and too costly when prices rise. Incentives can be for both centralized (wind and solar farms) and decentralized roof panels, small wind and micro hydro. The forgotten part is all the machines and parts that are made only for fossil fuels. That manufacturing base has to change out as well over time. The key is a constant drive for less fossil energy via more renewable supply or less demand or both.
So I agree that renewables today do not provide enough energy and are too expensive for most people. The question however is: How will this change if we do nothing and let the market rule?
Actually I am not arguing that we do nothing, rather that complacently sitting there and saying that wind, solar and nuclear will solve the problem is a non-realistic answer to replacing coal-fired power stations at this stage in the game. We need a considerable program of public education and much more awareness in the public at large about the nature of the problem that is coming down the pike. Further we need to be more constructive in looking for solutions, and the awareness that not all solutions will work in all neighborhoods. But, while waiting for those solutions to arrive, we still have to keep warm, and have enough power to maintain a life style similar to the current one (or else we will have a different set of politicians with a different agenda in place before too long).
Thanks for the reply and I get your point now. It is not possible to shut existing coal plants just because they pollute. There is no replacement for all that energy.
I agree with your assessment. Time is certainly our enemy in switching. I guess my statements were more along the line that if we had been proactively trying to replace fossil fuels since 1980 (instead of expanding the total energy supply) we would have both more alternatives and less fossil built into the energy system mix today. I feel we would have increased total energy supply over what it was in 1980, but at a much slower rate.
At some point, no matter how painful it will be, we have to stop expanding the fossil energy production base of the system. If we only increase supply via renewables (while continuing to feed the existing fossil base) we will learn very quickly what a sustainable growth rate is. The bigger we let that fossil base get the harder it is to replace, never mind grow, using renewables.
If this approach shows that population growth is occurring faster than energy growth, than population growth has to slow down because with or without a plan the fossil energy supply is going to stop expanding soon.
If this approach shows that population growth is occurring faster than energy growth, than population growth has to slow down because with or without a plan the fossil energy supply is going to stop expanding soon.
So we should continue to increase population as long as there is a possibility of increasing fossil fuel supply? What benefit do we get from increased population? Have you heard anyone predicting a decline in fossil fuel supply? Have you heard anyone speaking out against fossil fuel burning? Are humans smarter than yeast?
But, while waiting for those solutions to arrive,
You fail to observe that coal fired plants are the *SLOW* solution. Only nuclear and hydroelectric take longer (BTW, typically coal fired plants also need dedicated new coal mines, or expansions of old ones; utilities do not like to buy all of their coal on the spot market and this fuel supply requirement adds to the time required fro new coal fired plants. Replacement plants (same power, less coal due to higher efficiency) would not have this constraint.
Conservation is quickest, wind next and then combined cycle natural gas (order one from GE's catalog).
Best Hopes for the Best, and Quickest solutions,
Alan
Conservation is quickest, wind next and then combined cycle natural gas (order one from GE's catalog).
Wrong, stopping population growth is quickest and cheapest. We can stop immigration in two legislative acts - one stops illegal by severe penalties on employers and the other stops legal immigration by making it illegal. We can lower the birth rate to sustainable levels (immigrant mothers have recently pushed it above the magic 2.1 per woman) by stopping immigration. We can also stop subsidizing children over the first two per mother and get a negative population growth rate.
Let's count how many new power plants we would need to build to handle a stable population ... 0.
Let's count how many new power plants we would need to build to handle a declining population ... 0.
If you check out birth rates in the 30's, you will find that depression rapidly reduced birthrates to well below replacement rates, just as the birth rate plummeted after the collapse in Eastern Europe.
It seems as certain as anything can be that birth rates in the States will shortly be way below replacement rates.
If you check out birth rates in the 30's, you will find that depression rapidly reduced birthrates to well below replacement rates, just as the birth rate plummeted after the collapse in Eastern Europe.
It seems as certain as anything can be that birth rates in the States will shortly be way below replacement rates.
I don't know about birth rates, but immigration stopped in the Great Depression. Apparently when enough people are out of work all the talk from economists, politicians and businesspeople romanticizing and glorifying immigration starts to sound like the drivel that it is.
Why would we benefit by waiting for a depression to handle population growth? What is good about population growth between now and a depression?
Beyond saying that population growth is bad, you do not seem to have any practical ideas on how to reduce it.
Illegal immigration could of course be stopped almost instantly, not by border controls but by fining those who employ illegal labour.
The reason that was not done was that it was profitable to many of the powerful to have cheap labour.
Regarding your lack of knowledge of the history of fertility, it is a reasonable idea to acquaint yourself with the subject if you wish to hold forth on population as repeatedly as you do, as only in that way can a clear idea be formed as to whether and to what degree population increase or decrease might be a problem, and from it's history determine which measures to influence it have been effective and which have not, and what the natural rate is under various conditions.
Here is some starter information:
http://www.prb.org/
Beyond saying that population growth is bad, you do not seem to have any practical ideas on how to reduce it.
I am afraid you are confusing me with the Sierra Club. I hope to see you speak out against their ball-less advocation of a stable US population without advocating a single way to get there.
Illegal immigration could of course be stopped almost instantly, not by border controls but by fining those who employ illegal labour.
The reason that was not done was that it was profitable to many of the powerful to have cheap labour.
Illegal immigration is only half of our immigration problem and is cherished by many of the unpowerful. Plenty of people with no power will give reasons why illegal immigration either must continue (and isn't good) or why it is good. The romanticism that is given to legal immigration carries over to and pollutes much of the thought on illegal immigration.
Regarding your lack of knowledge of the history of fertility, it is a reasonable idea to acquaint yourself with the subject if you wish to hold forth on population as repeatedly as you do, as only in that way can a clear idea be formed as to whether and to what degree population increase or decrease might be a problem, and from it's history determine which measures to influence it have been effective and which have not, and what the natural rate is under various conditions.
My knowledge of US fertility is sufficient - it would be at or below replacement level were it not for immigration. What I find lacking is your knowledge of arithmetic. Citing US fertility rates without mentioning immigration shows you have problems with addition.
Here is some starter information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic
And I will ask again:
Why would we benefit by waiting for a depression to handle population growth? What is good about population growth between now and a depression?
I am aware of US immigration.
You have flaunted your ignorance of some of the basic parameters of the subject you wish to hold forth on, nor do you show any inclination to learn.
Whether your repeated rants continue is up to the moderators, but you have removed yourself from any informed discussion of the issues.
I am aware of US immigration.
It is your ability to do arithmetic that I think needs work.
You have flaunted your ignorance of some of the basic parameters of the subject you wish to hold forth on, nor do you show any inclination to learn.
I have some bad news regarding your personal selection of the "basic parameters of the subject". While you think knowledge of Great Depression birth rates is critical your own knowledge of it comes up short. US birth rates declined from 1909
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/t001x01.pdf
right on through the roaring 20's from 30 per 1000 in 1909 to 21.2 per 1000 in 1929. The fertility rate declined from 126.8 per thousand women in child-bearing age to 89.3 per 1000 in 1929. In the Great Depression from 1930 to 1939 birth rates and fertility rates declined from 21.3 in 1930 to 18.8 in 1939 and from 89.2 in 1930 to 74.8 in 1939.
So by either measure - fertility rate or birth rate, the decline was greater in the roaring 20's, than it was in the Great Depression. Your attribution of the decline in the birth rate in the 1930's to the Great Depression appears to be a result of shoddy research. And your assurance that a depression will lower birth rates in the US seems to suffer from the same lack of rigor as birth/fertility rates are already lower now in the US then they were in the Great Depression.
Whether your repeated rants continue is up to the moderators, but you have removed yourself from any informed discussion of the issues.
Since you place knowledge of Great Depression birth rates in the US as critical to whether one can comment on population growth 70 years later, then I regretfully have to inform you that it was in fact yourself who just got removed from the discussion. When you add in the fact that you engaged in a time-disgraced snarky, bogus and childish attempt to silence an opponent who has the facts on his side - coupled with your ducking of a repeated question on population growth - you may want to revisit your attempts to contribute to other discussions as well.
Birth Rate - All races (remember 9 month delay)
1929 - 21.2
1930 - 21.3
1931 - 20.2
1932 - 19.5
1933 - 18.4
1934 - 19.0
1935 - 18.7
1936 - 18.4
1937 - 18.7
1938 - 19.2
1939 - 18.8
1940 - 19.4
1941 - 20.3
1942 - 22.2
Your selection of 1938 appears to be non-representative. With a one year delay (close to reality with conception not being immediate after a decision), there appears to be a strong co-relation between economic activity and fertility.
1932 was worst year (from memory), 1936 was a rebound year and 1938 was another bad one but overseas war demand improved 1939.
I question your claim that the Depression did not suppress birth rates.
Given changing demographics and age profiles, I would prefer data on children/ women of child bearing age than "raw" birth rates.
Alan
Your selection of 1938 appears to be non-representative.
I don't see where 1938 was ever mentioned. If you are talking about 1939, I took the period 1929 to 1939 and compared it to 1919 to 1929 and 1909 to 1919. The lowest decline in birth rate of those three periods was during the decade of the Great Depression. The highest decline in birth rate took place during the Roaring 20's.
With a one year delay (close to reality with conception not being immediate after a decision), there appears to be a strong co-relation between economic activity and fertility.
What co-relation do you see?
I question your claim that the Depression did not suppress birth rates.
The birth rate decline slowed during the Great Depression over the decline rate it had seen during the period from 1909 to 1929. The greatest decline rate was during the decade of the Roaring 20's. If we are going to perform analysis that says "if A happened during B, then B was the cause of A" then we have to conclude that prosperity lowers birth rates and lack of prosperity lowers birth rates. But at that point prosperity would be eliminated as a determining factor. However, the normal way of thinking, the "conventional wisdom" if you will, is that prosperity leads to lower birth rates. Couple that with the conventional wisdom that the world will always get more prosperous and you end up seeing why everyone has their fingers crossed that population growth will never have to be addressed explicitly.
Given changing demographics and age profiles, I would prefer data on children/ women of child bearing age than "raw" birth rates.
If you reread my post or look at the pdf file you will see both birth rates and fertility rates - but they mirror each other in declining the most during the boom of the Roaring 20's.
Look mate which do you think is easier - insulating lofts or mind controlling 40m people into not doing what their entire existence is biologically and pyschologically impelled to do after eating and sleeping ?
Arguing the toss over birth rates in 1938 or 1932 is daft.
Look mate which do you think is easier - insulating lofts or mind controlling 40m people into not doing what their entire existence is biologically and pyschologically impelled to do after eating and sleeping ?
You have created a (bogus) false dilemma. Insulation will not protect from infinite population growth (the bogus part). And in the USA we can stop population growth by stopping immigration (left out of your false dilemma).
Arguing the toss over birth rates in 1938 or 1932 is daft.
If some proponent of population growth raises birth rates during the Great Depression as a key fact regarding US population grow today I believe I owe them the courtesy of a reply and the benefit of my opinion.
The year by year data clearly shows a strong relationship between depressed fertility and depressed economic activity.
By 1941 (1942 births) the Great Depression was almost over (at recession, not depression, levels of economic activity) and birth rates had rebounded to pre-Depression levels.
The Great Depression was not an "on/off" event, it varied over the years.
The metric you chose is flawed, as I noted. Changing demographics/age profiles make raw birth data quoted flawed in analyzing the economic effects on fertility. The trend you note over decades is heavily influenced by those changing demographics.
Likewise, the decade by decade analysis is nearly useless since events do not neatly divide themselves into decades. The jumping over nine years and only looking at the tenth loses too much good data.
And yes, increased "modern" prosperity reduces birth rates, as does radically reduced economic activity. High fertility is typically found in subsistence societies with stable & primitive economies.
Alan
The year by year data clearly shows a strong relationship between depressed fertility and depressed economic activity.
The decade by decade data eliminates the Great Depression as a reason for declining birth and fertility rates. Birth rates are lower now than they were during the Great Depression. Is economic activity lower now than it was during the Great Depression?
By 1941 (1942 births) the Great Depression was almost over (at recession, not depression, levels of economic activity) and birth rates had rebounded to pre-Depression levels.
By 1941 there was a World War taking place. You may want to include that data in your analysis.
The Great Depression was not an "on/off" event, it varied over the years.
The Roaring 20's were not an "on/off" event, it varied over the years. But it was more prosperous than the Great Depression and yet had a higher decline in birth rate and fertility rate.
The metric you chose is flawed, as I noted.
Wow, that's sad. As replied to the first time you tried that, I noted in my post, and the PDF government report included both the metric you didn't like (birth rate), and the metric you wanted (fertility rate). And both birth rates and fertility rates declined more during the Roaring 20's than the Great Depression.
Changing demographics/age profiles make raw birth data quoted flawed in analyzing the economic effects on fertility. The trend you note over decades is heavily influenced by those changing demographics.
Well there you have it then, the majority of the people in the world who conclude that prosperity lowers birth rates will have to stand down. It is not possible to draw conclusions from the overall data due to differences in demographics/age profiles. However, cherry picking a few years that work in your favor is OK.
Very briefly,
Rapidly vanishing prosperity reduces birth rates.
Rapidly increasing modern prosperity decreases birth rates.
Recovered prosperity tends to bring birth rates back to prior levels.
There is a strong link between prosperity and birth rates.
Demographics are a complex subject that responds to a variety of factors, of which I believe changes in prosperity (+ & -) are the strongest single factor.
All points are supported by the data, AND common sense knowledge of human behavior.
Your POV is contradicted by the data and common sense.
Alan
BTW, I did miss fertility rates in the gov't report pdf. I did not read the entirety of it all.
Up till the last 3.5 weeks of 1941, WW II had only a positive economic effect on most American lives (recession replaced depression). The first wave of mobilization (other than National Guard units) went on well into 1942. Given the delays between the decision to conceive and birth, 1942 births were likely minimally affected by Pearl Harbor.
I responded to your own comment:
Not knowing about birth rates is a disadvantage if you are concerned, presumably, with total population rather than just how many immigrants there are.
It is also unclear if you are concerned with population world wide, or just in the US.
The two issues might lead to different policies, as immigrants after a while tend to normalise in birth rate to the host country, and so it is arguably the case that immigration to the US would lead to lower total population world-wide.
There are however counter arguments, as perhaps some of the people would otherwise have died if they came from very stresses environments.
Assuming your concern is primarily with the US,
I further responded with measures which would surely counter illegal immigration by making it's employ illegal.
You replied about legal immigration.
The reason I did not treat that separately was because by definition it could be stopped at the stroke of a pen, so at the moment it is purely the political unpopularity of the measures you suggest to limit it that is the problem with stopping it, whereas illegal immigration is usually held to be more intractable.
It is also unclear what, exactly, you propose to ensure lower birth rates and no immigration.
Since it appears that in the event of recession birth rates correlate strongly with depression, and furthermore the banning of immigration attracts more political support, other than my suggestion that people should be held responsible if they employ illegal aliens, what more would need doing?
You falsely assume that I am against the basic idea that a lower population would be beneficial, but I am much more concerned with how we get there, and for this particular issue matters would appear to be favourable, only needing the additional push of banning the employment of aliens.
The situation is widely different for the world in general, as in the very poorest countries unlike in industrial lands hard times usually lead to increased birth rates.
But again, what exactly would you do about it?
It is all very well being against something, but unless you have some idea how to stop it, it doesn't make much difference.
Much of what you take to be indifference here to population is actually because it is very hard to do much about it.
Not knowing about birth rates is a disadvantage if you are concerned, presumably, with total population rather than just how many immigrants there are.
I am aware of US birth rates of today. They were recently pushed above replacement level by the higher birth rates of immigrant mothers. The world has shown an inverse relationship between birth rates and prosperity. The wealthier the mom is the more things she can do with her time besides raise children and most will have less as a result. A depression is likely to increase the amount of time American mothers have to do things besides raise children, as they will lose their jobs and/or have less money for leisure activities. In addition, a depression will not be limited to the US and will increase the amount of immigrants trying to get in. If immigration remains a sacred cow during a depression, there is no way the US population growth ends even if birth rate declines to 0. And with fossil fuels set to decline and replacements not in place, even a population leveling off is contraindicated - the ideal response is population decline.
It is also unclear if you are concerned with population world wide, or just in the US.
I am concerned with both. However only one is hypothetically solvable, requiring only for the Sierra Club and their , Peak Oilers and Global Warmers to grow a pair. World population growth appears to be a lost cause that will only be dealt with by starvation at some point. I suppose that it has the same solution - a requirement for the above groups - internationally - to grow a pair.
The two issues might lead to different policies, as immigrants after a while tend to normalise in birth rate to the host country, and so it is arguably the case that immigration to the US would lead to lower total population world-wide.
They also tend to normalize with regard to resource usage of the host country, which is why immigration to the highest per-capita resource utilization country in the world is contraindicated.
There are however counter arguments, as perhaps some of the people would otherwise have died if they came from very stresses environments.
Countries such as Mexico are given population and economic relief by sending millions to the US. If they could not come to the US they would have to address their own population disaster sooner.
Assuming your concern is primarily with the US,
I further responded with measures which would surely counter illegal immigration by making it's employ illegal.
You replied about legal immigration.
The reason I did not treat that separately was because by definition it could be stopped at the stroke of a pen, so at the moment it is purely the political unpopularity of the measures you suggest to limit it that is the problem with stopping it, whereas illegal immigration is usually held to be more intractable.
Before you even responded in this branch I had already said:
"Wrong, stopping population growth is quickest and cheapest. We can stop immigration in two legislative acts - one stops illegal by severe penalties on employers and the other stops legal immigration by making it illegal. We can lower the birth rate to sustainable levels (immigrant mothers have recently pushed it above the magic 2.1 per woman) by stopping immigration. We can also stop subsidizing children over the first two per mother and get a negative population growth rate."
It is also unclear what, exactly, you propose to ensure lower birth rates and no immigration.
Regarding immigration, see my quote which I repeated above. Regarding birth rates, with immigration stopped that should be taken care of unless a depression raises our birth rates. In that case government subsidies for children would stop at 2.
Since it appears that in the event of recession birth rates correlate strongly with depression, and furthermore the banning of immigration attracts more political support, other than my suggestion that people should be held responsible if they employ illegal aliens, what more would need doing
The banning of legal immigration attracts no political support. The enforcement of illegal immigration attracts political support from only a minority of the Republican party, and from none of that party's big leaders like Bush and McCain. Both illegal and legal immigration need to be stopped. Population growth is disastrous. Even a stable population in the face of pending fossil fuel declines with no replacements in place is contraindicated. The recommended treatment is population decline. But I would settle for population stabilization. How close are we to that? Well, right now we have birth rates going over replacement level. We have legal immigration at its highest level ever and we have illegal immigration at its highest level ever. At a time of pending fossil fuel production decline we are behaving as if there's plenty more to be found.
You falsely assume that I am against the basic idea that a lower population would be beneficial, but I am much more concerned with how we get there, and for this particular issue matters would appear to be favourable, only needing the additional push of banning the employment of aliens.
We get 1 million legal immigrants a year. We have births higher than deaths. Enforcing laws against illegals will not solve our population growth problem. Hoping that births will decline in the face of a permanent decline in standard of living enough to take in a million immigrants and not increase in population is a faith-based policy that I would say is based on a false hope.
The situation is widely different for the world in general, as in the very poorest countries unlike in industrial lands hard times usually lead to increased birth rates.
Do you think that a peaking of oil is going to cause a brief "hard time"? If not, then we don't have any data to suggest what industrial lands will do regarding birth rates when it hits. If they did go against the grain and react to a long term decline in prosperity with a decline in birth rates it makes no sense to counteract any decline in native population with immigrants. And that is unlikely to happen. Your hope that the sacred cow of immigration can continue due to depression lowering birth rates is very unlikely to occur. In the Great Depression immigration was stopped. Tough times are tough on everyone, even sacred cows.
But again, what exactly would you do about it?
It is all very well being against something, but unless you have some idea how to stop it, it doesn't make much difference.
Much of what you take to be indifference here to population is actually because it is very hard to do much about it.
Much of what you take to be a rant from me, comes from the extreme frustration of listening to people talk over and over again about which mop is best at wiping up the water coming out of the leaking pipe. To say that it's hard to fix pipes doesn't make mop selection a better discussion topic.
You are simply making entirely inaccurate assumptions as to my opinions:
Please find a single place where I have advocated this, if you wish to attribute the opinion to me.
It is, in any case, entirely false.
I believe that the situation is more hopeful than you indicate, at least in the case of the States, as you rightly point out that hard times in the 30's led to immigration controls.
It is also the case that birth rates in industrial economies did not just drop in the 30's, but it is an almost universal experience in industrial economies when times get tough.
Sine according to your self characterisation this was not a subject you had previously looked into, until questioned about it, you might like to read up some further - demographics trends tend to vary quite a lot, but there are good correlations to be had.
Don't jump to conclusions that everyone else is on the opposite side of the argument!
It may be ok to offer subsidies for specific outcomes (eg. Any electrical generation which provides energy with a specific limit of environmental degradation gains a given subsidy. Any electrical generation which uses zero fossil fuel input gains a different given subsidy. Any electrical generation which provides a certain level of waste heat use gains another given subsidy. etc.)
When things get messed up is when politicians pick specific winners, eg. why should solar PV gain a subsidy of 10x the amount that solar thermal gains? Distributed solar thermal electrical generation CHP is just in the development stage, and when feasible (eg. when the engine technologies are figured out) will be far more suitable than solar PV, but present subsidy regimes are discouraging it.
As best as I can determine Ohio is not particularly suited to providing the inhabitants of Columbus with wind energy of the scale needed to replace the power plant
pdf warning
http://www.windonthewires.org/documents/AWEA_WEW_OH_RPS_Article_42508.pdf
Alan
Actually Alan my concern was not the legislative climate, but if you will follow the reference, it takes you to the wind survey of Ohio and the availability of suitable sites where enough wind power will be available.
Michigan and Illinois (both nearby) have large potentials.
The methodology for estimating wind potential is quite dated; the estimates have not changed in almost a dozen years of watching the AWEA web map. 250 kW on short towers were the biggest available WTs (660 kW in prototype in Denmark) when I first read AWEA maps.
Bigger and more efficient WTs have increased the energy that can be harvested from a prime site (taller > more energy) and increased the area of economically viable sites. But no one (see GWB eight years) has financed s revised survey using modern WTs and modern technology.
Best Hopes for more wind,
Alan
Comment on my electric co-op and the 'perfect storm' I sense/see.
I posted on a recent DB that I observed a recent bill from my Electrical Co-op that had just increased my electrical KWH rate by approx 30%.
This was shocking to me. I use very little electrical usage as I have now started heating with wood instead of electricity or propane(as I did last winter).
We recently had the remains of Ike strike this area of the country and we were without 4 days of power. Huge numbers of trees where blown down and took a vast amount of power lines with them it. Many suffered the total loss of frozen foods and refrigerated foods.
I worked on supplying gas or propane generators to neighbors but a lot was still lost.
So...my history is that I ground installed all of my lines from the meter base to my loghouse and to the barn as well as the wellhouse. I did it myself and likewise did all my electrical wiring in all those buildings.
So I have always watched my meter and bills very very closely and for that reason installed my own 4 ton GeoThermal HeatPump. Did every bit of the work alone. Worked great but it did not stop the hemorrhaging of the slowly increasing rate increases.
This new rate is now very onerous. The reason they say is the cost of coal used by TVA, who supplies my co-op. They say it might go down next quarter. This I do not believe, not for a minute.
So here then is the 'perfect storm'. My pension is likely to disappear. My cost of living as per foods and so on is increasing markedly. Gas I expect to soon start its inexorable increases once more.
All of these and other factors means that electricity rates will be very difficult to live with and I will be left solely with just my SS monthly check. Thats all. If I didn't have wood to fuel my wood burner then I would be in more dire straits.
All these rising costs. It is the perfect storm to me at least.
And I live in a region of the country where its not that cold and doesn't get that warm.Meaning right in the middle of both extremes. Lots of good water. Good soil. Woodlands I have. Ectera....
So even with all that things are looking very dire. Very dire.
Electricity looks to be leading the pack on the above costs.
I used 701 KWH month before last. Cost was $98.
Last month I used 400 KWH..cost $78
Conservation on my part saved me some. I can conserve. Many here will not be able to.
I see a very bad moon 'on the rise'. Many are turning a blind eye to it. They won't for much longer.
This is how energy works out for my personal situation.
They recently replaced my analog meter with a digital meter. I am going to mount my own analog meter in my building at my own load center so I can monitor theirs. Some times I see large upticks that are unexplainable in the daily monitoring I do of their meter.
For me I am going to go to the absolute lowest possible amount of usage. Today I will shutdown one of my two refrigerators and transfer its contents to the small chest freezer and my other refrigerator.
I now use all CFL lights.
I will just about have reached the bottom of my usage enhancements. Not much fat remains. My welder perhaps. My battery charger which I could replace with a PV panel.
How are others going to handle this? I have no idea.
It may be a 'co-op' but there is absolutely zero oversight and no way that 'members' can do a single thing about it be it increases or outages.
Airdale
Amazing. Here in Colorado, the marginal cost is a bit less than 9 cents per kwh. They use coal from Wyoming which is much cheaper than easter coal, but it wouild be interesting to understand why the wide disparity in electricity costs.
Your question is unclear. Are you comparing your 9 cents to airdales 19.5 cents (7800/400) and questioning the disparity?
Yes.
California for example has 19.5 cent electricity because a) we do not use cheap coal and b) we're still paying for getting enronned.
Part of the total cost is the base rate of about 15-16 dollars.Also taxes of various kinds are added on. But as the rates increase then of course the taxes are automatically increased..a bad deal.
So I figured it was more like around $0.15 per KWH and it used to be just a tad above $0.11
Note that I haven't really put a pencil to it as yet but I intend to shortly. This was off the cuff numbers.
Yet it is heinous to me at least. Folks out here in the outback are going to be hurting.
Note: Besides the rate increase due to TVA costs they also throw in a monthly TVA cost adjustment. Not a lot...but still always seems to never be zero.
Airdale
One can get regional costs from the EIA . This is a summary that I have used in class.
Real world solar
Mother Earth News in the August/September issue had a very good spread called, “All About Solar.” It covered just about every thing a potential homeowner needs to know. Issues like real power vs. rated power, off grid and on grid, and how temperature affects efficiency and more. (The higher the temperature the less efficient.) The most interesting thing they did was take a 4KW system @ a real world price of $36,000 and came up with actual costs after state and federal incentives in various cities around the country.
In Seattle the system cost $32,000 and generated a measly $232.80 worth of electricity. In San Diego after hefty California incentives the cost was $24,000 and generated $749.25 worth of electricity. Columbia, MO the cost after credits was $32,000 and it generated $369.74 worth of electricity. In Tampa after credits the system cost was $18,000 and it generated $490.95 worth of juice. In Concord, NH with high electrical rates and credits the unit cost $34,000 and generated $617.88 worth of electricity. As far as payback is concerned, the cost per watt, a bit over $10 in these systems gives you 35 cents per kWh in an average location. That’s more than most utilities. (That’s their figures.) You would need to figure using your actual cost and electric rate. They figure the life span at 20-25 years. I don’t recall whether they figured in interest or not and if they didn’t or you don’t that would be a serious omission on figuring out pay back. After all you are adding thousands of dollars to a mortgage.
I didn’t find the article on their web site but, I didn’t look too hard and you can find it at your local library. (I have the magazine.) I thought the crowd here might be interested on numbers on solar in the real world.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/
Are the juice figures generated monthly or annually?
Annually.
The numbers for San Diego I know best. Say five hours of sun a day times 4kW means generating 20kWh/day or 7300kWh/year. At 15 cents a kWh which is what SDGE charges that's $1100 worth of electricity a year.
Yeah but what's (watts?) the "economic" value of those 20kWh/day after SDGE shuts down because the oil's run out? (... and thus the diesel train don't bring coal to the plant no more).
_____________________
Economic planning seems to always assume BAU
First of all, California doesn't burn coal. Second of all, those 20kWh a day become more valuable when nobody else has any electricity at all. Third of all, if you want electricity at night, you just have to buy batteries.
My take on solar PV is that as of 2008 it is too expensive and best suited to stranded applications like outback water pumps. Mind you my feed-in tariff for surplus electricity is 16.5c per kwh whereas for my home town of Adelaide it is 64c, for now anyway. Then again I have free firewood.
I'm not convinced that solar thermal can reduce the overall need for baseload generation. Granite geothermal has been a failure so far. Connected wind has low time-averaged financial yield but low regret ie nobody says we shoulda spent the money on something else. I think the future must head towards wind + dispatchable nuclear + aggressive demand management. I'm sure someone said that on TOD two years ago. The more things change the more they stay the same.
I've got a lot more faith in solar in Australia than in Germany - Oz fulfills a basic requirement which often seems to be overlooked - it is sunny.
I couldn't agree more with the rest of your remarks - I get fed up with people presenting their 'solutions' when they are a glint in someone's eye, and even if they could be made to work at large scale will take years to prove and rollout.
If we are talking what we can actually do right now, the choices are the same as they have been for years to generate substantial energy, no matter how much it is conserved.
Those choices are coal, the old-fashioned, dirty sort, nuclear, with however much gas is available, and wind can help some too.
That's it.
Strangely enough the hills behind me have 100" or 2.5m of rain in a normal year. This is Lat 45 S. I'm noticing that the recent higher sun cuts wispy cloud a lot better whereas the same cloud may bounce off rays from a low sun.
The question is why don't food and water challenged people move here? Answer; safety in numbers in the cities and a deep belief that things will work out OK. Get a house in the suburbs, drive your SUV to a well paid service industry job, have kids who will do the same. When the reality dawns it will be like being hit by a truck, but they still won't leave the cities.
Without making the usual pie in the sky assumptions common for the renewables faithful, where everything works out in technology for solar, but not for it's competitors, 45 degrees south is pretty far for vaguely economic solar power.
Certainly in it's early days if we are talking about truly economic use not government subsidies anything much north of around 40 degrees and with much cloud cover is not going to be the first viable areas, even for peak supplementary power.
There are a lot of other variables in there, of course, including off grid locations, the cost of diesel etc, but the variation in winter-summer incidence is a lot easier to cope with closer to the equator.
One of my correspondents puts up actual proposals for energy build in NZ, and solar is not even close at the moment - without huge subsidies nothing is financible.
Wind and geothermal are the workable solutions there.
"My take on solar PV is that as of 2008 it is too expensive.."
I agree, the numbers were pretty dismal in my opinion. Solar water heating in the Caribbean makes a lot of sense. High electric rates and lots of intense sun. Personally, I'm looking for a Little cottage in Negril to combat peak oil.
Now the Sierra Club has gleefully touted their success, and their perception of the message it sends:
The Sierra Club is a well-meaning organization full of timid intellectuals who say they want a stable population and can't find the courage to advocate a means to achieve it. Their feel-good drivel should be left out of any discussion that purports to be logical and scientific.
HO, this is a post of the kind that really made me stuck to TOD back in day, asking the difficult questions when they were needed to be asked.
I would also point out that neither wind nor solar can replace the role coal has in the present electricity generations mix. Solar and wind can reduce the use of coal but not replace it as a baseload provider. Nuclear and storage systems can eventually provide for that role but not in the time frame we are considering here.
Shutting down coal power plants guarantees no emissions reduction if the coal that was supposed to be burned there is simply exported outside the country, as is presently the case with the US.
This may sound like wisdom, and is no doubt a relevant concern, but unfortunately what it really is, is an example of the short-sighted excuse-policy that the Bush administration has employed. If the US shows strong and continued (ie strategic) initiative in emissions reduction, other countries will be more eager to follow. If the US shows no initiative, this hurts emissions reductions in the long run. Since the US is one of the top historical and contemporary emitters, there is no question of ethics and legibility to show strong initiative.
There are no guarantees for the future. There is, however, strategic thinking that likely improves the long term situation, versus unstrategic thinking which is likely to save a penny now at the expensive of pounds in the future. What the Bush administration has done, is save a few pennies on not having to comply with emission targets, at the cost of being dropped out of the loop internationally; likely resulting in larger future emissions reduction costs while being less able to influence the policies. And not just internationally, also internally: US state governments and US companies have been largely alienated from the federal government in this, by adopting their own policies on emissions reduction. US companies want to comply with Kyoto, but I think that they fear to alienate themselves from the federal government. The situation can't go on like this.
I think Obama is getting this message.
Also, in for example Canada where I live, we simply cannot take any steps which would cause even minor penalty to our industry which the USA doesn't take, because the "free market" thing will make it economic suicide. (something like 80% of our foreign trade is with the USA). Many other countries in similar positions, though most not quite so much.
If a step includes even a very minor cost to industry, then the USA must take it in concert with all others, else it simply cannot economically happen anywhere.
I respectfully disagree. That's the same non-solution based thinking, and it is where the government can help with putting a price on carbon, and using part of the revenue of this to provide investment tax breaks to help the energy intensive industries make the necessary investments. The biggest part, though, should go back to workers via payroll tax reductions to reduce overall cost to the economy. That's what Al Gore has proposed, and it makes sense.
Now, if you want to compete on cost with, say, Chinese manufacturers, you will get very disappointed. Import tariffs can help a lot in keeping energy intensive industries in North America. Yes, many people don't like tariffs, especially the Bush administration appears to promote 'free markets', but let's get real, you can't compete against the dirtiest cheapest coal plants and five dollar workers. The 'free' market people have an inconsistent fantasy. The economic benefits to North America of keeping energy intensive industries are huge, much more wholesome and substantial than the promised reduction in cost of products that production in low wage dirty cheap power countries will get.
But if we stimulate our economies, in various ways, to move faster on efficiency and new low carbon energy technology, then various economical benefits accrue that more than make up for the upfront costs (Just look at the numbers on fossil fuel imports and what that does to the trade balance), and we'll break this stupid impasse (what's this stuff about the US being a world leader?), while being better off in the long run ourselves, and reducing total global emissions much faster. Trust me when I say that the Chinese will follow when North America and Europe move more aggressively on these issues.
Is that likely? The existing shipping capacity (esp. rail lines) is tailored for the current routes from mines to plants. It seems possible that coal, once on e.g. the Mississippi or a tributary, could be routed to a port rather than a domestic plant, but there could easily be bottlenecks which prevent large increases in the traffic overseas.
It's not likely, but there could be a risk of new coal exporting infrastructure where it may be lucrative enough. We don't want that, clearly. I don't think it's likely, because the low turnover of such infrastructure means it's a long term investment, and with the new administration there's likely to be some kind of carbon penalty, it would be risky investments.
Obama should put a small export tariff on coal that increases over the years, so that coal exports are gradually phased out (give some slack to the poor coal exporters, they have to find a new job!).
We don't want to send our energy supplies out of the country. We want to export low carbon and efficient technology and know-how.
Step 1: Smart-grid (intelligent communicating meters controlling local loads according to electricity availability, using a price signal)
Step 2: PHEV autos for storage (requires step 1 first)
Step 3: grid-wise PHEV and EV (requires step 1 first)
Given Step 1, and some of Steps 2 and 3, the load curve can be managed to allow a) maximum economic penetration of intermitent renewables. b) elimination of inefficient fossil peakers. c) maximum utilization of non-polluting nuclear generation. d) maximum replacement of fossil fueled transport with electrical.
It is a plan, at least. Requires zero technical breakthroughs, all technology is in hand. Provides for maximum exploitation of any available renewables as developed. Provides for smooth continuity of industrial production. Is affordable.
Also by providing fair market prices for excess self-generated electricity for even the smallet generator, it will encourage maximum penetration of highly efficient micro-CHP home heating units such as GE's SOFC natural gas-fueled fuel cells, Honda's several entries or WhisperGen's stirling engines. These systems need to become the ONLY way natural gas is allowed to be burned in future, if we are to make this transition intact.
Potential uses of 1 GJ (278 kwh) of Natural Gas:
1) 129 kwh of electricity, 0 kwh of heat in a 50% effic. CCGT with 7% Tx losses
2) 66.6 kwh of electricity, 0 kwh of heat in a 25% effic. simple cycle peaker gas turbine with 4% Tx losses
3) 0 kwh of electricity, 250 kwh heat in a 90% efficient heating furnace / boiler.
4) 139 kwh of electricity, 111 kwh heat in a 90% efficient SOFC fuel cell furnace / boiler.
Similar to 4) for Honda's engines, WhisperGen etc. though less electricity, more heat. Also comming onto market are thermal-drive adsorption / einstein refrigeration systems which can use the waste heat to produce AC cooling at COP's approaching .9 Extends life of N Gas resources to nearly double, much longer when add benefits of Smart Grid are rolled in.
Clearly all uses from 1) to 3) for natural gas need to be replaced by 4) asap (Should be mandated), though the generation connections will require the Smart-grid system described above.
Len, I don't know much about them but run of river turbines seem to have some potential in certain areas, especially in the better-watered parts of the US.
I believe the legislative environment has been against them.
Also of interest are solar energy use air conditioning units:
http://www.physorg.com/news135317790.html
The cost of fuel cells seems to be a bit steep still:
http://www.fuel-cell-reports.com/products/wg44111-wg44111-fuel-cell-mrkt...
Run-of-river hydro is nice, but in size its potential continent-wide (economy-wide) i think is not very significant.
Re: SOFC fuel cells.
"Factory Cost -- For factory cost, Delphi also met the Phase 1 goal of $800 per kW for the total power unit, assuming volume production, by achieving an estimated $770 per kW."
http://delphi.com/news/pressReleases/pressReleases_2006/pr_2006_06_20_001/
At $770 / kw (2006), they're still slightly above DOE target of $330, but I'll be interested in the result of a detailed analysis I'll do to establish exactly what the kwh cost would be from these. Given that typical (dirty) coal plants cost about $2000 / kw, nuclear perhaps double that, etc. I'd guess that these will be very economically attractive long before the Smart Grid system required to implement them will be in place.
Is Delphi still a separate entity from GM? It would make a wonderful this-for-that return on a multi-billion$ bailout package to require them to get these SOFC home heating units done and on the market on an advanced schedule.
We should get busy.
That FC cost sounds good, but unfortunately it seems the last rites are being performed on Delphi:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agb.FN3vNYlU&refer=home
My money's on Mitsubishi to build a good one.
Rats: Too bad eh? We can't even finance a desperate company to bring to market an existing desireable technology which they've developed. Must import competitor's product from overseas.
Economics is nuts.
Delphi the company may die, but the technologies will be sold to pay the creditors. That fuel cell is worth quite a bit to a lot of folks.
That is not evident to me. The latest CCGTs are around 60% efficient, which is similar to SOFC. But SOFC are more expensive right now, and tend to be less reliable. It remains to be seen whether their electrical efficiency and reliability and cost will be lower than CCGT; gas turbines have had an excellent historical learning curve, and still have a lot of room for improvements. Plus CCGT is just as compatible with CHP as a SOFC.
The SOFC would have the benefit of having higher grade (temperature) waste heat, so that could be an economical advantage since a high temperature heat source is more valuable than low temperature heat source. Thermochemical hydrogen production from the SOFC's 'waste' heat might be an interesting development. Another option would be an ultracritical Rankine as bottoming cycle (yes the tlow is that high). With 60% SOFC efficiency and 50% turbine efficiency, perhaps 80% net electrical efficiency can be achieved. I think that would be better than CHP, since electricity is much more effectively turned into low temperature heat (via heat pumps), going for CHP isn't the best option from an energy perspective. Cost is another factor, though; ultracritical Rankines aren't cheap. And I'd go for biogas ASAP rather than 'natural' gas.
Perhaps if the efficiency of the SOFC can be improved there would be no need for the additional complexity and cost of a bottoming cycle. If I recall, the theoretical efficiency of a methane fuel cell is more than 90%. There are a bunch of parasitic losses that make that difficult to achieve, but >75% should be a reasonable long term goal.
But the CCGT is mature, while SOFCs are in their commercial infancy. SOFCs are also not dependent upon large scale for their efficiency; in principle, a 1 kW SOFC can be just as efficient as a 100 MW SOFC.
Only if there is an industrial point user which requires tens of megawatts of heat; CCGT plants are too big to site e.g. downtown, and heat ships poorly.
The trend in SOFC technology is toward thinner electrolytes with greater ion mobility at lower temperatures, so that cheap and durable metals can replace touchy ceramics in their construction. The sulfur-iodine process needs about 800°C. It also probably requires large scale to be economical, but if the SOFC waste heat goes to hydrogen rather than CHP this will not be a factor.
If the heat is "free" the business case may be improved. This still requires large scale, though.
I think it's going to be more significant at small size. If you can reach even 40% efficiency in a unit of 2-10 kW with a lifespan of 5000-20000 hours, there are a host of applications from vehicle APUs to residential and commercial DHW and space heat. The former waste enormous amounts of fuel idling and creeping in traffic, and the latter burn mostly fossil fuels in open flames. The savings potential is huge.
Here are a few links on the present state of play:
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/fu
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/025655.htmlel-cells-japa.php
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_/ai_n29472005
The first two links are broken.
Try this:
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/fuel-cells-japa.php
http://www.japanfs.org/en/pages/025655.html
Hope I got it right this time!
Concerns on improving the electrical efficiency of SOFC before implementing are in the wrong park.
I note that one of the more advanced (re developemnt of product) SOFC fuel cell companies, Acumetrics, offers at http://www.acumentrics.com/products-fuel-cell-home-energy.htm a "peak 2.5 kw, nominal 1 kw" unit with 30% electrical effic, (near) 90% overall effic. Two points about this unit: 1) it includes a ?20 kw? auxiliary gas burner to handle peak heating demand for a typical home. 25 kw thermal overall. 2) Even implementing a 10% efficient generator would be a better use of natural gas in cold climates given short-term storage of heat and easy on-off cycling. I realize SOFC's have difficulty cycling (glass seals) but a stirling engine would be perfect. Esp. useful if the electricity generated can happen at daily peak and get compensated fairly for that, eg. VERY smart metering / real-time pricing.
The point is that a lot of natural gas is now burned in 0% electrical efficiency burners for home heating. ANY electrical efficiency is better than that.
I don't think anyone made such an assertion. To the contrary, accelerating SOFC deployment, even by heavy subsidies, is desireable and good strategic policy, since it would be policy based on good physics, and would force SOFC along the learning curve, even though forcing it to learn the hard way as like as not. Considering the sensitivity of SOFC to mass manufacturing economies (MUCH cheaper when mass produced) this would be excellent policy.
Excellent point. With best available tech, you can get 300% efficiency with a 60% CCGT and a COP of 5 heat pump. Well no that is not thermodynamically correct, but it gets the point across for comparisons.
And passive solar space heating doesn't use any fuel at all. Just a bit of hydrogen in that big yellow orb yonder that would have fusioned anyway... might as well use it.
Maybe. Incremental improvements can still add up. Ceramic or CerMet turbine blades for higher operating temperatures might yield a substantial improvement. Anyway, it is precisely because current generation CCGT are proven, that they can accrue large amounts of private investment at relatively low interest rates, so can scale quickly in most markets today. In the future it could be different, I think it's likely that SOFC takes a big market share but not for another decade at least.
Could be an advantage in some markets but not always; higher installation and maintenance overhead versus economy of mass production and other advantages derived from the modular design. A small unit would have to be very reliable (need little maintenance).
Isn't the biggest market for CHP in large industrial users and city district heating (actually I consider that overly luxurious; but the New Yorkers seem to like it a lot!). Ships heating is niche.
The only big CHP market I can think of is space heating for small/medium buildings; however, it would be better to burn any fuel with higher electrical efficiency and use passive solar design (complemented with high efficiency heat pumps when necessary) to do that. Of course, the SOFC is already quite efficient.
Absolutely. Lower temperatures are the route to a practical, cost-effective SOFC. And of course, if you have methane, you could also just steam reform it to get the hydrogen, as is being done right now.
I was referring to large scale here, yes. The problem is that the SOFC costs money, and adding an ultracritical cycle will cost more money while perhaps not getting proportionally more kWhs for your money. Ideally, developments in SOFC will make it so efficient that it needs no bottoming cycle (ie adding such a cycle will not yield a lot more kWhs of electricity).
DHW is best done with transcritical CO2 heat pumps. For space heating, passive solar and heat pumps.
In my mind, the most promising market will be as a generator in a series hybrid or plugin hybrid. Or am I starting to sound a bit much like the 'amazing' doctorX now for your liking? ;)
Or be designed into a standard, swappable subunit. Since the performance of the current cells appears to degrade over time, "failure" might just be crossing below a threshold rather than quitting entirely. Your "Check fuel cell" light would go on, whether on the dash or the kitchen wall monitor.
You'd actually be getting more for your money, because the fuel-handling and many other major equipment costs would be borne by the FC section. The problem I can see is, again, scale; the ultracritical steam system probably has a minimum size to be worthwhile, and if it's being fed from the 40% waste heat stream from an SOFC plant the minimum total plant size could be uneconomically large.
That depends what energy supplies you have. Something has to generate the electricity, and if you're using backup fuel it might as well be in an FC which feeds its waste heat to your desired uses also.
It would depend on fuel costs and on the cost of the fuel cell power block versus the ultracritical power block. Right now the Rankine is probably cheaper than the fuel cell, but the fuel cell has more potential for cost reductions in the long run. With higher fuel cost it'll make sense quickly.
It's true that as the SOFC gets more efficient, the capacity ratio of the bottoming cycle to fuel cell increases. With 40% waste heat the scale of the SOFC shouldn't be too big. For example, a 1200 MW electrical SOFC power block would have an 800 MW thermal bottoming cycle, perhaps 350-400 MW electrical. Many coal plants are >1000 MW electrical, and many nuclear powerplants are even >2000 MW electrical. There would definately be a big market for those things, pardon the pun, although it would indeed be better to have smaller powerplants. In the interest of a more flexible, less congested grid and all that.
That's true as well. To make the argument sensible, we need to start with some natural gas fuel and then decide what to do with it. Since the SOFC is just as efficient as a big CCGT, but the SOFC can be in your home or business, it can use it's waste heat for hot water or space heating, while as much electricity is created as in the CCGT for a given amount of fuel. Of course, in many cases there is a big market for tens of MW heat from the CCGT as well, so I don't think CCGTs are going away just yet. Another option for large scale CHP would be the SOFC with the Rankine AND a bit of waste heat from that put to use. Let's just hope that the SOFC cost targets are not too optimistic.
Cyril, I have contacted Brian Wang regarding your point about the burn up of Hyperion reactors.
There appears to be a distinction between fissile and fissionable, with the outcome that the likely burn of the hyperion is around twice that of conventional reactors:
Check out the comments in this thread:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/11/hyperion-power-generation-not-scam-and....
Apologies to all for the inappropriate placement of this information - I could not find your e-mail to communicate it privately, Cyril.
Thanks. It does look rather obvious that a self regulating design could have larger operational margins. Perhaps the uranium hydride fuel doesn't lose much of it's thermal conductivity over time, which is another important factor in increasing burnup and increasing the time between refuelling. Because then a high power output can be sustained over time.
Of course Peterson was correct in wording it fissile burnup. Since the Hyperion is designed as a slow neutron reactor, just like LWRs. And you need really fast (high energy) neutrons to fission U-238, and even then it can't sustain a chain reaction, as mentioned in the Wikipedia entry. Fissionable - only fissile with high energy neutrons - is not very relevant in a low energy neutron (slow neutron) reactor. With the lion's share of the fuel mass being the U-238 (about 95%), it would therefore not be possible to get 50% burnup with just 5% U-235 enrichment. If the total inventory burn is 6-9%, that means it gets a lot of it's energy from the bred plutonium; U-238 is what is called fertile in this reactor design, meaning the U-238 absorbs excess neutrons and so is converted into plutonium, which is fissile. Sounds plausible to me, if it's true what I wrote in the first paragraph above. I don't think it's possible to get more than half of the total energy from fissioning the plutonium (there wouldn't be enough free neutrons for that), but 6-9% is within that range. Not sure though, since this is such a different type of reactor, but the moderation is about the same as in a modern light water reactor, if the patent is correct. More nuclear-knowledgeable people can comment better on this. The Wikipedia entries are quite good.
The use of thorium in this design is also very interesting, because with thorium, unlike U-238, a slow neutron reactor can breed U-233 from the thorium and sustain a chain reaction with that, permitting very high burnup. This requires highly enriched fissile material at startup. The Engineer-Poet suggested using reactor grade plutonium for this purpose, and there's no shortage of that!
With pure metals, reprocessing should also be really easy. I think pyroreprocessing would work very well with pure metals. Most conventional nuclear reactors use ceramic fuel, uranium oxide, which is much more difficult to reprocess. The property that makes it suitable for reactors is that it's stable, but that also makes reprocessing very difficult, since the fuel must be reacted with something else in order to recover the metals.
Of course, the highest burnup with thorium can only be achieved with a fluid fuelled reactor with continuous reprocessing, such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor.
In the first six months of our work on behalf of our provincial utility and department of energy, my firm has helped various small businesses reduce their lighting related demands by over one GWh (1,000,000 kWh/yr). As we gradually ramp up our operations (we recently brought in two additional sub-contractors) and as our materials supplier works out some logistical issues in keeping us in product (perhaps our biggest concern going forward), we expect to bump this number closer to five GWh/yr.
At this point, we've reduced provincial peak demand by just over 300 kW, so a 1.0 to 1.5 MW reduction, per year, is not out of the question. I can't discuss the economics in any great detail, but I can tell you that incremental cost of these demand measures is considerably less than what the utility would spend on building new coal-fired or wind generating capacity.
Cheers,
Paul