U.S. to Be World’s Top Oil Producer in 5 Years, Report Says
 

The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/bu...ears.html?_r=0



The IEA sees profound consequences. For starters, the long-standing U.S. trade deficit will narrow and might disappear. In 2011, oil imports represented two-thirds of the deficit in goods. While the United States will use less imported oil, it should also become a substantial exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG);

The U.S. may become energy-independent after all - PostPartisan - The Washington Post




IEA Report: Fossil Fuel Boom Is A Climate Disaster In The Making

The IEA made an historic statement in the executive summary.

It said, “No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal,”

IEA Report: Fossil Fuel Boom Is A Climate Disaster In The Making | ThinkProgress




IEA report reminds us peak oil idea has gone up in flames

The truly global implications of the 2012 report lie in the warning that we must leave most of our fossil fuels in the ground

IEA report reminds us peak oil idea has gone up in flames | Damian Carrington | Environment | guardian.co.uk




The IEA Oil Forecast Is Ludicrously High

The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides unrealistically high oil forecasts in its new 2012 World Energy Outlook (WEO). It claims, among other things, that the United States will become the world’s largest oil producer by 2020, and will become a net oil exporter by 2030.

The IEA Oil Forecast Is Ludicrously High - Business Insider






Somewhere in all of this, there is bound to be truth.




https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1352919080

I listened to the Diane Rehm show today on NPR about this subject, and I do not know exactly what to make of it. It is an interesting subject.

I've been talking about this for a little while now. Due to falling US oil import demand (peaked circa 2005-2006), increase in fleet fuel efficiency (something good came of cash for clunkers and CAFE), increase in switching of commercial vehicles to natural gas, increases in technology like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling and a few other factors - the US could conceivably become "energy independent" by 2020.

Lots of "what ifs" in there, but it's conceivable. We already technically export some crude oil, but it's a tiny amount and we are still largely net crude oil importers. There are some refinery and storage constraints that could lead to more exporting of crude.

Several companies have applied for, and a few have been granted, permission to export oil. It's a very political process, though. Expect to see more of that in future speeches from politicians abusing the truth and misleading people like Messrs. Bundy and Eack.


Edit:

How do you listen to that show? She may have her mental faculties, but I assume she suffered a stroke or something because her speech pattern is unacceptable for someone on the radio. It would be like having someone with MS as a lifeguard.

I think she is pretty sharp. I love how she asks a question and then directs it to a particular person on the panel of speakers. That seems pretty harsh. I do not know if I could handle it if I were on the panel.

I understand that there is a law against exporting oil to any nation other than Canada.

It's interesting, isn't it?

We seem to have a difficult time understanding what happened to oil prices and production six months ago (or five years ago, or whatever.) And yet by the same token, we feel that we can confidently predict 20 years into the future, with a high degree of accuracy, what will occur on both the supply and demand sides of the oil equation across several dozen different countries.

If you'd have asked any qualified expert in the 1920s whether they predicted that the average fuel efficiency of all passenger cars would be significantly improved by the year 2000, they'd probably have all said yes. Presupposing, that is, that they didn't believe cars would be obsolete and we'd all be flying around with personal rocket-belts or using Futurama-style pneumatic tubes.


In the 1960s, we all figured that oil would be worthless by now, since nuclear energy was going to be too cheap to meter.

And who predicted in the 1970s that China, India, et al would be simultaneously building more nukes than the US and Europe while also consuming more oil and coal than us?



Lot of variables...


I struggle with this myself.

It wasn't a stroke- she suffers from spasmodic dysphonia, which is a neuromuscular disorder. So, actually, the joke about the lifeguard with MS isn't all that far off-base.

Legally, WAMU / NPR could probably get rid of her. Even with ADA, an employer is not prohibited from firing an employee whose physical impairment prevents them from performing a certain job despite reasonable accommodation. This is especially true in the case of performance artists. A television studio, for instance, would be able to terminate the contract of an actress who gained a lot of weight, suffered a disfiguring injury, etc.

On the other hand, the political ramifications would be pretty severe, especially given the strong informal bond typically shared between public broadcasters and the disabled community (eg: radio reading service for the blind.)

And, of course, she is in fact a very good radio host despite tending to exhibit a strongly liberal bias.

But like you, I find her painful to listen to.

Afterburning turbojets and turbo Miatas forever!!!! Yay!!!!

Exactly. Making predictions is like shooting a rifle. The closer the target, the easier accuracy should be - though there are still a lot of variables to deal with.

However, the farther out you go (in time for predictions, distance for shooting), the harder it is to have pinpoint accuracy. Small changes at the shooter's position (the present) can have a huge difference at the target (the distant future).

Take a rifle and move the barrel a half inch and you might well still hit a target that's ten feet away. Move the barrel the same half inch and you might not even be in the same neighborhood of a target that's 1,000 yards away.

In the case of global energy distribution on a 20 year timescale, it's like shooting a rifle at a target placed on the deck of a fishing boat, while you are standing on the deck of a different fishing boat a mile away, in heavy seas, in the rain, while one of the deckhands throws cut-up bait at you.


On the other hand, observations such as this are in fact made partly on the basis of observable trends, and not merely speculation. So if I've been shooting at that target for a while, the boat captain is not entirely pissing into the wind if he makes a bet with the engineer that I will miss the next five shots.

And yet, given all the variables that affect climate, we are sufficiently certain that CO2 emissions are the only possible cause of a gradual increase in global temperatures that we are willing to stake the economic viability of Western civilization on it.

1000 years ago, the climate also warmed dramatically. Enough to cause a population explosion in the far North that unleashed Viking hoardes on the Western world. It was warm enough that an agriculture-based Viking colony on Greenland was viable for a couple of centuries before freezing over again.

What's the point? Beats me. The more I know, the more I know that I don't know. But I do know that there are a lot of variables.

http://virtualnothingness.files.word...vdan.jpg?w=500

All your Byzantian religious base (Hagia Sofia) are belong to us?

I'll be honest- I'm not a global-warming denier any more. I used to be right there on the bandwagon saying "more research is needed!", but then I stopped.

Correlation does not always indicate causality, there's no question about that. If piracy on the high seas goes down, and then the average temperature goes up, it's not really fair to conclude that pirates prevent global warming.


On the other hand, I have noticed that whenever I see a house burning down, I also tend to hear sirens. And sirens, when they happen at night, disturb my sleep. Additionally, based on the results of the recent census, I know that the number of people living in my town who report their occupation as "Arsonist" has increased significantly over the past decade.


Now, I'm no expert in E911 telephony, emergency management, human behavioral psychology, building construction, law enforcement, polysomnography or chemistry. I do not completely understand all of the minute interactions which take place that cause sirens to be associated with burning houses, and I have no data whatsoever which specifically links arsonists to sirens.

Despite this, I feel pretty confident in drawing the following conclusion:

• If the police decrease the number of arsonists in my neighborhood, I will sleep better at night.

So it's kind of the same deal here.


Our understanding of physics and thermodynamics is sufficiently advanced that we can make complex observations such as "Gaseous carbon dioxide acts as an insulator."

Based on radical findings such as this, we can also draw conclusions such as "increasing the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere of a planet will tend to have the effect of increasing heat retention from that planet's sun, with the result of increased surface temperature."


Radical stuff, I know.



Of course, this thread isn't really about global warming per se. Or at least, not exclusively. I will gladly trade 2°C and the loss of southern Florida in exchange for political and economic security, or at least for a full-blown shooting war (as opposed to these limited regional occupations) in which we (along with the rest of NATO) will have the opportunity to fully eradicate those states which have historically been associated with being a pain in everyone's ass in a consequence-free environment.

[QUOTE=Joe Perez;949833] Headache inducing rhetoric QUOTE]

The show on NPR touched on exactly what you were saying. There were of coarse parties on both sides of the issue, It talked a lot about our natural gas reserves, and how it is supposedly cleaner than oil. However there was a lot of debate on just how much cleaner it is.

What it really boiled down to is whether or not it is a good idea to invest heavily in extracting and then distributing our oil or should we invest heavily in other alternatives in hopes that we can have an affect on climate change.

Joe, just kidding around about your posts. I find them very interesting. :makeout:

Australia is on the right path. At least from what I hear, they are at the forefront of alternative energies.

I guess that'll happen after a hole in the ozone opens above you.

It sort of depends on your definition of "clean".

NatGas is a vastly cleaner than oil and coal in terms of the production of soot and other fine particulate matter.

Given present-day technology, the use of NatGas typically reduces emission of CO, CO2 and NOx by 20-30% versus oil and 40-50% versus coal, on a tons-per-BTU equivalent basis. NatGas is not significantly advantageous in terms of CH4 and N2O emissions, and in fact performs much more poorly than coal or oil in CH4 emission when burned in turbines rather than flue boilers, as is common in the small demand-based plants (aka "peakers" or "daytime" plants) in which NatGas is the most economical fuel to burn.

One interesting trend in large-scale generation is Co-Firing. Put simply, you take an existing coil plant and retrofit it such that NatGas is injected into the firebox along with the coal. This has the advantage of allowing for more complete burnup, slightly higher combustion temps (= higher turbine efficiency), and of course, the substitution of a "clean" fuel for some percentage of a "dirty" fuel.

Acceptance is not yet highly widespread, due to the initial capital costs of plant retrofit combined with the increased operational complexity and reliance upon a second supply-chain. Seems like a PowerCard as opposed to an MS3, in my book.

Sources:
http://www.testo350.com/pdfs/Flue_Ga..._0981_2773.pdf
http://www.iofwv.nrcce.wvu.edu/publi...s/co-firin.pdf
http://daq.state.nc.us/monitor/eminv...on_Sources.pdf




Nukes, of course, solve both problems. They require no fossil-fuel input, and they emit no greenhouse gasses.

On the plus side, construction at Vogtle 3 and 4 continues, and Commanche Peak 3 and 4 still appear to be "go", although construction has yet to commence.

On the minus side, San Onofre continues to be mired in controversy. A restart proposal for Unit 2 has been filed, which if accepted will bring that reactor back online at 70% for five months, followed by a shutdown and inspection. Unit 3, meanwhile, has been de-fueled and placed in long-term outage status. SCE reports that it “will not be operating for some time,” and that there are “no plans to bring it back online in the near future.” (sadface.)

Joe - In your backyard, filed under the "all of the above" energy independence plan: "Solazyme and Propel Fuels announced that Propel's stations around the San Francisco area will be selling Solazyme's algae-based renewable diesel, branded as Soladiesel."

It's not "bio-diesel" so there are no blending limits and pricing should be on par with diesel. There is not enough capacity for commercial use yet as far as I know.

Clean Energy Fuels and GE are working on the commercial side with the buildout of "America's Natural Gas Highway" and GE's MicroLNG tech.

And this is extremely cool. Like Ethanol, it's a net carbon-neutral technology (meaning that the carbon released in the burning of the fuel is carbon which was re-captured during the production process itself, and will be again re-captured on a subsequent production cycle.

(I am obviously handwaving over energy input to the process which is not captured as useful output, such as the energy required to run the processing and distilling equipment, to transport the fuel, etc. Energy costs of this nature are inevitable, and apply to some degree or another to any chemical fuel.)

What's even cooler is that Sloazyme is apparently already producing both marine diesel and commercial / mil-spec jet fuel as well, and has already made deliveries to the US Navy.

Now, it'll be interesting to see how well the technology scales. I might just go shopping for an '81 VW Rabbit.

Yes. And commonly accepted. But incorrect.

For starters, the heat transfer of the Earth vis-a-vis space doesn't happen via conduction (or its relative, convection). It happens via radiation. During daylight, the sun radiates heat onto the Earth's surface and we warm. At night (especially clear, cloudless nights) the Earth's surface radiates that heat back out into space and we get cool. The tilt, spin and rotation of the Earth around the Sun alter the hours of daylight vs night and gives us our seasons. Etc., etc.

Anyways, CO2, which is a trace gas in our atmosphere (even now) is odorless, colorless and transparent. It may be a good insulator (for that matter, so are Nitrogen and Oxygen), but it provides almost no resistance (shielding) to radiative heat transfer. It's not the acting agent in Global Warming scientific theory (although it is the acting agent in common discourse).

There are other gases in our atmosphere that are extremely powerful radiative heat shields. Water is the main one at this time. At other periods in Earth's geological history, Methane has also been present in significant amounts. Most of the global warming theories revolve around elevated CO2 affecting the atmosphere in such a way that one or both of these powerful gases become more abundant in the atmosphere leading to warming. In the early periods of this science (starting back in the 60s and 70s), there was debate as to whether these gases would block heat from reaching the Earth or would block heat from escaping the Earth (i.e., would we have Global Warming or Global Cooling). Since the Earth has in fact been warming since that time, the Global Cooling theory has gone out of favor.

Real causation evidence has been elusive. For example, there have been satellite studies conducted on the Earth's dark side to measure the radiative heat loss. They failed to find significant reductions in radiation. From the reading I've done (and it's darn hard to find purely scientific materials on this subject that are untainted by politics -- sigh), the linkage remains circumstantial -- and given how many other variables there are -- the fact that we are still in a geological ice age (i.e., the Earth, on balance, is usually warmer anyway) -- and the fact that this has become much more of a political issue than a scientific issue -- well, circumstantial-only evidence isn't cutting it for me.

What I see in connection with Global Warming via CO2 emissions is a perversion of the scientific method. In the classical scientific method, one makes observations and then develops plausible theories to explain those observations. As time goes on, more and better observations are made, theories evolve and new ones develop. Human understanding improves.

What we have with Global Warming via CO2 emissions is that the theory, not the observations (such as the satellite studies), are king. The theory remains static, and you pick and choose the observations that offer support to your theory and discard those that don't. There is another politically charged theory where the exact same perversion happens -- Creationism. Ironic, no?

BTW, Global Warming via CO2 emissions and Ozone Layer destruction by CFC's are completely different issues. The latter has been conclusively proven in laboratory experiments and the Ozone Layer destruction is readily observed by satellites. It pains me when I see these two issues discussed in the same forum. They could not be more different.

Anyway, where I come down is that I want my friends and neighbors to have the best job and progress opportunities possible. Real middle class growth and power (which, IMHO is what separates the U.S. from many other countries) can only come if there is high demand for the labors of a middle class. Without that demand, the bargaining power of the middle class ceases to exist -- whether there are labor unions or not. One does not need to look far to find clear examples of stratified societies where this has persisted (a few rich and a lot of poor). In fact, one might say it is the normal human condition in most parts of the world. I think it is important to resist it and to support a middle class through economic opportunity. Extreme environmentalism (i.e., way beyond any cost vs. benefit) is a real threat to that economic opportunity.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled thread discussion.

No, you make some totally valid points and I can't argue against them.

My reasoning might best be described as something more along these lines:


A:Thus, it can be safely postulated that the combustion of petroleum MAY cause environmental harm, and CANNOT cause environmental benefit.

Additionally:

B:Thus, as the demand for petroleum increases, the supply of petroleum decreases, and the real fixed cost of obtaining petroleum increases, the economic viability of petroleum as compared to alternative energy sources will tend to decline.

Therefore,


C:We really ought to just set a date after which the sale of petroleum-derived fuel will be prohibited in the US, and start building new nukes. You can use 'em to charge batteries, you can use 'em to drive the electrolytic separation of hydrogen, you can use 'em to power factories that create petroleum substitutes through organic means. All of this is feasible given present-day technology.

This will, incidentally, have the secondary benefit of driving down the cost of petroleum on the global market, which will have a beneficial effect on the populations of China and India. Their productivity will increase, and they will be able to manufacture more cheap shit to sell to us. Simultaneously, all automakers everywhere will become strongly incentive to invest in the production of non-petroleum fueled cars at a level sufficient to supply US demand, which will drive down the cost of said vehicles to parity with their present-day counterparts (as opposed to the extremely low-volume "alternative" vehicles of today).

The sudden influx of cheap, non-petroleum based cars in the global market will have a rippling effect, incentivizing other nations to invest in non-petroleum infrastructure to satisfy the inevitable resultant demand within the domestic market for the now cheaply available other-than-gasoline cars.

But, what about "D" . . . nukes are scary to the average Joe (pun intended)!!

Seriously though, sounds good to me. Burning hydrogen derived from electrolysis should keep the exhaust valves and turbo nice and clean.

BTW, on point A1, burning fossil fuels is actually an excellent way to create (rather than deplete) ozone. If only we could instantly transport the resulting ozone from the LA basin to the ionosphere. Charging your leaking AC system with R-12, OTOH . . . .

Also, as a combat veteran of an oil war, I feel entitled to burn some. Aren't we, after all, an entitlement society?

Just to throw fuel on the fire: Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it | Mail Online

Haven't read the whole thing yet, so I don't know how legit it is (too much so to quit?).

Claims that said report support the conclusion that "Global warming has stopped" have been pretty credibly de-bunked as constituting cherry-picking of data.

The Met Office itself has also officially refuted the claim (which was made by third parties based on Met Office data) that its report makes that conclusion, or that its findings support such a conclusion.

Also that's the daily mail so someone has to laugh at you for linking to the daily mail.

:nono:

That's fine. I was looking for more knowledgeable analysis before actually reading the thing.

I don't deny this, but I also don't understand it.

To me, war, social upheaval, economic collapse, widespread flooding, hyperinflation and suffocation are somewhat scarier than a large pot full of warm water.


Help yourself. We're an equal opportunity exploiter.

But the masses inherently understand (or think they understand) war, social upheaval, economic collapse, yada, yada.

Something that glows in the dark and warms water, now that's mysterious and easily lied about.

My Grandmother would never travel on an airliner . . . by far the safest mode of transport. Same thing.

BTW, many of my neighbors work at Comanche Peak.

Part of me wants to be pissed off at the whole situation at San Onofre.

And I suppose that I have a right to be pissed off at Mitsubishi, which took my money and sold my power company a set of defective boilers.

And I'm definitely pissed off at all of the people who are protesting the plant's restart and sowing misinformation to foment fear and suspicion, seemingly without regard for the true consequences of their actions. (You don't want nukes? You do realize that the alternative is coal, right?)

But I just can't be pissed off at SoCalEd, or at the NRC, or even at the local government. The reality of the situation is that this is a very sensitive time for clean energy in the US, and a serious accident at the plant, even one that didn't involve a meltdown or significant radiological release, would set back the cause another 30 years.

Are they being overly cautious? Maybe. I'm honestly not qualified to say. But to me, this is proof that "the system" works. Despite the enormous financial cost, it's pretty clear that neither the utility nor the NRC are behaving recklessly. The plant operator is demonstrating extreme caution, and proceeding in a deliberate a logical manner despite the enormous financial impact that the plant's shutdown causes them every day that the turbines are idle.

Had one loved it.


Which brings up a very good point. Would it not be wise for the US to have a diverse energy plan? You would now have a diversity of technologies in extraction, transport, and consumption. When one method does not work out for what ever reason, I would think it would not have such a devastating affect on the economy.

For some reason these people think all our power demands can be met by solar and wind. I'm guessing they didn't pass high school physics.

Where I live, we have:

1. An operating nuclear power plant.
2. A gas well on every corner.
3. An oil well for every fifth gas well.
4. Gigantic wind farms coupled with enough wind that they actually pay back.
5. Clean air and water (air is clean enough that we are EPA-exempt from smog inspections).
6. Jobs (unemployment far below the national average).

There are dangers in this, however. Oil field service trucks can rear-end your Miata. People, empowered by employment, feel their oats and develop an independent streak. There's a secession petition circulating and a lot of people swear by Creationism despite an abundance of fossils on the ground. Go figure.

Technically the only problems with solar is large capacity energy storage (i.e. battery technology) when the sun goes down or it is cloudy and its current cost. Both of these issues could be solved with technological advances. However, I still think a diverse policy is best because putting all your eggs in one basket is never a good idea. Not to mention I do not want to force any type of energy out of the market because I would rather not pay more for energy than is necessary.

As a designer of downhole tools, most of them unconventional, I can affirm that we are doing what we can to get at every drop that can be made economically feasible.

Never underestimate the American workforce. Everyone in energy, from rig workers to engineers, is a pretty motivated and resourceful crew.

And as soon as the price goes up a bit there are more incentive to tweak technologies to go when no one dared to go before.

The intermittent technologies (e.g. Solar and Wind) put more stress on transfer technologies since energy needs to be cross-transferred between areas of productions and consumption (not as steady state and predictable as for steam and hydro turbines).
Building new power lines are not done swiftly.

Cost being the much larger problem. Subsidies don't make economic sense, except for the recipients and their cronies.
I also do not believe in subsidizing any technology it so that it will come sooner; it will come when it's time (see ubiquity of blue LED's which led to LED flashlights et al), You also don't see what we could be missing out on if that productive energy were instead left to others to figure out where to focus it, for things that have more immediate payback. As a simple example, if nations had not subsidized nuclear energy research (with weaponry as a main motivation), industry may have developed it 10 years later, but focused on Thorium, and we may have lots of Thorium-fueled plants today instead of a few Uranium fueled ones.

The cure for AGW (assuming you believe in it), is worse than the disease.

Danish professor and author Bjorn Lomborg argues that GW has benefits too, and that the cost to simply mitigate its ill effects, plus the cost of advanced R&D (to find a future long-term solution), will be way cheaper than the proposed solutions (which increase the cost of energy). The latter are very expensive and relatively ineffective.

And, among humankind's problems, the effects of AGW should be far down the list. In terms of bang for the buck, many other problems are better being addressed first.

Lomborg is the author of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist"

wherein he explains how the world's environment has been improving, thanks to early enivronmental laws, and improving technology. He also laments that Big Enviro has gone from being pro-environment to a political machine. He has been attacked numerous times by the academe and accused of being a shill, just because he is trying to show a new paradigm. Kind of the same way Joe summarily dismisses my anti-central banking arguments ;)

He is pro-nuclear, for obvious reasons.

Lomborg's book "Cool it":
Cool it - The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide To Global Warming | lomborg.com

documentary:
https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/C...9?locale=en-US

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, left it because it turned anti-human. He is also a nuclear energy advocate:
Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future

Related to the OP, the USA's CO2 emissions are now at its lowest due to the wider use of natural gas. Just happened, without fiat or force. Now why aren't the environmentalists celebrating?

Thanks to fracking, U.S. carbon emissions are at the lowest levels in 20 years. - Slate Magazine

Would it? I'm not sure that I'm qualified to say.

Diversity is a funny thing. It's great in some applications, like where you want to create biological life. Genetic diversity among a population of animals is a key factor in improving the quality of the breed over time (by way of natural selection), and it also decreases the probability that any one specific pathogen will wipe out the entire species.

In technology, diversity is usually a bad thing. In hardware design, engineers strive to reduce diversity of component selection on a board, as this decreases cost and tends to improve reliability. In software design, diversity of operating platforms increases workload on the designers and tends to lead to more bloated code, increases the likelihood of bugs or other unintended operation, etc. One of the primary reasons that computers such as the Macintosh and the Amiga gained a strong reputation in the 1980s for high-performance and high-reliability is that the hardware platforms were not at all diverse- every single one was exactly the same, which allowed code (both OS and application) to be highly optimized for that specific configuration.

Diversity is also bad in manufacturing and industrial applications. Having diverse machinery means that a much larger inventory of spares must be kept on hand, and the staff responsible for maintaining them machinery is required to trade depth of proficiency for breadth of proficiency, which leads to decreased operational efficiency. There is a reason that fleet operators tend to buy a lot of the same type of (bus / police car / taxicab), and that Boeing puts four of the same type of engine on every 747.


As hornetball pointed out, our energy infrastructure is already highly diverse. We have coil, natgas, nuclear, and hydro as high-availability options.


In the Greenpeace version of a "clean" energy infrastructure, increased diversity would be a necessary evil. Of the energy-production methods which they espouse, no one of them would even be capable of operating alone.

And in a fossil-fuel economy, diversity can be beneficial as well. If the price of coal skyrockets, producers can shift load to natgas or oil-fired plants.

But in a nuclear economy? Well, a breeder reactor is already diverse all by itself. It can burn uranium or plutonium in any form, and if need be it can actually create its own fuel in real-time by switching to thorium or other "fertile" materials. (Yes, I know it sounds counterintuative, but there are actually some types of reactors which PRODUCE nuclear fuel while also producing electricity. It is quite literally a modern-day version of alchemy.)




One of my favorite treatises on this subject was written by Dennis Silverman, a retired professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine and (get this) environmental activist.

There is a group which has suggested that the troubled San Onofre plant (located on the Pacific coast between San Diego and Orange County) be permanently closed, and replaced with a photovoltaic solar farm. This inspired Mr. Silverman to engage in some research on the subject. His findings should be completely unsurprising to anyone who actually understands the basics of energy production, but help to put things into perspective for the liberal-arts crowd. An excerpt:
And, of course, the author of that paper lives in Southern California, where it's sunny 364 and a half days a year. How much of the population of the US lives in the northeast?


Oh, and there's one other thing. If you live in an area in which residential solar power is common, you've probably heard radio ads from solar solutions vendors advertizing their "linear performance guarantee." They are guaranteeing that your brand new solar panel, if properly maintained, will degrade in performance by a certain amount each year.

For a high-end commercial photovoltaic panel, we typically expect the panel to degrade to 80% of rated output after 25 years. Degradation is fairly linear in nature, so it's reasonable to project that outwards.

Now, 25 years may seem like a long time, but in terms of energy production, 25 years is the break-in period. Most of the fossil-fuel plants in this country are 50+ years old, and even the nuke plants are getting on in years. No new reactors were constructed in the US after TMI-2 failed in 1979, so by definition, the very youngest reactors in the US are nearly 35 years old. Many are over 40.

The question then, is how much does the output of nuke plants degrade over time as compared to solar?

It doesn't.

In fact, all else being equal, the power output of nuclear reactors tends to increase very slightly over time, owing principally to increases in operating efficiency made possible by periodic overhauls which include new turbine designs, new boiler technology, and improvements in reactor control.


Heck, we already have enough problems with population growth causing energy demand to increase over time, and its only going to get worse when we all start plugging in our cars overnight. Why on earth would we want to invest in a technology which is guaranteed to perform more poorly in the future than it does today?



*ding ding ding*

We have another winner.

Even if we had an infinitely efficient battery storage technology to level out the energy production when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, the power distribution grid in the US just can't handle that kind of load. Could we change that? Sure. I could make a Dacia Sandero go 200 MPH if I had enough money. But it wouldn't really make sense to do so.

Hmm, this article seems to contradict the original post about energy independence:

The Oil Drum | The Big Deal About U.S. Energy Self-Sufficiency

This is why the (more useful) talk is "energy" independence, not "oil" independence. Oil exports can increase, but being a net exporter is unlikely.

For example, I have been talking about the increase in use of domestic natgas combined with the reduction in oil import demand (which peaked before the financial crisis) for a number of reasons - like the increase in broad fleet fuel efficiency.

Joe, at the risk of sounding totally ignorant and arrogant, do you really feel electric cars are a net win environmentally over fossil fuel cars? Aren't we trading one thing for another, or worse.

I for one am all for getting rid of fossil fuel consumption just so the the sheiks and Chavez can sit down every day and drink a crude smoothie for breakfast since they wont be able to do anything with it. Yes yes I know there are other things made from crude but you get what I mean.

The measurement for "net win" will be in what's called "well to wheel" efficiency.

Last time I looked, the best "wheel to well" efficiency is from CNG cars, and next would be electric cars. The latter's efficiency depends on the source of the electricity - i.e. the fuel, and the efficiency of the power plant.

BTW I just had an interesting conversation with a guy who was planning to get into the businesses of planting thousands of acres of Acacia Mangius trees to be turned into wood chips for a new wood-burning power plant, in Southeast Asia. He said you harvest and replant them every 4 years, and 200 hectares (500 acres), will can be burned to generate 1 MW worth of power continuously. I tried checking the numbers online but didn't get very far.

If the electricity being used to charge the cars comes from zero-emission sources, then yes. I'm not sure what you mean by "trading one thing for another, or worse."

So for a country like France, this is an absolute. 78% of all electricity generation in France is from nuclear fission, with hydro comprising an additional 12%.

In 1974, France embarked upon an ambitious energy-independence program, as a result of which they now have 58 operating reactors (the highest number per-capita in the world), with one new reactor presently under construction and a second in the planning stages. As a result of this, France has the lowest consumer electricity cost in all of Europe, and they are a net exporter of electricity to neighboring countries. They are, in fact, the largest energy-exporting nation in the world (by capacity) and electricity is France's fourth-largest export by value. France also exports both nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel.


If we presuppose an electricity infrastructure of this nature, then electric cars are absolutely a net win. The contents of present-day Lion batteries are mostly recyclable, and the environmental impact of manufacturing an EV is not significantly greater than a traditional fossil-fuel vehicle.


In the US, only 30% of total energy generation is from emissions-free sources (19% nuclear, 8% hydro, 2.8% wind and a negligible amount from solar), with the remainder being from fossil-fuels, mostly coal (43%) and natgas (24%).

Canada, incidentally, is much better off in this regard. 75% of energy in Canada comes from emissions-free sources (15% nuclear, 60% hydro). This is a good thing, as while the population of Canada is rather smaller than the US, Canada has the third-highest energy use per capita in the world, at 14 MWh per person per year. (The US is in seventh place, at 12.3 MWh.)


For the US, then, the equation therefore becomes more complex. Certainly, the 30% emissions-free contribution is immediately beneficial, and if current trends continue, the total percentage of energy derived from nuclear sources should rise in the coming years.

When looking at the coal / gas contribution, things become more complex. One thing which is often overlooked is that even though EV charged by fossil-fuel plants to effective move pollution "somewhere else", this is not to be dismissed easily. Fossil fuel plants tends to be located away from areas of high population density, so their contribution to smog formation and other localized health hazards is considerably less than the gasoline-powered vehicles which they can effectively replace. Additionally, the very simple fact is that for a great number of reasons, a large power plant, even one fueled by coal, tends to operate at much higher efficiency (watts-per-btu) than a gasoline engine, and its emissions are much more easily controlled, catalyzed and sequestered, principally because it's a big thing that sits there running at the same speed all the time and has a team of engineers monitoring it constantly.


Additionally, coal and natgas are principally domestic products (produced and consumed within Canada and the US). This fact keeps getting stated and forgotten about.


So, yes. I think it's pretty clear that that EVs are a net win overall.

The very notion of a "well" in this statement presupposes that all power (electrical or traction) must ultimately be derived from fossil-fuel sources. This mentality, of course, is one of the problems which afflicts meaningful comparisons of transportation and power in the 21st century.



A quick first-order sketch suggests that his numbers in within the boundaries of reality.

We probably can't grow Acacia Mangius here in SoCal, but the southeast has a climate that would be conducive to them. The mean average capacity of a current-gen reactor in the US is about 1,000 MWe. If 500 acres yields 1 MW, then to replace the generating capacity of a typical two-unit nuclear site, you'd only need a million acres, which is 1,562 square miles. Or, put another way, an area 29% larger than the entire state of Rhode Island.

To replace one, single nuclear plant.

Cost is also a factor. In the US, a good long-term average for the commercial cost of electricity is about $100 per MWh, of which the fuel cost is typically 15-25%. So to generate 1 MWe continuously for one year, that's roughly $130-$220k in fuel cost.

To be competitive in a western market, your friend would need to be able to run his farm for less than $700 per acre annually.

I can't find any data on Acacia Mangius farming, but there is a hell of a lot of agricultural data available on other types of tree farming in the US. Walnut production, for instance, costs around $2000-$3000 per acre annually, depending on the size of the farm. Apples and Peaches also vary around the same range, tending towards the higher end of the scale.

These are obviously just operating costs- they ignore the price of the land itself. I have no idea how much it would cost to purchase the entire state of Rhode Island, plus an additional 350 square miles of Connecticut. Probably more than the $10-20 billion that a typical two-cylinder nuke plant costs to build in the US these days (and that's the high-side price, after factoring all of the cost overruns, delays due to hippies with law degrees, etc.)


On the plus side, it's net carbon-neutral. :D

The trade I speak of is in the battery itself. A Lion baterry may well be recyclabe but dont they produce a rather nasty gas, hydrogen or something? I dont know what several hundred million batteries would do to the environment but one catching fire that cant get extinguished by normal means isnt good. You save the environment but at a greater risk to human life. Plus since we arent getting any new nuke plants, how much better off are we going to EV cars before becoming more electric fossil fuel free?

No.

Lead-acid batteries produce hydrogen gas in normal operation (hydrogen, incidentally, is not toxic or harmful to life), however rechargeable lithium batteries are completely sealed and produce no outgassing in normal operation.



The same argument might hypothetically have been put forward in the mid 1910s when lead-acid batteries were introduced to automobiles, particularly as lead is moderately toxic to life. But today, we have nearly 100% recycling of lead-acid batteries, and recycling processes already exist for lithium-ion batteries in cell-phones and laptops. Compliance is not high, however that it because it's easy to throw a laptop battery in the trash. With a large car battery, recycling compliance will be 100%, as the swapping of the battery will tend to be performed at a licensed servicing station.


That didn't prevent VW from selling 22 million Beetles. Their engine blocks are made of magnesium, which cannot be extinguished except by digging a hole and buying it. Add to this the fact that EV batteries tend to be encapsulated within the most well-protected sections of the chassis, and you see why even with 2.5 million EVs already on the road in the US alone (mostly hybrids), we do not find ourselves in an armageddon of burning batteries.

(Additionally, newer battery technologies such as LiFePo4 do not exhibit the same tendency to flame out as early Li-Po batteries did. You can literally drive a nail through them and they won't catch fire.)



Huh?

There is one reactor under construction right now at Watts Bar, TN, scheduled to come on line in 2015, two more under construction at Vogtle, GA scheduled for completion in 2017, and two more under construction at V.C. Summer in SC for 2018 completion.

Those are reactor plants which are actually under construction right now. Additionally, plans and licensing applications are in process for new two reactors each in Levy County FL, William States Lee SC, Shearon Harris NC, and Turkey Point FL, plus one new reactor at Bellefonte AL.


It's true that after the incident at TMI-II in 1979, the nuclear industry pretty much halted in the US. Fortunately, we are finally seeing the light and getting back on track.

Just as the manufacture of gasoline-powered cars in the early 1900s drove the construction of new facilities for petroleum refining and distribution, as the number of EVs grows it will tend to drive infrastructure improvements and additional generating capacity in the electrical sector.

Inductive pickup/charging on the freeways would also be nice (probably similar efficiency to charging/discharging of the batteries).
Big Rigs etc would be better served by direct pickup than batteries I guess.
Diesel between the electrified parts of course.

Well I guess there must be some misinformation going around as UPS and/or USPS wont ship Lion baterries or have some type of restriction on shipping them. My friend bought one for his 997.2 GT3 and after it got sent back for some type of shipping mislabeling or missing labeling he went out and tried to find out what was up. He was told Lion batteries produced hydrogen or some other gas that was rather volatile and shipping them was problematic. He also was told that a few cars that had that type of battery had caught fire when the battery exploded. I dunno, maybe just misinformation.

Really? I just bought a Makita drill and impact set from Amazon, and they had no problem getting them to me.

Yeah well taking this thread of course so let me just say that I researched it a bit and it seems there is some kinda restriction from the USPS on international shipping of Lion batts. Maybe since the battery was from Porsche and it was shipped from Germany? Or the fact that its a larger than normal battery? I dunno but apparently there is some issue with the current Lion batts that shipping them internationally is a problem. From just a quick Wiki read, the generally used lithium ion battery is the most tempermental and using some other chemical forms of it helps with the volatility. Anyhow, back to the independence of foreign oil thread.

Shale will change the US, not the climate - FT.com


TL; DNR: Discussion of "zero-carbon" gas plants using carbon capture and sequestration. The switch from less coal to more natgas has already reduced US CO2 emissions growth significantly. Adding more carbon capture and sequestration capacity could reduce CO2 emissions that much more.

Oil Exports Trim U.S. Trade Deficit as Fuel Gap Shrinks: Economy - Bloomberg

[Posting this here because it ties into the "USA energy independence" theme.]

So I read some interesting ideas on the spread of solar energy, and how its adoption may end up being much quicker than most people (even solar optimists) are anticipating.
Longer read:
The Solar Powered Death Spiral For Utilities Begins – In Hawaii | Monetary Realism

Interesting.

When I read things like that, I have to wonder whether the authors genuinely do not understand the differentiation between continuous generation vs. intermittent generation, and how availability factor drives the differention between base-load and peak-load generation.

Or, put another way, why "5 GW" of (solar / wind) power is not even remotely comparable to "5 GW" of base-load (fossil / nuke / hydro) power.

In regions where the demand for energy to provide air-conditioning tends to reliably track the output of solar-electric arrays, then solar is indeed a viable alternative to peak-load generation, which is commonly nat-gas. In other words, solar is a viable alternative to the least-polluting fossil fuel which we have, provided that you don't live in the southeastern US where it is commonly both hot and raining at the same time.

Well said. This is exactly why I always chuckle when people talk about the future of ______ (any technology in general) like they have some sort of crystal ball.

I hate seeing projections of fossil fuel use that is 20 or 30 years out. Hopefully we can get away from them by that point. If not, we aren't trying or caring enough, and should all just leave our car running in the garage with the door closed and die.

The problem, of course, is that there are a lot of people in the world who claim to be futurologists. And if a large enough number of people make a large enough number of predictions, then the laws of probability alone dictate that a few of them will emerge as being "generally correct" about predicting the future. And suddenly, they become "credible experts."


The same logic, of course, is commonly used to justify systems for predicting the performance of the stock market, justifications for why the second-coming of Christ will occur in the next (xx) years, etc.

Joe - Did you read the longer article linked at the bottom of my post? If not, I'd be interested in your take. This is not an area of expertise for me at all.

I do think it is worth noting the pace of expansion. In that second article, the author makes note of "Swanson's Law" which is similar in principal to "Moore's Law." Recent trend data in some locations appears to actually be ahead of that curve, but obviously growth rates from small numbers are easier to make seem larger.

I'm personally ignorant on the storage capabilities of solar energy for electricity supply, but I imagine there must be (or will be) some innovation that will work for the Southeast USA where it tends to be hot and raining for relatively brief time periods but is sunny before and after.

I would think someplace like the Pacific Northwest where it's grey all day for weeks would be more of a challenge, but - again - I have not educated myself on solar very much.

I'm much more comfortable talking fossil fuel related topics. :)

The only real methods of storing electricity are in huge, industrial style batteries, or in pumped-storage facilities. A pumped storage facility is essentially a dam that pumps water uphill when demand is low, and generates power by letting the water run downstream. Neither of which are a good fit for solar. Solar generates the most when demand is high, so there is not sense in storing it for use later, except perhaps in the very late evenings and pushing it back onto the grid during peak hours the next day.


All generators have what is called a "capacity" rating. This is the rating that the generator can be relied upon to supply under all conditions. For renewables, this varies geographically. I am not as familiar with solar, but wind farms in the Allegheny mountains are typically assigned a capacity rating of 15%. I saw an article around a year ago that suggested the rating for wind in texas was around 9%. I would suspect solar panels have smaller numbers.

This concept of capacity makes the authors theory of competing with Peaker plants idiotic. A peaker's value is more than the sum of the energy it generates. Having 60 megawatts with 100% capacity that can be online almost instantly is what makes them worth having.

as cool as solar power is, there are some problems that arise when your power generation becomes as distributed as solar generation tends to be. The first is that it raises the available fault currents in the area, which tends to drive up utility equipment costs. A single solar panel does not make much difference, but when thousands of panels start to be installed in an area, the effect becomes significant.

Another problem is from the solar inverters. Solar cells generate a DC voltage, which needs to be inverted to AC. The AC inverters can typically not provide much more current than their nameplate rating. This makes setting your protection relay very difficult, because the amount of current you see in a short circuit condition is not much more than what you see under normal operating conditions.

While the article talks of a solar "death spiral" I imagine that solar installations will eventually hit a wall when all of the excess transmission capacity is used up on the grid. Eventually there will come a point where no more panels can be installed without some sort of major transmission upgrade being required. Because solar installations are much smaller by nature they will be unable to pay for the electrical upgrades that their addition to the grid requires. As an example, It is entirely feasible that a solar farm addition could overload a high voltage transformer at a local substation. Realistic cost for upgrading it would be around 2 million dollars. Joe's nuclear plants probably spend more than that on red and green pencils, this is a significant percentage of the total cost of a solar farm.


The author does not seem to consider the impact of tax credits on the construction of solar panels. You could probably operate a railroad consisting entirely of steam locomotives if you had the same incentives that solar panels get. While it is possible that the renewable market energy market may become self sustaining, I would wait to see if it could survive on its own before proclaiming that fossil fuels are in a death spiral.


As a neat fact, according to the author, solar costs about 57.9 $/MWH, and coal is 50$/MWH, which sounds reasonable to me. On 1/7, when it really cold, energy was trading at 1800 $/MWH during peak times.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll re-read the article, as I skimmed it quickly, but I don't think Sankowski was talking about the death spiral of fossil fuels.

As I recall, he was speaking specifically of the current business model of utility companies that involve very expensive infrastructure burdens.

Preface:

It occurs to me that one of the biggest obstacles to really understanding the challenges posed by grid-level generation is the ability to truly appreciate the scale of the problem. This type of question was recently covered in the XKCD comic "Lethal Neutrinos," in which the author analyzed, among other things, the question of which would appear brighter: A supernova, seen from as far away as the Sun is from the Earth, or the detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1389677510

(It turns out that the Supernova wins by nine order of magnitude, which illustrates why it is hard for us puny humans to comprehend problems at extremely large scale.)




I will be speaking on such matters of scale in the points which follow.




Not as comprehensively as I should have. I read the first, and sort of skimmed the second.

Upon a re-read, it is in fact kind of interesting.

On the one hand, it's one of the extremely few pro-solar articles which I have read that acknowledges the difference between base-load and peak-load generation, and I applaud that.

On the other hand, I'm having a very hard time rationalizing some of the conclusions which it draws.





Observation the First:

For one, the author states "And how big is the peaker market? It’s about 5% of the total electrical market," and he even provides a source, albeit one published by a solar advocacy group. The problem I'm having is that THAT highly biased source does not, in turn, cite a source, and the claim which it makes does not appear to be supported by actual usage data.

For instance, here is a fairly ordinary daily power-demand-curve for one 24 hour period from the California Independent System Operator (the agency with coordinates power distribution and generation across all utilities):

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1341875068


And the same data from Ontario, Canada:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1389677510

Both of these datasets were taken from 09 Jul, 2012, and I chose them simply because I used them as an example in another post a while back. (At the time, they were the current data from the day in which I was writing the post.)

Now, you can see pretty clearly that in both charts, the highest point is 60-80% higher than the lowest point, so I'm not sure where this 5% number comes from.




Observation the Second:

Then, they spend a *LOT* of time focusing on cost. And while economics is certainly a highly important factor in power generation, it isn't the limiting factor in the adoption of solar (and other non-nuke/fossil/hydro) technologies at any meaningful scale. If you only want to displace 5% of fossil-fuel generation, then be my guest. But that's kind of a pathetic goal, and it certainly does not justify the investment which it would involve. (To provide some sense of scale, all of the billions of dollars in public subsidies spent to date on solar installation have, by the admission of the author, displaced one-fourth of one percent of "legacy" generating methods. So we only need to spend twenty times as much as we already have in order to displace one-twentieth of legacy capacity. That's an interesting coincidence.)

But, again, cost isn't really the *biggest* problem here. The big problem is that the sun doesn't always shine (from the point of view of an observer located on the surface of the earth.)


See, it doesn't really matter if you have an installed base of solar and wind generators whose peak capacity is equal to the peak demand capacity of the whole country.

Hell, for that matter, you could have an installed capacity which was ten times peak demand. Again, as Davezorz pointed out already, the availability just isn't there.

You'd still have to deal with the reality that sometimes the sun isn't out. And then you have to ask the tough question: how many times per week are we willing to deal with rolling blackouts lasting for hours or days at a time?

(Answer: people went totally apeshit when the southwestern US was blacked out for a little under 12 hours back in September 8, 2011. That event even merits its own Wikipedia article under the title "Great Blackout of 2011."* Imagine that happening 2-3 times per week.)





Observation the Third:

The question was asked, and Davezorz touched on this, how do we store energy, at grid-scale, and then release it gradually? Davezorz mentioned battery technology, but this isn't really practical- it'd be like using a teacup to transfer the contents of the Atlantic ocean into the Pacific. The only really practical means for doing this is pumped-hydro storage, where you basically use the energy produced during peak generation time to pump an entire lake's worth of water up to the top of a mountain, and then let it run down gradually while turning a generator.

Now, pumped-hydro storage is a real thing which actually exists. Worldwide, roughly 130 GWh of pumped-storage capacity exists, representing 99% of all grid-scale energy storage capacity. Quick primer: Pumped-storage hydroelectricity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1389677510


But the storage question presents its own challenge as well, and for this, I'll focus strictly on the US here. Pumped-hydro electrical storage, when you really strip it down to the barest fundamentals, requires only two natural elements to work properly: A huge amount of surplus water, and a large mountain to pump it up.

Sadly, these are the two specific things which those parts of the US that receive the maximum amount of solar energy do not have. The south-east is completely lacking in tall mountains, and the south-west is completely lacking in huge quantities of surplus water. (Seriously, in CA / AZ / NM / NV / TX, water-rights are a bigger issue in local / regional electoral politics that gun control, abortion and welfare all put together.)



The southeast:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1389677510



The southwest:

http://naturespicwallpaper.com/wp-co...pers-HD-6.jpeg






Observation the Fourth:


Of course, even if we were to hand-wave over this, you still have yet another scale problem to contend with. This one, I promise, will be easy to comprehend:

The largest pumped-hydro plant in the entire world is the Bath County Pumped Storage Station, located in north-western Virginia. Built at a cost of $1.6 BILLION dollars between 1977 and 1985 (remember that number for later), it has a storage capacity of 2.1 GWh**

Now, by comparison, the V.C. Summer nuclear plant #1 was built between 1974-1984, and it continues to operate to this day at a rated output of 966 MWe with a capacity factor of approximately 100%. Cost to build? $1.3 Billion.

So, the Bath hydro storage plant cost 23% more to build than the V.C. Summer nuke plant, and it has 9% of the daily output capacity.

And remember, that money is just for STORAGE. The actual generation cost is above and beyond these figured.

Remind me again how they're trying to justify the costs here?






Observation the Fifth:

Let me put this another way:

The Niagara Falls flow about 150,000 gallons per second. The output of the Niagara Falls Generating Station is about 2GW on the Canadian side and 2.4 GW on the American side, or 4.4 GW total. This represents about 0.4% of the combined generating capacity of the US and Canada.

13 billion gallons per day, for 0.4% of the combined electrical needs.


Remember the Bath County station I referenced earlier, the highest-capacity pumped storage station in the world? When operating at peak output it consumes 13.5 million gallons PER MINUTE.




Scale is a bitch.






Observation the Sixth:

And that's where the whole argument crosses into the realm of the absurd. I mean, the very title "Death Spiral For Utilities Begins" suggests that the role of the utility company is coming to an end. Far from it, in order to implement the sort of generating and storage technology suggested in the article would require the direct involvement of traditional utility companies (or their nationally-subsidized equivalent) on a scale unprecedented since the original nuclear revolution of the 1960s/70s.


I just can't see it...





Observation the nth:

This isn't to say that I necessarily refute all of what is written in that article- indeed, I acknowledge much of it as truth. I merely find the totality of it difficult to grok in fullness.














I'm kind of tired. I think I'm going to go to bed now.

I really think that both you and Davez missed that the article was much more about economics of the utility company business model than it was about displacing fossil fuels with solar power, but maybe I read my own economic/financial bias into it.

Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, the site is blocked from my current location so I can't re-read it.

We can discuss the business model of utilities too, I don't get the impression the author understands how utilities work,

In markets that are deregulated, the classic "utility" is generally split up into 2 or more companies. One company owns all of the generation assets and participates in the local energy market. The market is what the California ISO Joe mentioned operates.

The other company is responsible for Transmission and distribution of electricity to customers. The idea is that the T&D utility treats the Generation utility the same as any other generator on the market, and does not provide them with an unfair market advantage.

Since generation is subject to competition, their focus is on $/MWH. typically they are very profitable when the economy is good and there is a lot of growth. in recent years, they have been marginally profitable, or not profitable at all. This is who solar competes with, they must keep their price per KWH low enough for the ISO to be able to select them to generate.

The T&D side of the company is a monopoly. They must serve all customers in their service territory regardless of how hard it is for them to do so. With the local public utility commission's blessing, they are free to raise rates in order to keep themselves profitable. There is no competition here. The T&D company gets its cut regardless who makes the electricity, or who buys it. There is nothing that solar or any other generator does to effect the bottom line of the T&D company.


typically a "Peaker" refers to single cycle gas turbine or a diesel generator that operates around 60 MVA. these are very uneconomical to run, the thermal efficiency of a turbine is around 15%, and while a diesel can be as high as 50%, the huge fuel costs and emissions controls make them uneconomical. These sites can be started in less than an hour (I have no idea how quick they can start cold, I imagine they typically have some warning they might be needed and can start the warmup process ahead of time) and are a last resort before the utility starts to shed load. This is where the author is getting his 5% number. You can see why having solar compete with these is nonsensical, their entire reason for being is you can call on them when you are on the ragged edge. Using solar, which has no capability to throttle itself, and can only be counted on to provide less than 10% of its rated capacity at all times in place of a Peaking turbine is stupid.

The 60-80% you are seeing is taken up by larger more efficient plants. I am not sure of the exact terminology, but I think spinning reserve might be correct. Essentially you have a coal plant, or a combined cycle gas plant, where the furnace is fired and the steam turbine is spinning, but providing no real electricity. As grid demand starts to rise, they throttle up to take up the slack. When you run out of capacity from these types of plants, that is when you call on your peaking generators.

It is my understanding that it takes a supercritical coal plant 24 hours to start from a cold state. I think the number might be closer to 8 hours for combined cycle gas. So if you get into trouble, plants like this in a shutdown state are not going to help you.