Power plants (continuation of a topic drift)

Darell

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Howdy -

It should surprise no-one that I was responsible for driving this thread right off a cliff, and molding it into my own plaything. It was sort of lost in the forum upgrade shuffle, so I restarted it here. This is somewhat of an off-shoot of my EV thread as well, but that one is getting a bit long in the tooth.

So, to catch up, Tomas wrote:
[ QUOTE ]
I was just wondering, Darell, as I would expect the power here, mostly hydroelectric, to be quite close to the top of the list on being "clean." (Sort of a "pounds-of-crap per megawatt-hour generated" measurement.)

I realize that CA does try harder (because they used to be the worst ) and is now the leader, but the statement " ... the cleanest mix of electricity of all 50 states" raised an eyebrow.

I know that the fossil fuel plants in CA are probably the cleanest of the dirty, but I wonder if the mix of power actually generated in California and delivered to the grid is really cleaner than the mix of power generated in, for example, Washington (the state, not the black hole) and delivered to the grid.

[/ QUOTE ]
I searched far and wide, and came up with exactly ZERO hard evidence for what I've been spouting. So I'll stop spouting it. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

What I did find out is that CA has by far the cleanest of the dirty generating plants. The regulations that control our coal burning plants create a situation between CA and other states that is like the difference between driving an EV and a Hummer when it comes to air and water pollution. But that alone doesn't mean we have the cleanest power mix, of course. We may still have the cleanest mix, but I have no way to verify it (so again, I'll stop saying that we do). It has been proposed to me by others that if CA has eight times as many "dirty" plants than another state, but that the CA plants are 90% cleaner (a reasonable assumption that I'm not attempting to prove in any way here) then the CA mix could still come out ahead. The other thing we always need to consider is that these calculations will always have to be per capita to level the playing field. Not that dirtier plants spread more thinly makes them cleaner....

Per capital, I'm told that we import and consume less coal than any other state. And the coal that we DO burn, is burned more cleanly than in any other state.

So, the big exciting conclusion of this opening post in this new thread is:

Oops. I shouldn't be saying what I've been saying about CA having the cleanest "mix" overall.
 

DavidW

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Well... I didn't pay attention to the EV thread but this interests me a little.

A couple of years ago during the power crisis I read a lot of articles on CA and power. I remember a couple of things. But of interest to this thread is that California lets other states generate it's dirty power for them. Like Oregon, Texas, etc. They let other states generate dirty power and they buy from them. Thus keeping within their own clean air guidelines.
 

Darell

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I'll forgive you for skipping the EV thread. Sort of. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif For a "car guy" such as yourself, I think you may get a kick out of learning about some alternatives to the internal combustion engine (ICE). But only if you're interested in high performance vehicles. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

It is true that CA has and does import some of its power. Part of the CA "power crisis" was due to the crazy hassles involved in permitting new plants. Nobody wanted to go through the hassle, so CA found itself coming up short. If other states want the money for their surplus power, and they don't have the controls on the pollution that CA does - well, then that's the way it's gonna be, I guess. All states buy product from other states - they buy the product usually without regard to how it is produced (not the same for overseas products as many sweat-shop owners will attest). Sometimes product is trucked across other states with higher speed limits, but it isn't done to keep the speed down in the receiving state.

I don't see this is an evil plot to dirty other states for the sake of CA's clean air. But I can see how it might look that way. And I can easily see how it may have been reported that way in the press.
 

ikendu

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Has CA started to build power plants (remembering the power "crisis" of recent years)?

BTW...I was darn suspicious of that "power crisis". I feel a little vindicated of being "suspicious" in the aftermath of the Enron scandal where facts came out about manipulating the power shortages to suck extra cash out of CA. Hardly the finest hour of our president (Bush '43) when he walked over to the Pontius Pilate bowl of water and washed his hands of the emergency. .../editorial.

And...if they are building, what kind are being built? How clean?

I attended a "Sustainable economy" conference at my University this week where a rep from our power company attended and commented on the growth of wind power in Iowa. It turns out we have a chunk of the state that gets quite consistent winds and (wonder of wonders /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ) we are actually building wind machines to harness it. Our wind power is still like 2% of our total energy but it is building.
 

Darell

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That is awesome about the wind power in Iowa. Glad to hear it. The modern turbines available today produce as much as 30 of the "older" units. Of course they're also about 30 times bigger. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The CA power "crisis" really is a misnomer. Don't have time to go into it right now. The short answer is that we never really DID run out of power for the state during the "crisis" - Not even during peak times. The power was shut off to many, yes, but it wasn't for lack of it. Yes, politics touches every part of our lives. What we had was a power *management* crisis. I only know enough about it to make me dangerous. I can offer my feelings on the subject, but they're only my opinions.

The dirtiest new plants being built in CA will be natural gas-fired.
 

bwcaw

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Yeah, those wind turbines are awesome. I live in Nebraska (thats right next to iowa for those who flunked geography)
And it is an awesome sight to see these huge towers with huge blades going around and around. It is really cool to stand right underneath them and listen to the whoosh as each blade goes around. I wish they would be able to make more efficient generator to use wind power instead of coal power.


On a related note, yesterday we even had smog here in the missouri river vally! It was so thick you could only see about four miles! I think it was from the nearby coal power plant, because it always does that when the wind blows from that direction.
 

ikendu

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One thing the power utility guy said was that the wind turbines create DC and they need AC for transmission without big losses (duh...). Apparently changing the DC to AC is a difficulty for them (not sure why that would be).

I wonder how the efficiency equation would work out to create hydrogen at the base of a wind turbine, pipe it to a big city and use a fuel cell stack to make it back into electricity...compared with normal long distance transmission losses? The pressures in a long pipeline would even give you a certain hydrogen storage capacity (better than a battery?) so you could even produce power when the wind isn't blowing.
 

DavidW

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All we need to do is drill for more oil. I mean more oil rigs off of California and Florida have been blocked. This can make up for shortages and bring down the price of oil.

(Point to be made later.)
 

Brock

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David /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Most of the new larger windgen's are actually AC. The smaller home ones, up to about 5kw are still made in DC, but even some of the smaller ones are going to AC now. It is much easier to "tie" in to the grid that way.

My father worked for a local power company, and he told me basically none of the power companies in calif could afford to build a plant under the rules set up by deregulation. Basically they were capped at some amount and then told they could only build ultra clean generation plants, that cost more to run and thus would make the cost of power above what was set by deregulation, so it was a catch 22 situation.

Now I know they could have probably built the plants and still made small amounts of $, but they didn't think it was worth it and probably gambled that Calif. would allow "regular" plants to be built so they could make a higher profit margin.

Darell, is this way off or ???

Moving on I wish I could install a wind gen here, but it isn't allowed, I do have 200w of solar so far and plan to add another 100w this summer, enough to run all my "necessary" items in a pinch.
 

Empath

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[ QUOTE ]
ikendu said:
I wonder how the efficiency equation would work out to create hydrogen at the base of a wind turbine, pipe it to a big city and use a fuel cell stack to make it back into electricity...compared with normal long distance transmission losses? The pressures in a long pipeline would even give you a certain hydrogen storage capacity (better than a battery?) so you could even produce power when the wind isn't blowing.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't create hydrogen, you extract it from something. We can use water as an example. The combination of oxygen and hydrogen gave off tremendous amounts of energy when they become molecularly combined to become water. In order to break that bond you've got to apply a corresponding amount of energy, which would once again give you the separate elements hydrogen and oxygen. Now, the energy you're trying to store is in the hydrogen, and you're discarding or finding a different use for the oxygen. So, you're throwing out one of every three molecules your electrolysis has produced. That's wasteful, very wasteful, as far as energy production goes. You store energy in a process that consumes far more energy than you've stored.

We normally get the energy by adding oxygen to a fuel. It's a reaction that requires only an application of circumstances to something barely teetering on the brink of reaction already. Extracting hydrogen isn't such. You're forcing the separation of oxygen through the application of energy, and then discarding the oxygen. With fuel, you're only creating a situation that permits a natural combining of the oxygen.
 

Tomas

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Hmmmmmm ...
We have a Liquid Oxy plant a couple of towns over, I wonder what they do with the hydrogen? (I'm sure they use it, its just that I don't know what for.)

For some reason it always makes me nervous driving alongside one of their big LOX trucks on the freeway ... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

tomsig03.gif


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ikendu

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Empath said: You don't create hydrogen, you extract it from something.

Sorry, I should have said...separate hydrogen from water.
 

Darell

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Right on the money, Brock. It was a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. So the easy answer was: Don't.

Brock's got it. Empath's got it. David still scares me.
 
D

**DONOTDELETE**

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..8 years ago if the price of electricity had gone to 25 cents, the big wind turbine builders would have made millions..and there'd be wind turbines everywhere..today I guess the price would have to go over 65 cents a kwh at least.. 2c.
 

Albany Tom

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I think they make LOX by chilling the air, so no hydrogen that way. Lots of liquid nitrogen, though...

It's all good to say you want to have cleaner power, and it's even possible to legislate it for a state, maybe even a nation. The problem with this is that the cheapest power is dirty, and industrial countries around the world, which we're quickly becoming one not of, use it. It's very easy to say that we can compete with these countries, but the reality is more difficult. It's also easy to say that we have a "service oriented" economy, but I don't believe it's possible for out economy to survive without industry.

Along those lines, I'm wondering where the power comes from to build the steel used in the motors and frames of the wind power units. I'd be willing to bet some of that steel came from Korea or China, and if it did, I think we're talking coal.

I'm not just making a joke, I really believe that we've come to a point that we're a country completely dependent on foreign trade. There are some things that we use that aren't made any more in this country, or aren't made in any real quantity. The irony is that part of the reason for this is that we've set a much higher standard for worker's rights and environmental issues than developing nations. Discussions get real interesting real quick when we try to compare our value systems with theirs.

Oh, and a final thought - hydro power is not as eco-friendly option as you might thing. Flooding land and throttling back water flows isn't a good thing for the environment.
 

Darell

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You bring up some great points Tom. All sources of power have their detractions - and Hydro is one of the most contraversial "green" ones. Yet hydro does still tend to fall into the "green" catagory for obvious reasons. The "cleanliness" of a given power source is a debate that has no end.

Certainly most devices that we build to save or generate power need to be produced in a way that produces some sort of negative environmental impact. But for argument's sake - let's pretend that it takes just as much imported steel and all other materials to make a wind generation plant and a coal-burning plant that each produce the same amount of power. Now that both plants are built, which plant is doing less damage to the environment for its output? I get the same argument on EVs pretty regularly: That my EV had to be built with oil and coal and all that. But I think we can safely assume that it took no more than a ICE vehicle. And now that they're both built, my opinion is that my vehicle is doing less damage per mile than an ICE. So while the point is valid, it is a matter of comparison.
 

Albany Tom

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Very true..more of the point I was aiming at was along the lines of "stuff is going to get built", either here or in another country. The more eco-friendly we make stuff, the more expensive it is to make things here, and the more stuff gets made in countries that are way less eco-friendly.

So while I'm not suggesting we toss out the clean air act, it is true that stronger environmental regulations locally will tend to cause greater environmental damage globally, unless there is no shift of production. To not create a shift of production, we need environmental regulations that are also affordable. This last point is one that a lot of "green people" just don't want to hear. No easy answers...
 

Tomas

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[ QUOTE ]
Albany Tom said: To not create a shift of production, we need environmental regulations that are also affordable. This last point is one that a lot of "green people" just don't want to hear. No easy answers...

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that was something I was more or less saying in a rather oblique way in one of the other threads (the EV thread, IIRC).

Here's a really simple, straightforward, solid example:

My current vehicle cost me about $2K and is able to transport me, a passenger, my non-folding wheelchair, and the usual detrius that collects around people the roughly 200 miles / month that I need.

The vehicle has an ICE, and gets reasonable gas milage, so that my fuel usage is usually just under 10 gallons of regular unleaded / month.

Insurance is roughly $50 / month, fuel approximately $15 / month, maintenance approximately $25 / month, and finally, licensing is approximately $3 / month.

This means total monthly runs about $93. Let's throw in a bunch of fudge factor, just for the heck of it, and double that to $186 / month, OK?

(That would allow replacement of the vehicle every two or three years, and/or allow for serious repair work.)

1) How much would it cost me, per month, to replace this "Nasty ICE Vehicle" with something suitably green? (Remember the load requirements ...)

2) What percentage of my fixed income is that?

3) Who is going to pay for it?

Right. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif

To be viable, green must compete in the real world, in real time, and real dollars. If it does not or cannot it is sadly not a real-world solution (yet).

<font color="green">Have a green day,</font> /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
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Darell

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[ QUOTE ]
Albany Tom said:
To not create a shift of production, we need environmental regulations that are also affordable. This last point is one that a lot of "green people" just don't want to hear. No easy answers...

[/ QUOTE ]
No easy GLOBAL answer, but there are few easy answers that come to my mind.

Yeah, we're supposed to be talking about power generation here, but this automotive example just came to my mind...

It costs no more to make a compact sedan than it takes to make a giant SUV. Probably less. So quite possibly there are fewer resources being consumed to build the sedan. And therefor less negative impace on the environment. If we can assume this to be true, and if we can then take some single-driver commuters out of their 15mpg vehicles and stuff them into a 30mpg vehicle we can do quite a bit without negatively effecting the environment through production of "green things." Shove more than one person into the SUV, or better yet - shove more people into the compact sedan and look how much you can do! Not just for free, but at a savings!

Please note: I really have nothing against SUVs. They're great for that which they are intended. Same goes for ANY vehicle, really. I use "SUV" as an abbreviation for "large vehicle that doesn't get very good mileage."
 

Darell

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Well, crap. I just spend 20 minutes on my reply that was eaten by cyberspace. Damn, I hate it when that happens. The good news for you is that this'll be MUCH shorter this time. Missing some juicy details though...

[ QUOTE ]
Tomas said:
Here's a really simple, straightforward, solid example:

My current vehicle cost me about $2K .... Insurance is roughly $50 / month, fuel approximately $15 / month, maintenance approximately $25 / month, and finally, licensing is approximately $3 / month.

This means total monthly runs about $93. Let's throw in a bunch of fudge factor, just for the heck of it, and double that to $186 / month, OK?

....

1) How much would it cost me, per month, to replace this "Nasty ICE Vehicle" with something suitably green? (Remember the load requirements ...)

.....

3) Who is going to pay for it?


[/ QUOTE ]

OK, here we go. Let me begin by saying that your example (while something to be proud of) simply is not representative of the average American driver. You drive an inexpensive, relatively efficient vehicle for very few miles. Just by doing that, you've done far more for the environment than most people can ever hope to accomplish. Good on you - really (and yes, I know it isn't by choice, but still...) Now, that's out of the way, let's pretend that you drive your car LOTS more, so the point of my examples will actually mean something. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

The one expense you left out of your figuring is the cost of environmental damage. Albany Tom pointed out above that a lot green folks don't want to hear about the environmental costs of building more efficient devices. While I wouldn't say that is a valid generalization, there is some truth in it of course. So on the flip side, I'm compelled to point out that the non-greenies (for lack of a better term) can sometimes overlook the costs of NOT building more efficient devices. The social costs of an oil-based foreign policy. The medical costs of respiratory diseases caused by air pollution. The costs associated with water contamination... yadda, yadda.

So here's my extreme example just to make my point: Tomas's car cost $2k. For fun, let's pretend there is a car that is twice as green as Tomas's car, but it costs $3k. HUGE increase in price - 50%! But now let's also consider that Tomas's car is causing $1000 worth of environmental damage per year, while the greener car only causes $500 worth of damage - and that damage needs to be PAID OUT OF YOUR POCKET directly. Every year, like your insurance bill. Now does the far more expensive-to-buy greener car seem like a better deal?

Referring to a more expensive, greener car, Tomas asked: Who is going to pay for it?

In response, I'd like to ask the same question about the environmental damage that will be caused by a less green car: Who is going to pay for it?

You guys are making me think, and I appreciate the civil discussion. Thanks! (this had better post this time, or I give up!)
 
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