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Is The War On Coal Really Over?

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 02:25:11

Again, kub you make unwarranted assumptions. The rural population I am referring to, which can and should benefit from distributed and residential scale renewable energy, are 15% of the total. The other 85% have the option of the power grid.

It so happens that the 15% only have electricity because of FDR's executive order which is fundamentally a government subsidy. They will still have power through solar PV and wind subsidies. The 85% benefit from abandoning the most costly part of the grid.

We're not talking absolutes here, and we are saving grid costs and carbon emissions and lots of materials and even the trees that don't get turned into power poles. FDR's executive order was 80 years old last year. Technology and energy costs and grid maintenance are all vastly different from 1936.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby Revi » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 07:56:14

Rockman, you could rig up a small system and the only part that you would need help for would be the installation on the roof. We have a small, one panel system that runs LED lights, charges our cell phones and a radio. It's great for when the power goes out, because we have a wood stove, so the house stays warm, we cook things on the wood stove and we can listen to the radio and get around the house. It just uses big speaker wire, has a charge controller, a small breaker box and two deep cycle 6 volt batteries.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby kublikhan » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 11:53:22

KaiserJeep - The Rural Utilities Service(modern day equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act) does include provisions for off-grid renewable energy. Plus efficiency programs, conservation programs, smart grid, etc. Not to mention other utility services. It is not used solely to keep rural america on the grid. If it makes financial sense for these customers to move off grid the support is there for them to do so. Otherwise they can stay on the grid:

Electric Programs
The Electric Program provides capital and leadership to maintain, expand, upgrade and modernize America’s vast rural electric infrastructure. The loans and loan guarantees finance the construction or improvement of electric distribution, transmission and generation facilities in rural areas. The Electric Program also provides funding to support demand-side management, energy efficiency and conservation programs, and on-and off-grid renewable energy systems.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 12:49:43

Kub, are you familiar with a tool called decision quadrants? The RUS, at least when it comes to "last mile" connections to individual farms, is an example of doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason. Those places that could profitably connect to the grid have been connected by the power companies. Those that never were profitable were subsidized by the REA/RUS, literally decades ago. Those questionable parts of the grid get less maintenance than profitable parts of the grid. For individual farmers, the grid is neither reliable nor desireable, given modern alternatives.

The national power grid(s) were once an asset, now they are crumbling as with the rest of the country's infrastructure. If you want to know the downside, then you should be living where I am living in the South SF Bay Area. I am choking on the smoke from 19 large fires in the North SF Bay area. Most of these fires were caused by untrimmed trees sparking in the winds we call "The Diablos", which reach hurricane F1 speeds virtually every year. Those neighborhoods where our power company PG&E decided they could save money on tree trimming, are now ashes. A few years ago, that same power company decided that a 30" diameter gas main installed in 1956 would be "just fine" if they increased gas pressure, rather than replacing the pipe. The San Bruno pipeline explosion generated a 1000-foot high fireball and registered 1.1 on the Richter scale.

The grid is an aging nightmare, and the cost of power has yet another reason to increase. Those parts of the grid which do not transport enough power to pay for themselves are being neglected. Likewise, bad decisions about above ground vs. below ground power lines and whether high pressure gas mains need replacement are being made. For one last and final time, I make the point that energy costs will increase, and certain cost decisions that today tip one way will tip the other way in the future.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby kublikhan » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 15:58:34

KaiserJeep - I get that our infrastructure is in need of upgrading. Which will cost money and cause rates to rise. I also get that rural america wasn't electrified with profitability in mind. The cities have densely packed customers so it is easy to turn a profit. Few poles but lots of customers. The opposite of rural america: lots of poles but few customers. However the decision to electrify these customers was not to bring in profits but to improve their standard of living. So despite the higher costs of these rural customers, I consider the Rural Electrification Act to have been a successful policy:

The disincentives to investment in electrical infrastructure left rural America increasingly distant from the rising standard of living in the urban and emerging suburban settings of the national economy. Lacking the greater productive efficiencies secured by the adaptation of electricity, productivity growth in agriculture, the industry that served as the central organizing principle for rural life, lagged other sectors in the economy over the 1880 to 1930 period. Rural demands for the newest manufactured items found in urban American homes — telephones, radios, refrigerators, washing machines, hot water heaters, and household appliances — were latent. The failure of the market, which left rural areas literally and figuratively in the dark, required an aggressive federal initiative to insure that residents of sparsely populated areas were no longer comparatively disadvantaged in the twentieth-century American economy.

The R.E.A. is considered one of the most immediate and profound successes in the history of federal policy-making for the national economy. By the end of 1938, just two years after its inception, 350 cooperative projects in 45 states were delivering electricity to 1.5 million farms. The success of the R.E.A. over the next two decades was even more impressive, especially as a self-sustained financing agency. By the mid-1950s nearly all American farms had electrical service that was provided through the R.E.A. or by other means. Monies lent through the R.E.A. were also largely repaid, as the default rate was less than one percent. Moreover, as with any significant surge in investment, the accompanying new demands for household electrical appliances spurred growth in home appliance manufacturing, and spawned the electrical and plumbing trades in rural communities. Electrical service also brought revolutionary new mediums of communication to rural farms, firms and households. Radio was followed by television, and the new streams of information narrowed the cultural, educational and commercial divide between urban and rural America.
Rural Electrification Administration

I am also not convinced that today the grid is undesirable for individual farmers. Maybe undesirable from the power company's perspective: higher maintenance costs, less revenue. But desirable from the farmer's perspective: reliable power without the cost & hassle of being your own power company. And the cost of this program is not onerous either. Before broadband was added to RUS, it had an annual budget of $655 million per year, which included more than just the grid. Contrast this with the $39 billion of taxpayer money we spent per year on solar. And this is before we expand the program to cover batteries, backup generators, etc that would be needed to go off grid.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 16:17:43

I consider tthe REA/RUS was successful in the 1930's. However my GrandFather in an act of unfortunate timing got married and constructed a new house after the power company and the REA did their thing along the main road, dubbed "Rural Route 2", where you drove through every stream and river, no bridges or culvert pipes. His new home was on a mountain in Arkansas with no power. They made him wait 21 years, my Mother grew up with no electricity, wood/coal stoves for heat and cooking, a springhouse to keep butter cool, hand-milking cows, only a well with a bucket and a rope. He got electricity in 1957, when I was 6 years old, a big deal. But his family was the poorest in the whole county, most likely. To this day, no running water, and an outhouse that is moved to a new spot every few years. It shouldn't happen to anybody, but Governor Bill Clinton used to run the place, and the corruption did not lessen after he left office.

One last appeal to your reason: Consider the grid from the perspective of a 10X increase in power costs, because of FF shortages. How do your assumptions and conclusions change as a result of FF energy being unaffordable? Then consider 100X FF costs, when gasoline is $400/gallon, and coal power is $3/kWh.

How usefull will the power grid be to a farmer who has FF powered machinery he can't afford to start, and lighting he can't afford to turn on? I start my analysis from the perspective that the Forum is based on, which is that the grid lasts only as long as cheap FF's. You however seem to assume that things will not be that different than in the past. If you are of a mathematical bent, recall that true shortages do not manifest themselves in a linear fashion, they are exponentials.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 17:07:09

Revi - "We have a small, one panel system that runs LED lights, charges our cell phones and a radio." I have a miniature version of that: a kid's toy I bought my daughter a few years ago. A Christmas present that pissed her off. Hey, that's what holidays are all about, right? LOL.

Now I have it after she put it together. But I also have a hand cracked radio with a USB port that works just fine. But for a real hobby project I would at least like to run that 110 window AC. IOW do something substantial. But I can buy electricity from a utility "selling" wind or solar power. It's all just on paper as an accounting plan but I can play the mind game of being "renewable" as long as the grid doesn't go down. A very rare event where I live. One of the reasons my retirement home is across the highway from the second largest refinery in the western hemisphere. Same reason we didn't get flooded during Harvey: highest land for 200 miles either way along the coast. Same reason we have very low property tax: ExxonMobil carries much of the town.

Just planned ahead.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 19 Oct 2017, 23:10:09

RM, you could always buy one of the "portable solar power kits" off the web. This is the "Solar e Power Cube 1500" which has a 1500w inverter and a 55AH gel cell battery. It folds up into a suitcase on wheels, doesn't have to be installed.
Image
In fact, this is probably bigger than you need. I have 2800w system on the roof, it runs this 14,000 BTU, 1390w "Soleus Air"unit with juice left over:
Image
...this is the same 110v unit I take camping with me, a reversible heat pump that cools or heats a large tent easily, very little fire danger.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby cephalotus » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 07:36:27

KaiserJeep wrote:In fact, using the IER figures and quoting from the first message in the thread:

Coal : $0.032/kWh and 10,000 deaths/Trillion kWh (US figure, global average is 10X)

Gas: $0.045/kWh and 4,000 deaths/Trillion kWh

Solar PV: $0.160/kWh and 440 deaths/Trillion kWh
(rooftop)
Wind: $0.100/kWh and 150 deaths/Trillion kWh

Nuclear: $0.022/kWh and 0.1 deaths/Trillion kWh


At the wholesale (power plant) level, Solar PV is 500% as expensive as coal and Wind is 313% as expensive. In any case, you are making an apples/oranges comparison.


Interesting numbers.

In cloudy Germany new solar PV plants produce electricity at 0.07$/kWh (less f you calculate over 30 years) and wind energy is around 0.06$/kWh

That's exactly the production cost of NEW built gas or coal powered powerplants over here. This does not include cost for emission of CO2. (which currently are almost zero anyway)

So new renewable cost more for grid integration, but not for production.

Cost for new nuclear power is unknown (we don't built any new ones in Germany), if we take the feed in tarif for Hinkley C as an example price of new nuclear power will be around 0,14$/kWh (and rising with inflation) and this does not include insurance against major accidents and does not include waste management.

So I wonder why the numbers for the US should be so different. Actually wind and especially PV should be much cheaper in US, because you have better solar and wind resources. Natural gas should also be cheaper.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 13:08:04

KJ - "portable solar power kits" off the web." Interesting...thanks. Looked it up on Amazon. About $1,000 to $1,300 depending on battery upgrade. Mixed reviews...why I like researching on Amazon. The negatives were mostly cheap plastic construction and damage...probably during delivery.

But can't come up with an easier set up. And not much more expensive then a good gasoline generator.

Found this one online at HomeDepot of all places. Like having someone local to chew on if there's a problem . $1,450. And like yours easily expandable.

Nature Power
1,800-Watt Indoor/Outdoor Portable Off-Grid Solar Generator Kit with 100-Watt Solar Panel and Luggage Style Carrier

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Nature-Power ... e-Carrier-
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 13:34:32

cephalotus wrote:Interesting numbers.

In cloudy Germany new solar PV plants produce electricity at 0.07$/kWh (less f you calculate over 30 years) and wind energy is around 0.06$/kWh

That's exactly the production cost of NEW built gas or coal powered powerplants over here. This does not include cost for emission of CO2. (which currently are almost zero anyway)

So new renewable cost more for grid integration, but not for production.

Cost for new nuclear power is unknown (we don't built any new ones in Germany), if we take the feed in tarif for Hinkley C as an example price of new nuclear power will be around 0,14$/kWh (and rising with inflation) and this does not include insurance against major accidents and does not include waste management.

So I wonder why the numbers for the US should be so different. Actually wind and especially PV should be much cheaper in US, because you have better solar and wind resources. Natural gas should also be cheaper.
It's not a Germany vs US thing. It's a trusted source vs BS propaganda thing. EIA gives basically the same numbers as Germany:

Table 1a. Estimated LCOE (weighted average of regional values based on projected capacity additions) for new generation resources, plants entering service in 2022
Wind $0.56/kWh
Gas CC $0.59/kWh
Solar PV $0.74/kWh
Nuclear $0.96 /kWh
Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2017

The earlier source used was the IER. It's purpose is to promote fossil fuels and undermine renewables. It is no surprise their numbers are garbage.

IER receives funding specifically to produce research papers that attack renewable energy and promote fossil fuels. With Koch brothers-linked groups serving as its major funders, IER “can get away with more extreme views, especially on renewable energy, than either Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute does.” IER has been promoting its pro-coal, anti-renewable energy agenda for years. IER plays “a very valuable and preconceived function within this greater Koch network, which is to provide academic ammunition for the other groups that fight for the Koch brothers and the oil and gas agenda writ large.” As usually happens with other groups in the Koch network, they will specifically attack the enemies of Koch Industries’ profit centers. So… they attack solar and wind.”
This is how the Kochs’ anti-renewable agenda becomes White House policy
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 14:54:55

Let us regroup here for a minute. The IER figures are historical, in the sense that they were wholesale power generating costs from 2016. They are not projected future costs, which are more properly called "BS propaganda" because those figures are projections for 2022, five years in the future, when nobody knows the cost of FF's, and the projections are from people with a renewable energy agenda. I'm also not sure of how "levelized cost" figures are calculated and what assumptions are used for such. Lastly, are those prices quoted generating costs? Because I suspect that they include the carbon taxes present in Europe.

Until we are all using the same figures based on the same assumptions, duelling figures are a waste of time. I gave my source and an adequate description of what was measured, not projected.

Retail pricing varies by geography, time of year, and by the type of customer:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
....and while the average US residential cost is about $0.13/kWh, I pay $0.20 at my California home and $0.26 at my Nantucket home. Which is why I have solar PV at the first and plan to add a wind turbine at the second.

We can work through the figures, but I personally do not believe that the cost crossover between the FF's and renewables is going to occur in the USA in the next five years, given where we are today.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby kublikhan » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 15:35:31

KaiserJeep wrote:Let us regroup here for a minute. The IER figures are historical, in the sense that they were wholesale power generating costs from 2016. Until we are all using the same figures based on the same assumptions, duelling figures are a waste of time. I gave my source and an adequate description of what was measured, not projected.
Link to source please.

KaiserJeep wrote:and the projections are from people with a renewable energy agenda.
So the EIA is pushing a renewable energy agenda now? How do you figure that?

KaiserJeep wrote:Lastly, are those prices quoted generating costs? Because I suspect that they include the carbon taxes present in Europe.
No carbon taxes. No European values. These are US figures. If you want the values including tax credits, here they are:

Wind $0.44/kWh
Solar PV $0.58/kWh
Gas CC $0.59/kWh
Nuclear $0.96/kWh
Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2017
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 20 Oct 2017, 23:19:20

Gassy - Didn't know anything about Scottish wind power. Very impressive: Scotland TODAY can easily be powered 100% by wind. The UK...not so much. I assume the new Scottish offshore wind has been developed to sell power thru out the UK. Didn't search but is all of UK on the same grid?

Wind turbines a "blight" on the scenery? Purely subjective IMO.

From 6 Oct 2017: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/06/scotlan ... cient.html

"Wind turbines produced double the amount of power required to meet Scotland's electricity needs Monday, according to researchers. Environmental group WWF Scotland said Friday that analysis of data provided by WeatherEnergy showed the country's wind turbines sent 86,467 megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid on Monday.

That day, total electricity consumption in Scotland – including homes, industry and businesses – was 41,866 megawatt hours, WWF Scotland said, meaning that wind power produced the equivalent of 206 percent of the nation's needs."

Sounds like the English, Welch and Irish need to get their asses in gear. LOL
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 21 Oct 2017, 04:37:52

Kub, here's the cost of power generation from 2016: http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/topics/policy/electricity-generation-cost/

But what purpose is served by comparing last year's measured costs to a projected cost 5 years in the future? Such projected figures are not real, especially since they were generated in April of this year, before Trump/Pruitt announced the repeal of Obama's CPP. Coal and nuclear today are the two cheapest energy sources, and I don't believe that will change in a mere 5 years.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 21 Oct 2017, 09:06:52

ROCKMAN wrote:Gassy - Didn't know anything about Scottish wind power. Very impressive: Scotland TODAY can easily be powered 100% by wind. The UK...not so much. I assume the new Scottish offshore wind has been developed to sell power thru out the UK. Didn't search but is all of UK on the same grid?

Wind turbines a "blight" on the scenery? Purely subjective IMO.

From 6 Oct 2017: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/06/scotlan ... cient.html

"Wind turbines produced double the amount of power required to meet Scotland's electricity needs Monday, according to researchers. Environmental group WWF Scotland said Friday that analysis of data provided by WeatherEnergy showed the country's wind turbines sent 86,467 megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid on Monday.

That day, total electricity consumption in Scotland – including homes, industry and businesses – was 41,866 megawatt hours, WWF Scotland said, meaning that wind power produced the equivalent of 206 percent of the nation's needs."

Sounds like the English, Welch and Irish need to get their asses in gear. LOL


People are ignoring one crucial fact when talking about Scotland. The territory formerly the independent nation of Scotland has roughly the same dimensions as the lower peninsula of Michigan but just 60% of the population. And Michigan is not a particularly densely populated state either. In the EU the first member country with a lower population density than Scotland is Bulgaria, another country with a lot of mountains in its territory. England covers well over half the island of Great Britain and has a population density of 400 km^2 while little Scotland has 67 km^2, nearly a 6:1 difference in population.

IOW if Scotland produces double what it needs and England deployed a equal number of windmills per area and they were just as productive they would still fall far short of producing all the power for the separate area formerly called England. This is the power of cherry picking at its finest, you pick a low population territory with a large commitment to a particular renewable energy source and crow about the fact it produces a surplus as if those numbers translate directly to high population density areas.
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Re: The war on coal is over. Coal lost.

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 21 Oct 2017, 11:52:35

T - "...if Scotland produces double what it needs and England deployed a equal number of windmills per area and they were just as productive they would still fall far short of producing all the power for the separate area formerly called England." Sorry, faulty logic: English wind turbines do not blanket the country as they do in Scotland. And England covers 3X as much area as Scotland. IOW if England had the same AVERAGE turbine density as Scotland it would produce 3X as much electricity. In fact, from 2015:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/564052 ... d-turbines

"SCOTLAND is set to become the most overcrowded country on earth for wind turbines, according to new research by the Sunday Express. The country now has 2,683 wind turbines capable of generating 5,115MW of electricity, although there are 282 more under construction and a further 2,202 with planning consent. Once they are all operational, Scotland will have an installed wind power capacity of 12,769MW - the sixth highest in the world behind China, the USA, Germany, Spain and India. It would also result in the world's highest density of wind power capacity, with 163MW for every 1,000km2."

Second, from Wiki: "The United Kingdom is one of the best locations for wind power in the world, and is considered to be the best in Europe. Wind power contributed 11% of UK electricity generation in 2015, and 17% in December 2015. Allowing for the costs of pollution, particularly the carbon emissions of other forms of production, onshore wind power is the cheapest form of energy in the United Kingdom. In 2016, the UK generated more electricity from wind power than from coal."

So all England need do is build more wind farms as Scotland has done. But I suspect its biggest problem isn't economics but widespread NIMBYism. Either the Scotts don't have a problem or the govt overrides such objections. According to the article some Scottish counties have very high turbine density compared to others: "Highland Council alone already has more wind power capacity than all but 24 countries in the world, with 416 turbines capable of generating 834MW. Once all those under construction or with planning consent are operational, Highland will have an incredible 1,040 turbines capable of generating up to 3,494MW - more than Japan or Holland and five times as much capacity as New Zealand."

Bottom line: looks like England could supply 100% of its needs by wind power...if it installed the turbines. In the meantime Scotland continues to expand beyond its needs. Presumably to sell to England...at a profit. And as long as the English are willing to pay a premium for imported electricity its wind farms will lag behind its potential. Despite being one of the best regions for this renewable.

If the English don't have a comparable renewable energy component as Scotland it isn't because it lacks the resource. It because they choose to not take advantage of the situation.
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