We need an energy miracle

[peakbagger]

Its taking longer than anyone thought to suck every last drop of oil out of the ground,thanks to fracking ,but eventually it will happen. We should be well on out way to alternatives by then.

Unfortunately, the ability to extract fossil fuels have exceeded the amount of CO2 that can be dumped in the atmosphere. Barring a CO2 miracle there will always be fossil fuel to extract but vastly changed world that is not interested in extracting it.

 

[peakbagger]

I beg to differ

With all due respect, NE is a mess in terms of its energy policy. There is negligible onshore wind power development compared to many other regions of the country The wind resource is not that great in new England, where there is a resource there is pretty good penetration. Unfortunately the resource is remote from the demand so new transmission lines are required and no one wants to write the check to pay for them. Maine just spent over a billion dollars to upgrade their grid to improve wind access and the ratepayers are paying for it, not the wind developers , and the offshore situation is an even bigger mess(offshore isn't a mess, the technology is available but no one wants to subsidize it, Cape Wind didn't die because of the kennedy clan, it died as no utility was willing to pay the long term 30 cent per KW rate for what is still an intermittent resource, The European developer proposing a large wind farm off the Maine coast wanted a 20 year guarantee for well over market rates for the intermittent power they produced. which has set back the entire industry nationwide for prob a decade. In a period when most of the country is enjoying the benefits of cheap nat gas, NE is running periodic shortages related to transmission, that bring up the average cost/risk considerably. New England did not build out the gas infrastructure as fracking is fairly new technology that changed a lot of paradigms, there actually was a big gas boom in new England about 15 years ago and almost every plant built went bankrupt because the price of gas was too high. Folks forget for quite few years the US banned any new gas powered generation as the US was running out gas. New Englands big issue is that due to air regs they got off coal too quickly and didn't replace it fast enough. It also was one of the earlier adopters of nuke and as a consequence several base load plants have closed in the regions as they were some of the oldest I don't follow RE policy up there that closely, but it seems that your regulators and policy makers have been willing to sign very unfavorable (i.e. costly) incentives and rate contracts for RE, having a mindset that 'it has to cost', which is out of the 2005 playbook. In other parts of the country the incentives are much less generous, and yet somehow people manage to make money hand over fist at wind and solar. When I look through the DSIRE website I don't see where New England as a whole has net higher incentives than any other region. A lot of it comes down to geography, northern climates need more energy than a southern climate and a lot of the resource doesn't line up with seasonal demand. People make a lot of money hand over fist by sucking up incentives, whenever there is even a hint that the PTC is going to expire every wind developer starts beating the drums of doom. Already there is discussion of a massive failure of the solar industry due to the removal of the 30% federal tax credit. If you look at RE penetration by state its directly related to the incentives and policies in place in each state. Many of the large solar installers have turned into creative tax shelters basically monetizing long term tax credits with artificially low interest rates, incidentally are all in serious long term debt and most are set up to fail before the debts come due.

Edit: Also, the whole 'Adding a MW of peaker for every MW of RE' is a canard. The fossil grid needs a lot of peakers because of pre-existing demand surges with time of day, hot weather, etc. It is clear that up until a certain penetration (at least 5% RE power) little to no additional peakers are required. AFAIK, no NE state is anywhere near that level of RE penetration, I dont know where you get your info but most New England states have renewable portfolio standards, generally in excess of 20%, so I doubt that any peakers have been added There have been several large blocks of peakers built in New England in the last few years, I am aware 0f at least 400 MW of peakers in CT in a two year block. Even running randomly, RE often cuts into the peaker plant operation, Peakers rarely run except when the grid is constrained they are mostly there for peaks and unlike RE they are dispatchable and that is the major source of the cost savings by RE on customer bills. This is an interesting contention I would like to see evidence of cost saving for RE except for folks like myself who install solar and effectively get subsidized by the other customers who don't have RE For producers that make most of their profit on peakers, it looks like a cost, and they try to block RE whenever possible. I guess you are not familiar with the capacity market, as RE penetration increases, someone has to supply the capacity to back up the crappy dispatchability of wind and the cheapest dollar per kw to build to meet the capacity market is distillate fired peakers, NRG loves wind turbines as every wind farm built means a better capacity market and more incentive to build more peakers

 

[jebatty]

The energy miracle happened in our back yard: 12.3KW solar supplying 16MW of electric energy annually and meeting 100+% of our household's use of electricity.

 

[peakbagger]

The miracle happened at my place also, I haven't bought net power for 4 years and generate enough extra to heat the house with mini split.

Its a miracle to me but a bane to other ratepayers who haven't hopped on the bandwagon as they are subsidizing my miracle whether they know it or not. Arguably, the intent of the subsidies was to create a larger solar market to drive down costs and that is what happened therefore I was rewarded for being a guinea pig and stepping up to be an early adopter. Part of the bargain was that I was making a long term commitment so the state made a long term commitment to net metering.

My first solar panels cost $6.60 a watt versus my most recent panels were $0.68 cents a watt. My original 1000 watt inverter was $1600, my last 3KW inverter was $1600. The first array went in prior to the 30% tax credit so all I got was a 10 % deduction (not credit). I had a hard time justifying to anyone on the payback of that system. Once the 30% credit went in, the market grew exponentially. The big question now is should the government be subsidizing RE given that the price has dropped down so substantially.

 

[jebatty]

... but a bane to other ratepayers...

Not exactly. You have added to your utility's generation capacity at your expense and saving other rate payers paying for new plant facilities, you have taken the risk, and you bear the costs of maintenance, etc. You are providing power with near 0 line loss vs the approximate 10% line loss your utility experiences. Also, you are giving freely to others fresh air and fresh water, untainted by mercury, acids, particulates, etc. Little need to even mention the carbon reduction.

Importantly, your solar is little different than any rate payer conserving vs those who have not conserved. Every effort to conserve and reduce power usage, like putting in LED lighting, turning down the thermostat, installing a mini-split, turning out the lights, etc., has the same effect on other rate payers as you generating your own power. Everyone who conserves shifts costs to those who do not, no different than your solar.

Also important, you have the right to choose! Your choice is an exercise of freedom which we need to work hard to preserve and protect. And, if your utility or others would develop Community Solar Gardens, then everyone would have the opportunity to choose as well. Kudos!

 

[woodgeek]

I beg to differ

We agree on a lot.
--Offshore is not there financially with current tech (and incentives). MA went for it anyway, no one else did at scale. That is messed up. I suspect that somebody got paid off.
--When I said no peakers were built, I meant no peakers were built specifically to service RE needs.
--Your gas story in NE is an interesting one of regs and building at the worst possible times. That's an (accidental?) mess.
--I would offer that the bigger story up there is pop density and resultant land use regs and NIMBY-ism when it comes to siting large-scale generation centers, transmission or NG storage. Also happens in other locations. I see these 'tiny' isolated wind turbines in high density locations along I95 and I just shake my head...why?

and then there is....
--The fact that RE reduces aggregate costs of grid power, and does so by reducing expensive peaking is currently canon, i guess we won't agree. IF you look at opponents/advocates of RE among utilities its pretty black and white. Utilities that own peakers and profit from them oppose RE, and utilities that buy power from other entities peakers are generally in favor of buying RE from other providers instead.
--I do know a little about capacity markets...a former student/friend of mine is a operator in the one running PA and NJ.

See:
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/24/8837293/economic-limitations-wind-solar

 

[OhioBurner©]

With the plants I am involved with, I know of a few dozen simple-cycle CT 'peakers'. They are all gas fired, though quite a bit more costly than combined cycle plants, but none I am aware of run oil. And I have never heard of one being fired up with anything to do with wind. Wind does often drive prices negative because there is too much when we don't need it, but it mainly drives all the coal plants down. These past few years coal plants have ran at the bottom a lot more or bounced back and forth all over the place because of wind. We even have to cycle off and on many plants which was almost unheard of a few years ago (not entirely due to wind mind you).

 

[peakbagger]

Just to make sure I used CT to mean Connecticut but I can see the confusion. The 400 MW of Connecticut peakers, 8 50MW LM 6000s built by NRG in Connecticut are multifuel, but since there is no significant gas storage and pipeline constraints, gas availability is poor unless its nominated a day in advance. Generally in a capacity situation they run off jet fuel (generally called distillate but very close to kerosene), The two facilities have 1 million gallon tanks of fuel on site. I also worked on another facility in the middle atlantic area (PJM) to upgrade its output. It also is a multi fuel with a big tank of jet fuel. It just sits there as a capacity machine but PJM is running low on capacity machines due to renewables so the owner getting paid a nice chunk of change to upgrade to the turbine even though they never run it (they get paid capacity which means they get paid to guarantee that they can bring it on line within a few minutes)

ISO New England doesn't tag events wind related, they just have occasions when the grid is imbalanced and they run into a case where the they are getting close to their legally allowed reserve capacity. When that happens, they crank up the peakers until they get back above the reserve margin as the large gas plants cant typically add any generation due to lack of gas. These cases of grid imbalance are increasing as the wind and solar resources are increasing and big baseload plants are closed.

Texas is the poster child for wind related grid issues. They don't make capacity payments for standby generation so when there is big drop in wind they occasionally run out of power and end up browning out the grid. They have had to import power from Mexico on occasion. The federal government requires grid operators to guarantee reliability and there have been several studies showing that Texas is dangerously close to not meeting the grid reliability standards. As far as I am aware of no solution has been implemented as it is expected that the solution will substantially increase the cost of power in the state so its a political football.

 

[begreen]

Ontario just said ix-nay on oal-cay.
http://www.biomassmagazine.com/arti...ill-banning-coal-fired-electricity-generation

 

[jebatty]

I recently took a road trip from Detroit east into Ontario just about to Toronto. About 100km of travel east from Windsor, across the border from Detroit, was one nearly continuous mass of wind turbines on the south side of the highway. Biggest wind farms I've ever seen. Probably related in part to the flat terrain lying north of Lake Erie and high average wind speed. And probably in part to Ontario's clean energy goals. On the other hand, once the border is crossed into the US, Michigan was barren of wind turbines.

 

[peakbagger]

Ontario made the decision to get off coal several years ago and put in place significant incentives to subsidize renewables. I expect Michigan didn't. Renewables follow the incentives, put in place good incentives and the turbines pop up. Ontario also some has significant hydro in that region so they can use the hydro to offset the variability of the wind. Europe does something similar, Norway has very large hydro facilities including a lot of pumped storage, they act as the large scale grid storage for Europe and make a bundle doing it. The US could do a similar effort but it would require a national energy policy to share the costs to implement the policy nationwide.

 

[OhioBurner©]

Just to make sure I used CT to mean Connecticut but I can see the confusion. The 400 MW of Connecticut peakers, 8 50MW LM 6000s built by NRG in Connecticut are multifuel, but since there is no significant gas storage and pipeline constraints, gas availability is poor unless its nominated a day in advance. Generally in a capacity situation they run off jet fuel (generally called distillate but very close to kerosene), The two facilities have 1 million gallon tanks of fuel on site. I also worked on another facility in the middle atlantic area (PJM) to upgrade its output. It also is a multi fuel with a big tank of jet fuel. It just sits there as a capacity machine but PJM is running low on capacity machines due to renewables so the owner getting paid a nice chunk of change to upgrade to the turbine even though they never run it (they get paid capacity which means they get paid to guarantee that they can bring it on line within a few minutes)

ISO New England doesn't tag events wind related, they just have occasions when the grid is imbalanced and they run into a case where the they are getting close to their legally allowed reserve capacity. When that happens, they crank up the peakers until they get back above the reserve margin as the large gas plants cant typically add any generation due to lack of gas. These cases of grid imbalance are increasing as the wind and solar resources are increasing and big baseload plants are closed.

Texas is the poster child for wind related grid issues. They don't make capacity payments for standby generation so when there is big drop in wind they occasionally run out of power and end up browning out the grid. They have had to import power from Mexico on occasion. The federal government requires grid operators to guarantee reliability and there have been several studies showing that Texas is dangerously close to not meeting the grid reliability standards. As far as I am aware of no solution has been implemented as it is expected that the solution will substantially increase the cost of power in the state so its a political football.

Yeah, I'm not to familiar with New England (except for hiking hey you need to throw up a hiking avatar) my familiarity is controlling plants in PJM, SPP, and ERCOT. The gas supply issues are of course local issues... we have a couple dozen CTs and generally have no issues with gas supply. Some of our bigger CCs and gas-fired boilers run into limitations now and then, especially in the peak of heating season when residential use is peaked. Some have up to 3 gas line available often with a base-load contract on one and another pipe that can swing much higher when demand spikes. Some can be online within 20 minutes (no special secondary fuel needed) to count for quick start reserves. I know they were debating adding some large secondary fuel tanks at one CC plant but that was for blackstart purposes, and I think the environmental red tape for putting them in was a big deterrent.

I guess I only brought this up since many seem to throw around that wind causes us to fire up these peakers, and maybe it does is some cases but not multiple times a day like some say. Last time we fired up a peaker in PJM was probably a month or two ago, and that was for economics actually. Our peakers in SPP run a bit more frequently but they are also pretty cheap - so usually economic but ever since SPP became a market and a BA they don't necessarily tell you why a unit is called on.

 

[begreen]

They're gaining steam and partners. More than 20 billionaires have signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The Univ. of Calif. has also joined.
http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I have been enjoying an energy miracle every sunny winter day for about 15 years now since i enclosed a south facing porch with 8 foot tall windows.
It shaves about 40% off my heat load during winter. Probably 60% in spring and fall. For the roughly $500 i spent on materials to do the job i got that back early in the first year. Every year since has been money in the bank, not including things like raising Lime and banana trees in central PA ,something that would not be possible without a sunny winter space.

 

[woodgeek]

They're gaining steam and partners. More than 20 billionaires have signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The Univ. of Calif. has also joined.
http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html

Looks like the usual suspects:
http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/who.html

Hopefully they won't give all the $$ to Khosla.

 

[begreen]

Every year since has been money in the bank, not including things like raising Lime and banana trees in central PA ,something that would not be possible without a sunny winter space.

Do you get any bananas? Our banana plants lives outside. No bananas but they are big showy plants.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Do you get any bananas? Our banana plants lives outside. No bananas but they are big showy plants.

They are supposed to after 2 or 3 years ,but they get so tall over the summer i have to cut the main plant to get em back inside for winter which leaves just the shoots to grow so im starting over each year. Our lime trees we have for about 15 years now. always loaded with limes. Its the miniature limes called "kalamansi" or "calamansi" common to the philippines.

 

[vinny11950]

Here's a good article on the coming shift in energy consumption because of technological advances and changes in behavior, ultimately driven by profit.

From Amory Lovins:

https://medium.com/@amorylovins/the-troubled-oil-business-21ad430eff10#.4vb43b1vm

I like this paragraph:

"That’s not hypothetical. In 1975, the U.S. government and captains of industry all insisted that the energy needed to make a dollar of GDP could never go down. A year later I heretically suggested it could drop by 72 percent in 50 years. So far it’s dropped by 54 percent in the first 39 years — partly through shifts in the structure of the economy, but more because we used smarter technologies to wring far more work from our energy."

 

[jebatty]

The downside (and upside) of my energy miracle. Living where the sun doesn't shine. December 10 saw 0.84kWh of total production, with a total of 5 days out of 15 that production did not get above 5kWh. And the heavy clouds and forecast snow set to continue for several more days. Would take quite a bit of storage to get through this.

The upside is that we could modify our living style substantially to get through such a period. The only critical need is for the fridge and freezer, secondarily for the well pump. Since its cold outside, we also could move most of the fridge and freezer stuff outside. One to two hours/day from our portable gas generator probably is all we would need. Our heat is wood, lighting is all LED, and it might be quite enjoyable to keep the electronics "off" for a few days -- we actually would need to orally communicate! What a change.

 

[woodgeek]

Here's a good article on the coming shift in energy consumption because of technological advances and changes in behavior, ultimately driven by profit.

From Amory Lovins:

https://medium.com/@amorylovins/the-troubled-oil-business-21ad430eff10#.4vb43b1vm

And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!

Quote:
"Yet my team found in 2011 that far more powerful technologies and design methods, enlightened regulation, and maturing financing, marketing, and delivery channels then available could save nearly twice what I originally thought, at one-third the real cost. We showed how the U.S. could run a 2.6-times bigger economy in 2050 with no oil, coal, or nuclear power, $5 trillion cheaper, with no new inventions nor Acts of Congress, led by business for profit. Now, four years later, many of those assumptions look conservative."

 

[peakbagger]

Since its cold outside, we also could move most of the fridge and freezer stuff outside.

I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer. When the unit senses that its cold enough outside, the refrigerant would be routed around the compressor and out to the radiator. Always annoys me that I am paying to cool an interior space when a foot away on the opposite side of the wall its 20 degrees. Commercial HVAC does this all the time for winter climates. There would need to be a defrost mode like a minisplit that pulls some heat from inside the house on occasion when the outside coils frost up.

I have seen somewhere where some individual had a huge ice block with a food box in the center in his basement. He forms a huge block of ice around the food box in his basement during the winter using a refrigerant loop that thermosyphons with no power. When its colder outside the refrigerant sinks down the tubes from the outdoor coil and the slightly warmer refrigerant rises to displace it. If it warms up the flow stops once the air is warmer than the ice.

I have thought, take the ice block concept and make a small version with just a separate coil inside the refrigerator separate from the normal cooling system and then mounting a separate radiator high on my back wall outside the house.

 

[vinny11950]

And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!

As I get older, I grow more and more suspicious of rich philanthropists selling a new future carved out of their beliefs and ideas. Generally they have some other hidden motive, or are seeking a larger legacy now that their end is near, or just have too much freaking money that they don't know what to do with.

 

[semipro]

I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer. When the unit senses that its cold enough outside, the refrigerant would be routed around the compressor and out to the radiator. Always annoys me that I am paying to cool an interior space when a foot away on the opposite side of the wall its 20 degrees. Commercial HVAC does this all the time for winter climates. There would need to be a defrost mode like a minisplit that pulls some heat from inside the house on occasion when the outside coils frost up.

I have seen somewhere where some individual had a huge ice block with a food box in the center in his basement. He forms a huge block of ice around the food box in his basement during the winter using a refrigerant loop that thermosyphons with no power. When its colder outside the refrigerant sinks down the tubes from the outdoor coil and the slightly warmer refrigerant rises to displace it. If it warms up the flow stops once the air is warmer than the ice.

I have thought, take the ice block concept and make a small version with just a separate coil inside the refrigerator separate from the normal cooling system and then mounting a separate radiator high on my back wall outside the house.

Or just use the waste heat from the fridge to assist with the production of domestic hot water...

 

[jharkin]

And contra Mr. Gates, no new massive R&D required!

Quote:
"Yet my team found in 2011 that far more powerful technologies and design methods, enlightened regulation, and maturing financing, marketing, and delivery channels then available could save nearly twice what I originally thought, at one-third the real cost. We showed how the U.S. could run a 2.6-times bigger economy in 2050 with no oil, coal, or nuclear power, $5 trillion cheaper, with no new inventions nor Acts of Congress, led by business for profit. Now, four years later, many of those assumptions look conservative."

The thing that frustrates me is that there is so much contradictory reporting on this, and few of us have time to read thousands of pages of source research to be truly informed. the other day I was reading an op-ed response to the Paris deal(it was in my LinkedIn feed, have to see if I can find it) claiming that even the most optimistic projections where that all the pledges in that agreement would amount to something like < 1% of the carbon reductions required to meet 2C.

So how do we separate the real story from the hype?

 

[jharkin]

I was always curious why some company cant come up with a "freecool" mode for a home refrigerator for us northerners where an outside radiator would be optional for a refrigerator or freezer.

You don't even need the complexity of the refrigerant loop. I once saw a show where some ski resort had a setup with the walk in freezer for their restaurant where in addition to the refrigeration equipment the freezer also had a set of damper controlled, direct air ducts to the outside. If the equipment detected the outside temperature was below the freezer set point, it would shut down the refrigeration altogether, open the ducts and turn on a fan to bring cold air in directly from outside.

Now that is what I call KISS engineering at its finest.