OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

I've been seeing references to costs more like 17-20 cents.

John

Sounds like "very little" to me.

Yup, diesels tend to be peakers, used only when necessary. They are expensive and very dirty. Even fuel oil is expensive these days.

Good thing you didn't, as we were discussing oil. But "compelling"?

Nameplates are cheap. Oil ain't.

As stated, it's very little. And getting less.

Nope, I didn't make that up.

John

ed

Also, I went with nameplate capacity because it avoids all the seasonal B/S. Which, I don't know about you, but I don't have visibility into that data as all these numbers are reported in arrears by DOE.

Then again, the solar plants Jim and I were discussing are inherently available during peak demand, so the fuel-oil / diesel peakers (arguably) could be the first ones taken offline. Of course, none of this addresses the transmission infrastructure, which is the real hurdle....

Don't just shoot your mouth off, give a decent pointer. See:

Joseph

By those numbers, then, about 2%. Still a significant value in my opinion. 64 thousand thousand megawatt hours.

23% if you include natural gas.

-mpm

google:

Here in the US the largest source of electric is from coal, followed by nuclear, and natural gas; oil is a poor fourth at about 2% to 3%.

See:

Joseph

James, What's happening? Haven't heard from you for awhile.

Picked up a 5 pound bag of split peas and a 5 pound bag of Jasmine rice, each at $3 at Wilma's place last couple of weeks, and Jim treated me to lunch across the street. Still working on the PIC project for his video processor. Not much electronic stuff to be found at GW. Doc is doing more business renting out space than selling stuff.

As for solar power, I figure my little panel of 36, 4 inch diameter crystaline cells saves about 12 cents in 50 hours under good conditions, but I don't use it much, except to charge a battery in my bedroom that runs a car radio. I charge the battery once a week for a couple days, so I might save 4 cents a week. Every little penny counts. But, as the price of gas goes to $8 a gallon, savings will be greater.

Later,

-Bill

ny more

are showing the only signs of intelligent critical thinking on the issues. = AGW has become such an absurd religio-political orhthodoxy that you guys now= defend it only with abuse.

Since my own reactions to your postings in this thread have included several URL's

-antarctica_x.htm

which you have ignored, you are either a liar or suffering from a very poor memory.

Either way, you are tarred with your own brush.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

the seams, which is no surprise since it's all

Oh? Really? And your evidence for this absurd claim is?

The obvious explanation for the fact that you don't see the mounting evidence for anthropogenic global warming is that you can't be bothered going to the web sites that we post to read the evidence that you know you are going to disagree with.

Since you clearly don't understand the science involved, this may be a rational choice, but it rather devalues the opinions you spend so much time ventilating around here.

I now you have claimed to have doone your own "scientific" research on the subject, but your unwillingness to tell us where this "research" has been published does suggest that you don't understand what "scientific" means, let alone the scientific basis of the research that you glibly ignore.

If you did understand the science, you'd be able to tell me what "pressure broadening" was and why it was important - I'm betting that you won't even be able to use anything you can google, such as this

pressure broadening In atmospheric radiative transfer, a process by which the broadening of absorption lines is brought about by collisions between molecules or atoms, which can supply or remove small amounts of energy during radiative transitions, thereby allowing photons with a broader range of frequencies to produce a particular transition of a molecule. This is the primary broadening mechanism in the troposphere.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Ask yourself why they use these generators, probably because there is no connection to the utility line voltage... so how does this relate to a solar plant in a desert 1000 miles away?

Mark

google:

I was speaking of total energy source not just electric power. So some degree energy sources can be interchanged. In any case even 1% of all the electricity in the US is a large market for one engineer.

[snip]

The APS engineer, who was _very_ straight forward, as soon as he realized I was an engineer (and I got all kinds of structural details), asserted that APS would be _buying_from_ Abengoa for 3¢/kWh.

So, High Horse Larkin, show me your references ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: "skypeanalog"  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

It may be what APS are paying Abengoa for the electricity, but someone somewhere must be making up the difference. The lowest real world price I have seen quoted by the optimists for 2015 is around 0.04Euro or US

6c/kWh. That's twice the number you have just quoted. Smells fishy...

I'd like to believe they have the engineering solved for 3 c/kWh, but looking at proponents of low cost thermal solar power websites I have only found numbers for existing solar plants even higher than John's. eg

Which gives $0.2-0.3 /kWh as a rough guide.

Regards, Martin Brown

** Posted from **

Pity you have no access to google, so have to depend on rumors.

The projections for competitive pricing are, like all such things, ten or so years out. Thermal storage is still dicey, and raises costs/cuts efficiency severely. You could verify that, too, if you had access to google.

John

[snip]

John,

Why must you be consistently the sore loser?

The only reference quoted that I would trust is Technology Review, and they don't cite any information from Abengoa _or_ APS, just US DOE... about as useless a reference as possible... and probably basing numbers on some plant in the northeast. You keep forgetting, I live in Hell where you can just about generate all your home power from thermocouples ;-)

It would be foolish for APS to buy power from Abengoa at 13-17¢, particularly since Wintersburg/Palo Verde (nuclear) is running at about 1/3 capacity... and I remind you APS is a publicly held corporation. We _do_ have competition in AZ (note that our power rates are probably half (or less) of what you pay in your glorious city... wonder why that is ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: "skypeanalog"  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

: t

the

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Yes, I now agree that the right number is hovering around 2% to 3% (fuel=3Doil types) I frankly did think that number was higher (around 5%). When you consider that the country already experiences brownouts, on occassion, my notion of 2% or 3% being significant becomes a little more obvious.

So the entire present electrical generating capacity of the US could be served with only 10% of the land area of Arizona, assuming the Spanish technology performs as predicted. Sounds good to me. ;-)

Maybe use some variant of Nazi-style coal liquification for gasoline and the oil could be used for more vital things like synthesis of polymers (most come from either petroleum or natural gas).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

snipped-for-privacy@d1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...

one

No, I believe the spreadsheet only included those generators that are grid-connected, including peakers.

Either way, it's power. And we were talking about percentages in terms of OVERALL US electric demand.

Even if some of those are standby generators, which I don't think is the case (I believe the spreadsheet excludes private and large industrial consumers), it's still technically demand - regardless of where it comes from.

=BD/kWh.

No, that number is too high. Even the Arusa project for California is projected at just slighly higher than $0.09/kwh in 2010 when the plant is completed. And for you numbers, traditional forms of energy are likely to be inflated by the time we get to 2015.

Like I said, we (United States) should start building these solar- thermal plants immediately. The US Government should secure a couple hundred square miles of the best desert land and make it happen.

Even if the US threw $1 Trillion dollars at this - what % of GDP is that? - , if it solved our dependency on foreign energy, we'd be much, much better off. (We spent about that on the war with Iraq, for comparison.)

So Jim, maybe now is the time to start buying up some bigger chunks of Arizona??

-mpm