The cost of electrical energy generation, broken down by fuel type.

[NNadir]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html

The costs are as follows as of 2005: Natural gas, 5.85 cents per kw-hr, hydroelectric 0.5 cents per kw-hr, fossil steam (mostly coal) 2.769 cents kw-hr and nuclear 1.816 cents per kw-hr.

The 2005 figures for the dangerous fossil fuel natural gas include the Katrina events and the natural gas figure suffers from being lumped with renewables.

The natural gas situation is going to get nastier I bet, especially because people have deluded themselves about its real nature.

[TheWraith]

1. How do you figure natural gas is dangerous?

It's one of the simplest and cleanest forms of fossil fuel. Or are you referring to the cost?

[NNadir]

4. There is no way to dump dangerous natural gas waste.

No permanent repositories are planned for it.

[Dead_Parrot]

2. Gas is going to be quite nasty...

Only ~25% of gas is used for electrical power, with home heating being another ~25%: The rest is mainly used for industrial purposes (some industrial heating, some feedstock). A price hike is going to have a knock on effect in all sorts of places...

Fun for all.

[diane in sf]

3. Wind power costs

-snip-

The most important variable, according to Wiser and Kahn, is the relatively low return on equity (12%) that is required by investors in gas projects, compared to 18% for wind projects. If a similar return is required for wind projects, the cost drops from 4.95 cents/kWh to 4.05 cents/kWh, a reduction of 18%.

-snip-

Wind energy costs can be cut substantially if a wind project is owned by a utility, and could also be sharply reduced if wind developers could obtain the same financing terms as gas power plant developers, according to a new study by two federal laboratory researchers.

-snip-

* Private ownership, project financing: 4.95 cents/kWh including PTC, 6.56 cents/kWh without PTC.
* IOU ownership, corporate financing: 3.53 cents/kWh including PTC, 5.9 cents/kWh without.
* Public utility ownership, internal financing: 2.88 cents/kWh including REPI, 4.35 cents/kWh without.
* Public utility ownership, project financing: 3.43 cents/kWh including REPI, 4.89 cents/kWh without.


http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:EhnbnHeGs74J:www.awea.org/faq/cost.html+wind+power+costs&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

[NNadir]

5. It's almost as expensive as natural gas.

Does this calculation include the cost of running spinning reserves?

If one includes external costs - and regrettably nobody does - wind beats gas by a mile, but wind is not predictably available.

[diane in sf]

9. Since we have a grid that we've already paid for,

if we knew there was a range of power being generated at any particular time and there are ways of storing energy--that could probably be engineered around.

External costs should be considered, anything else is very non-reality based accounting. Sort of like the Neocon idea of creating reality this is something that will bite us all in the butt eventually or not so eventually.

One of the good effects of the Republicans totally raping our government may be that we end up too broke to disguise these kind of costs.

[phantom power]

10. Storage is not impossible, however...

you then have to factor in the internal and external costs of deploying that storage. To be useful it must be capable of storing terawatt-hours of energy. Very, very large scale.

If I *was* going to propose a storage scheme for renewables, I might propose storing the energy as synthetic hydrocarbons. Generate methane, propane, or something with CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere. Use it to run methane generators, or use it for motor fuel.

all in all, it will be much more cost effective to do the same thing with nuclear power. Not just a little more cost effective. A lot more. Human civilization will get much more energy for its investment of disappearing financial and natural resources.

[happyslug]

11. But if you spread the windmills around, you reduce the risk of no wind

Basically it is rare for any LARGE area NOT to have some sort of wind. The wind may be 20 miles away from the becalmed area but wind is constantly worldwide.

Thus the best solution for the lack of wind in any one location is to have many windmills over a broad area (The broader the better). If it is calm in Pennsylvania, you may have wind in New York. If you have calm in New Jersey, you can have win in Maryland. Given the existence of already built electrical transmission lines the lack of wind IN ANY ONE LOCATION is NOT a serious problem PROVIDED you spread out the wind mills.

I expect windmills to expand over the next 20 years. They are MUCH cheaper to build than Nuclear plants and less pollution than Coal. Hydro-electrical power is generally reserved for "Peak Loads" for Hydro power is the quickest generator one can put into service when needed (Coal and Nuclear are better at providing the Basic power load). Wind and Solar is going to be like Coal and Nuclear, provide the basic load. Even today when you have surplus basic load of electrical power being produced, that surplus power is used to fill up hydroelectric dams with water so the hydro plants can be turned on when needed. As wind and Solar become more common this pattern will increase (With SOlar power being used during Daylight hours only i.e. on hot days when people want Air Conditioning).

My point is Wind CAN provide 24 hour power provided you spread the windmills around. Once you have a pattern of power being generated during low wind days you can calculate how much electricity will be produced over the whole windmill network. That will become the base load of Windmills. You will see increase production during high wind days (Except when the wind is to strong for the windmills, but those days will be tied in with Hurricanes, Tornado and other high wind events. I do NOT foresee wind becoming any more than part of the electric power grid, but one that with Hydroelectric and Solar can provide a good part of the solution to the upcoming carbon energy shortage.

[NNadir]

12. That's the theory, anyway. California's wind plants are widely distributed.

It's always nice to compare theory and experiment, so this represents a case.

More than 13,000 of California's wind turbines, or 95 percent of all of California's wind generating capacity and output, are located in three primary regions: Altamont Pass (east of San Francisco - a portion of which is shown on the right in this photo from NREL), Tehachapi (south east of Bakersfield) and San Gorgonio (near Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles). In 1995, these areas produced 30 percent of the entire world's wind-generated electricity.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/wind/overview.html

I would say, having lived in California, that Palm Springs, Altamount Pass and Bakersfield are "geographically distributed."

Yesterday in another thread I have a post that examines an instance where theory and experiment conflicted.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=88306&mesg_id=88318

However it would be unfair to say that wind is not useful. I think it is, because there are plenty of instances where wind does displace some natural gas that would otherwise be burned. However the need to maintain unused capacity (as back up) probably has some effect on the real cost of wind.

[diane in sf]

6. Does your cost for nuclear reflect the problems of waste disposal

and old plant decommissioning, the public assumption of the burden of insurance (which the plants owners refused to do privately and government subsidies to the industry?

Does your cost for coal include the cost of repairing the leveled mountaintops? (Not that I think this could really be done.)

[NNadir]

7. Yes. The cost of spent nuclear fuel is trivial.

Nuclear energy is the only form of energy where the so called "wastes" can be contained.

The external costs of coal and natural gas are not included but should be.

[phantom power]

8. Furthermore, the cost of NG and coal do *not* include the cost of waste disposal.