The USA: energy self sufficiency - political myth or reality? 1

[ARTURO8]

thread730-100534
Given probable economy and culture in the U.S., energy self sufficiency seems very unlikely.

Nevertheless, a multi-modal development is technically possible -- This would include not only the well publicized solar and wind but also [off the top of my head] further tech. in exploration and production of crude and liquids, clean burn for coal [double fluidized bed],
ocean currents, well engineered/constructed nuclear, high temp. superconductor transmission system.......

All

providing residential and commercial power. The latter to include a national very high speed 'rail' [maglev] which I believe Argonne National Lab determined would be profitable [or break-even] in studies performed during the 1990s. People would not give up their autos but discover maglev travel between major cities to be more comfortable and very much faster.

Articulation of concentrated market areas would further assist in offsetting costs [or improving net gain].

Consider as well that the above would represent a form of 're-industrialization' for this country.

Can't be afforded? The austerity = recovery arguments find little support, just as do wasteful expenditures.

 

[zdas04]

We keep trying to make a cart horse pull the train. The cart horse does what it does really well, pulls a small load over relatively short distances at fairly low rates of speed. Hook it to a train and the load is too high. Hook ten thousand of them to the train and the speed is too slow and the range is too short (to say nothing about slipping in the droppings).

Wind and solar are really great cart horses. Use them in places where the grid power is unreliable or too expensive to acquire at all. Fantastic. Use them to replace a Giga-Watt Scale generator station and they don't do so well. Sometimes it is night. Sometimes it is cloudy. Sometimes it is calm. For a wellsite, I plan on several 24 hour days in a row with no charging when I'm sizing batteries for a wind or solar application. Can you do that with GW scale load requirements? No one has yet, but maybe the companies in the WSJ article above will figure it out. Until they do, you have to build the GW scale plant and keep it on hot standby for calm days or cloudy days. That works out to be a terrible use of capital, and it actually puts more crap into the air than the GW scale plant would emit if it could run in its sweet spot instead of always in start-up mode.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[debodine]

dwallace1971 stated:

To paraphrase Milton Friedman, "As long as other countries are willing to trade such a useful commodity as oil for little bits of green paper, we should be glad to oblige them".

I think from the perspective of this dicussion that is a very relevant point. I do admit, however, that it landed my mind with a different view as well. As I understand the paraphrase, the implication is that the oil merchants are giving us a tangible resource with real value for a piece of paper that may or may not be backed with equal value. The oil merchant simply has to "trust us" that value is behind that piece of paper.

Now Milton Friedman probably had more economics knowledge in his little finger than resides in my entire brain, but I see this from his comment. That little piece of paper has value ONLY because the recipient believes it does, and if it turns out that the value really isn't there (or is subject to the whims of the issuer, which is a private institution, the deliberately mis-named Federal Reserve) then what does that tell us in the United States who trust those little pieces of paper for our own use?

 

[cranky108]

And what would Milton Friedman say about solar and wind power? Probally something like why are you wasting your money with them, when you have an inexpencive source of fossel generation.

Agreed that solar power works well as a car port, or so I don't have to replace the batteries in my calculator, but is far too expencive for most applications.

Or how about solar powered trees, that can be harvested and used to heat our homes (at least it looks nice). It's now an under utilized fuel, sort of like the way coal is going.

 

[2dye4]

""and it actually puts more crap into the air than the GW scale plant would emit if it could run in its sweet spot instead of always in start-up mode. ""

How does a conventional plant emit more pollution running at light load than in its 'sweet spot'

 

[TGS4]

These plants are optimized to run at full load. Their burners are optimized for steady-state 100% load. Anything less than that results in higher NOx, CO, particulates, etc. Except for CO2, a conventional plant will emit about as much of the above-noted pollution in the first hour of operation as it would in a month's steady-state operation. If it is constantly kept in that first-hour state, then the total pollution goes up.

 

[zdas04]

Exactly TGS4. It just keeps amazing me that Engineers will continue to apply steady state assumptions to transient behavior. A cold catalyst doesn't catalyze much.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
The plural of anecdote is not "data"

 

[cranky108]

Besides a partial loaded plant, except for fuel, costs the same to run as a fully loaded plant. You don't reduce personel, interest, or other accounting expences because it is partly loaded. Granted it uses less fuel, and may have fewer auxiluries operating, but the base cost of the plant dosen't change. I would expand that cycling a large plant actually adds to the maintenance cost because of metals expanding and contracting causes them to break.

It's simular to your car, in that commuting a short distance never lets you catlitic converter get hot enough to be able to convert anything. Also the start/stop cycling of your can makes the metal fatigue, which is why they say highway miles are not as hard on you car as city miles.

I also hear that startups of peaking plants are harder on the plants then if they ran all the time, but only because of the fuel cost they are shut down when not needed.

 

[2dye4]

Really, a plant running at a constant 40% produces more pollution than at constant 100% ??

 

[TGS4]

Yes. If you define pollution as NOx, CO, particulates, etc. Maybe less CO2. Even sulphur scrubbers are less efficient at partial capacity.

And, those peaking plants never run at 40% constantly, they are usually either on or off.

I really don't envy the electrical system operators - they have to deal with large fluctuations of load and production, and due to the virtually instantaneous nature of electrical power, it's quite the balancing act.

(As an aside about running at less-than-design rates - there was a heavy oil upgrader that ran at between 40% and 60% of it's nameplate rate because the supporting oil field didn't produce. In less than a year, there were more corrosion issues than expected over the 30-year life of the plant. In some cases, there were chemical species causing corrosion that had only ever been hypothesized to exist - and had not yet been found because the turn-down ratio for this facility was never imagined in the original design. Some process plants may have a turn-down ratio of 85%, maybe a little less, but they are primarily designed to operate in the 95-105% of nameplate throughput. Running at 40% corroded holes in thick, supposedly corrosion-resistant material, because the chemical species involved were never anticipated by the design team.)

 

[cranky108]

In a typical cyclonic burner plant with lower fuel throughput, either by operating each burner at lower levels or turning some of them off, the cyclone action is not as great, and the fuel/air mixing is not as great, and therefore the burn tempeture can be lower, which can cause more NOx, as well as higher CO levels, and more unburent fuel going into the scrubbers which can cause additional fowling of the scrubbers. There is a simular problem with plants that use the same design, but burn gas, in that CO and NOx go up with reduced fuel throughput.

In the world of burner technology, there is a sweet spot where NOx and CO production is lower, and this is designed to be at the fully loaded operating point.