Industrial History: Green Energy

Duke has made a 618mw coal-gasification plant work.

I've learned that some utilities were surprised when they did their last 5-year energy plan to learn that renewable energy has become cheaper than fossil fuel and that they have accelerated the closing of their coal-fired power plants. For example, NIPSCO. I found that hard to believe.

RenewWisconsin
[I hope that the utilities make agreements with sheep farmers to allow them to use those fields as pastures.]

But this article explains that if you use the "levelized cost," the utility scale solar production of electricity is already competitive with fully depreciated fossil and nuclear fuel power plants. It defines "levelized cost" as what I think of as life-cycle cost. "The levelized cost of energy analysis takes into account the capital costs, fuel costs, operations and maintenance costs, debt and equity costs, and plant utilization rates for each type of electric power generation." But that comparison includes U.S. government subsidies. I could not find figures for the cost if subsidies are excluded.

safe_image for Alliant Energy wrapping up solar project in town of Beloit
[A 4 MW solar field to offset the parasitic energy of 18 MW needed to operate a 700 MW natural gas power plant. It doesn't say if the panels are built in China. I do hope they graze sheep or something on those fields.]

I've learned that having zero fuel costs for sunlight and wind is a serious economic advantage. However, the article does mention that a lot more money is going to have to be put into the grid to compensate for the unreliable nature of green power. That is, what do you do when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow? An implication of zero fuel costs is that billing is going to have to change. Instead of paying for the electricity you use, you will need to subscribe for the capability of getting electricity. That is, you pay a monthly fee for a service level of a max usage rate and an availability agreement. [reason]

I've witnessed a similar evolution of billing for phone calls. When I was a kid in the 1960s, I remember my Mom thinking about what all she wanted to say before she dialed a long distance call because she wanted to be able to say everything on her mind in three minutes. For each minute past the initial three minutes, she would have to pay more money. When I started work in the Chicagoland area in 1973, we had to pay units for calls outside of our "local area." A "local area" covered the nearby suburbs. I don't know how big a "local area" was in Chicago. But I don't think it was the whole city. I remember a unit cost about five cents. By the turn of the century, fiber optics had made long distance so cheap that the phone bill included unlimited free long distance calls. In fact, work started providing a regular phone number, in addition to an 800 number, for our conference calls because so many employees had free long distance calls in their billing plan.

Cell phone calls is another example of a service that went from per-minute billing to unlimited minutes. For cell phones, you paid for "air time" so the per-minute charge included the time it took to make the call as well as "talking time." That is, you paid for calls that were not answered. Then cell phone calls became free, but you had to pay for text messages. Then text messages became free, but you had to pay for data. Now my calls, text and data is unlimited, but I probably pay a rather hefty monthly bill. In fact, I pay more for my cell phone service than I do for electricity. Now that I'm thinking about it, my cable bill is also more than my electric bill.

I have not been able to find a pie chart showing which countries are manufacturing the solar panels that the utilities are using to build their solar farms. It would be nice if some companies would build solar panel factories in Western Virginia and and other coal producing states to provide replacement jobs. My first thought was to build wind turbine components in the coal producing states, but putting those plants closer to the "windy states" (Great Plaines and Midwest) makes sense because they are a lot harder to transport.

By coincidence, the Chicago Tribune has an article in their Nov 4, 2020, edition on green energy development in Texas. While the oil and gas jobs are plummeting, the advanced energy jobs are growing "at twice the rate of the Texas labor market --- at least before the pandemic." (The article uses the term "advanced energy," and it includes storage batteries as well as the renewables of solar and wind.) The generation of wind power has increased from 6% in 2009 to 20% in 2019. Specifically, wind has increased from 9 gigawatts to almost 24 GW. I'd guess that 24 GW is equivalent to roughly 20 modern coal-fired plants. And Texas has been able to attract corporations that want to use renewable power. "Last year, corporations in the U.S. bought 23 gigawatts of electricity through power purchase agreements. That shattered the previous year's record, with Texas being the primary beneficiary, according to the 2020 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook. 'Companies are flocking to the Texas power market,' said the book, which is researched and produced by the BloombergNEF. Texas generators landed 40% of the purchase contracts last year."

Chicago Tribune

Update: I generalized these notes to green energy.

California is sponsoring the development of battery powered locomotives

safe_image for US greenhouse gas emissions see historic plummet
The tailpipe of a vehicle pumping out greenhouse gas emissions is seen next to another car in Los Angeles, CA. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images
[But the reason for the drop is the COVID-19 pandemic. The wildfires this year released as much CO2 as 43 coal-fired plants release in a year. When the economy bounces back, the emissions will probably bounce back.]

safe_image for Solar Panels + Agriculture: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
More good news for renewables: US Energy Department hatches plan to pepper US farms with crop-friendly solar panels (photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL).
[And The $1b for FutureGen died in 2015.]

safe_image for Korean artificial sun sets the new world record of 20-sec-long operation at 100 million degrees

Dennis DeBruler

It sounds like this project is making better progress than the National Ignition Facility is making.

https://www.sciencemag.org/.../laser-fusion-reactor...

"Converting to electric heat by 2040 is unrealistic, especially in a city like Chicago, which is so dependent on natural gas. Peak demand for gas on the coldest day in the winter is three times the peak electricity generated on the hotest summer day in Chicago" [Chicago Tribune, Dec 27, 2020, page 2 of the Business Section]

Uncropped safe_image for Renewables = 20.4% of US Electricity Generation
Dennis DeBruler: So in 2020, renewables passed both nuclear and coal in terms of market share.

The pendulum seems to be swinging back and forth. But it seems to be a matter of when, not if, they will be carbon free. "Xcel said it is on a path of reducing carbon by 80% by 2030, and has "a vision to provide our customers across our entire service territory with 100% carbon free electricity by 2050." The utility is finalizing a clean energy plan it will file with the PUC by March." [UtilityDive]

safe_image for Colorado regulators reverse course, allow 3 coal plants to operate past 2028

safe_image for Renewables Beat Fossil Fuels in EU for First Time Last Year [pay count]
[Renewables were 38% whereas fossil-powered was 37%. The remainder was nuclear. But one reason fossil-powered was down was because of the reduced consumption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the cut backs in generation was done by fossil-powered plants.]
Frank Meyer: They are heavily subsidized. Germany now has the highest rates of the 20 G countries and that with over 31,000 turbines.
Bill S P Parker: Let's hope, after the billions of tax money subsidising "green" destruction of European topography (from an ecological perspective) that someone finds representative provenance that "carbon" is the problem. Otherwise, it's been a bit of a waste of money, leaving behind only the scars of human folly.
[There are a lot of comments, some providing links to more information.]

safe_image for History made: Renewable energy surpassed fossil fuels for European electricity in 2020
[COVID-19 lockdowns decreased the demand by 4% in 2020.]

UtilityDive

eia (source)

safe_image for Boats that sail organically [paycount: 3/month]
(You can select an English version of the article.)
PHOTO PROVIDED BY CSL GROUP
Half of the CSL Group's Canadian fleet was fueled during the last navigation season with 100% vegetable fuel. Pictured: a CSL Group boat, in 2016.
“We are very satisfied with the results.” But it costs 1.5 times more than marine gas oil.

Mark Robinson: On the lakes where did they refuel?
Janey Anderson: Mark Robinson Sterling Fuels, located along Windsor's west-end shoreline, was providing the new biofuel to eight ships that belong to Canada Steamship Lines (CSL) under a trial agreement that ran through 2021. The Sterling Fuels Windsor location was selected as the sole provider based on its more central location on the Great Lakes. A large freighter can travel on one tank of biofuel to the farthest areas of the Great Lakes and back. https://windsorstar.com/.../windsors-sterling-fuels-on...

safe_image for Nuclear-fusion reactor smashes energy record
[They sustained a pulse for 5 seconds. It still needed more energy than it produced. But that is longer than the National Ignition Facility's 4 billionths of a second, which also needs more energy than it produces. I can remember when people were predicting we would have fusion by the year 2000.]

Rich Pantaleo commented on a post
https://www.eia.gov/.../electricity-in-the-us-generation...
Warren Columbus commented on that same post:
Since 2003, our grid (PJM) closures are listed as 50,482.6 MWs.
https://www.pjm.com/.../services.../gen-deactivations.aspx

Support Technologies for Green Energy

Flow Batteries for grid storage (85% efficiency)

Abandoned mines could be used for pumped storage in the othewise flat states of Illinois and Indiana. [GreatLakesNow]

I'm also tracking the development of hydrogen fuel because that will be critical for weaning us off of fossil fuels.

safe_image for World-first home hydrogen battery stores 3x the energy of a Powerwall 2
"Storing the hydrogen in a patented metal hydride "sponge" at a pressure of 30 bar, or 435 psi. It stores some 40 kilowatt-hours worth of energy, three times as much as Tesla's current Powerwall 2 and enough to run an average home for two days. At AU$34,750 (US$26,900), it costs more than what you'd pay for three Powerwalls in Australia, but not by a huge amount, and that price is set to drop to AU$29,450 (US$22,800) in the last quarter of 2022, by which point Lavo says it'll be available internationally."

safe_image for Trucking Industry Comes Together for Mass-Market Deployment of Hydrogen Trucks
[I find it interesting that they are focusing on long-haul trucks rather than city delivery trucks. I've already learned that EU taxpayers are scheduled to help pay for carbon-free steel production. It looks like they will also help pay for a hydrogen-based infrastructure.]

Green Hydrogen Article

US agriculture is very energy dependent. Not only does it need a lot of diesel fuel, it needs fertilizer. But Air Protein (source) would consume carbon dioxide rather than generate it. Basically, NASA found a class of bacteria (hydrogenotrophs) that poop amino acids. It is made in fermentation vessels similar to yogurt or beer. The product is about 80% protein compared to 40% in typical soy protein flour.

I've become concerned that it is now harder to recycle batteries than it used to be.

safe_image for Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Finally Takes Off in North America and Europe
[How many birds are killed flying into skyscrappers? Yet I don't see anybody saying we should not build them. I was surprised (dismayed) that China has been buying mining rights in Africa, South America and elsewhere, and it has now cornered 80% of the market. It continues to be a shame that US walked away from the newer nuclear power solutions.]

safe_image for USA Wins Electric Vehicle Battery Battle With Assist From US Army

safe_image for A Shifting Fluid Power Industry
"The transition to electrification will bring about a need to rethink the design of traditional hydraulic systems."
[They replace hydraulic fluid with a belt on a pulley system in the cylinder. The belt is driven directly by an electronically controlled motor. And the motor can act as a generator when a load is lowered. And the article says that hydraulic cylinders can't pull as well as they can push, but their new cylinder design can do both with equal strength. They don't mention it, but it seems that stringing wires rather than hoses around a machine would reduce maintenance issues. Wires generally don't have a problem with leaks.]

Will G Benson shared
New technology offers wind turbine blades can be recycled: https://www.reuters.com/.../end-wind-power-waste-vestas.../

safe_image for Natural Gas, America’s No. 1 Power Source, Already Has a New Challenger: Batteries
"A megawatt of electricity can power about 200 homes, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid. Some other estimates peg this number higher."
[Gas forced coal-fired plants to become stranded assets. Now it is looking like renewable energy and batteries could turn gas-fired plants into stranded assets. Power companies are looking at building new gas-fired plants with a 25-year lifespan instead of the traditional 40-year lifespan. Coal-fired plants were near the end of their lifespan anyhow. That is not true for the 60 GW of gas plants built in the US since 2014.]
"Already, the cost of discharging a 100-megawatt battery with a two-hour power supply is roughly on par with the cost of generating electricity from the special power plants that operate during peak hours. Such batteries can discharge for as little as $140 a megawatt-hour, while the lowest-cost 'peaker' plants—which fire up on demand when supplies are scarce—generate at $151 a megawatt-hour, according to investment bank Lazard.
Solar farms paired with batteries, meanwhile, are becoming competitive with gas plants that run all the time. Those types of projects can produce power for as little as $81 a megawatt-hour, according to Lazard, while the priciest of gas plants average $73 a megawatt-hour. Major battery projects under way in New York and California are driven in part by state mandates to slash carbon emissions, not just improving battery economics.
Even in Texas, a state with a fiercely competitive power market and no emissions mandates, scarcely any gas plants are under construction, while solar farms and batteries are growing fast. Companies are considering nearly 88,900 megawatts of solar, 23,860 megawatts of wind and 30,300 megawatts of battery storage capacity in the state, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. By comparison, only 7,900 megawatts of new gas-fired capacity is under consideration....
Most current storage batteries can discharge for four hours at most before needing to recharge.