Ivanpah is unable to meet its intended electricity generation

Ivanpah is unable to meet its intended electricity generation of 940,000 megawatt-hours per year, despite its designation as the largest concentrated solar plant in the world.  Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) received only 45 percent of the electricity it expected from Ivanpah in 2014 and 68 percent in 2015.

Output is so low, in fact, that it fails to meet Ivanpah's power purchase agreement, which requires a set amount of electricity production for a certain price.

Ivanpah's managers found that the facility needs to produce much more steam than initially thought to run efficiently, which requires substantially more natural gas than originally planned to supplement the concentrated solar each morning.  Weather predictions underestimated the amount of cloud cover the area receives, which prevents the facility from consistently producing high levels of electricity.

Compounding this reality, the price of solar photovoltaic panels has dropped precipitously, making concentrated solar more costly and less efficient in comparison to new solar technologies.  Ivanpah is a concentrated solar power (CSP) facility, using mirrors to concentrate sunlight and power a steam turbine to create electricity.  Solar photovoltaic panels, in contrast, convert sunlight into electricity directly.  Although CSP was once thought to be the future of solar power, technology improvements have made photovoltaics cheaper and more efficient.

Despite these realities, PG&E has given Ivanpah an extra six months to meet the required electricity production.  If Ivanpah can't produce enough power by July 31, the $2.2-billion facility will shut down.

The reasons why are simple.  Ivanpah has been selling electricity for, on average, anywhere from $135 to $200 per megawatt-hour of electricity.  Existing coal-fired power plants produce electricity for $88 per megawatt-hour, after accounting for social and environmental costs, and even solar photovoltaic was being sold for $57 per megawatt-hour in 2015.  Despite the CPUC continuing to force PG&E to pay an expensive premium for electricity, Ivanpah simply cannot deliver.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/solar_energys_real_problem.html

Wind turbines do not reduce pollution or the carbon footprint.

Interesting article by an environmentalist – who is also an engineer.  A 75 MW wind farm with an actual output of 10.1 MW.  With a 30% tax credit.  How does that make sense?

Apex Clean Energy plans to build an industrial wind facility, the Rocky Forge Wind Farm, on North Mountain in Botetourt County. The plan is to construct 25, 550-foot-tall wind turbines.

Each turbine is rated to produce 3 megawatts (MW) of power when spinning at optimum speed. The total facility is rated at 75 MW.

When I heard of this project, I found it curious because I did not realize that sufficient wind to produce energy is available in central Virginia.

Throughout the year in this area, winds are typically light and intermittent. As an engineer, I have worked with power companies and attended some of their conferences.

Does Wind  Payoff Justify the Cost

WOW

 

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

George Carlin

http://iso-ne.com/isoexpress/

For those who aren’t in to power, the NE market for energy is generally $20/MW to $30/MW (2 cents/kW to 3 cents/kW).  Market pricing at $8/MW (0.8/kW)?  Wow.

Note that the residential rate is 18 cents per kW.  Before deregulation, energy and transmissions were about equal.  After deregulation, energy dropped but Transmission & Distribution (T&D) increased to about 8 cents to 12 cents per kW and power dropped.  Out local rates stayed about the same initially but are now increasing at ~2 cents/kW per year..

Why is electricity so expensive these days? Why does it cost so much for something I can make with a balloon and my hair

Dennis Miller

Spill baby, spill

Only when the last fish is gone, the last river poisoned, the last tree cut down...will mankind realize they cannot eat money.
Greenpeace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4

Any conflicts in this Greenpeace ad?

What are Lego’s made of?

Who provides a key component for ABS plastic?

Hmmmm….

Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts.
Ryszard Kapuściński

The New Energy Source

More and more people are using wood as their main source of heat as opposed to heating oil and kerosene.

The Energy Information Administration reports that, “All nine states in the New England and the Middle Atlantic Census divisions saw at least a 50% jump from 2005 to 2012 in the number of households that rely on wood as the main heating source.”

Daily Caller

The end of coal

Though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire

Thomas Paine

Try everything. Do everything. Nuclear. Biomass. Coal. Solar. You name it. I support them all.
T. Boone Pickens

President Barack Obama is tired of waiting for Congress to move on legislation to reduce carbon emissions, and his administration is poised to move forward on actions to do just that—including a move that will effectively eliminate the possibility of any new coal plant opening in the United States, experts say.

"We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence," Obama said during his State of the Union address. "Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science—and act before it's too late."

Climate change has been a controversial public policy issue in recent years, as many conservative Republicans have denied a relationship between carbon emissions and incremental increases in temperatures, which many scientists link to increasingly severe weather events.

The rest is at US News

http://www.investors.com/

In every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him.

George Orwell

Tornado Power

In a twist on updraft towers, a vortex generation approach may make for more compact power generation using waste heat.

http://rt.com/news/tornado-power-plant-project-931/

Think gas prices are high?

Based on January 2012 data, the average US tax on gasoline (federal plus state ) was $0.488 per gallon.

ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM ) makes about $0.02 per gallon.

Chevron (NYSE: CVX ) makes about $0.02 per gallon.

Big Oil?  …or Big Government?

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Henry Ford

Why is Uranium the predominant nuclear fuel?  Because Plutonium is great for making nuclear weapons.  Is Thorium a better fuel?  Does it matter? 

Watch and see.

 http://energyfromthorium.com/

I have a pretty good idea that LFTR technology is a better bet than wind, solar, or geothermal.

And don’t miss this article on China’s pursuit of Thorium reactors – to the detriment of the US:  www.washingtonsblog.com/

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla

(Post 1000) To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero.

It's Over

“…a storm of protest broke recently over the news that one small conservative think-tank called Heartland was proposing to spend just $200,000 in a year on influencing education against climate alarmism. A day later, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, with assets of $7.2 billion, gave a grant of $100 million to something called the ClimateWorks Foundation, a pro-wind power organisation, on top of $481 million it gave to the same recipient in 2008. The deep green Sierra Club recently admitted that it took $26 million from the gas industry to lobby against coal. But money is not the only reason that the entire political establishment came to believe in wind fairies. Psychologists have a term for the wishful thinking by which we accept any means if the end seems virtuous: ‘noble-cause corruption’. The phrase was first used by the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir John Woodcock in 1992 to explain miscarriages of justice. ‘It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned,’ said the late Lord Denning, referring to the Birmingham Six.
“Politicians are especially susceptible to this condition. In a wish to be seen as modern, they will embrace all manner of fashionable causes. When this sets in — groupthink grips political parties, and the media therefore decide there is no debate — the gravest of errors can take root. The subsidising of useless wind turbines was born of a deep intellectual error, one incubated by failure to challenge conventional wisdom.”
The Spectator

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now.
Matt Ridley


BTW, This is Post No. 1000.  Wow.

I hate corn ethanol (.com)

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture posted an interesting graphic on the reality of ethanol.  He always has an interesting take on, well, almost everything.

http://www.ihatecornethanol.com/

By reducing our dependence of foreign oil and increasing alternative energy sources such as ethanol, we can begin to bring down prices at the pumps, create thousands of new jobs and bring a much needed boost to our economy.

Jim Ryun

Let me know how that’s working out…

End of the Green Dream

I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.

Martha Washington

Culturally, green has broad and sometimes contradictory meanings. In some cultures, green symbolizes hope and growth, while in others, it is associated with death, sickness, envy, or the devil. The most common associations, however, are found in its ties to nature. For example, Islam venerates the color, as it expects paradise to be full of lush greenery. Green is also associated with regeneration, fertility and rebirth for its connections to nature. Recent political groups have taken on the color as symbol of environmental protection and social justice, and consider themselves part of the Green movement, some naming themselves Green parties. This has led to similar campaigns in advertising, as companies have sold green, or environmentally friendly, products.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green

No matter how much you want to believe in Global Warming and the green solution, the reality is that it doesn’t work.  That’s why there are tremendous subsidies and vilification of traditional energy sources.  Instead of complimentary solutions, there is an absolute attitude that green or else.

Green is a dying dream.  In Spain 2.2 jobs were lost for every ‘green’ job, in Italy it was more like 5:1.  That’s why Europe has realized that the industry is unsustainable and putting their countries at a competitive disadvantage.   Europe is now slowly backing away from feed in tariffs.

The number of articles against green is rising.  Of course, the American Thinker is hardly a center philosophy magazine/blog, but in catching up on all of the reading there were two interesting articles.

Then there is the report about an ethanol plant, Range Fuels, that in 2007 received in startup subsidies $76 million from the federal government and $6 million more from the lucky state of Georgia, in which it was to open.  It was a plant that was going to make ethanol from pine chips.  The next year, it got a loan for $80 million guaranteed by taxpayers under the "Biorefinery Assistance Program."

The reason the Bush administration started pushing this "advanced biofuels cellulosic ethanol" program (essentially, a program for producing ethanol from switch grass and other biomass) was that corn-based ethanol was already rapidly acquiring a bad reputation for excessive costs and low yield of energy outputs for the needed inputs.  Cellulosic ethanol looked like a better prospect.

Georgia politicians were so excited by the smell of all this pork that they started calling their state "the Saudi Arabia of Pine Trees."  The Saudi Arabia of pine trees!

Well, guess what -- Range Fuels just closed, having never produced even one shot of ethanol.  Gone with the wind, as they used to say in Atlanta.  And all the subsidy money gone with it.

Honest to God, you couldn't make this stuff up.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/the_green_dream_is_an_economic.html

Using ethanol in a vehicle emits more total carbon dioxide into the air than using gasoline.  Last year, an additional 4 million tons of carbon dioxide went into the air because ethanol was used instead of gasoline.

Last year, ethanol production was only 5% of total US oil demand.  It is impossible for ethanol to ever replace imported oil.

David Pimentel, Cornell University professor emeritus, states that corn requires 29% more energy than the fuel produces, switchgrass requires 45% more energy than the fuel produces, and wood biomass requires 57% more energy than the fuel produces.  In other words, Professor Pimentel finds that the biofuel industry wastes more energy than it produces.

A gallon of ethanol contains only 61% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline.  No wonder it gets such poor mileage.  With ethanol, engines run hotter and rubber is eaten away.  An ethanol flame is almost invisible and requires entirely different fire-fighting techniques than gasoline.  Transportation, logistics and safety issues require a separate infrastructure to be built for ethanol than for gasoline.

In short, biofuel is a loser.  It is not "clean" as claimed.  Yet, the federal government protects ethanol from competition, gives it subsidies and requires its use.  The quicker that the US gets rid of ethanol, the better off our country will be.  Other energy schemes -- electric cars, hybrid cars, CNG cars, hydrogen cars -- should have taxpayer subsidies eliminated.  Their flaws and deficiencies should not have to be explained in order to stop taxpayer subsidies.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/solving_us_energy_problems.html

Even if you build the perfect reactor

For those not glued to the news re: Japan’s Earthquake.  There are serious times ahead for the island, it’s people. 

I hate to think of the impact on this industry, just as the nuclear renaissance begins.

The video above is her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kjx-JlwYtyE

More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12723092

Even if you build the perfect reactor, you're still saddled with a people problem and an equipment problem.

David R. Brower

There is no such thing as free energy

There is no such thing as free energy. Anyone who advocates it does not know what he is talking about.

Dr. Alireza (Ali) Haghighat

Awesome Good

See also:

https://www.llnl.gov/

Electric Power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need for coal, oil or gas . . .

Nikola Tesla