For those going PHEV/EREV/BEV route, good new is that the grid is getting cleaner faster than expected. With NG prices dropping and plants getting old, and wind/renewable picking up, coal usage for electricity generation is dropping. U.S. Coal Generation Drops 19 Percent In One Year, Leaving Coal With 36 Percent Share Of Electricity | ThinkProgress Let's hope it stays that way. A few weeks ago I attended a meeting where an engineer from Xcel (Denver's power company) had just showen folks a real-time power monitoring and he blew away the audience showing them at the city was running on almost 70% wind power. He commented the switch to NG matches very well with Xcels increase in wind as NG plants can ramp up fast enough to make up as the winds go slack.
Yep, saw that and some other encouraging numbers. This is one of the big points in favor of EVs and PHEVs. They automatically get cleaner as the grid does, while gas burners get dirtier as the light sweet crude declines and heavier synthetics (tar sands, etc) increases. It is happening quicker than I thought it would. A very pleasant surprise I wonder when or if any of the reports on how 'green' EV/PHEVs are will be updated?
I cannot say for sure, I was not actually in the meeting so I could not grill him on the specifics. But is quite possible as Xcel is the largest wind producer in the country. It has 1,773 megawatts of wind capacity on their Colorado system and 3800 megawatts overall. And it was a moderate sunny spring day so virtually no heat and no AC. Xcel also has 42 megawatts of solar power (5th in the country I think). I do think it is slightly more likely the engineer was saying it was running on 70% renewables. By statute Xcel has to pay for curtailment of wind so they really want to use all they can. (in 2010 Xcel paid $3,854,156 in "curtailment" fees to their wind producers, i.e. paid millions to to idle Terawats of wind energy and keep their coal plants running. Mostly that was at night.. which is why I'm buying wind power for my Volt!.. its just being wasted. ) EDIT: Decided to dig a bit.. to see if I could verify this. I nolonger belive its quite true (maybe it was a limited area, say the metro area itself). why? because if they did it would be a new world record and they would have had a press release like they did in the fall when they set the last world record or 55.6% wind usage. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19342896 Though maybe with solar added and a more limited area being considered it might still be true. But either way, I'm still happy they are pushing wind so hard here.
The may have been at 70% as a momentary snapshot. Whereas for any record they need to sustain the numbers over a full hour. Or, as you suggested, it may have been a combination of wind and solar.
First let me say the new numbers show that what we have been saying is true, the grid can get cleaner. The people who will be paying higher rates are mainly those that were getting power from the most polluting plants. As a whole the drop in natural gas prices and wind turbines means that this reduction in pollution is fairly cheap for the price increases for power. Natural gas is expect to stay inexpensive until 2015. By then lng facilities can be built for export, but when you decommission a coal plant it isn't likely to be resurrected. That's probably it. I don't like it when people come out with these high numbers for instantaneous, they are pretty meaningless. But renewable can grow to a much higher level in most of the country. In texas we use a 15% factor for wind, which means when wind reaches 15% of the grid, which shouldn't take too long here, it will be instantaneously be able to power everything during strong winds for breif periods of time. The nukes and coal won't go offline though, so the number won't hit 100%, wind will be curtailed. Its thought that with improved smart grid and more fast cycling natural gas, wind can make up 30% of the cumulative power.
Heck, even if it is 55%, then that is great. What this means to me is that there is a immediate & huge payoff if a cost effective direct storage technique is discovered, created, or shared.
Here are the leading states in terms of wind power generated as a function of their total usage: 1. South Dakota: 22.3% 2. Iowa: 18.8% 3. North Dakota: 14.7% 4. Minnesota: 12.7% 5. Wyoming: 10.1% 6. Colorado: 9.2% 7. Kansas: 8.3% Yep storage and time shifting are key to reaching 100% renewable, but could make money now. The US has lots of pumped hydro, but that tends to be more difficult in the better wind areas. Colorado already has some pumped storage, but we need better ways to use it. But for now, I like storing at night in my EV ;-) If one looks at the most recent NREL study The wind potential at 80m is staggering with a per year potential of 38,552,706 GWH. Putting that into perspective, the total US power consumed in 2010 was 22,063,000 GWH. (Note there is even more potential wind energy at 100m, but more expensive to get that high). In 2011, colorado overall was at 9.2% wind over the whole year. By 2015 the goal is 15 and by 2020, 30% of all electric used must be renewable. Colorado's wind potential, at 1,288,490 GHW per year is way above (like 40x) our current consumption of 55,000 GHW per year. Enough for all we do now, plust lots of EV. Unfortunately even with storage, legal requirements result in the need for traditional capacity as well, which short term is greatly helped by the the switch to NG as a backup. But maybe if good storage techniques are developed, we can eventually move away from that too.
Good new BUT... Coal use is actually steady or, as the report noted, going up slighty, it's that increases in electricity demand are being picked up by the natural gas plants. Certainly better than new coal plants but we aren't cutting coal use as much as we need to.
I agree with your last sentence. The coal use is going down though, according to this piece EIA projects lower coal use by U.S. power sector in 2012 - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) While I would like to see it go down faster, I'll take a 5% decrease. Granted, I hope the 2013 projected increase (still below 2011 levels) is wrong. But the trend is in the right direction.
Interesting stuff, thanks. The table assumed a 5 Mwatt windmill density of one per square kilometer. Energy to cover total US use would be a million windmills. I am not sure what installation costs for these monsters would be, but my old information was $3 a watt, or 15 trillion total.
Coal use by power sector but overall coal use is apparently going to increase slightly and per the graph seems fairly steady.
Note the model is not covering all of US, its estimating the areas with 30% gross wind capacity at 80m height. Its a small fraction of total land in most states. US power consumption in 2011 was 3,873 Billion kWh. So to installed that much wind power, at 1.36 per Watt (see Wind turbine prices fall to their lowest in recent years | Bloomberg New Energy Finance) that is only 4Trillion. The point of the study was to show there is plenty of viable land for that much (and more) wind power. But wind alone will not work as its to variable.. it needs peakers to back it and/or some other storage.
"The Bloomberg New Energy Finance Wind Turbine Price Index includes the cost of turbines, as well as transport to site (marine and overland) but excludes VAT, construction and connection costs." I am not against wind AT ALL, I just wanted to put a number on it. I am imagining an inter-urban rail line fed by these windmills. Man that would be awesome.
The implication is we cannot use EPA Power Profiler to estimate fuel-by-type useage because it is too out-of-date.
Yep. Btw, the average annual yield is about 3.5 kwh/watt. That is phenomenal. Compare it to residential PV, which is doing good at 1.5, and superb at 2.0. This suggests that unsubsidized wind is about 25% the cost of unsubsidized home PV, not including infrastructure costs.
