Solar Is Top Source of New Capacity On the US Grid In 2016 (arstechnica.com) 192
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The U.S. electric grid continued to transform in 2016. No new coal plants were added, and solar became the top new source of generating capacity. Combined with wind, a small bit of hydro, and the first nuclear plant added to the grid in decades, sources that generate power without carbon emissions accounted for two-thirds of the new capacity added in 2016. These numbers come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which asked utilities about what sources they expected to have online at the end of the year. These numbers typically show a burst of activity in December, as projects are raced to completion to take advantage of the tax benefits of reaching operational status in the current year. Overall, the EIA recorded 26 GW of new capacity added to the grid in 2016. This includes a small amount (0.3GW) of new hydropower and a smattering of projects collected under "other" that produce a similar magnitude. Notably absent from the list is coal. Also absent is distributed solar, meaning panels installed on homes and other small-scale projects. Distributed solar accounted for about 2GW of new capacity in 2015, and the EIA notes that the incentives for these projects haven't changed considerably in 2016. Even without that 2GW, solar comes out on top, with 9.5GW of new additions this year. At 8GW, natural gas comes in second place on the EIA's list, followed by wind at 6.8GW. Thanks to the opening of a new reactor at Watts Bar in Tennessee, nuclear also joins the list for the first time in years, adding 1.1GW of capacity. Combined, wind, nuclear, hydro, and solar account for 68 percent of the new additions, making 2016 a low-carbon year for the U.S. grid. Assuming distributed solar this year is similar to its 2015 levels, the percentage of new non-fossil generation goes up above 70.
Total Capacity (Score:3, Interesting)
Not total delivered.
So when you see that 9.5 gigawatts of solar compared to 8 gigawatts of natural gas, it's more like 3 gigawatts of average solar output versus 7 gigawatts of gas...
Re:Total Capacity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Total Capacity (Score:5, Informative)
No, actually pretty similar on average; the solar may even edge it. The nuclear reactor obviously has higher power at night, but much lower power during the day than the solar. The average capacity factor of solar is about 10-20% depending on location, so 9GW of solar will produce somewhere between 0.9GW and 1.8GW on average, whereas this is a 1.2GW reactor; and the solar was installed much, much more quickly, and probably cost roughly the same or even less than the nuclear.
Re: (Score:3)
You are five to ten times more likely to die from slipping off the roof by cleaning your solar panels than you would from any nuclear power accident.
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2... [nextbigfuture.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... [forbes.com]
Of all the energy sources by carbon footprint the ones with the lowest emissions per energy produced are wind, tidal, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal. Solar doesn't even make the top five.
Solar is a loser on "death footprint", carbon footprint, and cost. Since geothermal, wind, tidal, and hydro
Re: (Score:2)
It does not really matter if you fall from the roof cleaning a solar panel or cleaning a chimney.
Both can be avoided by following safety standards.
The carbon footprint of solar panels approaches zero. The only carbon dioxide produced is basically the transportation of raw material and finalized products to the installation place! If you take that into account then the carbon footprint of nuclear plants are a nightmare. They produce over their life span nearly the same amount as a similar coal plant does.
All
Re:Total Capacity (Score:4, Insightful)
It does not really matter if you fall from the roof cleaning a solar panel or cleaning a chimney.
Both can be avoided by following safety standards.
Understood but historically speaking more people have died from solar than nuclear. We cannot expect solar to ever reach zero on deaths, just like we can't from nuclear either. What we can expect is that while solar power is improving its safety record that nuclear power will as well. Nuclear power has it's slip and fall accidents too, we can fix that just as well as with solar but nuclear already starts with a good lead. As of today, right now, solar is a more deadly than nuclear and by an order of magnitude. Claiming that solar will improve and nuclear will not is speculation.
The carbon footprint of solar panels approaches zero. The only carbon dioxide produced is basically the transportation of raw material and finalized products to the installation place! If you take that into account then the carbon footprint of nuclear plants are a nightmare. They produce over their life span nearly the same amount as a similar coal plant does.
What color is the sky in your world? I have to ask because claiming that nuclear power would ever get to the level of coal is insanity. If you had instead claimed that wind and/or solar had a lower carbon footprint than nuclear by something like an order of magnitude then we might have a sane discussion. I might not be disputing the carbon footprint but instead focus on things like the benefits of nuclear being able to operate in any weather, needing much less land/steel/resources, and improved capacity factor. Claiming that nuclear power could even get close to producing as much CO2 as coal is just beyond the pale.
All power plants, that includes nuclear plants, need a favorable place. The main reason why Germany did mot build more before the decision to abolish them is that Germany has no space left where we could build one. Except the option to upgrade an existing one with another reactor.
This is demonstrably false. Nuclear power reactors can be operated in very confined spaces safely. They are running right now in submarines and aircraft carriers without incident and in very close proximity to people for decades at a time. This fear of nuclear power over nonexistent safety problems is hurting the environment and therefore hurting real and actual living people.
Same for France btw. That is the main reason France is buying so much power from Germany and in parallel is investing in renewables. Climate change is hitting Germany and France noticeable already: less snow in winter means far less water in summer in the rivers. Which means: shut down nuclear plants due to environmental regulations regarding temperature of water in the rivers. Or simple lack of water.
If we are going to speculate on the future advances of solar power to include improvements on safety and carbon footprint then I am going to speculate on air cooled nuclear reactors. Air cooling requires no water source, therefore your claims of a lack of proper water cooling preventing nuclear power use is not relevant. Even if we limit this to current technology I get back to the use of nuclear reactors in naval vessels. Build the nuclear reactor on a floating platform off shore, where the reactor is literally sitting in coolant, and run wires to the shore to transmit the power. If we can run wires under water to connect the UK to France to spread out the benefits of wind and solar power then running wires to a nuclear reactor at sea should be trivial by comparison.
I've actually heard of people claiming we should cover large portions of the Sahara desert with solar panels, run wires from there to Europe so they can benefit from carbon free energy. If that makes any kind of sense in the realms of logic, economics, and physics, then so should putting nuclear reactors out in the sands of Africa and running
Re: (Score:2)
it is fun to have geysers in front of the house ...
Here in America, we have Geezers in front of the house, yelling at the kids to get off of their lawn
Re: (Score:2)
> Don't forget the dangers of solar energy production.
> I can barely sleep at night worrying about the possibility of a solar leak
We have it under good authority (Bobby Mann) that solar panels will suck all the energy from the sun and burn it out. We need to fight against the liberal solar agenda to prevent this catastrophe. What, facts? Science? Those are just more liberal propaganda. Facts don't actually exist, according to Scottie Nell Hughes. ;)
Re:Total Capacity (Score:4, Informative)
So that 9.5 GW of solar capacity is only generating about 1.15 GW of power on average. If you add the 2 GW of distributed solar (rooftop panels) it works out to 1.39 GW average generation.
Natural gas is a bit of a wild card, since it (and hydro) is typically used to follow peaking demand. That is, you don't run them full tilt. They top off power generation to match demand. But its (and hydro's) capacity factor is historically around 0.40. So NG's 8 GW translates into 3.2 GW of average generation. Hydro's 0.3 GW translates into 0.12 GW of average generation.
Wind's capacity factor is about 0.25. So its 6.8 GW capacity works out to 1.7 GW of average generation.
Nuclear's capacity factor is about 0.9. So the lone new nuclear plant at 1.1 GW capacity translates into 1 GW of average generation.
So in terms of actual power generation:
Re:Total Capacity (Score:4, Informative)
to get capacity factors close to 0.3, which is physically impossible unless all your PV panels are super-high efficiency
How did you conclude that panel efficiency impacts capacity factors? That doesn't make sense. Efficiency as a multiplier scales both maximum and average generation from a unit of insolated surface. The ratio of these two therefore shouldn't change (modulo possible spectral sensitivity effects for direct insolation vs. overcast for the different technologies, but these aren't in any simple way connected to overall efficiency).
Re: (Score:2)
How did you conclude that panel efficiency impacts capacity factors?
A more efficient PV cell is easier to activate under low light. It takes a certain level of light to get a PV cell to overcome it's internal resistance, if this resistance can be lowered then it can operate through a larger part of the day. If the PV cell can operate through a longer period in the day then the capacity factor increases.
Re: (Score:2)
A more efficient PV cell is easier to activate under low light.
That is bollocks. The amount of photons able to kick an electron into the conducting band depends on the doting and the kind of 'junctions'. In the bandwidth of light spectrum where a solar panel is working it is already very efficient regarding that frequencies.
It takes a certain level of light to get a PV cell to overcome it's internal resistance,
No it does not. Resistance has nothing to do with light level. The question only is: are there en
Re: (Score:2)
No need to get your panties in a wad over this. I'm not a fan of solar power but I am pro-arithmetic. If solar panel efficiencies can be improved then it can improve capacity factors. I didn't claim it would be much, only that it is possible.
There are losses in the conversion, transmission, etc. If efficiencies can be improved then the capacity factor can improve. Again I made no claim it would be much, only that it would be measurable.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that's not how it works. The nameplate capacity of a solar plant is based around how much power it produces in ideal lighting conditions. If you use more efficient panels, then you've upped the nameplate capacity, not the capacity factor. The capacity factor is average actual generation over nameplate.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, trust a random person's blog, not the EIA? Yeah, I'll stick with the EIA, thank you. The blog's "well, if we eliminate the plants we don't like and then assume that half of the power that grid operators add will be poor home installs... " stuff is stretching to say the least.
Re:Total Capacity (Score:4, Interesting)
They're playing some tricks with the numbers [euanmearns.com] to get capacity factors close to 0.3, which is physically impossible unless all your PV panels are super-high efficiency and track the sun. But this isn't the sort of thing you can just cover up. It's trivial to calculate the actual capacity factor for PV solar:
Yeah sure, there's a conspiracy to cover up the real numbers. Or, you know, you might have botched your calculations. You took the solar output from large utilities only and divided it by the total solar capacity including distributed generation.
Solar capacity factors of >25% are relatively easy in the sun belt and can go as high as 36% with tracking and a high panel-to-inverter ratio (Lawrence Berkely study, 2014 figures [lbl.gov]).
Re: (Score:2)
Solar capacity factors of 25% are relatively easy in the sun belt and can go as high as 36% with tracking and a high panel-to-inverter ratio
No, 25% is top end for the sunny southwest, certainly above average for fixed panels in that region. US average is a lot lower. And nobody is installing tracking PV, for the cost is too high and it requires too much maintenance, it works out better to just pay for more fixed panels.
Re: (Score:2)
Boy, gee, your counter of a peer reviewed study with "flat assertion from Mr D from 63" sure is convincing!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The paper defines the sample:
What about that do you object to? Do you want them to include plants that haven't been run for a full year? Furthermore, the study was clearly conducted in 2014 because that's when the newest reference is (even though the PDF date is 2015). So exactly where's the prob
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because inverters aren't always sized to the maximum physically possible for the panels to deliver; it's not always worth sizing it to the maximum physically possible generation.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images... [nrel.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
> And nobody is installing tracking PV, for the cost is too high and it requires too much maintenance,
As of 2014, 61% of new utility-scale solar plants were tracking systems (https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-1006037_slides.pdf) (see page 23). The 10% higher cost for the tracking hardware is more than offset by the extra output you get from always facing the Sun.
Re: (Score:2)
> And nobody is installing tracking PV, for the cost is too high and it requires too much maintenance,
As of 2014, 61% of new utility-scale solar plants were tracking systems (https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-1006037_slides.pdf) (see page 23). The 10% higher cost for the tracking hardware is more than offset by the extra output you get from always facing the Sun.
To my knowledge, the use of tracking has significantly dropped in newer installation. I don't recall any recent projects that included it, but I don't have a list of all installations so maybe that is incorrect. If you include residential PV, tracking is even a smaller percent of the total. Why spend 10% more for 5% increase in CF when you can get 10% increase in total capacity for that same investment? Plus take on the added maintenance costs and reduced generation when a tilt motor fails. In some places t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
First of all the capacity factor is not related to efficiency.
If I produce 1GW with a 4GW panel because it is only 25% efficient has nothing to do with the capacity factor which is basically only the number of sun hours per year.
Furthermore in your bullshit calculation it would make much more sense to use GWh produced, and not GW 'adjusted to capacity factor' because in full sunlight a 4 GW solar panel will surprisingly produce: 4GW, hence the nameplate.
Bottom line: you should stop using metrics from which
Re: (Score:3)
Indeed. Up to a certain point adding more solar actually makes load following easier. Also, wind and solar tend to run opposite each other: solar peaks in the day, while wind peaks at night; high pressure systems bring low wind and high sun, while low pressure systems bring high wind and low sun; etc.
Solar and wind both benefit greatly however from a HVDC grid, to allow for timeshifting - aka, people using power after the sun's gone down from a place where the sun is still up, and vice versa. The last s
Re: (Score:2)
Actually at peak the solar plant will deliver its 9.5 peak. Same for the gas plant ... and the gas plant has no CF of 100% either, unless it is a base load plant then it likely runs at 95% power output with enough down time to have a CF of about 90%.
In real life a gas plant will be at absolute minimum at night, barely producing power, and load following between roughly 9AM till 5PM or 7AM and 7PM at decision of the operators, so its CF is just about 45 percent, as most power plants that are not used for bas
Re: (Score:2)
Not total delivered.
So when you see that 9.5 gigawatts of solar compared to 8 gigawatts of natural gas, it's more like 3 gigawatts of average solar output versus 7 gigawatts of gas...
And? I would look at those numbers and do some quick calculations about an inplace technology that is now providing almost half of the power that a technology that involves drilling and pipelines, trains, compressor stations, and a lot of infrastructure.
We are seeing some models already. A local small power generating plant, designed to supplement the power system as needed, generates power and steam heat from natgas. Uses essentially a Jet engine turbine, and collects the waste heat for heating buildi
Re: (Score:2)
You don't back up intermittency with baseload, you back it up with peaking (or load following for slower changes).
Just like has always been done to handle changes in demand or loss of production capacity due to sudden outages or scheduled maintenance.
Want to guess why? (Score:3, Funny)
Want to guess why? Because one is subsidized and the other was successfully taxed and regulated out of existence.
Re:Want to guess why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because one is subsidized and the other was successfully taxed and regulated out of existence.
Exactly. It is totally unfair that coal plants had to stop spewing soot and sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. We need to make America great again!
Re: (Score:3)
Asthma is as American as Apple Pie.
Re: (Score:2)
Make America's Skies Gray Again!
Re:Want to guess why? (Score:5, Informative)
Want to guess why? Because one is subsidized and the other was successfully taxed and regulated out of existence.
No, it's for the same reason there was no capacity added from burning whale oil, namely that it's not economical. Natural gas (#2 on that list) is what kicked coal to the curb, not environmental regulation. There's lots of articles covering this, such as this one from not-exactly-a-bastion-of-liberal-thought Reason magazine [reason.com].
Re:Want to guess why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was one of the leaders in the coal industry, I most certainly would tell the angry workers with pitchforks that it was the government's fault that they were laid off. I certainly wouldn't want to tell them the truth that it was because they weren't making me enough money.
Re: (Score:3)
Not counting cutting wood on your farm, name one energy source that wasn't subsidized as it replaced the prevailing source. Camphor oil, whale oil, kerosene, oil, coal, nuclear, hydro have all been the beneficiary of federal subsidies, some much more than others.
If you own coal futures and want to see them do well you'd be much better off blowing up some natural gas refineries than worrying about solar.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know this for a fact but I recall reading something on how farmers would make their own alcohol to run their tractors until Prohibition. There were no ethanol subsidies then but the farmers were quite willing to replace gasoline and kerosene for moonshine.
I believe that Prohibition set back the bio-fuel industry by more than a century. We'd have had all kinds of real world data on the utility of ethanol as a fuel if Prohibition didn't kill it off. Even after Prohibition ended there were still "re
Re: (Score:2)
the old tractors would run on old motor oil too (that you could get for free at the corner garage or from your other equipment).
you could start them on a cup of gas, switch to running on oil, run on old oil all day and then that night use another cup of gas to clean up the plugs and carb. So two cups a day of "paid for" fuel.
moonshine is a little more valuable than gas so even with zero regulations, I think folks would just buy gas and drink/sell the shine
Re:Want to guess why? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is complete bullshit. The reason is simpler: natural gas because cheaper. Coal was out-competed by fracking.
The free market killed coal, not regulations.
The only way coal will continue is if it is subsidized more than it is already (by not having to clean up the mess created by coal).
Re: (Score:3)
This.
We have so much goddam natural gas we export it.
U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas Exports [forbes.com] Reach A New Market And Continue To Climb In 2016. In the first six months of this year, nearly 50 Bcf of U.S. LNG was exported. We will be surging to a dominant role in less than five years, with five terminals operating on the Gulf Coast and in Maryland by 2020.
Re: Want to guess why? (Score:5, Informative)
Do you imagine that the federal government cuts checks to oil companies?
Yes, I do. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Right, and if you follow that link you gave then went to where the money was spent you'd see this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)
If I was in the energy business and I could choose to go into oil and get a very very small slice of the already small 20% of subsidies spent on fossil energy versus getting a potentially large slice of that 45% spent on renewable energy. If the goal is to profit from subsidies then I'd be going into something renewable. If the goal is to make a profit from delivering actual
Re: (Score:2)
That's a common misconception among people who don't know shit.
There are layers upon layers of subsidies to the oil industry. There are subsidies for exploration, for drilling, for refining and even for shipping and exporting. And a large portion of those subsidies take the form of direct transfer payments. That means a check made out to the oil company.
Even the subsidies are much
Re: (Score:3)
That's all fine, but let's not pretend that the subsidies aren't really subsidies and that we never "cut a check" to the oil companies.
If you don't have a problem with it, I don't have a problem with the government picking winners and losers, but let's
Re: (Score:2)
Do you imagine that the federal government cuts checks to oil companies?
Your UID is too low to be that oblivious. Hell there's entire satirical movies based on the premise that the Koch Brothers control American politics. There are most definitely special benefits given specifically to oil and gas projects.
And I say that as someone in the industry.
Solar for your home (Score:5, Interesting)
Florida voters narrowly (and surprisingly, to me) defeated a constitutional amendment that was funded by Florida Power & Light and other very interested parties that would have made it difficult and expensive to install solar power in the home. A rare victory for common sense in Florida.
http://www.miamiherald.com/new... [miamiherald.com]
Google tells me that a ballot initiative by the Good Guys failed to achieve enough signatures to make the 2016 ballot (due to some scam artistry by the polling company they hired) so they will try for the 2018 ballot.
https://ballotpedia.org/Florid... [ballotpedia.org]
I'm not comfortable with amending the Constitution for something as specific as this, but I suppose they figure the legislature could be bought out by the incumbent power companies if it were a mere lowly law on the books.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
http://channel.nationalgeograp... [nationalgeographic.com] talked about solar power in NV, FL, and India. It was an interesting episode. IIRC, it talked about FL's voters and how old power companies tried to block the solar companies. :(
Re: (Score:2)
Florida voters narrowly (and surprisingly, to me) defeated a constitutional amendment that was funded by Florida Power & Light and other very interested parties that would have made it difficult and expensive to install solar power in the home. A rare victory for common sense in Florida.
We massively went after the misleading amendment as well as promoting amendment 2 for medical marijuana. And if it weren't for the large number of old guard snow birds who keep settling in Northern Florida, the state would have turned blue. But that's another story.
This time we wised up with the solar panel amendment.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm not comfortable with amending the Constitution for something as specific as this,
Southern states commonly put a lot of stuff in their state constitution, and require it be passed in a general election. The theory is it restricts the legislature from doing stuff the people explicitly have said they want or don't want.
Yei first Offshore wind farm operational in U.S (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I we would halt all off shore wind farms and put them where the wind in strong and constant. Montana and the Dakotas. Place them among the farms, generate power all year long, day and night.
There is a reason why the U.S built its Nuclear reactors close to population centers instead of building them in the middle of the Great Basin Desert. It is the same reason why we can't cover Montana and the Dakotas with turbines to power the U.S. Transmitting energy long distances is both expensive and inefficient due to resistance loss. In much of the North East land is expensive and as a result those states lag behind in wind power generation. Well other then the Southern States which have practically no
Re: (Score:2)
> mostly due to Political ideology against Climate Change Science
No, it's because we have a lot of trees in the south, which causes friction and lowers wind speeds. It's no coincidence that most wind farms are in the midwest/Texas areas where it's flat open prairie and crop land. Wind speeds are actually just as high at higher altitudes in the South. The same weather systems blowing through other states eventually come here. But it's not economic to build wind turbines that tall yet. The same logic
Re: (Score:2)
And the blades would cool the land, counteracting global warming.
Re: (Score:2)
I we would halt all off shore wind farms and put them where the wind in strong and constant.
The wind offshore is strong and constant. That's one of the main reasons you'd want to put a wind farm there.
Re: (Score:3)
Comparing the EU to the USA in terms of where they build their Wind is like asking why there's no awesome swimming beaches right off the Norwegian fjords. The geography of one area is of a huge benefit to off-shore wind (very shallow waters in wind generating regions), while the USA's geography is far more beneficial to onshore wind (most of the USA coast has a very steep cliff just off the coast, that makes it good for surfing but not so much for construction.
The USA has 48800 wind turbines. With a capacit
Re: (Score:2)
The last time you spread this wrong 'information' you probably where misinformed. /. readers that your claim is: wrong.
However you got corrected just a few days ago by dozens of
So repeating this claim now, makes it: a lie.
So what is your agenda in lying to the audience in such an important matter?
Re:Yei first Offshore wind farm operational in U.S (Score:4, Informative)
No you aren't . US wind power capacity is 75 GW. EU wind power capacity is over 140 GW - and that is just EU, not the whole Europe.
Cue the trolls (Score:5, Informative)
Argh, the comments section of Slashdot is getting completely unreadable when the subject is something that is even vaguely related to global warming. Hordes of trolls rush to tell us that the globe is not warming, that this is all just a vast conspiracy by all the scientists in the world to get more research money.
Come on, can't we get something interesting? I remember that even last year there would be plenty of comments talking about insolation, capacity, load balancing, grid-level storage, price, subsidies, etcetera. Now it's just this nutjob shitfest.
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't you read the subject line?
He's calling in the trolls to start posting.
Re: (Score:2)
The very first post was a troll, he wrote "A new administration is coming to town. In 2017, other sources of power will become legal again.". After that a whole line of trolls replied and started new threads, with some mentioning global warming explicitly. The technical posts can be counted on my fingers.
I wonder if this will change (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Never bought a smart phone. Never plan to either. Entirely separate issu
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Solar rated highest in 2016, but... (Score:2, Offtopic)
No, you can't spell 'job'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Considering his appointees so far, my guess is he'll put you in charge of NASA.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
NASA is very important to the Republicans even if they don't want it doing Earth science. It is very efficient at distributing government spending across the country and no politician will want to miss their chance at getting their more than their "fair share".
Re: (Score:2)
Is he going to get me a jerb too?
It is so quaint and cute that so many people think he's actually going to follow through on his multitude of campaign promises.
Build the wall, put her in jail, and unless we somehow do a CCC level makework project, those coal miners aren't getting their jerbs back, certainly not mining coal, for what there is left of it is automated just like the rest of mining.
Coal mining in my area is quick and automated. And Limestone (dolomite) mining is so automated that what took several decades to do back in t
Re: (Score:2)
The reality is the solar industry employs twice as many people as the coal industry (200,000 vs 100,000), and they are cleaner jobs too. But many of those jobs are in Democratic-leaning California, which isn't where Trump's base is.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Other sources of power are already legal and in use currently.
Let's put the numbers in perspective direct from the EIA:
Coal 33%, NG 33%, Nuclear 20%, Hydro 6%, Petroleum 1%, Biomass 1.6%, Wind 4.7%, Geothermal 0.4% and....
solar 0.6%. (yeah, 0.3% if it adds to 100%, thanks to EIA for the rounding error)
So in 2017 solar might hit 1% and probably max out. NG will continue to increase with easy access to fuel. Coal is declining although may stabilize. Renewables will be around but probably will never top 10
Re: (Score:2)
> So in 2017 solar might hit 1% and probably max out.
Given the 75 GW utility solar pipeline (built, contracted, and announced), that's not likely:
http://www.seia.org/research-r... [seia.org]
Assuming a 20% capacity factor (average vs rated capacity), the 15 GW of average output is more than 3% of total US electric use.
Re: (Score:2)
"They just have to be!" - a last desperate grasp at dying technologies.
Don't get me wrong, they will continue to have a use on the grid - just not the same use. Until storage becomes cheaper than peaking**, fossil fuels will continue to be used as peaking. Natural gas in particular makes an excellent peaking fuel. But their days as baseload are at an end. Renewables have gotten too cheap over the past decade. These $1.50/W renewables plants - sometimes even closer to $1/W - are just insanely cheap comp
Re: (Score:2)
Coal will never be economically competitive again, so it wouldn't really matter if we did make new coal plants illegal, which by the way we don't.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope that by that time ... (Score:2)
I hope that by the time coal becomes competitive again, I can move to a newly-terraformed Mars or Venus (or maybe even farther out).
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the orbiting colonies, where the sun shines 100% of the time, and it's 36% brighter than on Earth (no atmosphere to block any of it).
The amount of solar energy that crosses closer than the Moon is equal to the whole world's fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. It's a mind-bogglingly large resource. We just have to tap it economically.
Re:Solar rated highest in 2016, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
And they will still Build Natural Gas plants not Coal.
Indeed. Even if Trump was able to relax environmental requirements for coal (highly unlikely) there is no reason to believe that even more stringent requirements won't be slapped back on in four or eight years. Only a fool would build a new coal plant today. In America, none are being built or even planned. Coal is dead.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not any more. Have you looked at who's going to head the Environmental Petroleum Agency starting next year? Coal may not be petroleum, but I'm sure the EPA will conclude that coal is no more environmentally unfriendly than petroleum.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The leakage from natural gas almost all occurs in the local distribution network used for domestic premises. This is because much of it is old cast iron pipe work.
Leakage of any sort in the high pressure transmission pipelines is generally catastrophic and so does not happen at any significant rate. You don't think a power station is hooked up to the high pressure transmission lines with a 50 year old 1" cast iron pipe do you?
Re: (Score:2)
Also, I lived in a house built in 1917 with gas pipes original to the building (you could still see remnants of the original gas lights) and none of them were cast iron, they were all steel. I can't remember ever see
Re: (Score:2)
Nat gas most definitely does not leak 1-2% during transport. Hell HP Hydrogen doesn't leak 1-2% during transport and that is the hardest gas to ship around.
Re:Solar rated highest in 2016, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The market is going to do whatever is cheapest. It is now cheaper to get natural gas out of the ground because of fracking, and the reserves available are so massive that it makes sense to invest in natural gas powerplants as they will be supplied with cheap fuel for a very long time. It is also cheap to burn natural gas because it doesn't require scrubbing and other processing of the emissions to reduce pollution.
The price of solar has continued to drop - panels have been way under a dollar a watt for a while now ($0.79 a watt buying 6,000W of panels at a time, and I'm sure power companies get even better deals buying bigger quantities). The way these are now being utilized (just fed into the grid when they can produce power without battery storage, inverters, etc) is very economical for power companies to invest in.
Coal, on the other hand, is relatively expensive and labor-intensive to get out of the ground, even when strip mining. Further, it takes expensive scrubbers to remove pollutants from the exhaust when it is burnt, which further increases the cost to use coal. Both of those factors combined (fracking and solar prices dropping) simply make other sources of energy cheaper to produce and utilize than coal for generating electricity.
If you were to ask the question "Why didn't we start doing this 20 years ago?" the answer is because we didn't have the technology to mass produce solar this inexpensively, and we didn't have the technology to produce natural gas this inexpensively.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Trump and cabinet be damned, companies do what's best for them.
People who work in coal want their jobs, but investors will not be interested.
It's the Big Tobacco plot and [spoiler alert] it dies in the end.
Re: Solar rated highest in 2016, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Current panel prices are sub $0.40 a watt wholsale and install costs have begun to fall as fast as panel prices. IIRC installed pricing is now arround $2.50 a watt, this is a price I never thought we would see. 5 years ago it was nearly $5 a watt installed.
Re: (Score:2)
> IIRC installed pricing is now arround $2.50 a watt,
Depends where it is installed: http://www.seia.org/sites/defa... [seia.org]
Residential averages $3/W, while Utility tracking is down to $1.21/W. Tracking systems tilt the panels to follow the Sun, thus get more watts for more hours than fixed-tilt panels. The extra 10% it costs for tracking hardware is more than made up by the extra output, so they are now the best option in terms of cost per kWh produced.
Re: (Score:2)
The technology of today is the same as 20 years ago. ...
You use silicon like in the chips industry, dote it, like in the chips industry and basically thats it.
However 20 years ago the world market for solar power was extremely small (and all power markets where relatively small)
That is why Germany e.g.started subsidizing solar power about 30 years ago
The main reason is the capital intensity. Not many companies can build a multi billion fab for solar panels from their pocket money or get funding in such high
Re: (Score:2)
Coal, on the other hand, is relatively expensive and labor-intensive to get out of the ground, even when strip mining.
Don't worry about that. Adahni is about to cut open the biggest hole in the world in Australia for a lovely new source of coal. That should bring the cost right down. Combined with the steady drop in demand I predict that coal will be far cheaper than natgas again within the trump presidency.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, stop right there. Solar is a DC source by very definition.
A definition is something artificially man-made to explain a certain term. Solar power is DC simply because there is no suitable design that produces AC.
So for all practical purposes, solar power is DC. Until a suitable (and commercially viable) A/C design exists, I'm more interested to see the OP's original question answered.
Re: (Score:2)
Coal is dead as long as we can frack, baby frack!
Re: (Score:2)
Even if they never put back stringent requirements, the economic benefits of coal are declining. Times change, we shouldn't have to act like it's still the industrial revolution. Remember in the UK it was people on the left kept wanting to keep coal in order to keep jobs but the conservatives didn't want to keep it alive on life support. Now in the US it's the opposite, conservatives want to keep it in order to keep jobs even if it doesn't make economic sense. The goal of the coal industry is to make mo
Re: (Score:2)
There's actually not much difference between the two. It's pretty easy to retrofit a plant to use the other fuel source for generation.
Relatively "easy" to convert a coal plant to gas (you're boiling water to make steam, so you can "just" change the heat source. This ignores that some coal plants are designed with temperatures you couldn't really achieve with gas).
However, it's impossible to convert a gas turbine to run on coal, unless you turn your coal into syngas first.
Re: (Score:2)
"The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is a Cabinet-level department of the United States Government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material."
They don't care about anything unless it has to do with radioactive elements. I don't think they particularly care about power generation by nuclear power plants, when it comes right down to it.
The EIA deals with electrical power generation, distribution and use.