Not so long ago we had a big,fast ship that was powered by coal,it was very fast,coal works pretty darn good for something huge,Also our coal can be converted to pretty good diesel fuel(forget tar sands)-Kevin
It’s a shame that our government is as short sighted as the stock market. A long range plan to control the finite fuels while protecting the environment would be a great benefit to our grandchildren and to us. Coal can be used to power the electric grid safely and lower the demand on oil. Doing so would help hold the price of oil(gasoline) down. The rest of the world will be burning coal regardless what we do. But if the industry can solve the emissions problem with coal fired steam plants here we would certainly share that technology with the rest of the world.
The oil BILLIONAIRES of the world are afraid of coal. Coal could help us at their expense. So the BILLIONAIRES spend millions to convince us that “coal is bad-oil is good.” And it is. For them.
I’m just not buying that wind turbines are effective when the energy used to construct and maintain them is factored in along with the energy consumed 24 hours a day whether the blades are spinning or not. The substation is lit up 24 hours a day and the maintenance building for the farm has every light blazing 24 hours a day also; both yard and inside lights.
Those maintenance trucks are also on the road every day burning gas and diesel.
The electric company says that the optimum time for wind turbine useage is spring and fall so it will be interesting to see with summer coming on just how many hours per week those blades turn when the wind is usually light or non-existent. I fail to see how a turbine operating say 1 day a week offsets the other 6 days in the week grid consumption.
Those turbine heads weigh about 50ish tons and rotate constantly even with the blades inoperative. I have no idea but it seems to me the amount of electricity required to move something that heavy (and not even including blade pitch operation) would be huge; and that’s just on one turbine head.
Another puzzler to me is how a turbine can spin at fairly high RPMs when the wind speed is flat zero; something I’ve seen a couple of times. Since they’re induction generators this does make me wonder how much of the rotation of a spinning blade is due to the wind and how much of it is due to being helped along by grid power.
I’ve also seen a turbine facing SW and rotating while the wind is out of the ESE.
Almost no oil is used to generate electricity. Not an issue. And any that is used is bunker fuel oil, can’t be used in cars. Coal has LOTS of environmental impacts compared to natural gas.
Coal and oil really don’t compete anymore. Oil is used in transportation (no more steam locomotives) and as a chemical and lubricant base stock. Coal started losing its preeminance in ships starting around 1900 when Winston Churchill switched the Royal Navy over to oil. That was the start of the “Anglo-Persian Oil Company”, later BP, and now the Iranian National Oil Company. The Titanic still used coal, but today diesel and heavy oil (such as Bunker C) and nuclear (US Navy) are the major fuels. Some Navy ships are powered by gas turbines and these use a lighter oil similar to jet fuel. Many ships also have auxiliary diesel engines to power lighting, etc.
Coal is no longer competitive as a marine fuel, especially since there is so much cheap heavy oil available. Steam engines and furnaces require a lot of staff. Today’s larghe bulk and container ships have very small staffs, something as little as 12-14.
The oil and the coal lobby really are not trying to displace each other , but they try to get the best tax breaks. Neither needs subsidies. The US has the world’s largest coal reserves and most of it is inexpensive to mine, unlike Europe. It therefore stands to reason that no matter what Al Gore whines about, coal will form an important part of the US energy futue, but it may be cleaned up in some manner.
I am curious, @Docnick. Who is spending millions to tell us how dirty coal is? Who has gone to bed with the corn states to build a political coalition against “all other fuels?”
Natural gas is part of the petroleum empire it seems.
And the oil industry is determined to cut off any efforts by the coal industry to liquify coal and produce a motor fuel. At the current price of crude, coal oil would be profitable. From Texas City to Baghdad coal is a four letter word.
The oil industry is in bed with the environmentalists to gain forgiveness for past sins and to gain an ally against coal.
Rod Knox, The current administration authorized $3.4 billion for research on coal gassification. And I don’t think that the oil/natural gas industry is actively trying to sabotage the coal industry. They don’t have to.
Who is trashing coal,@jtsanders? I cannot fathom who would gain from trashing coal other than oil and natural gas, and they are tied together at the hip. When I found Rant and Rave nearly 20 years ago the technology to produce gasoline from coal was common knowledge and it amazed me that we were paying exorbitant prices for gasoline based on OPEC oil prices when coal oil from abundant domestic supplies was sitting under our feet. No one seems to be as skeptical as me. I don’t look where I am told to look, instead, I look behind the smoke screens and curtains. And coal is behind the curtains and smoke.
You are incorrect. It’s not cheap and not easy to make gasoline from coal. Lots of btu per gallon and expensive high pressure equipment. It’s been well known for 70 years, the Germans and South Africans did it, but only when they were cut off from oil supplies. This is one of those “Everybody knows how to do it so the obvious reason they’re not is that it’s too expensive” kind of thing.
And the problems with coal are also obvious and have been mentioned already.
Late to this discussion.
Docnick has made some comments that I would like to add to:
- The Western States have saturated the available hydopower sites and are in the the process of removing the smaller dams-because the cost/benefit is no longer there in light of efficiency, maintanence and environmental factors.
- The PNW dams: The Willamette River system (tributary of the lower Columbia) are peaking power dams with an co-function of water flow control. The lower Columbia dams are “run-of-the-river” and generate contiuously as the river runs. The upper Columbia/Snake are flood and water flow dams.
- Coal fired electric plants in the PNW are being phased out for Nat Gas. Berkshire-Hathaway/Midstates, doesn’t care what fuel source as long as it’s cheap and reliable, although Berkshire-Hathaway/BNSP would like to keep their unit trains moving.
- Conversion of Coal Plants (steam) to Nat Gas is fairly simple but not efficient as compaired to gas turbine. Gas Turbines can be up and running in minutes vs steam plants must be upto pressure all the time for peak efficiency.
- 10-15% of electricity generated in the PNW that is sent down to California is lost in transmission. Another 10-15% is lost in transformers. The were times the last couple of years where the PNW had too much spring runoff water power that BPA (Bonneville Power Administration) could not let WindPower unto the transmission network. But wait until late September when there isn’t enough waterpower to supply our own electric needs.
- In a few year IMO, Apple, Google, and other big cloud companies will be big energy producers for their own server farms. In Central Oregon, they have build acres of servers, which is located in PUD’s and are near to the main transmission lines. Most importantly, the weather is stupendous for solarcell farms-lots of scub land that have little water, poor soils (volcanic pumice and ash), and solid basalt either at the surface or under hundreds of feet under the ash.
Reference to
SciAm.com (they had a special issue on energy a few years ago)
http://nvs.nanoos.org/ (taxdollars at work) shows dams, power capacity, energy production from all sources. ( I want to know about Tsunami’s )
SolarCity.com which is causing some disruptive technology/energy distribution/ much like windpower , localized gas turbines.
There are nice wiki and corps-of-engineers (builder) info on each of the dams. Used to be better but some info has been removed.
Google Earth
@Longprime,very interesting-thank you,Kevin
The politics of energy is awfully convoluted, @longprime. And predicting the next super bowl winner is far simpler than guessing how our energy demands will be met. The Chinese are producing diesel fuel and a myriad of chemicals from coal currently but the need for water in their process has stalled expansion of the effort. The petroleum industry is wise to consider competing energy sources and choose whether to invest in them or fight and compete with them. The US has a lot of coal and the public burns a lot of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel produced from a “peaking” supply of easily produced crude oil that has topped out at >$140/barrel and hovers around $100 now. My understanding of the coal to gasoline process is that a significant profit could be made selling at the current market price. And profits seem to motivate people.
Agreed @RK but sometimes, some of us can make money thru wiser use of energy. BPA and it’s consortium of power utilities has figured out that they can make a profit by NOT building thernal plants. SolarCity is an power utility, (not an installer) but builds its plants piecemeal, one house-at-a-time, and can do it practically in a single day with a small crew.
Portland General Electric, shut down its Trojan Nuclear Plant after 20 years (sited inadvertantly on an undiscovered fault) because it also discovered that it really didn’t need its electricity.
A few of the Big Oil companies have stated that they are Energy companies, and not necessarily an oil company. If you can make gasoline from coal, and you are a refiner, you going to make gasoline anyway you can, the cheapest way you can be it from coal or oil or soybeans
I ran across this cost comparison
http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2010/01/26/the-price-of-energy/
It raises the question of how any fuel is more cost effective for electric generation.
@longprime Very good info. The USA is fortunate to have so many choices as sources for electric power. When coal fired plants reach the end of their natural life, many are being “re-powered”. This means the boilers are taken down and replaced with gas turbines and waste exhaust heat boilers using natural gas; called combined cycle . The rest of the plant can be re-used and this saves a great deal of time and money, since siting and permitting takes a long time for any plant.
Although the US is not officially part of any offcial international green house gas recduction programs, there is a program to reduce CO2 emissions and replacing coal with gas cuts those emission in half. We’re very lucky that gas in North America is bout $3 per million BTUs compared to the international price for LNG at $12 or so. Converting an aging coal plant to gas does not drive up power costs very much.
Building a NEW combined cycle gas plant compared to a coal plant produces cheaper power, in spite of what some posters here believe.
Rod Knox, It appeared that you were complaining about the current administration funding wind and solar but not other forms of energy production. I just wanted to point out that they seem to be funding an energy research that can produce power with less pollution than exists today.
@RodKnox The raw energy cost at the mine of coal is very low. However, building a plant that is clean as well has the much higher maintenance and operating costs that drives up the delivered power to at least as high as gas. Transporting coal by rail costs a lot more than transporting gas by pipelines.
So, if you are building a new plant, gas is now the least overall cost. This is relatively recent since gas in now less that $3 per million BTUs, If the fuel cost was the only consideration, than solar, hydro, wind power would be FREE. We all know that this is not so, and that the input cost of the fuel is only part of the total power cost.
The overall cost of running a car is about 1/3 fuel cost. An expensive and complicated car using free fuel would still be expensive to operate.
My support for the Obama administration is based on my total disgust with the direction the GOP was carrying us in recent years and although I am pleasantly surprised that the President has carried himself quite well the many hegemonys that are faced by the White House have proven to be more powerful than him. B.O. is being slammed by his own party over energy/environment, gay marriage, guns, etc, ad nauseam. It would be to our advantage to have some non partisan, long term planning to be used in deciding what course to take on energy and that ain’t happening right now.
As for the cost of shipping coal. As many as 20 trains pass through this town some days, made up of 100 +/- coal cars headed south to the Gulf of Mexico and on to who know where. It’s profitable for someone to buy it and ship it by rail and ship.
Anybody want to go back to CRT TV’s and computer monitors? Virtually free at Goodwill and the Mission thrift stores, which makes their cost/benefit attractive shortterm. but longterm costs are really bad.
The Chinese are looking hard at coal to gas/liquids, but it’s still in the planning stage. Lots of expectations, we’ll see how much actually happens. Amazing what you can do with many billions of cash reserves:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b3dff99a-b2a0-11e2-a388-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2TlLIcuPH