Next Big Future: House and Senate Climate Bills and Stimulus Bill Energy Impact
CalvinLeman
· 5 months ago
Getting energy from plants can meet the world energy demand of 14 terawatts. Nuclear energy is carbon-free, but we need to build a 1 gigawatt nuclear plant every two days for 50 years to get 14 terawatts. Photo voltaics, algae, wind, geothermal, and hydro can help, but even together they cannot reach 14 terawatts. I am collecting this information at http://votingpeoplehelpingpeople.com/Ethanol/Ce...
nextbigfuture
· 5 months ago
I will allow the on topic link. Should look at energy in terms of billions of kwh or by Quad BTU.
conversion factor of 10,000 btus=1 kwhr this 97.35 quads is equivalent to 9.735 trillion kwhrs/yr of electricity. In the chart we know that the USA uses 4200 billion kwhrs/yr for electricity and going to about 5100 billion kwhrs. The US generated 800 billion kwhrs/yr from commercial Nuclear power plants. this does not include the nuclear power generated by nuclear plants in submarines and air craft carriers. About 8.4 quad BTU from commercial nuclear.
Total world power usage now is about 440 Quad BTU.
New power plants are 1.2-1.6 GW. And China is increasing the size of the AP1000 Westinghouse unit (How much delay for the US to buy the larger units). Long term should be looking at either conventional plant sizes of 1.5-2 GW or look at modular factory mass produced units of 30-400 MW. Certain plants can use the waste heat for other industrial purposes. So 80 of the larger new plants for 10 Quads of electricity. So 2900 conventional plants to generate all of the power not currently generated by wind, hydro or nuclear. So 16 years producing one plant very two days to generate 380 Quad BTU.
the peak world production of nuclear plants was 24 completions in the mid-80s.
US GDP has doubled since the early 70s. the US could get back to 10 completions per year by 2020 and then to 30 completions per year by 2030. China is on track to 10-20 completions per year by 2020 and 40 completions per year by 2030 is possible for china. Similarly India, Russia and Brazil, Japan and S Korea can also complete a lot of nuclear reactors.
40 global completions per year by 2020 of conventional commercial reactors is possible (4 quad/year not up to full size yet) 120 global completion per year by 2030 (14 quad/year of the 1.5+ GW large units) [5 times more than the peak build in the mid-80s]
Double that or more with mass production of factory mass produced smaller units. Which should be deep burn reactors in the 2020+ timeframe.
I expect the US and western Europe to not build their share of nuclear power. Some will be built but it will China, India, Russia and other parts of Asia and Eastern Europe that build most of the nuclear reactors.
by 2020, I expect from the figures that I see that China will add 80-100GW of nuclear power (6-8 quad) the rest of the world will make about the same. by 2030, I expect that China will add 300-400 Gw of nuclear power (this is higher than currently stated plans of about 170GW added in the 2020-2030 timeframe) but I am expecting the factory produced modular units to work out by then and for the targets to be raised. (24-32 quad) Double or triple that figure for what the rest of world builds.
Plus there should be super-uprating of existing style reactors with annual fuel. 50% power boost. starting 2020-2025.
150-200 quad from nuclear by 2030 is very feasible and likely.
joelupchurch
· 5 months ago
I agree China is in the forefront of nuclear plant construction. I suspect they have plans to convert existing coal plants to nuclear once they work out the bugs in their PBMR design. By 2040, they might be giving us a hard time about our CO2 output.
It must be a huge advantage to not have GreenPeace or the NRC.
robot_makes_music
· 5 months ago
Nuclear energy is carbon free and radioactive-waste heavy. Next!
Ethanol is not the answer. Power from explosions is terribly inefficient.
This stimulus bill will probably not help - notice only one graph has any significant deviation from the norm, assuming the debt from this stimulus doesn't offset any gains we might make. Energy companies are all multinational, and when the going gets tough here they'll just fire everyone and offshore everything.
Notice also there's provisions for PHEV tax-credits... but not a damn word about pure EVs? No wonder the electric car will never be viable - we're working as hard as effing possible to keep combustion (and endless trips to the gas station, propping up the fading oil industry) as our primary mover in our society.
Combustion was great when we didn't have anything else, but for science sake, we had electric cars in 1907! Sure, they had terrible range, but if we had invested in them instead of just going for the cheap solution (oil)... where might we be now?
korvin
· 5 months ago
I will mention that they deliberately stoped projection the affect of the Tax and Kill bill before its real cost impact comes into play. 2035 is the drop dead timeline on the 85% reduction and the deliberately stoped before geting near the real reduction requirements and its longer term affects after that.
GoatGuy
· 5 months ago
Uh... there is a lot of "muffin-head" facts here, folks. Be careful.
(1) NBFuture (comment 2): there are 3600 BTU per kWh. I'm not quibbling, but being off by about a factor of 3 makes a difference (and somewhat worse).
(2) Most of the projections are linear-exponential, which the US alone has proven false. It was estimated in late 1960's by today we'd be using 2.5x the power-per-capita that we currently are. We've become way more efficient in a lot of areas. This trend, if anything, will accelerate as the economics of power goes from cheap to expensive. (Proof: $10/gallon gas in Iberian peninsular Europe for 25+ years put millions of barely-tin-can, 2 and 3 cylinder, 50+ MPG cars on the road. Ugly, rattletraps, cheap, efficient.)
(3) Lumping all the gigaquads together ... is just silly. Nice in principle, but misses the point. We presently ARE making enough electricity - even in challenged states like California - and the number of new plants going online is keeping up with demand. In deed, it is a kind of "boring" industry. Employs a lot of people though.
(4) Changing our electrical use patterns from somewhat to decidedly diurnal (i.e. "a whole lot when the sun shines, and very little at night") allows the true "energy winner" - energies from solar - to make the biggest, cheapest and most realistic impact. As others above have writ, ain't it a pity that there aren't fully-electric cars, infrastructure to quick-charge them, and a power distribution matrix to support it all? Well, there is to a degree. Let's just build as much solar (PV OK, thermal OK, whatever), get entirely over the "storage problem" - because it is no further away than "the grid" and using a whole lot more during the daytime. Including charging up the 100 million car fleet of real electric vehicles.
(4a) E-cars, in short, require about 1/3 kWh per mile. If 300 miles are driven per average car per week (commuters) ... then that's 100 kWh/week, or 15 kWh/day, or 2 kW/hr for an average 8 hour 'max-charge' day cycle. Per car, times 20,000,000 cars (Calif) ... is about 40 GW sustained peak over the 8 hours. That's pretty nominal ... at 20% conversion (solar-thermal, desert, 1000 W/sq. meter insolation), 200 GW solar = 200 sq. kilometers, 40x40 on a side. Its pretty damned cheap to build mirrors.
(4b) Photovoltaic isnt' much different. 20% (projected by 2012) conversion, with no necessity to really precisely focus gazillions of mirrors. Same area. Works pretty well in partially cloudy weather, high overcast. Hates dust. So do mirrors. Robotic solar powered "dusters" would be the trick. Size of small rabbits. Furry. "walk about" the cells in organized patterns, undusting them daily. Hydrophobic like ducks ... handles rain. Magnetic actuated suction feet ... handles wind. Lots of alternatives. "long pole sweeps" like old fashioned men's rotary shoe-shine devices ... but with 10 foot long fuzzymuffs. Only needs to go 1 RPM, as inexorable repassing over cells does the cleaning.
(5) The energy needs of the world ... should be an "industry claimed as vitally important to the sovereignty of the nation-state". Each country SHOULD be responsible for most of its solar infrastructure. Yes, profit potential for The Big States sucketh... but that's OK. Nuclear was SUPPOSED to be cheap-as-dirt, but Big Industry (plus Big Gub'mint) forces turned it into a bare break-even against fossil. All "big" energy projects become prey to governments, and them to industries, that mean to extract an endless river of mortgage from their expensive product's installation. This is the case where truely "lots and lots and lots" of competitors is the best answer.
Efficiency for fossil fuel and nuclear sources. At 100% efficiency, the conversion from heat to electricity is at a rate of 3412 Btu per kWh. Actual generation efficiencies, limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and design practicalities, fall short of this. More specifically, for U.S. power plants during recent years the average heat input per kWh of net generation was in the neighborhood of 10,300 Btu/kWh for fossil-fuel steam plants and of 10,700 Btu/kWh for nuclear plants, corresponding to thermal conversion efficiencies of 33% and 32%, respectively (3). [It is expected that future plants, especially those based on gas turbine systems, often will have higher efficiencies, in some cases exceeding 50%.]
Energy equivalent for non-fossil fuel sources. To facilitate comparisons between different energy sources, a conversion factor is assigned to non-fossil fuel sources which relates electricity generated to a nominal primary energy. For nuclear energy, this is done on the basis of the heat content of the steam produced (3). A similar approach can be used for geothermal plants.
For the various renewable energy sources, the primary energy cannot be readily established and often is irrelevant. Instead, a "primary energy" is assigned by adopting a standard conversion factor---equivalent to adopting a nominal efficiency, where 100% efficiency corresponds to 3412 Btu per kWh. In DOE/EIA publications, the nominal efficiency for renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, biomass, wind, photovoltaic, and solar thermal) is taken to be the same as the efficiency of fossil-fuel steam electric plants, namely 33.2% (3). [More precisely, the conversion factor is set at 10,272 Btu/kWh.] In OECD/IEA publications, on the other hand, the efficiency is taken to be 100% for hydroelectric, wind, and direct solar sources; for geothermal sources it is taken to be 10% (4). Thus, compared to DOE/EIA publications, the OECD/IEA publications underestimate the primary energy consumed for hydroelectric power and overestimate the primary energy consumed for geothermal power. [The DOE/EIA and OECD/IEA assumptions are summarized in Table 1.]
Gigawatt-year (GWyr). Large individual plants have capacities in the neighborhood of 1 GW of electrical output (GWe). This makes the gigawatt-year (GWyr) a natural unit to use in discussions of total electricity production. By definition:
1 GWyr = 8.76 x 109 kWh.
It is to be noted that a 1 GWe plant does not normally generate 1 GWyr of electricity per year. The ratio of the actual electricity generated to the amount which would be generated were the plant to operate at full capacity for one year is the capacity factor. Typical coal and nuclear plants operate at capacity factors between about 60% and 80%.
For a plant with a conversion efficiency of 33%, an electrical output of 1 GWyr (3.15 x 1016 J) corresponds to a thermal output of 9.5 x 1016 J, or 0.090 quad. Thus, typically, the relation between primary energy used and electricity produced is approximately:
1 quad ---> 11 GWyr.
DOE/EIA publications use the 10,272 BTU to 1KWh conversion
The EIA energy numbers quoted for the USA are about 100 quadBTU. Of which about 8.2 quad is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is about 800 billion kwh. So converting US governments quad BTU numbers to kwh use the 10,227 BTU to kwh conversion as mentioned. The US uses about 4000 billion kwh of electricity. 40% of total quad BTU for electricity, the rest for transportation and other non-electric.
All Comments
Should look at energy in terms of billions of kwh or by Quad BTU.
conversion factor of 10,000 btus=1 kwhr this 97.35 quads is equivalent to 9.735 trillion kwhrs/yr of electricity.
In the chart we know that the USA uses 4200 billion kwhrs/yr for electricity and going to about 5100 billion kwhrs.
The US generated 800 billion kwhrs/yr from commercial Nuclear power plants. this does not include the nuclear power generated by
nuclear plants in submarines and air craft carriers. About 8.4 quad BTU from commercial nuclear.
Total world power usage now is about 440 Quad BTU.
New power plants are 1.2-1.6 GW. And China is increasing the size of the AP1000 Westinghouse unit (How much delay for the US to buy the larger units). Long term should be looking at either conventional plant sizes of 1.5-2 GW or look at modular factory mass produced units of 30-400 MW. Certain plants can use the waste heat for other industrial purposes. So 80 of the larger new plants for 10 Quads of electricity. So 2900 conventional plants to generate all of the power not currently generated by wind, hydro or nuclear. So 16 years producing one plant very two days to generate 380 Quad BTU.
the peak world production of nuclear plants was 24 completions in the mid-80s.
In the US alone 12 nuclear plants were completed in 1974, 10 in 1973, 8 in 1972.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/07/constructing-l...
US GDP has doubled since the early 70s. the US could get back to 10 completions per year by 2020 and then to 30 completions per year by 2030. China is on track to 10-20 completions per year by 2020 and 40 completions per year by 2030 is possible for china. Similarly India, Russia and Brazil, Japan and S Korea can also complete a lot of nuclear reactors.
40 global completions per year by 2020 of conventional commercial reactors is possible (4 quad/year not up to full size yet)
120 global completion per year by 2030 (14 quad/year of the 1.5+ GW large units) [5 times more than the peak build in the mid-80s]
Double that or more with mass production of factory mass produced smaller units. Which should be deep burn reactors in the 2020+ timeframe.
I expect the US and western Europe to not build their share of nuclear power. Some will be built but it will China, India, Russia and other parts of Asia and Eastern Europe that build most of the nuclear reactors.
by 2020, I expect from the figures that I see that China will add 80-100GW of nuclear power (6-8 quad)
the rest of the world will make about the same.
by 2030, I expect that China will add 300-400 Gw of nuclear power (this is higher than currently stated plans of about 170GW added in the 2020-2030 timeframe) but I am expecting the factory produced modular units to work out by then and for the targets to be raised. (24-32 quad)
Double or triple that figure for what the rest of world builds.
Plus there should be super-uprating of existing style reactors with annual fuel. 50% power boost. starting 2020-2025.
150-200 quad from nuclear by 2030 is very feasible and likely.
It must be a huge advantage to not have GreenPeace or the NRC.
Ethanol is not the answer. Power from explosions is terribly inefficient.
This stimulus bill will probably not help - notice only one graph has any significant deviation from the norm, assuming the debt from this stimulus doesn't offset any gains we might make. Energy companies are all multinational, and when the going gets tough here they'll just fire everyone and offshore everything.
Notice also there's provisions for PHEV tax-credits... but not a damn word about pure EVs? No wonder the electric car will never be viable - we're working as hard as effing possible to keep combustion (and endless trips to the gas station, propping up the fading oil industry) as our primary mover in our society.
Combustion was great when we didn't have anything else, but for science sake, we had electric cars in 1907! Sure, they had terrible range, but if we had invested in them instead of just going for the cheap solution (oil)... where might we be now?
(1) NBFuture (comment 2): there are 3600 BTU per kWh. I'm not quibbling, but being off by about a factor of 3 makes a difference (and somewhat worse).
(2) Most of the projections are linear-exponential, which the US alone has proven false. It was estimated in late 1960's by today we'd be using 2.5x the power-per-capita that we currently are. We've become way more efficient in a lot of areas. This trend, if anything, will accelerate as the economics of power goes from cheap to expensive. (Proof: $10/gallon gas in Iberian peninsular Europe for 25+ years put millions of barely-tin-can, 2 and 3 cylinder, 50+ MPG cars on the road. Ugly, rattletraps, cheap, efficient.)
(3) Lumping all the gigaquads together ... is just silly. Nice in principle, but misses the point. We presently ARE making enough electricity - even in challenged states like California - and the number of new plants going online is keeping up with demand. In deed, it is a kind of "boring" industry. Employs a lot of people though.
(4) Changing our electrical use patterns from somewhat to decidedly diurnal (i.e. "a whole lot when the sun shines, and very little at night") allows the true "energy winner" - energies from solar - to make the biggest, cheapest and most realistic impact. As others above have writ, ain't it a pity that there aren't fully-electric cars, infrastructure to quick-charge them, and a power distribution matrix to support it all? Well, there is to a degree. Let's just build as much solar (PV OK, thermal OK, whatever), get entirely over the "storage problem" - because it is no further away than "the grid" and using a whole lot more during the daytime. Including charging up the 100 million car fleet of real electric vehicles.
(4a) E-cars, in short, require about 1/3 kWh per mile. If 300 miles are driven per average car per week (commuters) ... then that's 100 kWh/week, or 15 kWh/day, or 2 kW/hr for an average 8 hour 'max-charge' day cycle. Per car, times 20,000,000 cars (Calif) ... is about 40 GW sustained peak over the 8 hours. That's pretty nominal ... at 20% conversion (solar-thermal, desert, 1000 W/sq. meter insolation), 200 GW solar = 200 sq. kilometers, 40x40 on a side. Its pretty damned cheap to build mirrors.
(4b) Photovoltaic isnt' much different. 20% (projected by 2012) conversion, with no necessity to really precisely focus gazillions of mirrors. Same area. Works pretty well in partially cloudy weather, high overcast. Hates dust. So do mirrors. Robotic solar powered "dusters" would be the trick. Size of small rabbits. Furry. "walk about" the cells in organized patterns, undusting them daily. Hydrophobic like ducks ... handles rain. Magnetic actuated suction feet ... handles wind. Lots of alternatives. "long pole sweeps" like old fashioned men's rotary shoe-shine devices ... but with 10 foot long fuzzymuffs. Only needs to go 1 RPM, as inexorable repassing over cells does the cleaning.
(5) The energy needs of the world ... should be an "industry claimed as vitally important to the sovereignty of the nation-state". Each country SHOULD be responsible for most of its solar infrastructure. Yes, profit potential for The Big States sucketh... but that's OK. Nuclear was SUPPOSED to be cheap-as-dirt, but Big Industry (plus Big Gub'mint) forces turned it into a bare break-even against fossil. All "big" energy projects become prey to governments, and them to industries, that mean to extract an endless river of mortgage from their expensive product's installation. This is the case where truely "lots and lots and lots" of competitors is the best answer.
GoatGuy
Efficiency for fossil fuel and nuclear sources. At 100% efficiency, the conversion from heat to electricity is at a rate of 3412 Btu per kWh. Actual generation efficiencies, limited by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and design practicalities, fall short of this. More specifically, for U.S. power plants during recent years the average heat input per kWh of net generation was in the neighborhood of 10,300 Btu/kWh for fossil-fuel steam plants and of 10,700 Btu/kWh for nuclear plants, corresponding to thermal conversion efficiencies of 33% and 32%, respectively (3). [It is expected that future plants, especially those based on gas turbine systems, often will have higher efficiencies, in some cases exceeding 50%.]
Energy equivalent for non-fossil fuel sources. To facilitate comparisons between different energy sources, a conversion factor is assigned to non-fossil fuel sources which relates electricity generated to a nominal primary energy. For nuclear energy, this is done on the basis of the heat content of the steam produced (3). A similar approach can be used for geothermal plants.
For the various renewable energy sources, the primary energy cannot be readily established and often is irrelevant. Instead, a "primary energy" is assigned by adopting a standard conversion factor---equivalent to adopting a nominal efficiency, where 100% efficiency corresponds to 3412 Btu per kWh. In DOE/EIA publications, the nominal efficiency for renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, biomass, wind, photovoltaic, and solar thermal) is taken to be the same as the efficiency of fossil-fuel steam electric plants, namely 33.2% (3). [More precisely, the conversion factor is set at 10,272 Btu/kWh.] In OECD/IEA publications, on the other hand, the efficiency is taken to be 100% for hydroelectric, wind, and direct solar sources; for geothermal sources it is taken to be 10% (4). Thus, compared to DOE/EIA publications, the OECD/IEA publications underestimate the primary energy consumed for hydroelectric power and overestimate the primary energy consumed for geothermal power. [The DOE/EIA and OECD/IEA assumptions are summarized in Table 1.]
Gigawatt-year (GWyr). Large individual plants have capacities in the neighborhood of 1 GW of electrical output (GWe). This makes the gigawatt-year (GWyr) a natural unit to use in discussions of total electricity production. By definition:
1 GWyr = 8.76 x 109 kWh.
It is to be noted that a 1 GWe plant does not normally generate 1 GWyr of electricity per year. The ratio of the actual electricity generated to the amount which would be generated were the plant to operate at full capacity for one year is the capacity factor. Typical coal and nuclear plants operate at capacity factors between about 60% and 80%.
For a plant with a conversion efficiency of 33%, an electrical output of 1 GWyr (3.15 x 1016 J) corresponds to a thermal output of 9.5 x 1016 J, or 0.090 quad. Thus, typically, the relation between primary energy used and electricity produced is approximately:
1 quad ---> 11 GWyr.
DOE/EIA publications use the 10,272 BTU to 1KWh conversion
The EIA energy numbers quoted for the USA are about 100 quadBTU. Of which about 8.2 quad is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is about 800 billion kwh. So converting US governments quad BTU numbers to kwh use the 10,227 BTU to kwh conversion as mentioned. The US uses about 4000 billion kwh of electricity. 40% of total quad BTU for electricity, the rest for transportation and other non-electric.