Slashdot Mirror

How much would it cost to replace America's current infrastructure with the exact same stuff?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal plant costs between $2,934 and $6,599 per KW to build, while onshore wind costs $2,213 per kW to build. Even if you had to build three of them for each coal plant, the wind turbines are getting very close to the capital cost of coal plants that come with any carbon capture and storage system (CCS). Additionally, coal plant costs increasing and wind power costs decreased over the last 4 years.

Now if you can position the wind turbine in a location where it generates more than a third of the nominal capacity, the wind turbines start winning. If they were generating at 100% of the rated capacity they'd beat even the cheapest coal plant before you account for operations and maintenance and fuel costs.

For everyone in the western US that is paying $0.10/KWh or less, there are 5 people in California or the Northeast paying $0.18/KWh or more. Or Alaska and Hawaii that are paying $0.20/KWh and up. Real Data rather than numbers pulled from ass.

Yes, on average, it looks like energy production is quite cheap. But, there are people getting squeezed pretty hard if you look a bit deeper, and it's usually the people that can't afford the additional pressure.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

Net imports accounted for 40% of the petroleum consumed in the United States, the lowest annual average since 1991.

The top five source countries of U.S. petroleum imports in 2012 were Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia.

Okay I stand corrected, thanks for the info -

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe...

  here is a breakdown by country. for example all of opec countries give us 3.700 TBPD canada alone gives us 3.100 TBPD (there is no US so im unaware of our own internal production that we keep vs exporting)

  All imports are 9.700 TBPD and 2/3rds of that is non opec (makes you wonder why open dictates the price of oil here as much as it does)

  TBPD = thousand barrels per day

Yep, thanks but none of which answers the question of how much of what is consumed in the US is produced in the US. If the US were a mass exporter of petroleum products you would think that you wouldn't need to import at all and would, indeed, be independent of OPEC - which is obviously not at all the case.

Since we don't have the actual data, it seems more likely that the US does not, in fact, produce most of what it consumes based on US reliance of external oil sources.

... As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

The chart you link to of CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2013 shows that they have risen 10% over that time. The only years in which they fell were during the economic recession. Since that was caused by Reagan/Bush deregulation policies is that what you are suggesting to combat climate change?

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe...

here is a breakdown by country. for example all of opec countries give us 3.700 TBPD canada alone gives us 3.100 TBPD (there is no US so im unaware of our own internal production that we keep vs exporting)

All imports are 9.700 TBPD and 2/3rds of that is non opec (makes you wonder why open dictates the price of oil here as much as it does)

TBPD = thousand barrels per day

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...
Net imports accounted for 40% of the petroleum consumed in the United States, the lowest annual average since 1991.
The top five source countries of U.S. petroleum imports in 2012 were Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia.

(Did you know ~30% of San Francisco's air pollution was emitted in China?)

Well... 25% of US coal exports goes to Asia.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

U.S. coal exports have made steady inroads into the Asian market since 2007. Almost all the U.S. coal exported to Asia went to the world's top four coal importers: China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Asia's share of total U.S. coal exports increased from 2% in 2007 to 25% in 2012. While U.S. coal has also been gaining market share in Asia, it provided less than 4% of Asia's coal imports in 2012, and less than 1% of total coal consumed by the four large Asian importers.

And as natural gas pushes out coal in the US, that only means even more coal gets to be exported to Asia.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Hey, look at it this way.
USA gets cheap labor and ONLY a tiny fraction of pollution from its own coal.
Meanwhile, China pays USA for coal, keeps nearly all of the pollution from said coal, and exports cheap labor to USA.

USA gets cleaner air, cheap products and profit - while China gets cheap energy, much lesser profit and air and other pollution.
It's a win-win.
Mostly for USA, but it's a win-win.

http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

Average U.S. Electricity Bill. $107/mo (2012).

I suspect most people who have things like refrigerators, ovens, electric lights might object to seeing their electric bills go up 300 bucks a month.

That doesn't really say what it says.. Well, it does but it is wrong.

You see, it starts off in 1990. Germany was divided into 2 separate countries at that time. According to the EIA, ****IF the right selections do not appear, it is simple to make the selections on their tool and see the values by changing the dates and selecting the countries.

Anyways, in 1988, east and west Germany combined to a total of 1009.618 million metric tons of Co2 emissions from energy use, in 1989, that went to 988.247 million metric tons. In 1990, it went to 981.634 where in 1991, it went to 928.950 million metric tons. That's almost a 81 million metric ton drop from combining east and west Germany into one state unit. In contrast, from 1991 until 2012, a little less then double that has been reduced or 141 million metric tons- give or take. So it took 3 years to drop half of what it took 21 years to reduce (while only 8 of those years being after the first Kyoto treaty in 1997 that went in effect in 2015) when East and West Germany became simply Germany.

What am I trying to say with all this? Well let me get to the point. When Germany was two separate states, either records were flawed, estimated and inaccurate because they were absent, or purposely manipulated (espionage, cold war and such) that inflated numbers were recorded until the two countries combined. And while you would think that the numbers would rise as East Germans began having the abilities to upgrade their lifestyles and do more once the two countries became one again, but they fell even more- before the Kyoto protocol even was signed. Some of this may be shuttering inefficient generation plants that more efficient ones could make up for once the two countries power grids were connected, but the numbers in the early to mid 1990s were likely too high to match reality.

The federal excise tax alone is $0.184 per gallon source. You forgot state taxes. Also, there are plenty of countries with much higher gas prices. It was $6 a (US) gallon a while back, and is now back down to about $5.50. People adapt - they buy more fuel-efficient cars (good for auto sales), plan their trips better and drive a bit less, take public transit, and carpool (all good for the environment AND the wallet).

And before everyone whines "they don't have public transit here" - of course not, not with artificially low gas prices. Double them, and you'll certainly create the demand.

Anyone with solar power and is also hooked up to their power grid can and does sell any surplus to their local power company.

Your little story is off-topic.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

I sincerely hope that the fusion plants can be built here.

Congratulations on achieving ~22% nuclear electricity in July 2014.

My state of no-nuke Oklahoma is powered by natural gas and coal (which arrives by train), considers itself a nexus of wind power but after decades of investment, hundreds of turbines and probably much more money spent --- net generation of mostly-wind ~809GWh for July is still less than the ~855GWh that would have been generated that month by the single two-reactor Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant. That is... if it had not been the only nuclear plant in the United States cancelled after construction began, in 1982.

Oklahoma sits on the border of the three North American grid interconnects. I have been trying to convince the powers that be and Halliburton Corporate to embrace molten salt research, to no avail so far.

I sincerely hope that the fusion plants can be built here.

Congratulations on achieving ~22% nuclear electricity in July 2014.

My state of no-nuke Oklahoma is powered by natural gas and coal (which arrives by train), considers itself a nexus of wind power but after decades of investment, hundreds of turbines and probably much more money spent --- net generation of mostly-wind ~809GWh for July is still less than the ~855GWh that would have been generated that month by the single two-reactor Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant. That is... if it had not been the only nuclear plant in the United States cancelled after construction began, in 1982.

Oklahoma sits on the border of the three North American grid interconnects. I have been trying to convince the powers that be and Halliburton Corporate to embrace molten salt research, to no avail so far.

In 2012 the US used 360 million gallons per day.
http://www.nacsonline.com/Your...
(360 million gal gas) x (33.4KWh) = about 12,000 GWh = 500 Gigawatts averaged over 24 hours.

Lets assume 25% of the vehicles convert to electric only, and they are 4x as efficient (your 25 mpg versus 100 mpge), thats 31 gigawatts

For comparison, the current US electric power production capacity is around 1100 Gigawatts with current average consumption around 500 Gigawatts. Realistically, you never have more than 80% of capacity online, and that last 10% is expensive gas turbines versus cheap coal.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

So after some significant hand waiving, and napkin doodling - I estimate that converting 25% of the cars to electric only will consume somewhere around 10% of the excess generation capacity in the US.

Lacking that, I'm just going to assume that your are making stuff up. The "logic" of "Fracking has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions" seems to be lacking. How could the conclusion follow from the premise?

For the same amount of energy, natural gas results in about half the CO2 emissions compared to coal (the two major fossil fuel sources for electricity in the US).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Shale gas production has increased greatly in the US and led to an overall strong increase in the use of gas for energy production, substituting more carbon-intensive sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

The "logic" of "Fracking has been responsible for a big decline in US greenhouse gas emissions" seems to be lacking.

The logic is that plummeting natural gas prices have undercut the demand for coal, which was even worse. This resulted in an overall reduction in US CO2 emissions.

If the amount of money made from the actual electricity falls too far then the cost will be transferred to a network connection costs.

It doesn't really matter how the accounting is done, utilities are going to have to charge more for power as they sell less of it, because their fixed costs are such a large proportion of their total costs. Fixed costs account for anywhere from 75 to 100% of plant costs: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/c... (the data in table 1 appear to mean "fuel cost" when they say "variable cost").

The utilities model is based on the notion that you can recover your capital costs (and more) over the lifetime of the plant. The rapid rise of solar in particular is putting that at risk, and utilities are caught between a rock and a hard place. They can fight by keeping power costs low, and lose, or they can fight by raising their power costs--however they want to do the accounting--and also lose.

Personally, I hope they raise the costs. It will make low-carbon alternatives like wind and solar more attractive.

If you're talking about CFLs and LEDs using so much less power that the power company has to jack up rates, that seems very unlikely to me. Since residential and commercial lighting is about 12% of total US electrical usage, reducing that to zero will still leave electricity consumption at 88% of what it was. Moreover, a lot of cost of your electricity is the cost of generators and maybe fuel. So, I'd expect switching to more efficient lights to not lead to any significant raise in rates.

The SA price is about 0.40 USD per kW/h (including taxes). That is a conservative number from the cheapest providers. It only goes up from there.

http://www.energymadeeasy.gov....

Compare that to the USA

http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

They average about 0.13 USD per kW/h.

Let's look at the data.

Peak residential cost for Natural Gas is over $20/MMBTU - 5 times higher than you quoted.
Solar is a hedge against instability.

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

From TFA:

Saudi Arabia has announced it is on track to start work on its first major solar farm early next year. ...
He added the project was on track to begin feeding electricity into the grid by 2015 and will mark the first step on the government's path towards delivering 41GW of solar capacity by 2032, through a combination of solar PV and solar thermal technologies.

And they are planing to be producing 120 GW by 2020 - of which only those 41GW will be solar. By 2032. 17GW will be nuclear.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...

UAE as of 2011 was producing 26.1 GW of electricity.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...
With plans for 28.8 megawatts (MW) wind farm and a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with 100 MW capacity.
While building at least 4 nuclear reactors, first two 1.4 GW ones planned to come on-line in 2017.

Neither country cares much about renewable sources because 1) oil and gas and 2) they are investing in nuclear.

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

From TFA:

Saudi Arabia has announced it is on track to start work on its first major solar farm early next year. ...
He added the project was on track to begin feeding electricity into the grid by 2015 and will mark the first step on the government's path towards delivering 41GW of solar capacity by 2032, through a combination of solar PV and solar thermal technologies.

And they are planing to be producing 120 GW by 2020 - of which only those 41GW will be solar. By 2032. 17GW will be nuclear.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...

UAE as of 2011 was producing 26.1 GW of electricity.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/c...
With plans for 28.8 megawatts (MW) wind farm and a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with 100 MW capacity.
While building at least 4 nuclear reactors, first two 1.4 GW ones planned to come on-line in 2017.

Neither country cares much about renewable sources because 1) oil and gas and 2) they are investing in nuclear.

So I did some research, natural gas is 26% of total energy production but the methane leaked through use is roughly 10% of total greenhouse gas emissions, so replacing all coal and petroleum with methane would only result in an ~70% reduction in total greenhouse gas effects, using propane from carbon neutral sources would be closer to 98%.

Why do I get this funny feeling that the "178 TWh/year" figure is from the rated capacity factors and not the actual production?
Because you are an idiot? But for all idiots the old saying is true: google.com is your friend.

I must be one of the idiots because I cannot find your 178 TWh/yr production either.
However, I can get close to that. Looking here:
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...
I see this:
"The first half of 2014 was marked by mild temperatures and high electricity production from wind and
solar energy. Solar power plants have increased their production compared to the first half of 2013 by
28%, while wind power grew about 19%. In June solar systems have produced twice as much electricity
as wind turbines. In the first half of the year solar and wind power plants together produced more than
45 TWh or approximately 17% of the net electricity generation. The renewable energy sources solar,
wind, hydro and biomass produced a total of about 81 TWh and accounted for approximately 31% of
the net electricity production. The renewable share of the gross electricity production including the
industrial power plants is approx. 28%."

That's the first half of 2014, so twice that is 162 TWh.

However, tis statement of yours is wrong "Germany can now meet demand without any nuclear and without additional gas imports."
They can't do that this year or the next.

By way of comparision, in the USA during 2013, we produced 522 TWh with renewables
http://www.eia.gov/electricity...

ooo, look, I included links for my assertions instead of just pulling numbers out of my hat.

So again, we ask: where did you get your number of 178 TWh?

In 2013, the United States consumed a total of 6.89 billion barrels of petroleum products, an average of 18.89 million barrels per day. A barrel is 42 gallons, so, 289 billion gallons.

That's 28,000 birds for this current, small, solar installation: 0.4GWh, when the US uses tends of thousands of GWh.

Please don't mix units or make up numbers. A GWh is different from a GW.

This installation has a peak capacity of about 400MW. Total installed peak capacity
in the US (Total net summer capacity) is just a bit over 1000GW.

Interesting note: the growth in capacity over the years shown in this graph is made up nearly
exclusively by renewables and gas, both contributing about half. I hate stacked bar graphs for
obscuring such things, but there's a "download data" option in the top right corner of the graph
so you can look at the raw numbers (they're also in the page source, as a JSON object).

Given that I used Model S batteries, 'greater range vehicles' would account for it rather easily.

Recreating my work:
60 kwh (Smaller Model S battery)
29.7 kwh/day from 10,837 kwh/year

If you assume a 60 kwh battery will be retired to grid storage when it hits 70%, then recycled when it reaches ~40%, then assuming 50% average life remaining gives you ~30kwh to cover that ~29.7 kwh.

actual figures can vary wildly, of course. It might be 'worth it' to keep the pack even when it's only at 20% capacity. You might replace them when they reach 80%. But I figure that 30% degradation during EV use would be about the same time period as 30% degradation during fixed use, making battery durability not a significant factor so long as you're not losing batteries completely to failures too often.

Given the average of 2.28 vehicles per household..., you have enough for 1 day of homes if half of vehicles are electric, if 2 are(leaving ~12% of vehicles as something else) that should be enough to cover the commercial side as well, given that 37% of current electricity production is used by households, 34% commercial, 26% industrial. Some would be made up by batteries from pure commercial vehicles that don't belong to any household. Of course, if 88% of vehicles are electric that would significantly change electricity usage - my estimate was that the 2.28 vehicles would increase the average use of electricity by 50% going by averages for vehicles per household, miles driven per vehicle, miles per kwh, etc...

But I figure step 1 of any storage scheme would be to not charge EVs during a power shortage...

One note that I'm sure you'll love is that in a scenario where most of this electricity is generated with solar panels you'd logically want to charge all these EVs during the day as well. Would make for an interesting mechanic if it became a 'standard' benefit to provide charge for your employee's cars. I'm picturing solar car ports and shades...

Given that I used Model S batteries, 'greater range vehicles' would account for it rather easily.

Recreating my work:
60 kwh (Smaller Model S battery)
29.7 kwh/day from 10,837 kwh/year

If you assume a 60 kwh battery will be retired to grid storage when it hits 70%, then recycled when it reaches ~40%, then assuming 50% average life remaining gives you ~30kwh to cover that ~29.7 kwh.

actual figures can vary wildly, of course. It might be 'worth it' to keep the pack even when it's only at 20% capacity. You might replace them when they reach 80%. But I figure that 30% degradation during EV use would be about the same time period as 30% degradation during fixed use, making battery durability not a significant factor so long as you're not losing batteries completely to failures too often.

Given the average of 2.28 vehicles per household..., you have enough for 1 day of homes if half of vehicles are electric, if 2 are(leaving ~12% of vehicles as something else) that should be enough to cover the commercial side as well, given that 37% of current electricity production is used by households, 34% commercial, 26% industrial. Some would be made up by batteries from pure commercial vehicles that don't belong to any household. Of course, if 88% of vehicles are electric that would significantly change electricity usage - my estimate was that the 2.28 vehicles would increase the average use of electricity by 50% going by averages for vehicles per household, miles driven per vehicle, miles per kwh, etc...

But I figure step 1 of any storage scheme would be to not charge EVs during a power shortage...

One note that I'm sure you'll love is that in a scenario where most of this electricity is generated with solar panels you'd logically want to charge all these EVs during the day as well. Would make for an interesting mechanic if it became a 'standard' benefit to provide charge for your employee's cars. I'm picturing solar car ports and shades...

A single home isn't a very good proxy for a regional or even national scale grid.

With your house example, the only options are solar and generator. In reality you would have more than these two options. For example, add wind to the mix. You can argue that it's not 100% but it will cover a lot of run time at night, saving you battery capacity and reducing the required over-sizing of your PV system. Perhaps instead of 400% oversizing on PV, you only need 200% PV+Wind oversize.

Now add in something else... biogas perhaps. That covers you a little bit more and you can again reduce your oversizing.

Now add geothermal, hydro, solar-thermal (which works at night), and you start to easily fill in the gaps.

The US had 1,153 billion watts of generating capacity as of 2011 (Nameplate ratings, spreadsheet) and used ~3,797 billion kilowatthours that year. Naively we can say that if all our powerplants ran at 100% nameplate capacity, we could generate an entire year's worth of electrical energy in just about 3300 hours, or about 4 months... giving us a roughly 300% oversize on our electrical generating capacity *now*.

The key, of course, is that none of those plants are operating 24/7/365, and rarely are any of them operating at peak capacity.
=Smidge=

"Located at the geographic center of North America, North Dakota has a continental climate characterized by large temperature variations, irregular precipitation, plentiful sunshine, low humidity, and nearly continuous wind. Serious flooding caused by heavy rainfall occurs occasionally." http://www.eia.gov/state/analy...

Not ideal for nuclear power with the flooding risk.

I hope my math is correct: Taking numbers from wikipedia, considering only units 2 and 3: both were in operation for a bit more than 29 years and were producing about 1 GW at full power. Ignoring any production time lost for maintenance (my guess is they would run with a duty cycle of 80-90%), the total amount of produced kWh would be: 29 years * 365 days/year * 24 hours/day * 2 GW = 5e14 Wh = 5e11 kWh. The price for the decommissioning would thus come down to around 4.4e9 $ / 5e11 kWh = 0.0086 $/kWh, so let's round it up to 1 cent per kWh. Average price for electricity in the US seems to be around 0.10 $/kW, so the cost for the decommissioning seems acceptable, though not negligible.

So... not to stir up a hornets nest... but everyones aware that electric cars produce more pollution than gas right?

Let's look at some facts here. First off, the efficiency of a thermal power plant is somewhere around 33% to 48%, at least according to wikipedia. Let's split the difference and say 41% for a thermal plant. The typical thermal efficiency of a a gasoline engine is about 18% to 20%. Let's split the difference and say 19%. Thus, a thermal power plant is more than twice as efficient as a gasoline engine in terms of changing chemical potential energy to useful output.

But there are some caveats. Firstly, the electricity needs to be transmitted. High voltage power lines are extremely efficient, about 94% according to this article. That means that the chemical energy (lets assume from coal) reaching the charging station is 41% x 94% = 38.5%. And then there is the charging process. According to this article, the charge efficiency of a Li-Ion battery is about 97%, which makes sense to me, as batteries usually don't run too hot. The charging devices however probably are responsible for some loss. Let's assume they are 80% efficient. That gives us 38.5% x 80.0% x 97% = 30%. Thus, according to this, 30% of the coal chemical potential energy makes it to the engine.

But what about engine efficiency? Well electric motors run very cool, and have very high efficiencies, typically around 90%. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla's motor is better. This means that if a coal power plant powered a Tesla, 30% x 90% = 27% of the energy would reach the wheels of the car, compared with a gasoline powered car, where 19% of the gasoline's potential energy comes out of the engine, never mind the losses in the transmission lines. Thus, a coal powered Tesla is 40% more energy efficient than a gasoline powered car.

However, there is one problem. Generating energy by coal produces more CO2 than generating it by gasoline. According to this article, coal generates about 215 pounds CO2 per btu of energy, while gasoline generates 157 pounds CO2 per btu. However, even with this, by my calculations, an equivalent gas powered car still emits 3.8% more CO2 than our coal powered Tesla.

Elon Musk made this claim in an interview, that even if a coal power plant generates the electricity, a Tesla still emits less CO2. My referenced back of a napkin calculations above support this assertion.

Rough estimate

120 quadrillion BTU /year http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy...

using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... 0.272 kWh per 1m^3 per 100m height

square root of (120 quadrillion btu / 365 / 70% / 0.272 kWh * 1 m^3 /100m) = 71km.

(or in other words 71km *71km *100m at a height of 100m from the lower lake will stall enough power for the average day.

Or to put it in perspective about 5 holes the size of Bingham Canyon Mine

Kinda offset by Texas being the biggest energy slut

You can reduce carbon emission a lot without changing lifestyles.
US has carbon intensity of 0.413 (Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide per Thousand Year 2005 U.S. Dollars)
France has 0.167
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdb...

So they make 2.5 times more money for each ton of CO2

I do leave my computer on 24/7. However, being I moved to an area that is predominantly powered with clean energy, it's likely my computer use has far less environmental impact than your limited use. Doesn't detract from your overall point, just adds something else to consider.

http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
(Arizona does get kudos for being predominantly nuclear powered, though)

http://economics.about.com/od/...
As you can see, gas price does in fact affect driving, and thus emissions. Though, I'm not an intellectually dishonest person, and will gladly emit that cars aren't the major driver of CO2 emissions.

No- that's not accurate. Clean burning doesn't get you past combustion byproducts. In this instance, carbon dioxide, which is still very fatal in concentration. He just didn't stay there long enough ;)
To add to that, clean burning doesn't mean not much CO2, it means not much other nasty pollutants. CO2 is still a very really problem, however.

Localized disasters can be a real problem at times. Ask the okies, and the states that tried to handle their flux during the dust bowl. Could you imagine if climate change rendered mesoamerica uninhabitable? Where do you think those people are going? Hopefully you guys got your wall with machine guns, right?

The economy can adapt to the needs of the environment and our aggregate needs as a people. The climate didn't collapse when tetraethyllead was outlawed, it didn't collapse when CFCs were, it didn't collapse when sulfur emissions were regulated, it didn't collapse when companies were no longer allowed to dump shit in rivers.

I do leave my computer on 24/7. However, being I moved to an area that is predominantly powered with clean energy, it's likely my computer use has far less environmental impact than your limited use. Doesn't detract from your overall point, just adds something else to consider.

http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=...
(Arizona does get kudos for being predominantly nuclear powered, though)

http://economics.about.com/od/...
As you can see, gas price does in fact affect driving, and thus emissions. Though, I'm not an intellectually dishonest person, and will gladly emit that cars aren't the major driver of CO2 emissions.

No- that's not accurate. Clean burning doesn't get you past combustion byproducts. In this instance, carbon dioxide, which is still very fatal in concentration. He just didn't stay there long enough ;)
To add to that, clean burning doesn't mean not much CO2, it means not much other nasty pollutants. CO2 is still a very really problem, however.

Localized disasters can be a real problem at times. Ask the okies, and the states that tried to handle their flux during the dust bowl. Could you imagine if climate change rendered mesoamerica uninhabitable? Where do you think those people are going? Hopefully you guys got your wall with machine guns, right?

The economy can adapt to the needs of the environment and our aggregate needs as a people. The climate didn't collapse when tetraethyllead was outlawed, it didn't collapse when CFCs were, it didn't collapse when sulfur emissions were regulated, it didn't collapse when companies were no longer allowed to dump shit in rivers.

Sorry... Source http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...

I'd recommend against using those and use ones that don't have such a large carbon footprint. For example:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-sco...

or solar:

http://www.reuters.com/article...

so long as you realize that the myth that solar panels generate more CO2 lifetime than say coal (or even natural gas) has long ago been de-bunked. (max 72g vs 1.68lbs or 2lbs for coal) (http://www.edfenergy.com/energyfuture/energy-gap-climate-change/solar-and-the-energy-gap-climate-change and http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...)

This is China you're talking about. Chances are it's coal, not oil supplying most of the energy - not saying that's any better.

EIA's 2019 LCOE forecast. Ordered from cheapest to most expensive.
Source: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/a...

44.5 : Subsidized Geothermal
47.9 : Geothermal
64.4 : Advanced Natural Gas
66.3 : Conventional Natural Gas
80.3 : Wind
84.5 : Hydro
86.1 : Subsidized Advanced Nuclear
91.3 : Advanced Natural Gas with CCS
95.6 : Conventional Coal
96.1 : Advanced Nuclear
102.6 : Biomass
103.8 : Advanced Natural Gas Turbine
115.9 : Integrated Coal-Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)
118.6 : Subsidized Solar PV
128.4 : Conventional Natural Gas Turbine
130.0 : Solar PV
147.4 : IGCC with CCS
204.1 : Wind-Offshore
223.6 : Subsidized Solar Thermal
243.1 : Solar Thermal

A payback analysis can be done very easily: how much does it cost to buy and install a 2MW turbine, how much does it cost to maintain a 2MW turbine each year, and what is the value of the resulting generated electricity?

One source has the cost at around $3 to $4 million to install a 2MW turbine. source

In one year, assuming 20% capacity--which is not atypical in the real world--such a turbine would generate 3,504 mWh. (2mW * 365 * 24 * .2)

Using $50/mWh for the wholesale price of electricity (which I got from scanning the current wholesale prices listed here, with $50/mWh eyeballed from column 'G'), I get a gross profit of $175,200/year for the generated power.

So just with my back-of-the-envelop calculations based on about 5 minutes with Google, the report seems to be bullshit.

Even if the numbers were off by a factor of two--remember, I only spent 5 minutes with Google--I don't see how you can make $116,800 (8 months of generated power) into $3 million (the installation cost quoted above), for large values of $116,800 and for small values of $3 million.

And notice what is missing from my admittedly stupid and simplistic analysis: the cost to run a standby generator, the cost of power storage, or the maintenance cost of the turbine, which I assume like any complex machine requires periodic maintenance.

The problem with research reports like this is that they do their hardest to not talk about the actual costs involved, and instead focus on a very small subset of the costs of construction. In this case it looks like we focused strictly on the power used to construct the turbine, and not the overall material costs, or labor costs. It's the only way I can explain a greater than one order of magnitude gap.

And while I am checking facts: More efficient new plants have replaced old plants for lignites last year so usage of it has actually decreased while electricity production has slightly increaded. Usage of lignites decreased from 166.3 mil. T (2012) 163.8 mil. T. Coal went up ofcourse while gas went down, but overall CO2 emission from electricity production was stable from 2012 to 2013 at 0,51 kg CO 2 /kWh.

Source: http://www.ag-energiebilanzen....

I find it funny that indeed coal went up instead a bit in the US with corresponding higher CO2 emission:
http://www.eia.gov/todayinener...

Also, there is now a strategic security/economical/political dimension to the energy transition for Germany much like there is for the USA concerning Oil independence that has only been reinforced by the Ukraine crisis.

Two things:

1) The USA is a net exporter of petroleum products (we import some oil, but export more refined petroleum products than the oil we import makes) these days.

That's news to me.... a net oil exporter is somebody whose domestic production exceeds domestic consumption leaving a surplus to export. According to EIA statistics about 40% of the crude oil consumed in the USA in 2012 came from foreign sources:
http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_b...
According to this article the USA is on it's way to become a net gas exporter, it is already a net coal exporter but unlikely to be come a net crude oil exporter.
http://business.financialpost....

2) Increasing dependence on natural gas rather than coal by Germany makes them more vulnerable to things like the Ukraine situation.

They are planning to synthesize a natural gas substitute from hydrogen and CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere or collected off of decomposing biomass. How is that increasing dependence on Russian gas? If this pans out, and P2G is currently getting massive amounts of research money, the Germans will even be able to recycle their existing natural gas infrastructure for storage of excess energy. They'd at the very least be able significantly reduce eliminate Russia's importance as a gas supplier. The best case scenario would of course be to eliminate reliance on Russian gas since it is a significant a strategic liability.

Every licensed installer in my state charges 6-10x the wholesale panel price and will only do a fixed bid install that is about 4x the T+M labor cost.

Citation? Which state? My Anecdote: I walked into the solar place in my town and the first thing they proposed when I laid out my situation was that I do the install myself. About the only labor I couldn't do myself would be the final hookup. They'd provide the plans and instructions.

I'm not seeing any requirements to use a licensed installer here. It might be a state/city requirement.

In effect I can put up the 100 or so pannels to meet my current needs for 30k including skilled labor yet the cheapest installer it looking for 100+ with the government programs taking it back down to 80 meaning they are making 70+k on whats quoted as a 2 day job with a 5 man crew.

100 panels? How much electricity do you use? 25 would cover the average household in the USA(10,837 kWh/year, each panel producing 437 kWh/year, even in the middle of the country). Standard panels today are 250-300 watts each. Even the cheapest pallet of 20 300 watt modules will run you $5,270, or $26,350 in panels alone, without racking or inverters(~$4.5k). Checking other online sites shows similar pricing.

As such, wanting it done for $30k means the workers would be doing it for free. The $70k worth of 'labor' does seem inappropriate.

The most interesting part about Germany's Solar deployment is that they have almost no utility scale deployments. Almost every deployed panel is on the roof of a building of a privately owned residence or business.

Probably has to do with the form Germany's subsidies takes.

we'd have more power than we could ever use. Germany is proof of that.

Yeah, like we'd ever use more than 640k of memory... If the power is there we'll use it. To make aluminum, power our new EVs, etc...

Still, we have a pretty good example in Hawaii. Due to most of their electricity being oil generated and predominately sunny(but not too hot) weather relatively close to the equator they've actually managed to get to the point where they could have a day where they bust 100% at this point. It's reached the point that you need permission from the electricity company to get a hookup.

Still, let's do some figuring. Leaving Business and Industrial customers out of it for now.
The average US household uses 10,837 kWh a year, or 903 kWh/month.
A 300 watt solar panel takes up about 21 square feet and costs $263, though final install cost will be $1.50-$2/watt.

Each panel can be expected to produce about 789 kWh/year, ideally placed. Competing against 10 cent electricity, payoff would be about 8 years. Note: I'm using average cases here. I almost bought solar panels for my house, given that I have a nice south-facing roof. On the other hand, I live in Alaska. Even with our relatively expensive electricity I couldn't make it make sense due to substantially LOWER power production than I'm figuring and higher costs(even doing most of the work myself).

Anyways, getting back on topic, that means that each homeowner would need to install 14 panels, on average, to cover their energy needs, assuming they have a retired Model-S battery or something to provide stability.

Some interesting calculations I've made in the past:

1. A retired Tesla Model S battery with 70% capacity remaining repurposed as a giant UPS will provide the average household 2 days worth of electricity
2. The average household would use ~50% more electricity if they replaced their vehicles with EVs(note: 2 days of electricity in an outage from your old battery doesn't include charging your current EV)
3. Start busting 20% of your total energy(and Germany is only at 5%) from solar power and it makes more sense to charge EVs during the day
4. It would take approximately 200 1GW nuclear plants to make the USA carbon neutral for electricity. Again, lots of batteries would be handy...

The units on gigawatts/hr works out to energy/time^2. I'm not even sure what that means. Rate of acceleration of energy use?

Assuming the Reuters reporter never took physics and the actual figure is 22 gigawatts, while it's an impressive amount, it's peak production. Solar has just about the worst capacity factor (ratio of average production to max peak production) of any energy source. If you look at Germany's solar statistics, they produced 31400 GWh in 2013. The average of their 2012 and 2013 installed (peak) generating capacity was (32.643+35.948) / 2 = 34.296 GW (averaged to take into account new plants coming online through the year).

34.3 GW * 8766 hours (1 year) = 1.08 * 10^18 joules
= 300673.8 GWh of potential solar production - i.e. how much the plants could have produced if they were operating at max capacity the entire year.

So their solar capacity factor is just 31400 / 300674 = 0.1044.

Compare to U.S. average capacity factors of
0.9 for nuclear
0.7 for geothermal
0.64 for coal
0.4 for hydro
0.35 for offshore wind
0.22 for onshre wind
0.145 for PV solar in the U.S. (not on chart)

So if Germany's peak solar production was equivalent to 20 nuclear plants, that means their entire installed base of solar plants has only eliminated the need for two nuclear plants. (There's some wriggle room here because they're comparing a peak load power source to a base load power source, but I'm just rolling with the comparison they made.) This is why you don't compare power production technologies based on peak production. It's like comparing the fuel efficiency of different cars only when they're going downhill - it unreasonably favors cars with low drag coefficients even if they may have inefficient engines. You should be comparing average production through the year (equivalent to peak production * capacity factor). Just like you should be comparing the average fuel efficiency of cars across all use cases.

In 2012, the United States alone produced roughly 32 million tons of plastic waste

Operating continuously, the plant can convert up to 10 tons of plastic per day into 60 barrels of oil, with zero toxic emissions.

So just one years worth of the US's plastic waist could be turned in 192 million barrels unfortunately they can't handle that kind of volume.

The roughly 21k barrel produced by a facility like this in a year would make a very tiny dent in in the 6.89 billion barrels a year we use http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/...