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2015's Electricity Retirements: 80 Percent Coal Plants (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In the US, electricity demand is growing very slowly, which means that capacity additions don't have to exceed retirements by much in order to keep the grid functioning. Tracking the comings and goings from the electric grid can help provide a picture of the country's changing energy mix. The Energy Information Administration, which provides data on the US' electric grid, says 18GW of capacity were retired this past year, more than 80 percent of it coal-fired. More than 27GW of utility-scale projects will replace that this year. Note that much of the new generating hardware is wind and solar, but the plants being replaced often had low capacity factors due to their age and high pollutant output.
Has never been higher. Additionally because my state (Colorado) has decided to replace the coal plants with natural gas, increasing the price to heat my home as well.
The Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign has really helped in getting this going. http://content.sierraclub.org/...
Brought to you by the coal industry.
With 7+ Billion people and a large chunk of them in China and India in poor areas with little to no electricity, what happens when they start demanding access to the conveniences of the modern word?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
large and powerful companies can buy off some of the people in congress, enough to block any real reform. so the new tactic is to fight them everywhere which companies are not prepared to fight because it means you have to buy off all the little people which would be quite expensive and the little people can't always be bought. i think you will find that after much of the coal industry has fallen, only then will congressional reform be possible.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Interestingly, electrification is now proceeding as an appliances service. Phone, light and radio come with solar and battery. Don't pay your bill? The devices won't work. http://www.economist.com/news/...
I wonder when the fossil/nuclear/hydro vs wind/solar ratio will tip us over into regular Brownouts. Wind and solar are not the future, unless you want to have to turn on your less efficient plants every night. Nah, the real future is in nuclear, hydro, and limited fossil fuels (mostly natural gas). Solar will go away after the Federal subsidies end, and wind is more expensive than either alternative anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...
Nothing the Kock bros do is for the Greater Good(tm), they are in it for themselves alone.
Even if that were true, their interests do overlap with poor people and small businesses.
If the Kock empire were to vaporize overnight, I would be shocked if a statistically measurable number of "the poor" or "small businesses" had any negative change in their lives.
Depends how it were vaporized. Nuclear weapons, for example, would leave a mark on those other groups too.
I don't know, I think a whole lot of superPACs, candidates, and special interests would be very sad. Or happy if you found a different one.
I don't disagree, but this doesn't really affect the Kochs all that much. They're in oil and gas, not coal. It may even be helping them: a lot of the capacity shifts to gas plants, which they supply through fracking.
The drop in oil prices may be hurting them, and some of their fracking operations have as they're no longer profitable. So you can take that as a bit of cheery news.
I support nuclear and don't generally enjoy your submissions, but I am very happy to see you have a good sense of humor about it. Enjoy your day.
Depends how it were vaporized. Nuclear weapons, for example, would leave a mark on those other groups too.
Drone strikes, limited casualties.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Even if electricity demand were growing very quickly, capacity additions don't have to exceed retirements by much in order to keep the grid functioning.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
they were more expensive to run. The utilities don't really care whether or not the plants pollute. What they care about is how expensive they are to run. Old power plants tend to be less efficient in converting fossil fuel to electricity. The general dispatching rule is that the cheapest power plants go online first until you satisfy the demand. Which means that old power plants only go online during peak demand periods. In fact some may only be on during the weekdays of the summer months. Since you still need them you have to maintain them and they are old so that can get expensive. There comes a point where that does not make sense anymore.
New TED talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/al_go...
Starting at 13:40 he shows graphs of the exponential growth of wind, solar, and batteries that are driving the move to renewables.
What the heck does this have to do with the Koch brothers or Koch anything? Koch doesn't deal with coal and they don't own any electricity generation companies (that I know of).....so this doesn't appear to have anything to do with them or their companies. Are you so blinded by hatred and ignorance that you can't take 2 seconds to learn something about them?
It's hard to take the Koch haters seriously when they can't do basic research or differentiate between the different kinds of "energy". Hint: It ain't just electricity...
I think it's more the fact that the current Republicans would rather see things go down in flames than cooperate with Obama
You wouldn't be able to take them out of the equation without hurting some people who don't deserve it.
The real question isn't whether you will be hurting people by doing that. The question is whether you will be hurting fewer people over a longer interval than if you just left them there.
Note, I don't think the Koch brothers are the evil genius behind the Illuminati that is running the US. That's just bogeyman in the closet sort of bullshit. The problem with the country is how it is run, and while the Koch brothers may be part of that, maybe even a larger part of it than most, you wouldn't end the problem by removing them. It's not even clear that they wouldn't be replaced by something or someone worse.
If you want cleaner energy, then definitely take the step of both promoting and using it. Remain positive and keep moving forward, and you'll find that obstacles will still be there, but they will fall apart when reality sets in.
I think it's more the fact that the current Republicans would rather see things go down in flames than cooperate with Obama
Dream on. Obama's deliberately divisive. Read up on Critical Race theory - where EVERYTHING is about race.
Relentless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oops, I modded you up before noticing that you insulted the OP. I'm just correcting that.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
We are all going to die from Global Warming!!
If you own your roof it will lower your bill no matter how you do it (pay cash, lease, solar installer becomes your power company).
It may lower your monthly bill but that doesn't mean it's cheaper to you. I've done the math and for what it would cost me to cover my roof in solar panels I would break even in somewhere between 8-12 years. That's presuming that the panels still work at the same efficiency and require zero maintenance and that I'm still living there a decade from now, none of which is certain.
Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of solar but the ROI for solar is anything but simple and certainly isn't quick. Its a big up front cash outlay with a (hopefully) long term payback that isn't always realized by the person spending the cash.
The vast majority of new oil production added to the global market over the past 10 years is from the US. Saudi production is up 7%. US production is up 60%.
Without massive government subsidies, exclusions, and tax exemptions for coal, it's way too expensive to use, even without counting the 259,000 kids killed by coal.
Time to adapt.
Note that some of the coal plant retirements are for older end of cycle power plants, but more recent power plants may be retrofitted for more efficient use as coal cogeneration power plants, where we trap the waste heat and use it for other purposes, at the same time as outfitting the stacks with pollution scrubbers. This does end up increasing total power generation by 20-80 percent above original specs, but you need a process that can use the waste heat appropriately.
So not all the "retired" coal plants are gone forever, as business analysts incorrectly surmised when China retrofitted their coal plants for pollution scrubbing cogeneration coal plants. They just go away for a while as their internal processes are optimized for the 20th century instead of the 18th century.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Are you trying to tell me my zero emmissions vehicle... actually produces emmissions?!?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I never thought I would call Newt Gingrich "the reasonable one"!
Out here in Maryland, I'm not convinced that going solar makes a whole lot of financial sense. We're one of the states where it's pushed heavily, but we have quite a few days that are cloudy, rainy, snowy or just partially overcast, where panels just don't generate much power.
I purchased a 7.84 KWh PV system with a combination of South and East facing panels (all SunPower branded equipment which does cost a premium, but also means I've got panels with a little greater efficiency per square foot and hopefully backed by a warranty I can have more faith in than some).
The total cost with installation for this system, back at the end of 2014, was around $32,000. And yes, tax credits promised me 33% of that cost back -- but the way my taxes have worked out, I only got about $3,000 of it back the first year. (Not a tax expert or anything, but I'm assuming it's because I had enough other deductions so there wasn't enough earned income left to allow deducting more than that, for that tax year.) Anyway, on this year's return, I believe it was the same way.... I got a few more thousand of it back, but not the whole thing. This was rather unfortunate since the installer convinced me to take out a 1 year long 0% interest "bridge loan" for $10K to help finance the initial purchase, with the promise that "your first tax refund will let you pay it off before you owe any interest on it". Nope.... not so. I had to scramble to come up with money to pay the thing down.
Even if their interests overlap, hurting Kochs hurts Kochs themselves the most, not poor people and small business (the original statement and GGP's response)
That's ludicrous and one doesn't need to go beyond the current topic to see why. Most of the Koch family businesses are not dependent on coal production or consumption. So a drop in coal power plants doesn't hurt them very much. Meanwhile we have a significant impairment of US electricity production which hurts a lot of poor. So something that hurts the Koch brothers has IMHO hurt the poor even more, contrary to your assertion.
Would poor people and small business be hurt a bit? Probably, but still not as much as Kochs would be hurt. That's what we keep telling the poor anyway, that the problems of the poor aren't nearly as bad as the rich have it, and the poor should shut up, let the rich walk over you, and maybe one day YOU will be rich and be the one walking over others!
That's a pretty story.
One thing readers should pay attention to and one trick the unscrupulous should stop pulling is talking about the capacity factor of units that are mainly used to cover a peak. Of course it's going to be low. It's low because demand is not constant and you only being things on line when you need them.
Comparing windmills and large thermal units (coal, nuclear, some others) is like comparing a bicycle to a locomotive - while they both move they are intended for different roles.
I'm not accusing the above poster of pulling the trick but since it seems to come up every time this topic comes up I thought it was worth mentioning before the slimy salesfolk slithered out.
Out of date - a lot of the US production has shut down due to the Saudi price war.
Turns out that Bush's special friends are not so friendly.
You know, if ole Bill had managed to control his pecker
Seriously, so fucking what. Bill got his dick sucked by a young saucy intern - welcome to the world of having testosterone. If I was Bill I'd have looked the camera in the eye and said "Fuck yeah I had sex with her, I'm only human - I'll apologize to my wife but the rest of you can get in line and suck whatever is left. Next question."
If you wanted a reason to impeach Clinton it should have been for not taking a case of the finest Kentucky Bourbon whiskey he could find, presented it to Boris Yeltzin and said "Sign this Nuclear Disarmament treaty motherfucker and you can have this to get you started"
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
He's made zero attempts to work with them. His idea of working with them is for him to send them shit to pass and they need to shut up and rubber stamp it. I'll admit they're some sad fuckers but to say he's tried to work with them is an absolute, total lie.
Not an Obama fan but that's really not true. He plays along with the liberals on race but he's not leading the pity pack on that.
Listen fool. I don't give a shit if he got his dick sucked and shoved a cigar up her cunt either. Still and all, he serves the American public and if the majority or even just a significant portion of them don't think it's right for him to be getting his jollies on the job then he should maybe think about the ramifications of what he's doing. He got caught, which is a cardinal sin, because he wasn't discrete and he didn't cull shit. He'd stick it any bitch any time no matter where or how ugly and fat. Seriously, what's with that? He ruined his presidency because he couldn't control his dick. Just because you and I don't care doesn't change that fact.
Even here we are being astroturfed by what is pretty much American far right fascisism. I miss having Republicans in the GOP.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah. It says I'm using the system the way it was intended from the top down, not from bottomfeeding which you are implying. The idea of introducing externalities in your cost analysis in a negative way would completely offset the whole purpose that government subsidies have in the first place: drive policy via financial incentives.
In that regard I absolutely do not nor will ever take into account subsidies I get on my solar panels, just like I don't take into account the tax I pay on fuel when I fill up my car. The point of these is to push a certain technology paid for by taxes that will get taxed regardless of whether it gets pumped into environmental initiatives, donated to oil companies, spent on healthcare, or spent on warfare. If you disagree with any of those then the place for those discussions is in the political realm, not in a cost benefit analysis of something you're purchasing.
This post brought to you by the NBN, a $45bn network funded by my taxes.
So, you are implying that total cost benefit analysis should not include total cost. And the reason is that the government spends a lot of money in a lot of places. I'm not sure I buy that. I think its very important to look at real cost when we are charting our energy future.
Still and all, he serves the American public
My point was that he could have delivered an arms treaty that would have made the world a better place and been a great man for doing so.
Just because you and I don't care doesn't change that fact.
Well my point was that people care more about what his cock was doing and forget that a great opportunity was lost. You pretty much proved my point.
Listen fool.
I wasn't actually directing Seriously, so fucking what that at you, just at the general situation. I should have made that clearer.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
No I'm arguing that the total cost benefit analysis should cover only costs which are directly applicable and controllable.
Here's my scenario. I pay x number of taxes per year. I buy a solar panel from my roof. I still pay the same x number of taxes per year if I don't build a solar panel on my roof. That money has been given to someone else. That someone else is in control of directing country policy. The country policy in this case subsidises solar panels. Not buying solar panels won't change that.
Actually when I look at it now the result is even more in favour of going for subsidised options since I'm not only gaining benefits of the subsidy but I'm actually reclaiming some money I spent using that method.
Don't agree with the subsidy? That's politics, not project cost-benefit analysis.
You pay X amount of taxes relative to others. Your share changes with the tax credit, which is essentially taxpayers paying part of your power bill. You can rationalize it however you like.
Yes, subsidy amounts are political and area separate argument, but that doesn't mean they don't factor in to real cost. I don't think you care about real cost, you are focused on yourself. I care about the systemic cost, which is key to our energy future.
Oh, so now you are attacking another poster to get at me because you think I am on the same "side" instead of a discussion based upon reality?
This empty ideologically motivated shit of dismissing an energy source merely because the party donors have another is annoying, depressing and makes you look like a complete and utter idiot.
impeachment, you completely propagandized dolt. Let me mansplain it to you:
You are also missing the point, and being a douchebag at the same time. The bigger picture was the opportunity for international nuclear disarmament treaty was lost which highlights the dysfunctional nature of two party politics. No steps forward, one step back.
1. 2.
It's was a good explanation. I wasn't aware of that, however it changes *nothing* about what I have said. The opportunity in history to make the world better was lost, as you mansplain, by Clinton's own folly which mansplains why his language in interacting with the press used specific legal terms. I would like to understand that part of history better however it is still irrelevant in terms of the point I have made.
The Magna Carta
Due process of law has been bypassed in the US by the Bush administration that appointed him the wartime powers to pass various terrorism acts. It was not restored by Obama so this apolitical issue is unlikely to ever be rectified.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.