Batteries a Possible Future Blow to Coal

[tree68]

Paul_D_North_Jr

hat grid has never gone down entirely -

A satellite image widely circulated after one of the big northeast blackouts purported to show the entire area in darkness.

A little editing and playing with contrast levels of the image showed that someone had gone into the image and blacked out large areas with an image editor.

We have a number of municipal systems around here - none of them usually are down when the big blackouts occur.

[PJS1]

D.Carleton

But the residential rates are still regulated.......

Texas began deregulating most of its electric utilities in the 1990s.  Today, as a result, the majority of Texans can choose a service plan that best meets their needs.  State wide rates range from 5.8 cents per kWh to 13.4 cents per kWh, depending on the plan's features.

The residential rates for most customers served by the investor owned electric utilities in Texas are not regulated.  They are driven by the market. 

The rates of the state's public power and co-ops are still regulated.  It is one size fits all.  These entities had the option to participate in the state-wide competitive market, but most of them chose not to do so.  Government owned and operated entities just don't like competition, I suspect, because deep down where they live they know that they would get blown out of the water by market oriented competitors.

Generation in Texas has been deregulated.  As a result the state has seen a significant growth in merchant plants and co-generation. 

The transmission and distribution systems, irrespective of ownership, are still regulated by the Public Utility Commission.

[Boyd]

If we are so bent on ending the consumption of coal and oil why do local towns and cities have ordinances against back yard wind generators? Theoretically I could run my Lionel layout from wind power,,, that is when the wind blows.

[tree68]

Boyd

If we are so bent on ending the consumption of coal and oil why do local towns and cities have ordinances against back yard wind generators? Theoretically I could run my Lionel layout from wind power,,, that is when the wind blows.

I suspect it's a clash/disconnect between idealism (getting rid of coal) and NIMBYism.

Otto von Bismark's quote almost answers the question:  "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."

People want electricity available for their many devices, but don't want to see it made...  It's OK if it comes from that magical, mythical "someplace else..."

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Rockeater

Clean air silliness?

 

 

And just what is so silly about clean air and water??

[chicagorails]

tesla is building a new battery plant costing 2 billion dollars where the worlds most efficient batteries are built. the power companies in the usa need to get their ____ together and concentrate on a new power grid to save us from solar flares and emp attack.

[schlimm]

A lengthy article on advances in battery research.   Science

[IslandMan]

[quote user="CandOforprogress2"]

Power has to come from somewhere and you cant put windmills and Hydro everywere. Nothi

CandOforprogress2

Power has to come from somewhere and you cant put windmills and Hydro everywere. Nothing beats coal for BTU.

 

 

Coal is also an extremely large potential source of energy. Known coal reserves far, far exceed those of gas and oil. Coal could provide all our energy needs for centuries.

The problem of course is that coal is pretty nasty stuff. Apart from giving off more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than natural gas, it contains heavy metals such as mercury.

There are two technologies under development which if used in tandem, could make coal a clean source of energy: Underground Gasification of Coal (UGC) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

UGC consists of drilling two boreholes into a deep coal seam, igniting the coal around one borehole and pumping in air or oxygen and steam. The coal is converted to a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane and other gases and removed through the second borehole.

The gas produced could be converted to hydrogen, the carbon dioxide produced in this process separated off and interred using CCS.

The technique could be used to obtain energy from thin seams very deep underground, i.e. coal reserves that have never been worthwhile to mine by conventional means. 

Ash along with nasties such gas heavy metals stays underground.

 CCS puts carbon dioxide underground, in shale formations for example. The voids left after UGC could be used for CCS.

Together UGC and CCS would produce nice clean hydrogen. Perhaps obituaries for old King Coal are a little premature.

 

 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Coal's decline as a fuel source for electric generation is also due to economic considerations.  As long as the price of fuel oil and natural gas remains low compared to coal, utilities are not going to build coal-fired plants..

[rdamon]

A few municipal electric organizations in Georgia installed some gas-turbine (generator driven by a jet engine burning natural gas) peaking units that operate when demand or costs rise above their operating costs.

 

 

Interesting link on how much it costs to generate electricity.

 

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html

[tree68]

rdamon

A few municipal electric organizations in Georgia installed some gas-turbine (generator driven by a jet engine burning natural gas) peaking units that operate when demand or costs rise above their operating costs.

I've heard of large "server farms" (data centers) running their operations on such machines.  Don't know if it's cost or the fact that they don't have to rely on the grid.  If one of them goes down, a lot of email and credit cards won't work...

[tdmidget]

rdamon

A few municipal electric organizations in Georgia installed some gas-turbine (generator driven by a jet engine burning natural gas) peaking units that operate when demand or costs rise above their operating costs.

 

 

Interesting link on how much it costs to generate electricity.

 

http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html

 

Vitually evry utility has combustion turbines in their fleet.

They are NOT "jet" engines. "Jet" engines produce thrust in reaction to their exhaust. Combustion turbines, turboshaft engines, whatever appropriate name is applied do not produce thrust. They produce torque applied to a rotating shaft that transmits that rotation to a generator in this case or compressor, propellor, rotor blades or whatever.

[rdamon]

Just ask Delta airlines how important it is not to lose power to a primary datacenter. 

 

It is an interesting trend in telecommunications to see how things have evolved from using -48V DC power with at least 8 hours of battery support to driving servers with 220V AC and an inverter with less than one hour of battery time (some locations use large flywheels instead of batteries).

 

Designing datacenters to have redundant commercial power feeds off of different grids and the increased reliability of generators and transfer switches have allowed for the reduction of the large lead-acid battery rooms from the Bell System days.

 

 

There is a lot of investigation into the use of 220V DC or higher to eliminate the inverter power loss. 

[BaltACD]

rdamon

Just ask Delta airlines how important it is not to lose power to a primary datacenter. 

 

It is an interesting trend in telecommunications to see how things have evolved from using -48V DC power with at least 8 hours of battery support to driving servers with 220V AC and an inverter with less than one hour of battery time (some locations use large flywheels instead of batteries).

 

Designing datacenters to have redundant commercial power feeds off of different grids and the increased reliability of generators and transfer switches have allowed for the reduction of the large lead-acid battery rooms from the Bell System days.

 

 

There is a lot of investigation into the use of 220V DC or higher to eliminate the inverter power loss.

http://www.icelanddatacenter.com/#whyiceland

[tree68]

rdamon

There is a lot of investigation into the use of 220V DC or higher to eliminate the inverter power loss. 

The UPS for the computer center I worked in took in 3 phase 480VAC, rectified it to something like 400VDC, ran that across a large bank of batteries, then inverted it back to 480VAC 3 phase.

It used what amounted to 12VDC deep cycle batteries, but there were a lot of them...

Or did I already say that?  

[Electroliner 1935]

tdmidget

Vitually evry utility has combustion turbines in their fleet. They are NOT "jet" engines. "Jet" engines produce thrust in reaction to their exhaust. Combustion turbines, turboshaft engines, whatever appropriate name is applied do not produce thrust. They produce torque applied to a rotating shaft that transmits that rotation to a generator in this case or compressor, propellor, rotor blades or whatever. Ad

After the 1965 New York City blackout, the utility I worked for installed some quick start peaker plants. There were two types, Single shaft gas turbines and two shaft jet engine driven turbine plants. These were a lower cost design based on off the shelf airplane type jet engines exhausting into a separate turbine which was coupled to its generator. Lower initial cost, but higher operating cost. They had a limited operating time and were next to last on the list for dispatch. Burned J4 fuel and there primary justification was for system black start capability. We also installed one set (five units) of EMD 567 diesels at one of our fossil plants for black start capability and peaking power. Last on the dispatch list. Eleven megawatts total output. The diesels and the jets are all gone now. 

[daveklepper]

And are not most subsonic "jet" airplalnes really Turbojet or Fanjet, using a combination of jet action and fan action to produce thrust?

[erikem]

Good point Dave, modern turbofan engines are "high bypass" designs, where the mass flow rate through the fan may be  10X going through the core. Needless to say, they produce a lot of shaft power to drive the fan.

There are two general flavors for combustion turbines, 'aero-derived" and industrial. The former as the name implies are derived from jet engines and are typically somewhat less efficient than industrial turbines due to need to minimize size and weight. Aero-derived turbines are typically quicker to bring on-line and designed for higher number of start/stop cycles.