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The fact that you go to the doctor for treatment doesn't mean that you know the foggiest thing about medicine. I sincerely doubt you understand either the technical or the financial side of things. That's not your fault you are as you say just a consumer. Your understanding of how it happens stops at the wall switch -- up and the lights go on, down and they go off.
I don't ignore the posts that "don't support my point of view". I dismiss the posts that are based upon bad science, bad engineering and bad finance. I'm qualified to make those judgements. There are two sides to all argument. The side that says coal-fired electrical generation in the United States is a viable business are supporting the side of the argument that is wrong. That may offend you. That isn't a major concern.
Guess what? Being “an engineer in the field” also doesn’t make YOU a competent economist, environmentalist, futurist, or industry spokesperson. I would hate to hire someone like you for a project that believes he can perfectly predict the future of the entire industry. Keep quiet unless you are speaking towards the single fraction of knowledge that you are actually trained in. Declaring the future of the world’s energy needs isn’t it.
I'm "just" a consumer. Just before I bought my current house, I seriously considered getting solar panels installed at the back of my house (basically a perfect Southern exposure and a TON of sun), given the HUGE federal and state subsidies going on at the time. But even WITH those subsidies (which IIRC were something like $10,000), it didn't make financial sense. (I started a thread about it here: https://www.city-data.com/forum/house...ar-panels.html .)
I went and looked at your numbers and you conclusion. You are spot on. In fact, you were overly generous to the "green energy" community.
The fact is, solar and wind power are so heavily subsidized at every step of the way that it is unlikely they would be sustainable at all without a constant flow of subsidies. In other words, they are not sustainable energy, like gas is.
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So as much as I would LIKE to support "green living" when I can, sometimes it simply makes no financial sense.
And more to the point of this thread, coal seems to STILL be quite viable in certain areas of the country.
As a general rule, if it doesn't make financial sense, or if it has to be continuously subsidized, it isn't making environmental sense either. All of those subsidies are a clue that the process is very damaging to the environment in some way that can be hidden from the public.
What Nor'Eastah and RVcook said in the other thread is also correct, in that there are limited circumstances where solar makes sense.
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But the point of my earlier post was to ask why the OP simply ignored every post that didn't support his point of view? LOTS of people are knowledgeable about this stuff, you know. So why the arrogance?
He, and others like him, are not going to enter into a fair debate, since it isn't really a science at all. "Green Energy," like "climate change" (aka global warming) is a religion masquerading as a science.
:How does your conscience let you sleep at night???? Projects are being built all over the country to firm up wind......SMART wind developers actually plan to install NG plants alongside their wind farms to firm up sales.... Sheesh can you really stand behind what you say????
Nonsense. Backup is built based upon a system assessment. The analysis is based upon probability theory today but the old way still hold pretty true. You need spinning reserve to compensate for loss of the largest plant in the control area. Since that is often a two unit nuke 2000-2400 MW of spinning reserve is pretty common. That's well within the foreseeable variability of wind resources today. In addition day ahead meteorological forecasting has improved dramatically over the last 5 years. Predictable changes in wind resource just require different dispatch.
Guess what? Being “an engineer in the field” also doesn’t make YOU a competent economist, environmentalist, futurist, or industry spokesperson. I would hate to hire someone like you for a project that believes he can perfectly predict the future of the entire industry. Keep quiet unless you are speaking towards the single fraction of knowledge that you are actually trained in. Declaring the future of the world’s energy needs isn’t it.
What does it feel like to be such a boor?
Don't worry. You would never hire me anyway. You're not interested in insight. You are correct my engineering degree doesn't qualify me to speak about economics. My MBA in finance does. Over 30 years of helping utilities plan for future resource needs also provides a basis for forecasts.
Don't worry. You would never hire me anyway. You're not interested in insight. You are correct my engineering degree doesn't qualify me to speak about economics. My MBA in finance does. Over 30 years of helping utilities plan for future resource needs also provides a basis for forecasts.
You can send your MBA back to the Cracker Jacks company from which it was derived too. We already established long ago that you don't understand the advantage of investing a large nut initially compounding it annually for 20 yrs vs monthly increments of small amounts.
^^^ You beat me to it. Here's the important graph for those with too much cognitive dissonance to risk their delicate pshyches to actually read the article. Despite press releases to the contrary, China isn't cutting back. They're expanding coal use considerably.
We must concede one point to DC: the US leads the world in reducing co2 emissions (as if that's important?) because market forces are making the replacement of aging coal fire plants by NG powered plants more economically advantageous. NG plants are cheaper to build and cheaper to run here thanks to our abundance of domestic NG reserves....Of course, as demand for coal and supply of NG down go down thru the years & demand for NG goes up, we may hit an equilibrium point for prices that makes the complete abandonment of coal undesirable.
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 04-01-2019 at 03:03 AM..
^^^ You beat me to it. Here's the important graph for those with too much cognitive dissonance to risk their delicate pshyches to actually read the article. Despite press releases to the contrary, China isn't cutting back. They're expanding coal use considerably.
We must concede one point to DC: the US leads the world in reducing co2 emissions (as if that's important?) because market forces are making the replacement of aging coal fire plants by NG powered plants more economically advantageous. NG plants are cheaper to build and cheaper to run here thanks to our abundance of domestic NG reserves....Of course, as demand for coal and supply of NG down go down thru the years & demand for NG goes up, we may hit an equilibrium point for prices that makes the complete abandonment of coal undesirable.
We'll have to remind Guido that while he is entitled to his own opinion, he isn't entitled to his own facts. While natural gas is certainly a big factor, more solar and wind capacity are being installed.
Plant additions in 2017
Natural Gas 10,546.1
Wind 6,304.9
Solar 5,055.0
Wind costs ~ twice as much as fossil fuels while solar costs about 5 times as much due to prohibitive installation costs.
You dreamers fail to realize that wind and solar only produce power for several hours/day on average. Until we realize breath taking advancements in energy storage technology, wind and solar can only supplement the existing grid.
U-238 and Thorium are currently the realistic alternatives. All of the nuclear mishaps occurred with early nuclear plants - built well over five decades ago.
Lies will not make the unpleasant truth go away.
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