Energy & Power Generation
Power and Demand
Over the long term, electricity use has been closely correlated with the general growth in the economy. Due to the fact that building power stations, transmission lines and siting locations for distribution facilities has a long lead time (sometimes measured in decades), utilities have to plan ahead.
One of the major pillars of electricity demand is industry. Many facilities use large amounts of electricity, such as steel & aluminum, paper and pulp making, and manufacturing plants for autos. Some facilities use so much electricity that they build their own power plants, and / or locate their facilities near cheap power (which is why a lot of the aluminum industry and aircraft manufacturing is in the Northwest, where cheap hydro power was available).
This latest recession has caused industrial usage to plummet to an unprecedented degree. The article above was in the Wall Street Journal titled “Weak Power Demand Dims Outlook“. Per the article:
Electricity sales remained weak in the third quarter, prompting speculation that the sluggishness could persist even after the U.S. economy rebounds. Some utilities don’t expect power sales to recover to pre-recession levels until 2012 — if at all — because so many factories have closed.
Some of the major utilities, such as AEP out of the midwest and Southern Company in the Southeast are seeing demand reductions for industrial use in the 15-20% range. These types of reductions are out of the historical norm for a recession.
Green vs. Green
It has been written here many, many times that is getting more and more difficult to build base generation power plants in the USA. I can’t imagine what it would take to actually start up a nuclear power plant right now. Besides the billions and billions of dollars your company will spend, it will be dragged through the courts over and over and over again by land owners, environmentalists and others. I simply don’t have the stones for that constant harassment.
Today I heard a story about a proposed wind farm in West Virginia. Seems that the environmentalists there are trying to stand in the way of the wind farm to save a bat – the Indiana bat to be precise.
So I guess I am wondering that if WIND isn’t even clean enough energy, where would the environmentalists say that we should get our energy from? Electricity doesn’t exactly just drop out of the sky (unless you could harness a lightning bolt somehow). Or is the end game simply the destruction of any and all forms of commerce as we know them? All in the name of a bat that may or may not be harmed. Hard for me to tell what the real agenda is anymore.
Power: Mechanical, National, and Personal
James Boswell is of course best known as the great biographer of Samuel Johnson. But Boswell didn’t spend all his time in Dr Johnson’s company. In 1776, he visited the Boulton & Watt steam engine factory. Showing Boswell around, Matthew Boulton summed up his business one simple phrase:
I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have–POWER.
Fast forward to 2009. In the United States as in Western Europe, politicians are conducting a vendetta against the energy industry. See for example this, which describes the closure of an aluminum smelter in Montana–because it can no longer obtain affordable electricity–and the probable exit of much of the nonferrous metals industry from Western Europe, for the same reason. (Link via MaxedOutMama)
So, was Matthew Boulton wrong? Have we finally found a group of humans–our present-day political leaders–who are NOT interested in power?
Wind Energy
Recently when driving in Western Illinois near the Iowa border I noticed a vast field of wind turbines off Route 20. On the way back to Chicago I got off the highway and started driving on the rural dirt roads to get a closer look.
These are the wind turbines near Lena, IL. The turbines are part of the “EcoGrove” project. A firm called EcoEnergy was the project manager for this effort, and here is the web site describing the project. The project has a capacity of 100 MW and the turbines are between 1.5 and 2.5MW each… so there are at least 40-50 wind turbines at the site. The project cost $200M (per the web site). Per the wind FAQ’s section of their site:
How big is a wind turbine?
EcoEnergy’s turbines typically measure 262 feet (80 meters) to the hub height (where the blades meet) and rotor diameters in the range of 246 to 295 feet (75 to 90 meters)..
As you can see from the photos, these wind turbines are huge. They were all turning slowly the day I was there in the wind, with three blades.
Because they don’t produce all the time, aren’t wind turbines an inefficient way to get our electricity?
Wind turbines actually generate electricity most of the time (65 to 80 percent), though the output amount is variable.