Alternative Power, but with existing tech

Great Debates
21

Perhaps the best way to figure out if a power generation method is worth the trouble and expense is to see if people are already doing it. While there are various good bets being missed, none of them are that big and easy.

The most attractive methods that amount to the same thing as generating power are power saving methods. If you made a hobby out of tinkering with saving power, like with insulation and cutback thermostats and more efficient cars, you’d save quite a lot. Especially if you have access to a factory or some other large user of power.

Now, about power generation methods, as existing power supplies get more expensive of course the break even point for new methods gets closer and closer without the methods themselves getting any improvements at all. When you keep improving them, so much the sooner and better.

An interesting test case is photovoltaic solar cells. They can’t create a net increase in power availability for at least about 30 years. The reason is that they also take a lot of power to manufacture. Assuming various exponential growth rates in the solar cell industry, the industry itself consumes more power than its already-delivered products are generating, for at least 30 years, and that’s at an optimum growth rate. A faster growth rate has the industry consuming much more power, and a slower rate has their delivered products contributing much less. In the distant future, the industry’s products will eventually generate more power than the industry itself consumes (unless something unforseen happens to stop the industry or to make it unexpectedly more efficient), and it may be worth going down that road, but numerically it isn’t a way to increase available energy in the next several decades.

Cite? I read this in, I think, the Economist a few months ago. Might have been Scientific American though. But I think the more important point is that, since power generation equipment takes power to make, you have to analyze both sides of the relationship to see whether a new technology that works will contribute anything at all.

22

If those numbers are accurate I don’t see why the industry itself isn’t pushing for it. I’m guessing they could ask their existing customers if they were willing to pay $3.00 per year more for a reduction in CO2…and easily get a consensus from the majority of customers to warrant upping the price to those levels. Hell…they could just do it and not ask at those rates. No CO2 tax needed.

My question would be…why isn’t anyone doing this, given what you are saying here?

-XT

23

Everyone has different reasons, but in the case of the examples I gave above, the production cost for the plant of electricity is almost a break-even for the first two improvements. That is, the amount of coal and other associated costs they save from improving the efficiency is about equal to the cost. In the case of the first item, I think there is a net savings, and in the case of the second one it’s more of a break-even. The economics actually get a little complicated, but that’s a good analysis.

So why don’t they do it? Well…they are doing it in this specific case, is my answer, but you’re wondering why doesn’t everyone do it, and why didn’t they do it before? That’s where you get into…complicated issues.

Penny-wise-and-pound-foolish shit. “Our maintenance budget is only $1,500,000 a year, and we can’t pay for this out of our budget. Even if the company has a net savings, we don’t know who in the company will pay for it.” “Well, it’s not coming out of my budget!” “Well, it’s not coming out of my budget either! These Aeron chairs don’t grow on trees, you know!”

Analysis paralysis: “Should we replace this air heater, or should we do this temporary fix that’s 1/10 the cost and gets us 1/2 the benefit? Can’t someone just monkey with a while instead and make it better? Would we be better off putting the money into this other plant instead? Would we be better off just buying more green power credits from this wind farm? Or uprating a gas plant? How many more consultants like Una are we going to have to pay to make the right decision?”

Legal concerns: “By improving our efficiency, we could, in theory, raise our net generation. But our permit says anything we do that could, in theory, raise our net generation above our permit limit means we become subject to New Source Review. Therefore, we can’t do that, because even if we win, we’ll spend $2M on lawyers doing it.”

Labor concerns: “For this simple $1,200,000 job we have to open a formal bidding process, involving RFPs, first and second round reviews, interviews, qualify the vendors, check insurance certificates, etc. It’s going to take about 3 months to choose someone to work for 4 weeks. Oh, my head hurts, I just want to go home.”

Never a Good Time to Do it: “We can’t do it next week, we have this going on. We can’t come down this week, because plant A will be offline. We can’t do it this week, because power prices will be through the roof. We can’t do it this week, because that’s the week the ESP testing is going on.” etc, etc.

Many simple modifications just require the will to do them. And many organizations lack the…well, organization, and will, to do it.

24

:smack:

I didn’t realize that power companies work the same way as the government does. Thanks for the info and experience there Una…it helps to know what the REAL issues are, since they obviously aren’t economic.

-XT

25

Una, you forgot the people whose minds shut off at the first use of the word “spend.”