Electric Green Waste

American Thinker ^ | March 27, 2010 | Bruce Thompson

[neverdem]

Green initiatives are costing hard-pressed Americans billions of dollars, in the form of higher utility bills, and squandered investment in inefficient electric power generation.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is about to institute the first of four rate increases for electric power planned to take effect within the next year. The increases are expected to increase power costs for businesses by 21% to 22%. Residential customers will see increases ranging from 8.8% to 28.4%.

The money generated by the increase would enable [Los Angeles Mayor] Villaraigosa to carry out a longtime political promise: securing 20% of the DWP's power from renewable sources, such as solar and wind energy, by Dec. 31.

The political purpose of this is to replace coal fired generation with "green power." The DWP website has a link to a report detailing its existing generation sources. It has a total of 6,991 MW of "net dependable capability" of which 1,515 MW is coal fired and 285 MW is from renewables and distributed generation. Therefore, "going green" would require de-commissioning about 21.6% of the existing dependable capability. The question ratepayers ought to be asking is why?

Let us examine the largest coal fired power plant. It is Intermountain Generating Station located near Delta, Utah. LADWP's share of its output is 1,038 MW. The 2009 operating report provides this summary

Net Generation                  13,867 GWH

Net Facility Heat Rate      9,675 B/KWH

Equivalent Availability    92.1%

Forced Outage Rate          2.9%

Net Capacity Factor          87.6%

Net Output Factor             95.2%

The two units were put into commercial operation in June 1986 and May 1987.

The first conclusion we can draw is that the citizens of Los Angeles do not suffer from any pollution from the plant, the citizens of Utah are the ones affected. The purported benefit would be to protect Los Angelinos from "Anthropogenic Global Warming." Spending huge sums on solar and wind power projects could not result in an 87.6% capacity factor (the capacity factor is the percentage of actual power output relative to the theoretical full power operation 24/7/365).  For comparison purposes Spain's wind power has a capacity factor of only 21%. So it would take over four times as large a nameplate capacity to net out an equivalent amount of power. At about $2 million per MW for a wind farm, that works out to be $8 billion for 4,000 MW of nameplate capacity.

Now let us look at the situation from the perspective of the citizens of Delta, Utah. First, they do not want to lose the jobs associated with the plant. However, they would like to see the pollution from the plant decrease. Being from a "Red State" they likely have read Randall Hoven's Graph for The Day of March 18 in American Thinker and have noted that due to the Clean Air Act of 1990 (Bush 41) and the Clean Air Mercury Rule of 2005 (Bush 43) the air pollution from coal fired power plants has been in a dramatic decline. Today's coal fired plant would be dramatically cleaner ("Clean Coal") than a plant built in 1987. It would also be much more fuel-efficient. The greater the fuel efficiency, the less emissions (including carbon dioxide). So what they might prefer is to have LADWP use its newfound money to build a modern coal fired plant in Delta. Let's call it Unit 3.

As a notional design for Unit 3, we could copy an existing plant in Yuhuan Province, China. The Chinese have built and put into commercial operation four 1,000 MW ultra-supercritical boilers. According to Power-Technology.com, their estimated investment was 900 million Euros. That works out to be about $1.2 billion. The efficiency of the plant is shown to be 45%, which means the heat rate is 7,582 B/KWH. Reducing the heat rate of Unit 3 relative to Units 1 & 2 reduces fuel consumption by 21.6%. That directly reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 21.6%. An added benefit is that it would also reduce the demand for cooling water by 33.4% in the arid climate of Utah. So they would have one of "the world's cleanest, most efficient and most advanced ultra-supercritical units" that would be repaying the capital investment through fuel and cooling water savings while also improving air quality and cutting "greenhouse" emissions.

The principal impediments to this happy result are Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) who chair the Energy Committees in the House and Senate. So as the voters of Los Angeles pay those ever increasing electric rates, they know to blame. As Pogo so eloquently put it, "We have seen the enemy and it is us."

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

ThE LA DWP is the most hated department in Los Angeles

[familyop]

"Green initiatives are costing hard-pressed Americans billions of dollars, in the form of higher utility bills, and squandered investment in inefficient electric power generation."

For those of us too far from the nearest power lines, it's costing us much more, too. Solar and/or wind works for some of us in sunny and/or windy areas. It was already expensive enough for us, even before the rich tax credit welfare folks, big government proponents and utility investors started going hog-wild and inflating the markets.

[DanielRedfoot]

I love this unintended, counter productive x 10 nature of our communist neighbors in the environment movement

Consider this...

Communist (Democrats) have outlawed incandescent light bulbs in the year 2014 (google it)

People are lazy...

People are not going to follow the disposable instructions of compact florescent light bulbs.
CF light bulbs will be tossed into landfills and worse in rural areas, by the billions.

CF light bulbs contain MERCURY!

1+2= How much more Murcury will be in the ENVIRONMENT in 25 years and forward?????

Same with Prius etc batteries.

Yet fossil fuels are natural and being created by the earth even today.

But coal and fossil fuels are bad ?????

Its not just stupid, its deviant. Along with useful idiots

[Nitro]

Keep in mind, that according to Obama and the EPA...

every breath you take is poisoning the planet.

[Flycatcher]

I set my compass by the environmentalists, and never get lost.

Whichever way they say to go, I know the true way is 180 degrees opposite...

[DanielRedfoot]

Good plan!

And do like Rush, stock up on incandescent light bulbs, you’ll be a bulb Barron in just a few years :)

[OCCASparky]

Better yet, just open the breakers and see how “green” power really works in the dark.

[cva66snipe]

There's a solar power manufacturing company moving into my area. I believe they make the panels. Anyway the power demand needed for that one facility to make panels will be the total output produced by one hydroelectric dam. It just doesn't make sense.

Granted solar is the only choice in some remote areas with fairly low or conservative power usage. It is by no means ready for replacing the nations power grid nor will it likely ever be.

[neverdem]

Good luck with getting rid of Boxer. Getting rid of Waxman might literally take an earthquake. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !