Posted on 08/01/2017 4:56:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
Except that governments effort to do that FAILED. It was exactly the free market factor of innovation in production methodology (fracking) for natural gas and the resultant massive increase in supply that turned the tide against coal.
True TODAY. Future....no. And the choice is not a coal-fired steam turbine plant vs a gas turbine plant, but a coal-steam turbine plant vs a gas turbine/steam turbine combined cycle plant. Pure gas turbine generation "is" relatively expensive, and is only used for peaking, as it can be power-ramped as demand varies.
Yeah, and it failed bigly when we elected Trump! Hillary was set to bankrupt coal.
I’m comparing this year to last year. That’s a wide time window.
I already explained why gas was replacing coal, the main reason is the artificial cost put on coal generation by Obama’s policies. It’s very foolish to ignore that factor. Now those policies are going away and we already see it in the coal part of the MISO generation fuel mix - last year compared to this year. Coal is way more than gas this summer.
The coal plant I work at does follow load, we run it in remote control. MISO can ramp us up and down based on demand. The ramp up/down range is limited in MW/minute and range compared to gas.
That doesn’t explain why coal is more expensive than gas in creating electricity, other than the environmental regulations designed to bankrupt the coal plants.
In California the megawatt hours of power generated by burning coal dropped from 1% in 2007 to just 0.2% in 2015. California has a 96% decrease in coal-fueled electric power consumption during the same time frame. That is the steepest decline by percentage of any state.
There is only one active coal-fired electricity generating plant left in the state, the Argus Cogeneration Plant in the high desert. Two other coal-fueled plants in Bakersfield are on “indefinite shutdown.”
California still imports power from four coal burning plants in Oregon, Arizona and 2 plants in New Mexico. California expects to get no power from coal by 2024.
It is amazing reading that.
The Jobs that will support here. A true win for everyone involved.
The whole fleet of coal plants average about 38% efficient and run as base-load. Feeling generous, assume natural gas combined cycle plants run about 60% efficient full out, and drop only a few percent for those capable of being throttled.
A ratio of 60%/38% or .6/.38=1.58, exist as a differential of efficiency between the coal boilers and gas turbines. Coal boilers burn more fuel (Btu per kWe) for the same output.
For 2017 generation: Coal cost $2.15 million Btu.
For 2017 generation: Ngas cost $3.59 million Btu.
More coal in dollars [ 1.58 x $2.15= $3.40 ] is burned to match a high efficiency NG generating system output. However, note that the natural gas cost is more than one and a half times that of coal for the same heat in Btu.
Based on this rough comparison for 2017, natural gas is slightly more expensive than coal ($3.59 vs $3.40) to deliver the same electrical generation output. The trend is for NG to run $3.94 per million Btu in 2018, which will favor coal to a greater extent than at present.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.cfm
Perfect.
Natgas plants are far simpler in design, cheaper to build, more reliable, have lower continuing operations cost for both equipment and manpower, and the fuel is cheaper and safer to transport. There are far more factors involved than simple cost of fuel.
The simpler and cheaper part disappears for combined cycle plants, but the drastically increased efficiency more than compensates.
Wow. That’s a well-informed post!
Not arguing any of that with you. And when you take the environmental factors in, nobody’s building coal plants these days. I imagine they don’t want to invest a lot of money in case a Democrat president comes along.
All I know is coal plants can generate electricity cheaper than natural gas combined cycle plants. And yes, I was referring to combined cycle when just say natural gas plants. The peaker plants have too low a capability to be compared to a coal plant.
But something makes the coal plant able to produce the megawatts cheaper, in spite of the huge labor force they employ.
I know you covered just about everything in your calculations :-)
But I have one more question. Is the price of coal pretty stable? I know the price of natural gas fluctuates, which makes it hard for the natural gas plants to estimate their profits and sometimes can be tied to a contract that loses them money. I believe natural gas production is tied to oil production? Whereas is independent of anything else.
That was supposed to be, whereas coal production is independent…
Your continuing mistake is to take today’s cost and extrapolate into the future. As more pipelines get built, the natural gas advantage over coal will increase. There is no such factor tending to drive coal prices lower. The fixed costs for coal will almost certainly increase over time.
OK, now you get to the bottom line. It would’ve helped if you said that from the very beginning.
Is more natural gas being produced or plans to do so?
Sometimes you have to go through the process to find out what datum matters. It's like the lost keys are always found in the last place you look........
"Is more natural gas being produced or plans to do so?"
Yes. The best signal is that the drilling companies are laying off personnel in expectation of an over-supply situation. I know this as my sis-in-law is an exploration geophysicist in Houston (and a damned good one) and was recently laid off. A lot of wells have already been drilled and completed, and are awaiting pipeline construction to bring that gas into usable supply.
“Sometimes you have to go through the process to find out what datum matters. It’s like the lost keys are always found in the last place you look........”
LOL!
Sorry about your sis. I almost got into the oil industry, and I guess, in hindsight it was a good thing I graduated the year there was an oil slump in Texas. So I found another route to get into. It’s a shaky industry to be in.
Thanks for the info.
That it is. But the money is damned good during "up" times. Sis-in-law ain't hurtin'. She is getting close to retirement age anyway, and was sufficiently proficient that she was always kept on through other layoffs, so has plenty stashed away. Genius-level intellect to the point of being a wee bit unstable.
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