Picken's Plan

RI_TDI

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ikendu said:
Change to wide spread electric drive won't be effortless. No doubt.

And... remember, it also will not be overnight. Our vehicle fleet now turns over in about 15 years ...and we haven't even started yet.

There will be time to accomodate new electrical demand and the changes in the way we manage and distribute it.
Maybe not. The article referenced below shows that some existing wind projects are involuntarily idled during good generation weather because the grid is banging up against capacity:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html?em

Specifically regarding the Pickens Plan, the state of TX recently approved construction of a massive upgrade to transmission capacity, without which some of the new capacity would have ended up in the same boat as the windmills in the article. Can't say who is paying for the construction, but I don't think its at state expense.
 

mj1053

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Let's not forget that Pickens has bought up land and created water districts. Rumor is he is going to sell the water to big cities.

Pickens does not put out commercials for no reason. $$$$
 

ikendu

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ikendu wrote: "There will be time to accomodate new electrical demand and the changes in the way we manage and distribute it."

RI_TDI said:
Maybe not. The article referenced below shows that some existing wind projects are involuntarily idled during good generation weather because the grid is banging up against capacity:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html?em
We definitely need to be upgrading the grid, whether we adopt PHEVs or not. Wind energy is important to harness. The fuel is free and clean. My point is that grid upgrades for PHEVs will be slow enough coming that we will have time to deal with it. The article posted above is about grid upgrades needed no matter what (PHEVs or not).
 

ikendu

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RoundHouse said:
Sure the US uses 25% of the worlds energy. how much of the worlds food and products does the USA produce?

What percentage of the worlds wealth have we created?
Its hard to feed half the world and create 25-35% of the worlds wealth without using alot of energy.
Well... I don't disagree that we use energy for productive uses, I'm sure we do in many cases. And... even though energy is used productively, it doesn't change my earlier quote:

"What we do to conserve and pollute less does really matter."

If we can re-align our coal plants to use (and sell for that matter) waste heat that otherwise we simply throw away ...why not do it? In a case like that, what difference does it matter what China is doing or not? Ask any big company if it is smart to have an "efficiency expert" on staff to root out waste. There is a lot we can do to save money, improve profits and still have useful energy.

If my neighbor shovels dollar bills out his window, it doesn't mean I should.

Also... if my neighbor pours his motor oil down the storm sewer, it also does not mean that I ought to.

What China does to waste energy or pollute is not relevant to what the country that consumes 25% of the world's energy does.

As far as China goes, though, I believe we should institute a scheme of import tariffs tied to pollution. If a country like China pollutes the water I drink or the air I breathe (and their pollution does cross the Pacific), then they need to pay for that. Cheap goods from China, is not worth poison in my air or water. If a U.S. business isn't allowed to pollute then by golly we should't let the Chinese do it either.
 
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CentralFloridaTDIguy

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new ads

I like the new ads that he put out that he says 'Drill here and Drill now'

he has some ideas...just have not seen any real plans, etc
 

Joe_Meehan

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RoundHouse said:
My point is that OwlGore is a lunitic, as are most tree huggers. life on earth is not gonna come to an end because I drive a car and use A/C in my house.
We all tend to believe what is convenient.
 

CentralFloridaTDIguy

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do not believe in man made or assisted global warming, but

Joe_Meehan said:
We all tend to believe what is convenient.
heating and cooling of the planet is cyclical...ask any climatologist...

for someone to think that man can be contributing to global warming is rather foolish....more so called 'global warming' gases are spewed from naturally occuring volcano eruptions than what man puts out....

now the but...

I do believe that the 'easy' oil exploration is over and the remaining supplies are going to be harder and more expensive to extract....

I believe that we do need to develop renewable and domestically available 'non-food related' renewable resources to insulate us from the unstable middle eastern countries and countries with extremist leading them like Venezuela and Russia.

Jonathan
 

RI_TDI

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ikendu said:
We definitely need to be upgrading the grid, whether we adopt PHEVs or not. Wind energy is important to harness. The fuel is free and clean. My point is that grid upgrades for PHEVs will be slow enough coming that we will have time to deal with it. The article posted above is about grid upgrades needed no matter what (PHEVs or not).
We completely agree on support of PHEV and Wind and I am not responding just to be argumentative, but I have two issues with this statement:
  1. I understand that PHEV will (unfortunately) not be in widespread use for the better part of a decade. Yet upgrades to transmission capacity are no faster, and in some cases slower. The article is evidence - surely the commitment to build wind turbines in question was made something like five years ago the transmission capacity to take advantage of this wonderful source isn't there.
  2. Technically, the fuel is Free and Clean - but that is not the full story. In order to take advantage of that fuel, large investments in infrastructure and footprints on the environment must be sustained - the turbines have to be manufactured, erected, connected and maintained. And the transmission upgrades have similar associated costs, too. All of this ends up in someone's view, are audible from your yard, crosses your land or displaces something.
I say these investments and footprints are utterly worthwhile, but if they are not acknowledged we simply leave ourselves open to attack by the carbon cartel (petro-coal) and shame on us if a wind, solar, tidal or biofuel project is rejected because of it.
 

ikendu

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RI_TDI said:
We completely agree on support of PHEV and Wind and I am not responding just to be argumentative, but I have two issues with this statement:
  1. I understand that PHEV will (unfortunately) not be in widespread use for the better part of a decade. Yet upgrades to transmission capacity are no faster, and in some cases slower. The article is evidence - surely the commitment to build wind turbines in question was made something like five years ago the transmission capacity to take advantage of this wonderful source isn't there.
  2. Technically, the fuel is Free and Clean - but that is not the full story. In order to take advantage of that fuel, large investments in infrastructure and footprints on the environment must be sustained - the turbines have to be manufactured, erected, connected and maintained. And the transmission upgrades have similar associated costs, too. All of this ends up in someone's view, are audible from your yard, crosses your land or displaces something.
I say these investments and footprints are utterly worthwhile, but if they are not acknowledged we simply leave ourselves open to attack by the carbon cartel (petro-coal) and shame on us if a wind, solar, tidal or biofuel project is rejected because of it.
What you say is quite true.

Just like if we find a huge new source of natural gas, we'd need to build a pipeline to that area to bring it to market. The great thing about wind and solar (let's say the strong wind corridor that goes up through the mid-west from Texas to the Dakotas plus the great sunshine resource of solar in the SouthWest), is that the fuel is free and will not likely go away in thousands of years (unlike a natural gas field that can play out in a relatively short time).

So... once we build our "pipeline" to bring the energy to market, we only need to maintain it, not build new constantly every decade as new "fields" are discovered. Once the rights of way are established, the towers built, the wires strung, etc., that electricity pipeline will serve us energy for hundreds or thousands of years.

We do need to acknowledge the costs of new infrastructure just like a new gas pipeline or new Gulf oil drilling rig or Alaskan pipeline or railway constructed to deliver coal or... whatever. Remember, there was a time when none of that existed. Oil and gas doesn't just start magically flowing from way out in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico without some pipeline work. When fossil fuel advocates talk about new sources (like drilling off-shore), is a large part of our conversation all about the new rigs, pipelines, etc. to make it happen?

Not so much. Why not? Because we are used to it. It is what we know.

When the Alaskan pipeline was constructed, did we ask "Is this worth it?", heck it is clear that it has a finite, useful life as oil begins to play out in that field. Yet, we did it. I presume that clean, plentiful electricity from wind and solar that come from the regions best placed to harvest it will be just like that.

Here's the good part. The solar resource of the Southwest is not likely to "play out" and neither is the wind corridor from Texas to the Dakotas.

Seems like a pretty good deal for our society to me. We build it once, we keep it maintained, and it delivers abundant, clean electricity for a very, very long time.

RI_TDI said:
I say these investments and footprints are utterly worthwhile, but if they are not acknowledged we simply leave ourselves open to attack by the carbon cartel (petro-coal) and shame on us if a wind, solar, tidal or biofuel project is rejected because of it.
So... next time you see someone post about high-sulfur coal being using in an FT process for liquid fuel, ask them if they are acknowledging the cost of building new rail lines to get the coal to a processing plant and the new pipelines to get the fuel into our national pipeline.

And, BTW... I don't take your points to be argumentative at all. These are important issues to consider, plan and make sure our government is thinking about to really get this done. We will have to shift away from fossil fuels. No Choice. Inevitable. Only a question of when... not if.
 
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MBoni said:
Sorry, half of the plan is excellent, half is just stupid.

Building lots of wind turbines is a great plan.

But taking natural gas away from power generation (where it's about 60% efficient) and turning it into automotive use (where it's about 15-20% efficient) is a bad idea.

I have to agree with Joseph Romm on this one: Climate Progres
Actually modern power plants utilizing regeneration have seen eficencies as high as 93 percent using a natural gas turbine and then a steam turbine run off waste heat from the NG turbine.
 

Scott_DeWitt

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Dimitri16V said:
Public transportation buses can run on natural gas and reduce city polution. One thing for sure, the extra natural gas can be used somewhere else.
I like Pickens initiative . GE will make lots of $$ from wind turbines and it's investing in solar panels too.
Diesels can be converted to run on Ng as well.
 

RI_TDI

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Scott_DeWitt said:
Diesels can be converted to run on Ng as well.
Indeed. I was a Superintendent of a Municipal Utility in the mid-80s. They have a all-diesel power plant built in 1887 which was the sole source of electricity in the town until they tied into the grid in the mid 1960s (and had to abandon two-phase (!) power in the process).

Enterprise medium-speed three-phase generators intalled at the time of the tie-in continued to supply all power with the grid as backup. These units and many like them around the country are, or can be readily configured for dual fuel - #2FO or NG. An important fact considering the existing installed base of 'cogeneration' (peak shaving or emergency supply) units that could be utilized if the economics of running on NG improve. For sure, the 'enviro-nomics' are already there.

Then the second fuel spike in 1979 relegated the generators to be used for summertime peak shaving and when the occasional storm knocks out transmission from the grid. Unfortunately the NG supply belongs to the surrounding utility so generating on NG was never economically feasible. They proved very handy though - the villiage was always back online within 24 hr while the surrounding areas foundered for days - it was a boon for the local businesses.

For the diesel geeks - they still maintained the 'old' generators in wokring order: 1927 and 1929 Busch-Sulzers with open valve galleries. An 'oiler' patrolled the catwalks and dispensed oil directly onto the cams and valve train while the engines ran. I don't think that job would pass OSHA muster these days.

The main control panel right outta Frankenstein - built in the 1930's, it still used open knife switches and contained a special clock with two sets of hands - one set driven electrically and one driven by a pendulum. This way operators could regulate the generator's speed so all the electric clocks in the town remained in synch with the rest of the world back in the days before the tie-in.
 

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RI_TDI said:
For the diesel geeks - they still maintained the 'old' generators in wokring order: 1927 and 1929 Busch-Sulzers with open valve galleries. An 'oiler' patrolled the catwalks and dispensed oil directly onto the cams and valve train while the engines ran. I don't think that job would pass OSHA muster these days.

The main control panel right outta Frankenstein - built in the 1930's, it still used open knife switches and contained a special clock with two sets of hands - one set driven electrically and one driven by a pendulum. This way operators could regulate the generator's speed so all the electric clocks in the town remained in synch with the rest of the world back in the days before the tie-in.

That is so unbelievably awesome you just cannot know the depth of its awesome. :D
 

aja8888

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I ran a manufacturing plant in CT in the 1970's that was built around 1900 in Ansonia. We had a still-operating hydro (water wheel) putting out about 1000 KW that we fed into our powerhouse. The nearby Naugatuck River had a diversion into our plant to provide the water power. We also had several steam driven generators that we fired up when we lost Northeat Utilities power to the plant. I have photos of the powerhouse being built in 1911 - 12. I had to "rebuild" the penstock on the hydro in 1979! I found the "sister" of our hydro plant in Baltic Mills CT in a shutdown textile mill and dragged it to our plant for spare parts!

Back in the early 1900's, they had some real challanges (for reliable electrical power) both from a domestic and industrial standpoint. Now you know why a lot of old manufacturing plants were built near waterways. ;)
 

RI_TDI

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aja8888 said:
I ran a manufacturing plant in CT in the 1970's that was built around 1900 in Ansonia. We had a still-operating hydro (water wheel) putting out about 1000 KW that we fed into our powerhouse....
...Now you know why a lot of old manufacturing plants were built near waterways. ;)
Whoa, small world. I installed and supported casting equipment in the Ansonia Copper & Brass (former Anaconda) Mill on the Naugatuck throughout the 90's. Which plant was yours - Waterbury Rolling Mills?

When you say 'water wheel' do you mean that literally or was it 1st-gen turbines? There was a woolen mill near where I took my undergraduate degree in Troy, NY which in 1979 was still deriving its principal operating power from early 1900s turbines. By graduation they were retired and literally tossed aside. The blades were ½" plate, not tapered but formed to complex curvature and the housing was riveted steel. Some entrepreneurs saw the value and had redirected the penstocks (ø24", 125 ft head) to some modern turbines (built with state subsidy) which are still printing money to this day.

And Turbine Power - (assuming that was a genuine response and not mockery) I didn't mention that the Power Plant has to this day a functioning machine shop (lathes, mills, shapers, grinders, etc) all driven by flat leather belts from an central overhead shaft.

OK no more Memory Lane. Pickens' Plan isn't perfect and he'll get rich-er, but we'll get more independence so in my book its a good (enough) deal. Pickens' TV ads, just like the pharma's Direct-to-Consumer campaigns, kinda creep me out though. I know that winning the hearts and minds is key, but doesn't it still feel like the money could be put to better use?
 

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RI_TDI said:
And Turbine Power - (assuming that was a genuine response and not mockery) I didn't mention that the Power Plant has to this day a functioning machine shop (lathes, mills, shapers, grinders, etc) all driven by flat leather belts from an central overhead shaft.
Oh that wasn't even close to mockery, that was genuinely heartfelt envy. That you're only making worse, curse you. :(
 

aja8888

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RI_TDI said:
Whoa, small world. I installed and supported casting equipment in the Ansonia Copper & Brass (former Anaconda) Mill on the Naugatuck throughout the 90's. Which plant was yours - Waterbury Rolling Mills?

I was Engineering Manager at the Ansonia Plant Between 1975 and 1980. I was pretty much responsible for the acquisition and installation of the new (at the time) indirect Schloemann extruder. I also ran all maintenance and engineering. Then I was Plant Manager of the Anaconda Small Tube Plant in Waterbury until I went to ARCO (California) in the 1980's. I had different engineering jobs in the "Brass" since I got out of college. I did a stint in Detroit as Production Superintendent in the early 1970's. Seems so long ago...

When you say 'water wheel' do you mean that literally or was it 1st-gen turbines? There was a woolen mill near where I took my undergraduate degree in Troy, NY which in 1979 was still deriving its principal operating power from early 1900s turbines. By graduation they were retired and literally tossed aside. The blades were ½" plate, not tapered but formed to complex curvature and the housing was riveted steel. Some entrepreneurs saw the value and had redirected the penstocks (ø24", 125 ft head) to some modern turbines (built with state subsidy) which are still printing money to this day.

Yes, the Ansonia Plant had an operating water wheel turbine (generator).

And Turbine Power - (assuming that was a genuine response and not mockery) I didn't mention that the Power Plant has to this day a functioning machine shop (lathes, mills, shapers, grinders, etc) all driven by flat leather belts from an central overhead shaft.

OK no more Memory Lane. Pickens' Plan isn't perfect and he'll get rich-er, but we'll get more independence so in my book its a good (enough) deal. Pickens' TV ads, just like the pharma's Direct-to-Consumer campaigns, kinda creep me out though. I know that winning the hearts and minds is key, but doesn't it still feel like the money could be put to better use?
Other sources of energy are in our future for sure. As long as the U.S. is held hostage for crude oil, then there will be incentives. Natural gas will be a big part of the conversion. Wind power will be slow to develop due to costs and logistical issues.

I'm curious about your history with the Brass. PM me with a brief history of your projects, etc and I will do the same back, OK?

Tony
 
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