The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#101

Post by Animats » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

niftich wrote: post #92

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

Moreover, what's driving low natgas prices in the US is the use of hydraulic fracturing -- 'fracking' -- which injects some fluid, often water, horizontally along an entire layer of shale to free the trapped gas. This technique enabled formations like the Marcellus Shale [1] in WV, PA, OH, NY to be economically viable to extract, and this formation grew to be the largest producer of natgas in the US. There are many u…

Oklahoma is getting some answers. Try their interactive earthquake map. Look at earthquakes in 2016 vs 2010 vs the 1980s. They show disposal wells on the same map. The big problem is not the fracking injection itself, but disposal wells for all the waste fluid involved.

[1] https://earthquakes.ok.gov/what-we-know/earthquake-map/

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#102

Post by awqrre » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

why do you exclude hydroelectric?

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#103

Post by yessql » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

alex_stoddard wrote: post #97

cagenut wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over': https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... But you are absolutely right that its entirely due to natgas and that will maybe last us a decade or two but certainly not three. In fact its just enough time to build a fleet of nuclear plants, but as you also point out, fear rules that decision far more than physic…

Data on national scale, like the eia stuff you link to, is vital to understanding and debate. What I realize I don't understand is the meaning of "Generation at Utility Scale Facilities" in the header of the table. What does this exclude and how meaningful is the exclusion? According to the table, net generation at utility scale has decreased 10% over the last decade. How much of that is driven by non-utility scale g…

Commercial and Residential solar are excluded. Those might add up to half a percent or so. The other 9.5% is probably due to energy efficiency.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#104

Post by yessql » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

awqrre wrote: post #102

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

why do you exclude hydroelectric?

Too geography dependent, and we will probably never build another large hydro project because of the environmental impacts.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#105

Post by yessql » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #96

keebEz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same could be said for solar? The sunbelt is/was heavy on coal for energy production. Solar is a great fit for the sunbelt. The federal government subsidizing solar adoption is a direct transfer of money to southern states as well as a direct negative on WV/WY economies. What is the relative value of marginal votes from those different areas...

This isn't about the votes from coal miners. It's about what coal stands for in the minds of rural white voters.

Exactly right. Coal mining as a job has declined much more than coal as fuel. It's just easier to blame regulations and outsourcing than to admit that people can't compete with machines in energy production and manufacturing.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#106

Post by danmaz74 » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

awqrre wrote: post #102

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

why do you exclude hydroelectric?

Not the OP, but usually hydro is excluded because it's "old renewable" and most potential sources have already been developed.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#107

Post by jartelt » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

dangerlibrary wrote: post #84

jartelt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If coal is so great and cheap, then why is no one building new coal plants? Over the past few years wind and solar account for ~40% of new generation capacity and natural gas makes up the rest. Based on your comment, one would expect to either see only natural gas capacity being built out or some mix of natural gas and coal. That is not what is happening and it's because wind and solar are cheaper than coal in severa…

I feel like you and I don't disagree, but for some reason you think we do. Natural gas is replacing coal for base load generation because it is cheaper. from wind-watch.org: > "How does wind power affect base load? Wind power has no effect on base load. https://www.wind-watch.org/faq-electricity.php

Well, you said wind and solar are more expensive than coal and I am saying they are not (hence why they are being built out like crazy). You seem to be arguing that wind and solar cannot replace coal since there are intermittent. I think that is wrong.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#108

Post by stale2002 » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

dangerlibrary wrote: post #15

shuntress wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't I believe them? Assuming they are pointing to the datacenter equivalents of wind/solar/nuclear energy as the reason why datacenter use is shrinking. Edit: Did you mean to imply that Coal is not actually going away because the 'cheaper alternatives' are fake?

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

Solar power is currently following Moore's law.

Prices are cutting in half every 2 years.

There is not a whole lot more price cuts that need to happen before Solar is at grid parity, and cheaper than coal.

In places like Hawaii it is already way way cheaper than any other available power solution.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#109

Post by crdoconnor » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

cagenut wrote: post #74

Animats wrote: post #71

Well over 40% of US electricity is still from coal. Despite all the hype, renewables other than hydroelectric are only 3% in the US. What's driving energy prices is cheap natural gas. Natural gas is cheap to extract and can be extracted fast. But after a while, it's all gone. Britain's North Sea Gas boom is over.[1] Gas fields also drop off faster than oil fields. The cheap natural gas boom won't last forever. It's c…

Sorry if this is nitpicky but fyi, coal in 2016 was almost exactly 40%, not 'well over': https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... But you are absolutely right that its entirely due to natgas and that will maybe last us a decade or two but certainly not three. In fact its just enough time to build a fleet of nuclear plants, but as you also point out, fear rules that decision far more than physic…

"Wind and solar and batteries are awesome, but even in very optimistic case scenarios we need an alternative to coal and the temporary surge of natgas to handle baseload between here and ~2040. It should be nuclear, but, sigh. "

Wind and solar's bigger problem isn't really the intermittency of availability of electricity, it's the distribution of availability. It needs a more sophisticated grid. America's grid operators (who also own generators) would be shooting themselves in the foot by upgrading the grid since renewables eat into their bottom line (they want to sell natgas/coal/nuclear electricity, not buy solar from your rooftop or set up windfarms that makes a razor thin profit...).

Utility operator lobbyists thus have a marked tendency to overstate the problem of renewable intermittency.

Nuclear is cost competitive with solar and wind but it's only cost competitive if the liability is capped. Remove the liability cap and mandate that nuclear insurance cover the cost of a Fukushima style cleanup and there's no point in ever building a plant ever again. Whereas if you remove all the tariffs (e.g. things like the 40% solar import taxes) and subsidies, renewable prices probably wouldn't change all that much.

Re: The Cheap Energy Revolution Is Here, and Coal Won’t Cut It

#110

Post by dangerlibrary » Wed, Apr 26, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #108

dangerlibrary wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind and solar are non-starters. They're more expensive than coal and they can't cover base load. Nuclear could cover base load but is orders of magnitude more expensive (up-front) than coal. Huge investment, huge regulatory burden, huge political risk. Until recently, we hadn't built a new nuclear plant in the country for decades. [0] Coal is cheap and reliable. Always has been. What's killing coal is low, non-volat…

Solar power is currently following Moore's law. Prices are cutting in half every 2 years. There is not a whole lot more price cuts that need to happen before Solar is at grid parity, and cheaper than coal. In places like Hawaii it is already way way cheaper than any other available power solution.

In order to cover base load solar + utility scale battery deployments need to be cheaper than a coal plant in terms of TCO.

You're not wrong, and of course things like a carbon tax could change the economics substantially, but base load generation is not going to be solved by cheaper panels alone.