…at the New York Times:
Natural gas just might be the energy solution environmentalists say they want, but actually can’t stand because nothing would put them out of business faster. Forbes blogger Chris Helman words it perfectly:
We would have thought that the Times would be in favor of plentiful, low-cost natural gas. It burns a lot cleaner than coal, and with nuclear off the table for now, gas is poised to fuel U.S. economic growth for more than a generation to come. I can only guess that the problem, as the Times sees it, is that as long as we have all that cheap gas, there’s precious little need for solar panels, windmills and other cornerstones of their much-heralded but slow evolving green jobs revolution.
Forbes, on the other hand, thinks it’s pretty awesome that thanks to drilling ingenuity the U.S. has proven to have one of the world’s biggest and cheapest hoards of clean-burning gas. Now that’s a story.
This may be a solution to some of the idiocy in California as well, given out high electric rates due partly to NIMBY reluctance to build generating capacity and the insane carbon law they passed. We’re currently paying fifteen cents a kilowatt-hour in SoCal (more for amounts exceeding baseline). I can buy a generator like this one (or smaller), and produce the same power for about a quarter of that at current gas prices (and they’re likely to continue to go down). But I imagine if I were to do that, the carbon nazis would come after me. Also, I’m not sure if they’re designed for steady use, but I think that if you could come up with one that was fairly quiet and could run 24/7, it will become pretty attractive to a lot of people around here.
The warranty is “4 years or 3000 hours” which works out to 8.6% usage.
I don’t think your numbers work.
I get 12.49c/KW for running my own generator, just counting
nat gas costs, no maintenance or other allowance.
I pay $0.63/therm for nat gas in San Diego.
A therm is 96.7 cu ft.
The generator burns 259 cu ft/hr at half load (27KW/2)
Multiplying it all out I get 12.49c/kwh.
Toss in an oil change every thousand hours etc….
If you start adding in things like co-generation where the waste generator heat makes heat and hot water, and you have some deal to sell unused power back to the electric co at peak rates for load leveling it might make sense.
I for one am willing to pay something for not having to hassle with a generator. I grew up in Alaska, off grid, it is not a zero attention item.
It really sucks to get up in the morning to find that the automatic system did not come on, your in a cold dark house and have to go mess with it before you can take your shower.
NatGas may be less hassle then diesel, but with diesel you never ever get the smell out. IMHO this is wishful thinking pining for independence from the system without acknowledging the real costs.
Paul, where did diesel come into the picture? That generator runs on natural gas. And if you do a bit of research you will find continuous duty models for not a lot more money.
Granted it’s not cheaper than relying on the electric grid … yet.
Thanks for doing the math Hal, but I wonder if it’s that linear. I have a feeling if you bought one, installed it right, and set it going- then did all necessary periodic mantenance- you might be surprised how long it could go before you see (hopefully) an auto-shutdown due to a fault. I think I’ll put getting one of these on my “if I ever win the Powerball” list (it’s getting pretty long).
If you want to make your own power, co-generation is probably the way to go. Systems like the ones at freewatt.com let you generate continuous base-load electricity from natural gas and use the waste heat to reduce the load on your furnace. It’s like running a high efficiency gas furnace and then getting half your electricity for free. It’d probably work better in a colder climate though.
The watermelons are not in favor of an energy source unless it is unavailable. To wit, the opposition to big solar projects in the desert, or wind farms anywhere near an elite’s lune of sight. The their objective isn’t to make clean energy abundantly available, but to make energy beyondd subsistence requirements unavailable to their inferiors. You can’t rule prosperous people. Their objective is to rule…
It’s not NIMBY anymore, it’s BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Though with the opposition to the Panoche Valley solar project (where there really is nothing), I’m guessing even BANANA doesn’t work.
Paul,
Granted, maintenance isn’t free, and the price of the unit wouldn’t “pay for itself” (just consider it a sunk cost that more than pays for itself during rolling brownouts and rolling blackouts). But, excluding maintenance items, am I missing some sort of math magic in which 12.49 cents/kWh is NOT less than Rand’s current rate of 15 cents/kWh off-peak, under-baseline?
If I’m not missing a math magic trick, then wherefor your assertion that “I don’t think your numbers work”?
Curt-
Don’t forget the CAVE dwellers: Citizens Against Virtually Everything
Paul-
My bad. I glossed over the part where Rand said “for a quarter of that”. In that case, you’re correct, 12.49 is much more than 25% of 15.
Sorry ’bout that.
My personal experience with a off-grid generator was diesel.
As I said in my comments:
NatGas may be less hassle then diesel.
No question that natural gas is a terrific fuel, however, the NY Times article is asking whether extracting natural gas from shale is as easy and inexpensive as company promoters are saying.
Can natural gas be extracted from shale at a low enough cost to sell it to consumers at competitive prices?
Shale promoters say yes. Others say no.
Me? I’ve read both articles and I need more data before coming to a conclusion.
Doing a little more research:
0.22c kwh for more than 200% of baseline electric.
and for non baseline gas its 1.24/therm. So the gas is more than the electricity.
Also too,
I have looked into generators for my house and unless I went on an aggressive energy diet, I’d need a surprisingly large unit to match what we draw from Com Ed. Especially during summer peak air conditioning season.
Ideally, I would like to go geothermal for our HVAC needs but the up front costs are high.
Our local high school recently took a very close look at geothermal for a needed HVAC replacement and concluded that if we had year round school, the electricity savings from geothermal air conditioning would have made it the best choice, however since the buildings are largely vacant in summer, natural gas heat was the cheaper option.
Interestingly, a geothermal system needs to be run on a 12 month schedule so that heat extracted in winter is put back in the ground in summer.
= = =
Increased use of geothermal for winter heating and summer cooling would reduce demand for natural gas, thereby lowering the price.
Recent reports say that Google’s new CA datacenters use Bloom Energy’s 100Kw natural gas fuel cells for baseline power. Given that they would want onsite backup anyway, it would be a no-brainer for them.
Paul Breed Says:
June 29th, 2011 at 8:06 am
A therm is 100kBTUs. Your current volumetric equivalent is 96.7 cu.ft. Your BTU is 1034. Any change in BTU will raise or lower your volume and your costs. 1034 is kind of high.
I just Googleed therm to cu ft and 96.7 is what I saw.
There’s a company named Capstone in the San Fernando Valley that’s been making small natural gas-fired turbo generators for quite a few years now. They’re continuous-duty-capable and can be teamed with an absorption chiller to optimize cooling using the turbo’s waste heat. Smallest model is 30KW output. Might be a good place to start for anyone looking to get off the grid.
As someone who has lived off-grid with various sources of power … solar, wind, micro-hydro, and a backup generator … I can say it is nice to be on the grid hassle free. However, it is just as nice have one or more of those other options as a backup for the inevitable grid failure (storms, etc.)
I don’t support using all the new-found NG to make electricity for the grid even tho we supposedly have years and years of the stuff. I’d rather use it for heating and cooking. (I also had to use a wood-stove for cooking and heating while off the grid).
For grid power, it is time to move to Gen IV molten salt reactors (MSRs) like a Liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) that are much safer, more efficient, and cheaper.
Even without Gen IV, you’ll find nuclear competes well with NG:
Levelized costs: http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
Levelized costs per the British: http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_of_Generating_Electricity.pdf
Curt-
Don’t forget the CAVE dwellers: Citizens Against Virtually Everything
Or SWINE – “Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!” from the old “Li’l Abner” comic strip. Change “Indignant” to “Ignorant” and you pretty well sum up the situation today.
NG is a super way to store and transport energy. What we need is not just energy availability but Energy Freedom. I think both Mike and LoboSolo have a point. It makes a lot of sense for the majority of grid power to come from nuclear. But I would love to have a backup. If only Bloom would come out with a House sized fuel cell. I assume that it is much quieter than a internal combustion engine generator and therefore more likely to get the ok from the wife. (she likes her quiet) Distributive generation and reliable sources all add up to stability. Stability makes for good business investments.