Dumb Energy Advances in Colorado

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Xcel Energy is the dominant electric utility in Colorado. In cooperation with various organizations promoting green energy, Xcel released what it calls the Colorado Energy Plan. The plan proposes building nearly two billion dollars of wind and solar energy installations. It also proposes closing two coal-generating plants and building some new natural gas-generating capacity.

Xcel, without directly saying so, gives the public the impression that the closed coal plants are being replaced with wind and solar. That can’t happen for the simple reason that coal works when the wind isn’t blowing and when the sun isn’t shining. Wind and solar are always part-time supplements to the electric grid. They don’t replace reliable coal or natural gas plants. All that wind and solar do is to reduce the amount of fuel consumed in the coal or natural gas plants, when those plants are throttled back to accommodate wind or solar electricity.

What is really happening is that Xcel is replacing older, but perfectly good, coal plants with natural gas plants. The coal plants being replaced are equipped with modern pollution controls and have low operating costs. Dumping the coal plants is necessary to accommodate the proposed wind and solar. Wind and solar have to have backup plants that can inversely follow the ups and downs of erratic wind and solar generation. Natural gas turbines are much better at doing that than is coal-based generation. Dumping the coal plants that emit more CO2 than natural-gas plants also pleases radical environmentalists that worry about global warming.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/dumb_energy_advances_in_colorado.html

The Colorado Public Utility Commission, supposedly acting on behalf of the consumer, is acting against it.

Similar to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, charged with protecting civil rights, was found guilty of denying the civil rights of the baker.

Colorado has become a basket case, simply one step behind California.

[Absalom]

The Colorado Public Utility Commission, supposedly acting on behalf of the consumer, is acting against it.

Similar to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, charged with protecting civil rights, was found guilty of denying the civil rights of the baker.

Colorado has become a basket case, simply one step behind California.

----------------------------------
Any technological advance is constrained by economics and has been forever;
which is why Thomas Edison advised/urged Henry Ford to abandon an electric
powered car for the internal-combustion engine.
Solar and wind are the beloved fads of economic assholery w/a political agenda.
Oil and LNG are the past, present and future of energy, w/coal and water a distant
third as well as the choice of the third world; led by those wise Chinese. Hmm..........         

[Smokin Joe]

----------------------------------
Any technological advance is constrained by economics and has been forever;
which is why Thomas Edison advised/urged Henry Ford to abandon an electric
powered car for the internal-combustion engine.
Solar and wind are the beloved fads of economic assholery w/a political agenda.
Oil and LNG are the past, present and future of energy, w/coal and water a distant
third as well as the choice of the third world; led by those wise Chinese. Hmm..........       

Still, we have known reserves of coal which could last for centuries. More likely is the processing of coal (gasification) to produce liquid and gaseous fuels in the future.
The research has been going on well over 40 years, and when the economics catch up, that will happen if the economics of other technologies do not preclude it.

[Absalom]

Still, we have known reserves of coal which could last for centuries. More likely is the processing of coal (gasification) to produce liquid and gaseous fuels in the future.
The research has been going on well over 40 years, and when the economics catch up, that will happen if the economics of other technologies do not preclude it.

------------------------------
Smokin, I'm emphatically not a Luddite about coal.
If it can be harnessed economically as a competing
resource; let's go forward.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Still, we have known reserves of coal which could last for centuries. More likely is the processing of coal (gasification) to produce liquid and gaseous fuels in the future.
The research has been going on well over 40 years, and when the economics catch up, that will happen if the economics of other technologies do not preclude it.

Well, the Nazis made liquids out of coal to power their tanks, so technology has been around for a long time.  The Nazis, like South Africa during apartheid, were forced into making coal into liquids as their access to oil was limited.

Since it is my belief the production growth in liquids from oil in this country will slow down significantly next decade, it will not be economics but a similar necessity to make liquids for transportation out of both coal and natural gas.

[thackney]

Still, we have known reserves of coal which could last for centuries. More likely is the processing of coal (gasification) to produce liquid and gaseous fuels in the future.
The research has been going on well over 40 years, and when the economics catch up, that will happen if the economics of other technologies do not preclude it.

You missed a zero.  Try over 400 years.

HISTORY OF GASIFICATION
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-gasification

It has had significant "modern" research for over 60 years.

POST WWII DEVELOPMENT
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-postWWII

[Smokin Joe]

You missed a zero.  Try over 400 years.

HISTORY OF GASIFICATION
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-gasification

It has had significant "modern" research for over 60 years.

POST WWII DEVELOPMENT
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-postWWII

I stand corrected. I knew of this https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Great_Plains_Synfuels_Plant

[thackney]

I stand corrected. I knew of this https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Great_Plains_Synfuels_Plant

Yes, I have doubts they could afford to build it today to compete with the Shale Gas sources.  But back then, we were running low and significant imports were in our future.

https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/great-plains

[Smokin Joe]

Yes, I have doubts they could afford to build it today to compete with the Shale Gas sources.  But back then, we were running low and significant imports were in our future.

https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/great-plains

Yep, much of that was signed ff on during the last (pre unconventional resource development) boom.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Yes, I have doubts they could afford to build it today to compete with the Shale Gas sources.  But back then, we were told by Government Officials we were running low and they believed significant imports were in our future.

Had to make that clarification.

Also, there is no doubt in my mind that the abundance of shale gas will usurp any type of gasification of coal project in this country for many years to come, save for coal seam gas which is already occurring in situ.

[thackney]

Had to make that clarification.

Also, there is no doubt in my mind that the abundance of shale gas will usurp any type of gasification of coal project in this country for many years to come, save for coal seam gas which is already occurring in situ.

I don't agree with your qualifications.  It was far more than just the opinions of government officials.  From that time Natural Gas imports quadrupled before they started coming down.

U.S. Natural Gas Imports
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9100us2m.htm

Major players in the industry spent billions of dollars building LNG import facilities and was still building them as late as 2008.

(Although that Freeport LNG had been in the works for years.  They loaded exactly one ship to commission it.  It never operated commercially past that point until they built the export unit to liquefy the Nat Gas from inland.)

[Absalom]

You missed a zero.  Try over 400 years.

HISTORY OF GASIFICATION
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-gasification

It has had significant "modern" research for over 60 years.

POST WWII DEVELOPMENT
https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/coal/energy-systems/gasification/gasifipedia/history-postWWII

--------------------------------------
A demurral.
Sure experimentation occurred 400 years ago by a chemist here and there.
Yet each was little more than a curiosity; never translating into anything
applicable/usable by the market place.
Science, be it biology, chemistry, physics, technology, among many, is
constrained by economics which asks a fundamental question:
Does the market want this and if so, what is it willing to pay for it???
When that dynamic changes, we will have a space ship rather than a car
in our garage.
   

[truth_seeker]

Fischer Tropsch. Nazi Germany, and later Sasol, in South Africa (operating now)

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer-Tropsch_process

[thackney]

--------------------------------------
A demurral.
Sure experimentation occurred 400 years ago by a chemist here and there.
Yet each was little more than a curiosity; never translating into anything
applicable/usable by the market place.
Science, be it biology, chemistry, physics, technology, among many, is
constrained by economics which asks a fundamental question:
Does the market want this and if so, what is it willing to pay for it???
When that dynamic changes, we will have a space ship rather than a car
in our garage.
   

The last 60 years has been in commercial production, South Africa drove much of that development.  Even earlier for significant German production before and during the WW2.

Germany's Synthetic Fuel Industry
1927-1945
http://www.caer.uky.edu/energeia/PDF/vol12_5.pdf

[IsailedawayfromFR]

I don't agree with your qualifications.  It was far more than just the opinions of government officials.  From that time Natural Gas imports quadrupled before they started coming down.

U.S. Natural Gas Imports
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9100us2m.htm

Major players in the industry spent billions of dollars building LNG import facilities and was still building them as late as 2008.

(Although that Freeport LNG had been in the works for years.  They loaded exactly one ship to commission it.  It never operated commercially past that point until they built the export unit to liquefy the Nat Gas from inland.)

You might not have been around back then, but it was the federal government causing those shortages.

Carter and the Congressional Dems decided to freeze the price of natural gas sent into interstate markets.  This predictably caused new drilling in the fields dedicated to that market to dry up and production declined immensely.

I was there working and we had no incentives to produce more gas in those fields.  I recall the max was maybe 59 cents per mcf, with some only 19 cents per mcf, compared to a couple of dollars per mcf for intrastate.  Us Texans were forced to pay several times as much for natural gas we produced and used compared to what we produced that went elsewhere.

That is one reason the bumper stickers driving around Texas back then was "Let the bastards freeze in the dark"

It was a disaster policy that caused those imports.

This country never ran out of natural gas other than due to governmental interference.

[thackney]

You might not have been around back then, but it was the federal government causing those shortages.

Carter and the Congressional Dems decided to freeze the price of natural gas sent into interstate markets.  This predictably caused new drilling in the fields dedicated to that market to dry up and production declined immensely.

I was there working and we had no incentives to produce more gas in those fields.  I recall the max was maybe 59 cents per mcf, with some only 19 cents per mcf, compared to a couple of dollars per mcf for intrastate.  Us Texans were forced to pay several times as much for natural gas we produced and used compared to what we produced that went elsewhere.

That is one reason the bumper stickers driving around Texas back then was "Let the bastards freeze in the dark"

It was a disaster policy that caused those imports.

This country never ran out of natural gas other than due to governmental interference.

In the mid to late 1970s and early to mid 1980s I agree with that.  But the US Nat Gas imports continued to rise until 2007.  It took technology and price until then to turn the tide and start reducing our imports.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

In the mid to late 1970s and early to mid 1980s I agree with that.  But the US Nat Gas imports continued to rise until 2007.  It took technology and price until then to turn the tide and start reducing our imports.

To some extent that is true, but the foundations of the government stepping in and dictating price and access caused most of the majors to sell off assets in the US and direct attention overseas.

Only recently are companies like Exxon (buying XTO), Chevron and Shell coming back to the US as they realize the opportunities here.

[Joe Wooten]

The Colorado Public Utility Commission, supposedly acting on behalf of the consumer, is acting against it.

Similar to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, charged with protecting civil rights, was found guilty of denying the civil rights of the baker.

Colorado has become a basket case, simply one step behind California.

It's all the Californicators who have moved into Colorado and vote the same crap they did in Cali that ruined the state. They are doing the same in Texas too.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

It's all the Californicators who have moved into Colorado and vote the same crap they did in Cali that ruined the state. They are doing the same in Texas too.

not if we can help it.

Sure, there are bastions of idiocy here like the city of Austin and congressional folks like Sheila Jackson Lee and Lloyd Doggett.

I believe it is very telling that the last time any Democrat won a statewide position is in 1994 and that was by a conservative Democrat.

BTW, the last time Dems won most votes in Texas for President was Jimmy Carter in 1976.  He got 51.14% of the votes.

Texas learned afterwards what a mistake that was, and Carter only got 41.4% in 1980, and
southerner Bill Clinton never won Texas in either election of 1992 or 1996.

[Joe Wooten]

not if we can help it.

Sure, there are bastions of idiocy here like the city of Austin and congressional folks like Sheila Jackson Lee and Lloyd Doggett.

I believe it is very telling that the last time any Democrat won a statewide position is in 1994 and that was by a conservative Democrat.

BTW, the last time Dems won most votes in Texas for President was Jimmy Carter in 1976.  He got 51.14% of the votes.

Texas learned afterwards what a mistake that was, and Carter only got 41.4% in 1980, and
southerner Bill Clinton never won Texas in either election of 1992 or 1996.

I know, I lived in Texas up until 1997. That's why the 0bama admin went so viciously again True the Vote, because it threatened their hold on Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin and their plans to flood the state with ilegal voters.