RTGordon said:
[I agree with you on several points, but there are a few more factors to overcome. Yes, power production is one of the most fuel consuming, least efficient, most polluting industries out there, but it is that way by DESIGN. Billions are spent each year to PREVENT upgrades to existing power plants b/c they are operating under regulations enacted at the time of construction. Instead of power companies upgrading, making their plants more efficient, or building non-fossil burning plants, they prefer to do what the gas stations and oil companys do: pass that cost along to the consumer. It's a daisy-chain of price increase. If oil costs more, refineries and oil companies charge more for it. Then, in turn, the power companies simply charge the consumer more. There is no way to break that chain until a genuine lack of fuel (or demand) exists.
From the standpoint of efficiency, the automobile is much more efficient than fossil power plants. Most coal plants can only dream of more than 30% efficiency. Natural gas is much better, but supply and pollution issues remain.
Oh, dear, no. Automobile
peak fuel efficiency approaches 27%, but
average efficiency is
much worse, around 9% to 10% for the average mix of driving. In other words, we rarely operate our engines at the peak thermal efficiency point, which for a combustion engine is fully loaded at an RPM 80% of the peak torque RPM. Most of the time we're opeating well below that point, rarely we're operating above that point. This is why a properly designed hybrid can do so much better. In theory, its engine can be sized so that it mostly runs at the peak efficiency point, charging batteries when load demand is low, and using that battery power when demand is high. In theory, that allows a hybrid to approach an average efficiency near the peak efficiency of a combustion engine, ie around 27%. But in practice none of the hybrids currently on the market actually achieve this. They have engines which are too large, and batteries which are too small to realize the full efficiency benefits of hybrid operation. (There are good engineering and cost reasons why that's so.)
Meanwhile, the
average fuel efficiency of the
worst fossil electric generating plant in the US is about 30%, combined cycle plants have hit 52% efficiency, though they're more typically in the mid-40% range because of nitrogen oxide limits placed on them by the EPA. That's close to the Carnot cycle limits, which are set by physics to be a function of the difference in inlet and outlet temperatures.
Now it is true that many older plants in the US aren't being updated to be more efficient. That's because EPA rules say they'd have to go through the same process required of
new power plants to get relicensed. That takes on the average 12 years, and costs billions of dollars. But if they keep the plant the way it is, they avoid all that, and can continue to operate under the rules in force at the time they were licensed, often 30 or 40 years ago. There's no benefit to the power companies to upgrade efficiency anyway because the rules of the state PSCs allow them to tack a fuel cost adjustment onto consumer bills.
Now
if power companies were allowed to do upgrades without having to go through the relicensing process, and
if the state regulators didn't automatically grant them fuel cost adjustments in their retail rates, then you'd see all those older plants being vigorously updated to higher efficiency. But the current regulatory structure penalizes companies for doing that, so they don't.
Still, even given all that, average US fossil fuel power plant fuel efficiency is more than 3 times that of the average fuel efficiency for automobiles.
The only thing we can do individually (other than with our vote) is attempt to reduce demand. For example, many of us have a Corvette as a second vehicle. Let's make sure that our primary car is as efficient as it can be. If you buy a new car, there's nothing wrong with a hybrid or econobox to go back and forth to work.
That's a good choice for some, but many are in my situation where my Corvette
is my economy car and my second car is actually a truck/SUV/large sedan necessary for the family for those times when a two seater just won't do. A commuter car would have to be a third or fourth vehicle in these cases, and for many families (though probably not for most Corvette owners) that'd be cost prohibitive.
We can also make sure out homes our better insulated. In many localities, the International Energy Conservation Code is just now being adopted; that means many older homes and businesses were built with minimal insulation for maximum profit by the contractor.
True, insulation generally has a relatively short payback. It is a good investment.
Personally, I'm in the process of equipping my house with solar panels. From my calculations, I will have a net negative power consumption from the utility. That means I will get a check from Dominion/Virginia Power each month instead of a bill. I realize that may not be a practical thing for many people (the initial investment may be large or you may live in an apartment/townhouse) but to some it is a reasonable alternative. Perhaps I've just got too much environmentalist in me...
Almost certainly you do. If you do the sums, your real cost per kWh for solar electric is 3 to 5 times conventional bussbar cost. Only because there are government subsidies for solar can you approach breakeven. That's because 1) there is a tax credit for installing solar, and 2) your utility is required to buy back power from you at the
retail instead of wholesale power rate. In other words, the utility is forced to subsidize you too. All of the rest of us are paying for those subsidies, in higher taxes and higher electric rates.
A statement was made that government has no effective means of regulating costs without regulation that would choke the entire premise of free market economy. That is not exactly true. Yes, fuel costs could be regulated, but an even better alternative is to provide more incentives for switching to alternative fuels. Provide those incentives to industry, not just a little tax break to the consumer for buying a hybrid car. Set an example by improving government facilities in the same way. The energy market does not need the iron fist of regulation, rather, it needs encouragement to move in the right direction.
The new Bush energy bill does some of that. It encourages a switch from oil or natural gas (our most scarce fossil fuel) fired electric generation to clean coal technology with tax credits, it streamlines regulations for nuclear power plant construction, it offers new opportunities for oil and gas drilling, and it encourages more aggressive stripper well operations. Unfortunately, it also pork barrels in a requirement for gasohol which is a net fossil fuel consumption increase (it takes more oil to grow and process grain for alcohol production than is saved by the use of that alcohol in the automotive fleet, Brazil learned this hard lesson in the 1980s).
Here's a hard fact. There is no new
alternative fuel that is cost effective compared to fossil fuels, except nuclear power. We've already dammed the good hydro sites (and enviromentalists are forcing us to tear down some of those dams). Wind is too sporadic and too localized to be viable except in a few specific locations (and the environmentalists have yet to address the effects of large scale use of wind turbines on the local microclimate, ie it steals energy from the local enviroment, and that has effects on meteorological patterns). Solar electric remains too expensive, and is only available at best for about 8 hours a day. Etc.
In the long run (and not all that long either, we've reached the point of diminishing returns with fossil fuels), we are faced with a clear choice. We can revert to a mostly muscle powered agrarian society, or we can embrace nuclear power. It is the only source of bussbar power that we know can economically meet the needs of a high energy civilization for thousands of years to come. Given adequate bussbar power, we can electrify our roadways and run our transport sector off of it too. Synthetic gasoline, hydrogen, etc are only stopgaps, the most efficient use of resources is to have an electric vehicle fleet that is powered by the roadway. We have, or know how to build, the technology to do this efficiently and safely using non-contact inductive couplers on our cars and buried inductive distribution in our roadways.
