ripskii

12 Stocks Poised to Profit from Energy, Infrastructure in 2010

chancer: you are spot on with respect to our critical goals on energy and I couldn't agree more with your proposed solutions. The one thing I would add is the nuclear reactors should all be IFR types and we must immediately restart the remaining R&D required allow this to occur.

www.sustainablenuclear...

How Much Natural Gas Remains in the USA?

Mark: You've clearly stirred up a hornets nest of opinion regarding how much NG the U.S. has. Before you make statements about those quantities you would be well advised to read Robert Hefners's book "The GET Grand Energy Transition". Your comments about his gas well drilling economics entirely misses the point about NG reserves. He has extensive experience in developing NG reserves and presents substantial data to support his estimates (there is a lot of NG).

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Fitz: You ask a difficult question. This current article imo encompassed the entire issue from an economic perspective. While I appreciate all your research and technical details articles and have learned a great deal from them, when it comes down to making the case for NG transportation fuel it must ultimately stand on its overall economic advantage. The ever increasing disconnect between oil and NG pricing seems to be pushing the solution toward NG more strongly than ever. Of course as you have previously discussed, a totally rational approach requires the addition of all the subsidized and hidden costs to each fuel in order to make a good decision. A good example of this problem is the failure to recognize that electric cars require expensive batteries and most seem to ignore the efficiency, cost and origin of batteries required to make them at all useful. If all the batteries for electric cars are imported which is largely the case now for hybrids are we better off than importing fuel? A total systems view of costs is necessary and you have provided that in this article.

On another point I don't believe the disaster at Kingston TN by the coal industry is well known and I've never seen a cost applied to it. This is just another example of ignoring the total cost of a particular solution.

How Natural Gas Can Save the U.S. Economy

Fitzman: This article is your best yet and rises to a high in covering the entire issue of our excessive spending on imported oil. I noted that just this AM our monthly trade deficit was reported to IMPROVE to only a negative 27 billion $ due to declining imports as a result of our weak economy. If this doesn't underline you main point nothing will.

www.census.gov/indicat...

The 'Green' Side of Natural Gas

Coal produces about half of our electricity and oil only about 2%, so your 70% number for coal and oil is too high. Even so, switching coal sources to NG would greatly reduce CO2 and other pollutants while we develop a good long term base load electrical solution, efficient fast nuclear reactors that eliminate all combustion pollutants.

www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/...

Natural Gas May Be Just the Solution for This Economy

Michael Fitzsimmons is spot on with his comments on NG use and our failure to implement a sensible energy policy! After staring at $145/bbl oil last year and a change in administration is it incomprehensible that we still no plan to deal with our future energy requirements. Nuclear energy needs to be updated to use the concept of the IFR reactor developed a decade by Argonne Labs. It solves most of the problems related to the current generation of light water reactors, all of which are seriously aging in the U.S. now.

www.nationalcenter.org...

Investing in the Pickens Plan, One Year Later

Thanks for the informative article. I was surprised by the the fuel economy penalty comments in the UPS study, but noted it was based upon old (1990's) conversion technology. Most of the penalty was related costs of troubleshooting initial problems. Now with Westport (WPRT) supplying OEM NG engines designed and proven in service these issues are eliminated and in fact modern CNG fleets realize lower maintenance costs.

The Pickens plan envisions a large quantity of wind turbines located in the central plains, but the power generated must be transported to distant markets. This requires a major (and expensive) change in our electric grid. Perhaps a better solution is to utilize off shore wind farms where the wind availability is higher and the nearby population density eliminates the electric grid transportation problems.

Fuel Systems Solutions, Toyota and the Phill

Fitz: I completely agree with all your points about what needs to be done and greatly appreciate your efforts to bring about change. My point about Honda diesel development is that if they were applied to NG we would be much farther toward those goals. Look at what Westport has done to large diesel engines and you'll see what I'm getting at. What we are seeing so far from both Honda and Toyota are their regular cars tweaked a bit to run on NG and not a serious vehicle designed overcome the obvious discussed shortcomings. The VRI car shows what talented students can do.

As you have pointed out we have a very powerful network of gas pipes distributed throughout our country (many at high pressure). The addition of a moderate number of fueling outlets connected to those existing pipes PLUS good range of a NG vehicle will greatly increase the practically of NG cars and lead to their wide acceptance.

www.cumminswestport.com/

Fuel Systems Solutions, Toyota and the Phill

Fitz: RoadCyclist outlines very well most of the real life problems that require solutions before we can expect wide use of CNG for autos. If you consider that the Honda GX is the only car available in the US and analyze its performance it is clear we must do better. I figure that you need about 2X the fuel capacity which could be accomplished with about 7 feet of 7 inch diameter tank (at 3500 psi). That length could be divided into several shorter segments.and could be designed into the structure in a much better configuration than filling the trunk. Refueling tanks that are far from empty is much quicker and removes the anxiety of running out (read some of the reviews of the GX to better appreciate the consequences of running out of fuel). Next the fuel efficiency needs to be much better. Honda's new diesels get from 50- 90 mpg and NG fueled versions should achieve similar results Engines specifically designed to run on NG can utilize that fuel capability better than just adapting a gasoline engine.

Your response raises a major point regarding the real costs of the fuels. It is clear to me that the fuel pricing model must the adjusted to reflect much of the real total costs in order to drive consumers to the "best" solution. That looks to me like the bigger problem since it is political. The technical problems are amenable to rational solutions. Political ones are more difficult due to vested interests.

Fuel Systems Solutions, Toyota and the Phill

Fitz: The CNG fuel tank is not as simple as you suggest. Currently the trend to get enough capacity is to use pressures around 3500 psi and there won't be any rectangular tank in that pressure range available that will not weigh way too much. The best solution is the long thin cylinder shape. They could be made of carbon fiber or a combination of metal and fiber. One possible solution would be to make them a structural part of the car because they have to be very strong so they could also be part of the chassis/body. All high pressure metal tanks have to be hydro tested every few years due to their high stress level to insure that retain sufficient strength. A carbon fiber structure might avoid this problem, but would require substantial testing to prove the concept.

The Honda GX uses a fiber reinforced metal tank that pretty well takes all the trunk space to contain the equivalent of about 8 gals of gasoline. We need to do better for a usable design that would be acceptable to a wide range of users.

Fuel Systems Solutions, Toyota and the Phill

Fitz: Have you looked into the fuel qualities of NG for internal combustion engines? I noted that its equivalent octane rating is about 120-130 (depending upon its exact content of gases) and that is why it works so well in diesel engines. See Westport's engine developments for details. The upshot of this is that while NG works well in standard automotive engines it is much more efficiently burned in diesel engines.or engines designed for it. The dilemma is similar to burning ethanol in gasoline engines where you get lower mileage with higher ethanol content (flex fuel engines). The Honda GX uses an engine set up for NG.

Another issue is sufficient on board fuel storage. For CNG you must use fairly high pressure storage and that requires an efficient pressure vessel design. Note that the CNG buses use long thin cylinders mounted in their roof structure to solve this issue. These issues suggest that a good CNG car needs to be designed around these factors and filling up the trunk of a standard car with a heavy, too small capacity pressure tank is not the answer.

The fuel capacity problem is also why LNG fueled large long haul trucks work. They can carry enough fuel for very long ranges hence requiring many fewer refueling stations where they can be quickly refueled. Note what Peterbuilt and Kenworth are doing on this front using Westport engines. Another advantage is that cleaner burning NG extends engine life about 2X between overhauls, especially for diesel and NG designed engines.

www.westport.com/

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

WOW-- I just read Edwin Black's article on Honda & Fuelmaker and it paints a most distressing picture of Honda. Being a Honda supporter for some time I find this almost unbelievable and amazingly stupid from both a strategic and PR perspective. Honda will regret this and I suspect it was conceived at some lower division level. Hopefully Honda leadership will see the light and fire the boneheads responsible for such poor behavior or send them to Attu to work to work on future NG fueled arctic vehicles. Thanks for the links.

Honda moved their talented diesel engine car designers to the new Insight design to counter the Prius. Perhaps Toyota will respond by going into production with their new NG/hybrid.

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

Excellent article. You've brought together many diverse aspects of this problem into clear focus and outlined steps toward the solutions. I think the central focus is the main issue along with leadership (or lack of it) because most of the potential components view their prospects through the lens of their own company/industry. The auto industry is a good example of this as their attention is focused on their immediate survival, not looking to solve our energy problems.

Clearly a national energy policy is required to accomplish these goals and it looks like it will have to come from the people as you noted.

Your comment regarding the oil and gas available to private energy companies worldwide is right on target. The great majority of reserves are in the control of foreign governments. I think that fact was behind Conoco's purchase of Burlington ang their move into more gas reserves. Hopefully Mulva will be a strong supporter of NG transportation as it is clearly in his interest. Russia's recent moves on the gas front are disquieting and should alert us develop our own resources for obvious reasons.

I remain convinced for a complete energy policy in addition to NG transportation we MUST get moving on advanced fast nuclear reactor development as soon as possible. NG is a bridge, but we need the foundation on the other end of the bridge to carry us forward. As has been discussed here before while wind, solar and geothermal are all good sources of renewal energy and must be expanded, their numbers are too small to become the major source of our base power needs in the near to intermediate term.

Is There Enough Natural Gas?

Fitz: It has been some time since I looked at natural gas power generation, but my understanding is that most of the modern gas plants use new designed gas turbines. that are more efficient than boiler fired steam turbines.

I noted in an interview on CNBC today with Raser Technogies CEO that he stated the US had enough geothermal energy to produce 30% of our electrical power. That is quite a bit more than I was thinking was available.

www.rasertech.com/medi...

www.rasertech.com/geot...

Is There Enough Natural Gas?

A lot of this discussion revolves around the quantity of available gas. Here is another take on the subject that makes the point there are huge quantities of gas worldwide and prices will remain low for a long time.

seekingalpha.com/artic...