ART005

Wind, Natural Gas ETFs: Oil Man Pickens Thinks You'll Make Money

Captbob,
Amen, Precisely!! Add "equitable" to your "faster method of energy generation" and you've hit the bullseye.

I can't speak for migratory bird issues but wind turbines killing birds is either out of date or urban legend. My experience and the statistics say other common things kill more: buildings, chimneys, cars, etc.

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder but my neighbors like my 1 kW turbine on 17 feet tower. I like the industrial ones along the highway and even living on the Rocky Mountain front I have never heard a local say they found any size a menace to the environment. Generally, enthusiasm for the days they run best! It's science and progress in motion.

Wind is so equitable I don't think Pickens is really scheduling around subsidy issues either.

Wind, Natural Gas ETFs: Oil Man Pickens Thinks You'll Make Money

I think the author and Cal48 have hit on the high points.
1. The Pickens plan is a plan, something missing in most places. And the technologies it's based on are readily available.
2. Wind energy where it exists costs about $0.12/kWhr or less so is currently viable. While solar PV has potential, its cost is around $0.22/kWhr so I don't understand the shortage for the ongoing world wide build out. Seems PV is too costly to justify the extent of its build out.
3. Energy independence probably isn't anymore a necessity than independence of anything else in the world, but increasing supply by equitable means empowers those participating. Increasing demand usually means increasing productivity, meeting that demand with more stable alternatives does not squeeze progress against an unsustainable future (headlines of $200 oil, etc.)
4. The Pickens plan is not mutually exclusive of other options. Nuke plants can be built where they can, coal use can be improved, solar PV can continue down its path, Solar heat to elec. and hot water will offer immediate bennefits. Other renewables, more oil,....
5. Conservation by lifestyle and technology are moving forward.
6. Natural gas transportation will work for some, others will be better served by electric. The Pickens Plan makes both more viable without needing a centralized plan to distribute the benefits. Both will benefit gasoline users slower to convert.
7. The Pickens Plan takes 5 minutes to explain, uses available technology, produces alternatives with viable economies, distributes benefits to manufacturers, financers, contractors, land owners, other? over nearly 1/3 the U.S. Especially nice to see such a widely beneficial approach.
8. Important step could be to get the auto industry more ready for electric cars.
9. I think a convincing plan to challenge the perception of inadequate future oil supplies will be part of quick oil price relief.

Is There a "Best Way" to Invest in Wind Power?

In less than 5 minutes Mr. Pickens can say more than the whole presidential primary race. And even after the camera stops rolling it only takes him a few more seconds to roll out most of phase 2!!

Attractive electric cars are less than 1 year away. 4 wheel versions are a little bland due to safety laws. 3 wheel versions are exotic and generating a lot of interest because they only have to measure up to motorcycle safety guidelines.

Add solar heat which is already economically viable and maybe solar PV with a little more improvement over the next couple years and his pie charts look great.

100% solar hot water alone would reduce U.S. energy demand by 4%. That alone is 3 years energy growth stabilized to execute Pickens' plan. Solar hot water pays 6% ROI with uninflated energy costs before subsidies. Add in minimal 2%/yr energy inflation, the lifetime ROI more than doubles.

Leadership, education, cooperation can get it done!

To Meet Wind Power Goals, Government Action Needed

The turbine manufacturers are at full production. There is about a 4 year lead time on turbines according to a GE engineer I talked with. The only way to increase turbine installation is to increase production capacity. This is the complaint of the on/off tax environment. At this point the turbine industry has to commit to production expansion and the unstable tax program makes them hesitate.

I have a fast 1 kW, 9'-2" rotor, 17' tower turbine in a rural setting of small mountains, lakes, streams, eagles just the kind of beautiful place that urban legend says is too beautiful for turbines. My neighbors complain when I shut it down for service. It's part of the friendly gab at the local tavern. I give tours to passer byes. It has killed no birds in 4 years. My large windows have killed 3. So the research for Floorboard is prohibit windows, install turbines!!

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

Humblemaster,
Nice post. I was at a multiday biodiesel seminar in March. The presenters commented on Algae. They said there was a problem getting the oil isolated for the esterification process. Do you know what the status of that is? I didn't realize different algaes were being cultured specific to the target fuel: diesel, jet fuel and such.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

nakedjaybird,
I appreciate your enthusiam but you are just brushing past the PV capital cost issue. I took some time to check my work and dig a little deeper. I would sure like to see different energy sector experts comment on the numbers. I'll try to be more concise:

Construction and delivered energy costs of some energy methods:
PV: $7/W but 35% sunlight = $21/W, $??/kw*hr
Nuclear: $5.5/W, $0.06/kw*hr
Wind: $2/W but 35% wind = $6/W, $0.10/kw*hr
Coal: $4/W, $0.06/kw*hr
Nat. Gas: $4/W, $0.05/kw*hr

I wouldn't read precise accuracy into the numbers colleced but they came from pretty comparable sources. And it seems odd to me wind is at $0.1/kw*hr with similar $6/kw to coal and gas and no input costs but that's what I found.

The point is that unfortunately PV is off the chart to the high side and I couldn't find an estimate of PV $??/kw*hr.

Wind status:
Current U.S. (from pie chart): equiv. of 170K bbl/day, increasing annually at 42K bbl/day/yr.
Current World: equiv. 463K bbl/day increasing at 115K bbl/day/yr.
I think the wind numbers are on the cusp of being significant in terms of bbl/day oil equivalents for world energy balance.

I think your theme is right but the focus on PV is too early and I wouldn't be surprised if PV is always just beyond economic reach (it would be good to hear from transistor chip people.) Wind and conservation (includes conversion to more efficient utilization, i.e. electric transportation and things like ground source heat pumps) will answer your vision with the gaps provided by more dense energy supplies. I think nuclear needs to be high on the high density list because of how it will ease demand of other stressed inputs (oil/gas.) without the emissions of coal. Also nuclear has the lowest percent of input cost/delivered cost so going forware for 10s of years Nuclear is the least susceptible to rising fuel costs plus it has the least competing competition for its fuel supply.

Solar can still play an important part via direct heat of homes and water. Ever improving solar concentrators are helping bring costs down. Solar water heaters are already cost effective at around $0.25 - $0.5/watt and then accounting for 35% sunlight = $1.1/watt. That tops the list and addresses the distribution losses you've mentioned.

As an example my solar water heater is 70% efficient and costs about 50% as much per sq. foot as a PV panel that is typically 15% efficient. So total improved efficiency is 9 times more efficient/$ than PV! Every place you see a PV, there is 900% more justification to install direct heat panel up to the usuable amount of heat.

Regarding my earlier nuclear fuel cost estimate. I tried to be careful keeping a constant basis of unenriched uranium. That's the level I'm most familiar with. Enriched uranium has about 10 times the energy and 4 times the cost, hence the motivation for enrichment. The $/person/yr energy cost is kind of meaningless since fuel is around 10% the cost of delivered nuclear energy. But the mass/person/yr might help some people visualize the waste issue. Coal, natural gas emmissions are 1000s of times more.

Also encouraging is how close to this path we are on. Right now I was told there is a 4 year lead time for delivery of commercial wind turbines due to sold out capacity. Plug in Hybrids are less than a year away. Electric bikes and scooters are already on the road. Permits for Nuclear plants are in the works. The Uranium mining industry is ramping up as fast as they can.

Improvements needed: Bring wind turbine lead time down to 2 years or what ever sight improvement schedule is. Facilitate faster permitting of Nuclear (probably the biggest issue.) Educate consumers on benefit of solar hot water, geothermal ground source heat pumps, electric transportation including plug in hybrids, and general conservation methods. And through it all I hope PV makes more progress.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

The solar PV analyses forgot to account for ~50% darkness each day so the return is twice as bad.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

nakedjaybird,
The pie chart is probably of energy output not input as you are referring to mentioning efficiency. Burning material to make electricity runs into about 40% efficiency limit due to exit temperatures of combustion products and slippage turning generators among other things. 40% efficiency doesn't imply wasteful, it's a thermodynamic limitation.

Energy efficiency and economic efficiency are not the same. Ultimitely the world runs on economic efficiency. Basically cost of inputs vs. value of outputs. For instance, a geothermal power plant (not geothermal ground source heat pump menitoned above) operates at only 15% efficiency but provides some of the cheapest power the world uses, lucky for Greenland.

PV Solar is not economically efficient. I'm not an electrical engineer or physicist so I can't comment on the likelyhood of overcoming their 15% energy efficiency. If they are at $5/watt right now they need to double energy efficiency and halve manufacturing cost at the same time and even then still above $1/watt.

The energy of the sun is rated at 1kw/m^2 on the earth. The average person would be comfortable with 50 kw*hr/day (Everything personl: HVAC, hot water, elec., daily transportation. Nothing industrial or commercial) so you're right that each person only needs about 500 ft^2 of earth to meet their personal needs at 100% capture efficiency. Remember that PV is only 15% efficient so this project needs 3300 ft^2. My south racing roof is 850 ft^2 so I'm only 1/4 there. That PV installation would cost $250,000. At 6% cost of capital not even accounting for the limited 25 year life (with decaying performance into those years) that is $1250/mo which is more than 6 times the value of the electricity! That is the magic of $1/watt, the break even point for energy generation. Plus I haven't accounted for cloudy days and such.

PV is not just suffering from economy of scale. A huge amount of electricity goes into processing the "sand". If you ever get a chance to tour a PV factory you'll notice the large electric substation right outside the building. So PV manufacturing costs are closely related to energy costs, they go up together.

So watch for $1/watt or lower Alternative Energy options: car pooling, driving 65 mph max, biking, CFL lights, other conservation, electric transportation, solar heat/hotwater, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps, nuclear, coal, hydroelectric. Probably virgin Biodiesel, deffinitely WVO to Biodiesel, probably not ethanol.

I would like to hear from someone that knows the delivered cost of nuclear power $/watt infastructure cost. My contribution is that at $60/lb for Uranium the equivalent cost of oil is $3300/bbl. My daily usuage study of 50 KW*hr/person/day results in 1.1 lbs/year/person of Uranium!! $66/year fuel costs!! Of course delivered energy costs have to account for the power plant ammoritization and waste storage. Remember Europe is running some 70% nuclear to U.S. 10%, maybe a significant cost disadvantage going forward.

Keeping Alternate Energy In Perspective

Thank you for the pie chart. Nice to see all that info in one place.

There seem to be two concepts that overlap and cause a little confusion when it isn't clear which is being addressed. Balancing energy requirements vs. energy investment opportunities.

I'm not convinced solar PV is economical so I don't follow that industry much. When they get to $1/watt then future build out will be productive. I'm afraid at $5/watt the industry is going backwards as far as adding value to the world. I'm all for subsidized research towards $1/watt but subsidized installation at $5/watt doesn't sit well with me.

Solar heat (hot water, home heating) on the other hand is below $1/watt.

Wind is at or below $1/watt. Current world wind energy output is around 32K equivalent Bbl/day. At an impressive 25% annual increase it is adding additional 8K equivalent bbl/day annually to world energy supply. But the world doesn't even respond to Saudi Arabi offering 200K Bbl/day. I think the ongoing world growth rate of just oil demand is on the order of 1 million Bbl/day/year. For total world energy then, using the pie chart, about 2.5 million equivalent Bbl/day/year increase.

My point is that every little productive contribution is important but as the author suggests, the small parts of the pie can not be improved enough to carry the struggling bigger parts (oil) in the short run. Coal and nuclear are big parts that can be ramped up.

Conservation on the order of 10% would be huge, moving some energy requirements from oil to electric (coal, nuclear) via the transportation sector as suggested is another big low hanging fruit opportunity. Geothermal ground source heat pumps are another productive transfer of energy load from gas/oil to electric.

So bigger growth investment opportunities might be in the fashionable alternative energies but the world's energy balance is going to have to come from higher energy density options with large input supplies (coal, nuclear.) Don't forget that oil as a chemical feedstock is very valuable so burning it all up and then converting to alternative energies isn't an option even it was possible.

The excessivley supportive alternative energy camp needs to realize that while improvements in their camp our valuable, proposing no expansion of coal and nuclear is a death sentance!!