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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Think4Yourself who wrote (169584)	12/7/2008 4:14:02 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

On the West Coast, if we get good rains in the winter, most of the hydropower damns don't run at 100% capacity 24 hours, and they dump excess water. So for maybe 10-15% of the year, there is almost free power - marginal cost maybe under 1 cent. That's why Alcoa has aluminum plants in Washington State. Nuke plants like to move up to 85-100% and just sit there. They don't ramp up and down quickly or well, but full power is easy and efficient. If cars are charged overnight, on a smart grid, most of the distribution system can be used for the first 10 + million electric cars. Natural gas powered cars, or better yet dual fuel, would make better sense in other parts of the US. Wyoming even has stranded gas, where there are not enough pipelines to get the NG out of the state.