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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (75024)	2/22/2017 10:02:17 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 86355

Nuclear Power is not the Enemy, my Friend 02/21/2017 By Rod Walton EL&P Senior Editor Last week I read my local paper to find, once again, Carrie Dickerson hailed as a hero for shutting down the planned Black Fox nuclear power plant in northeastern Oklahoma nearly four decades ago. She may have been a fine woman and I’m sure she was. But she was a hero only to those who are vehemently opposed to nuclear power at all costs or those who don’t really know any better and back any environmental cause no matter the proof behind it. The Tulsa World, a stellar newspaper for which I used to work, ran a fine article by Michael Overall, an excellent writer whom I also know, recounting Dickerson’s victory over Public Service Co. of Oklahoma and the nuclear power industry. Her admittedly stalwart efforts started in the late 1970s and culminated in PSO’s decision not to build the plant in 1982. Everything must be taken in context, of course. During that era, most people in the U.S. still feared the nuclear war with the Soviet Union as possible, maybe even probable. Nuclear power was a dirty word, despite that fact that it emits zero carbon emissions and had powered Navy submarines for decades. Then Three Mile Island happened in 1979, a partial meltdown which occurred due to a coolant loss. “The China Syndrome,” a film which had the fortunate timing of coming out around the Three Mile Island event, was selling the dangers of nuclear power on the screen. Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne were singing out against it at the No Nukes Concert. All of these starstruck efforts amounted to hype with only the slightest of circumstantial evidence. This is not to say that Three Mile Island was not a crucial lesson about the dangers of nuclear power. The disaster at Chernobyl in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) seven years later killed anywhere from 56 workers directly and likely thousands more from radiation sickness. Yet that disaster followed few, if any, of the safety backups used by the U.S. Chernobyl also fell victim to the Soviet penchant for lack of transparency and forthright communication. But that has never happened in the U.S. In fact, the deaths which have occurred at U.S. plants are from electrocution—touching energized wires—or equipment falling on workers. A release of radiation has never killed a single worker. Certainly it could happen someday, but it hasn’t. Meanwhile, an MIT study estimates that 200,000 Americans die from air pollution annually. Wastewater injection made necessary by shale drilling for natural gas may be causing earthquakes in my home state of Oklahoma. Wind turbines kill tens of thousands of birds annually. Environmentalists love solar energy—and I do, too—and yet millions of American get skin cancer every year. What’s so nice about the sun? Yes, I’m kidding about the last point, because what are you going to do about the sun? But the home truth is this: Whether or not President Trump allows the Clean Power Plan to go forward, America is getting greener and intent on cutting carbon emissions. And you are unlikely to reach those goals while also keeping the grid reliable without nuclear power. Nuclear power plants produce close to 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S. Yet only one new unit—Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar II—has come online in the past 20 years. Meanwhile, some utilities are retiring nuclear plants because of unfavorable economics against historically cheap natural gas and tax credits for wind and solar. The United States may come to regret this shortsighted hysteria in coming decades. Demand will ultimately rise, but with fewer coal-fired units to meet base-load needs, the burden on the grid grows starker. Nuclear power plants, once completed, are cheap forms of clean energy which also provide stability to the grid. Wind and solar, although clean and renewable, are not reliable nor adequate once the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow. Yes, Germany and other countries made a big splash in moving away from nuclear and fossil-fuel generation toward renewables. Perhaps technology and data analytics can make that work, but even some in Europe are questioning the long-term wisdom of the energiewende movement. So Carrie Dickerson and many of those like her were well-meaning souls who believed they were protecting their homeland against a potential radiating evil. But they were wrong, if not about public fears surrounding Black Fox certainly about the U.S. nuclear power industry as a whole. We need it, here and now and going forward until something better is found. Nuclear power, properly maintained and protected, is not an evil. It’s a necessity for the modern U.S. power grid. Some might even call it a gift. elp.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (75024)	2/22/2017 11:50:10 AM
From: Eric	Respond to of 86355

Markets & Policy Here’s How Nearly 15 Gigawatts of Solar Gets Built in One Year With a market this size, the total numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. Shayle Kann illustrates what’s happening in the residential, commercial and utility-scale sectors in the U.S. by Shayle Kann February 22, 2017 In 2010, the U.S. installed 852 megawatts-DC of solar photovoltaics from just over 53,000 individual projects. The non-residential (aka commercial) segment took the largest share (40 percent) of that capacity, and the largest state (California) accounted for 216 megawatts of new solar. How times have changed. In the record-breaking 2016, a year in which U.S. solar installations grew 95 percent over the previous high, the U.S. installed 14.6 gigawatts of solar from nearly 375,000 projects. The non-residential sector represented just 11 percent of that total, while utility-scale solar accounted for a massive 72 percent. California, still the leading state, installed over 5 gigawatts alone -- over 2,000 percent growth relative to 2010. FIGURE: U.S. Solar Installations 2000-2016 Source: GTM Research/SEIA U.S. Solar Market Insight With a market this size, the total numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. solar market is increasingly comprised of many smaller markets. Some, like residential loans and leases, compete with each other. Others, like offsite corporate solar and utility renewable portfolio standard procurement, share little apart from the project sizes they support. Below, using data from a mixture of proprietary GTM Research sources and the recently-release GTM Research/SEIA U.S. Solar Market Insight dataset, we show the buildup of U.S. solar’s record-breaking 2016 according to some of its submarkets. FIGURE: 2016 U.S. Solar Installations Sources: GTM Research/SEIA U.S. Solar Market Insight, GTM Research U.S. Distributed Solar Service, GTM Research U.S. Utility Solar Service Examining the market in this light offers many insights. Among those that I find interesting: California’s renewable portfolio standard remains an enormous driver of the utility-scale solar market and accounted for nearly 25 percent of all solar built in 2016. While projects supported by this policy will continue to come online for the next couple years, this source of growth is slowing down as utilities meet their mandated targets. Outside of RPS policies the utility-scale market is somewhat fragmented, if still large. Many projects have taken advantage of PURPA, a piece of legislation dating back to 1978 that has gained prominence as a source of growth as solar’s cost has fallen. Others have simply won contracts from utilities on the basis of their economic competitiveness or the utility’s resource requirements. Loans and cash deals have effectively caught up to leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) as a means to finance residential solar after years of third-party financing dominance. This has come hand in hand with the growth of smaller, localized installers relative to large, national players. But it is far too early to determine whether this is a pendulum that will, at some point, swing back in the other direction, or whether this trend will win out and the market will ultimately settle on direct purchases from local companies. Commercial-scale solar remains an exceedingly difficult business. And while there were strong glimmers of hope in 2016 (49 percent growth over 2015!), it is safe to say that no one has quite cracked the code on scaling that market. Now here’s the question I find most interesting: if we recreate this chart in 2020, which segments will we need to add? Or put another way, what will be the biggest drivers of solar in four years? All ideas are welcome. greentechmedia.com In the meantime, listen to our conversation on the Interchange podcast for more on what's driving these numbers: soundcloud.com Shayle Kann (@shaylekann) is a Senior Vice President at Greentech Media and Head of GTM Research. For more information on GTM Research solar data, contact solarsubscription@gtmresearch.com.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (75024)	2/22/2017 4:15:47 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

This was an interesting tidbit I found in this WUNT article about the latest and greatest New SuperComputer. The article has several amusing angles. Meet ‘Cheyenne’, the coal-powered climate predicting supercomputer Anthony Watts / 4 hours ago wattsupwiththat.com Wyoming is the nation’s highest coal producer, with over 400 million tons of coal produced in the state each year. In 2006, Wyoming’s coal production accounted for almost 40% of the nation’s coal. [1] Currently Wyoming coal comes from four of the State’s ten major coal fields. The Powder River Coal Field has the largest production in the world – in 2007, it produced over 436 million short tons. [2] Wyoming coal is shipped to 35 other states. The coal is highly desirable because of its low sulfur levels. [3] On average Wyoming coal contains 0.35 percent sulfur by weight, compared with 1.59 percent for Kentucky coal and 3 to 5 percent for other eastern coals. Although Wyoming coal may have less sulfur, it also a lower “heat rate” or fewer Btu’s of energy. On average Wyoming coal has 8600 Btu’s of energy per pound, while Eastern coal has heat rates of over 12,000 Btu’s per pound, meaning that plants have to burn 50 percent more Wyoming coal to equal the power output from Eastern coal. [4] Coal-fired power plants produce almost 95% of the electricity generated in Wyoming. Wyoming’s average retail price of electricity is 5.27 cents per kilowatt hour, the 2nd lowest rate in the nation [5]