5 ms·

The point the article makes is that coal is still a poor choice, all this aside. natural gas has the same reliability properties at a lower cost.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
And, Methane Hydrates! An enormous reserve of natural gas, estimated 6X all the oil we've ever drilled, waiting to be tapped.
- pstuart 7y ago
  I hope not. Especially if it means strip mining the ocean floor. Oh, and that CO2 thing as well. Fossil fuels should be incentivized away as quickly as possible.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Of course, but it'll be very attractive at first. So handy for port cities, which are among the largest cities in the world. And no strip-mining fortunately. Just drilling, pump down some warm water, hydrates dissolve and natural gas starts flowing. Pipeline to land and voila.
  - FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
    The problem is that this slush methane is going to melt with global warming and is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      There are oceans of it under the seafloor.
      - pstuart 7y ago
        Yep. Let's leave 'em there. We need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
- floatrock 7y ago
  At what price? Every time someone says "Fracking gives us 100 years of reserves", they always omit at what price. If most of that is cost-effective at $120 or $140 / barrel, is it really fair to suggest that's a good reserve?
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Dunno about fracking. But Methane Hydrate is a drilling/warm water deal which seems pretty tame. The Japanese are doing it already (they have no other energy reserves).
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      ...and if it leaks, the methane simply cools and forms hydrates again. Which has been happening on the ocean floor for 1B years.
makomk 7y ago
I do wonder how long that lower cost will last if oil implodes. Isn't the current supply of cheap US natural gas a by-product of oil production that may not be viable with current oil prices?
- csours 7y ago
  Not entirely. Some natural gas is co-produced at oil wells, but a lot more is produced from natural gas-only wells.
csours 7y ago
Natural gas is not universally available and cheap. It is also tied to politics in Europe as much of their natural gas is from Russia. --- To be clear, I'm not in love with coal; I'd much rather have a mostly solar powered grid, but I think it will be more expensive and complicated to get there than just "put some solar on it" When solar wins some percent of the total market (20%?, 40%?; I don't know) then things get complicated. Immediately obvious is the fact that generation is tied to sunlight, so when it is dark out due to rain or nighttime or shortened seasons, grid capacity will be reduced. There are other issues besides production though. Generators with great big spinning metal shafts currently (heh) control the frequency of alternating current power that we use in our homes. Direct Current Inverters can mimic the A/C sine wave, but it's not exactly the same. It's great to have batteries or other storage, but will you have storage equivalent to 20 or 40% of grid capacity? Or will you have to make hard decisions about how to apportion energy? Maybe you think everyone should have a home energy storage point? Sure, that's great. Do you think that should be mandatory or voluntary? Think about the consequences of each of these decisions. Think about what you are asking your neighbors to do. Think about the goals of grid operators and how they might reach them.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  > Direct Current Inverters can mimic the A/C sine wave, but it's not exactly the same. Some places use batteries to provide frequency stabilization for cheaper than the spinning metal they used to use. Odd that you would pick one of the most cost-effective use-cases of utility-sized batteries as an example.
  - csours 7y ago
    I know batteries are for used for quick response grid stabilization, but I've always read that they are worse at maintaining frequency under load. Do you have a source that talks about frequency stabilization in particular?
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      The Hornsdale battery in South Australia gets talked about on the news on a regular basis, as in pretty much every frequency stabilization event gets written up with how much better it was than the spinning metal that's also contracted for stabilization in that part of Australia. BTW you might also note that HVDC and DC-to-DC interconnects are becoming popular. If your theory about batteries being bad for frequency stabilization were true, they'd also be big problems.
Gibbon1 7y ago
Can always use natural gas plants to supplement wind and solar for power generation. And deal with storage later.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

And, Methane Hydrates! An enormous reserve of natural gas, estimated 6X all the oil we've ever drilled, waiting to be tapped.

pstuart 7y ago
I hope not. Especially if it means strip mining the ocean floor. Oh, and that CO2 thing as well. Fossil fuels should be incentivized away as quickly as possible.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Of course, but it'll be very attractive at first. So handy for port cities, which are among the largest cities in the world. And no strip-mining fortunately. Just drilling, pump down some warm water, hydrates dissolve and natural gas starts flowing. Pipeline to land and voila.
- FlyMoreRockets 7y ago
  The problem is that this slush methane is going to melt with global warming and is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    There are oceans of it under the seafloor.
    - pstuart 7y ago
      Yep. Let's leave 'em there. We need to decarbonize as quickly as possible.
floatrock 7y ago
At what price? Every time someone says "Fracking gives us 100 years of reserves", they always omit at what price. If most of that is cost-effective at $120 or $140 / barrel, is it really fair to suggest that's a good reserve?
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Dunno about fracking. But Methane Hydrate is a drilling/warm water deal which seems pretty tame. The Japanese are doing it already (they have no other energy reserves).
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    ...and if it leaks, the methane simply cools and forms hydrates again. Which has been happening on the ocean floor for 1B years.

makomk 7y ago

I do wonder how long that lower cost will last if oil implodes. Isn't the current supply of cheap US natural gas a by-product of oil production that may not be viable with current oil prices?

csours 7y ago
Not entirely. Some natural gas is co-produced at oil wells, but a lot more is produced from natural gas-only wells.

csours 7y ago

Natural gas is not universally available and cheap. It is also tied to politics in Europe as much of their natural gas is from Russia. --- To be clear, I'm not in love with coal; I'd much rather have a mostly solar powered grid, but I think it will be more expensive and complicated to get there than just "put some solar on it" When solar wins some percent of the total market (20%?, 40%?; I don't know) then things get complicated. Immediately obvious is the fact that generation is tied to sunlight, so when it is dark out due to rain or nighttime or shortened seasons, grid capacity will be reduced. There are other issues besides production though. Generators with great big spinning metal shafts currently (heh) control the frequency of alternating current power that we use in our homes. Direct Current Inverters can mimic the A/C sine wave, but it's not exactly the same. It's great to have batteries or other storage, but will you have storage equivalent to 20 or 40% of grid capacity? Or will you have to make hard decisions about how to apportion energy? Maybe you think everyone should have a home energy storage point? Sure, that's great. Do you think that should be mandatory or voluntary? Think about the consequences of each of these decisions. Think about what you are asking your neighbors to do. Think about the goals of grid operators and how they might reach them.

greglindahl 7y ago
> Direct Current Inverters can mimic the A/C sine wave, but it's not exactly the same. Some places use batteries to provide frequency stabilization for cheaper than the spinning metal they used to use. Odd that you would pick one of the most cost-effective use-cases of utility-sized batteries as an example.
- csours 7y ago
  I know batteries are for used for quick response grid stabilization, but I've always read that they are worse at maintaining frequency under load. Do you have a source that talks about frequency stabilization in particular?
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    The Hornsdale battery in South Australia gets talked about on the news on a regular basis, as in pretty much every frequency stabilization event gets written up with how much better it was than the spinning metal that's also contracted for stabilization in that part of Australia. BTW you might also note that HVDC and DC-to-DC interconnects are becoming popular. If your theory about batteries being bad for frequency stabilization were true, they'd also be big problems.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Can always use natural gas plants to supplement wind and solar for power generation. And deal with storage later.