Texas is getting ready to tap some of their quite good offshore wind because it will supply good energy during peak hours.

Notice how, just off the beach, Texas has as good wind potential as up in the Panhandle? Go out a little off the beach and it’s even better. And Texas has all sorts of experience building stuff in Gulf waters. They could feed a lot of the southern states with that resource.

“Several firms have been converting non-powered dams into energy
producing dams. Hydro Green Energy has conducted 28 projects in 13
states. Each project creates approximately 140 construction and
permanent jobs. Hydro Green Energy developed a plug-and-play technology
allowing small falls of water (under 30 feet) to be converted into
energy producing units. The Department of Energy recognized their
success by awarding $1.8 million to HGE, allowing them to conduct
further research in converting non-powered dams into energy producing
entities.

A second firm, American Municipal Power has converted 6
non-powered dams on the Ohio River creating 350 MW of renewable energy.
American Municipal Power is currently installing the largest hydro
power conversion in the United States. The Smithland Project is valued
at $400 million and has a 72 MW capacity, while creating 400
construction jobs and up to 10 permanent operating positions. Finally,
Advanced Hydro Solutions has begun converting an existing dam built in
1942, the Mahoning Creek Dam in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, into a
hydroelectric facility. The $12.5 million project has a generation
capacity of 6 MW and will produce 20,000 MWh energy yearly, supplying
power for approximately 6000 homes. ”

http://www.pennenergy.com/articles/pennenergy/2012/08/converting-non-powered.html

You can read about Eagle Mountain, Silver Creek and Olivenhain pump-up projects here –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_energy_storage_projects

I know a bit about closing, tearing down, dams. We’re getting rid of some here. They aren’t producing enough electricity to be important and they’re really restricting fish recovery.

Quit posting foolishness and I won’t feel a need to point it out.

Like calling Nick Griffin a Nazi isn’t very nice? I prefer to be accurate. P.S. Google Nick Griffin before you start screaming Goodwin’s Law.

“wind doesnt blow much during the peak times of the day in the hottest
parts of the country. I prefer reliablity in my power supply.”

And what is the sun doing during the peak times of the day?

Not to mention “Hook all the wind turbines in a 200 mile radius together and 30% of the
power is as reliable as coal. Which incidentally is the amount of
baseload power the utilities have been claiming is necessary for years.” as I said in the comment you were responding to.

I used to manage a power trading group; I know what the daily wind cycles look like and how out of phase wind is with hourly power load. This is the last time I’m going to tell you that.

Quit being a jackass, Bob.

Compressed air with heat storage is looking interesting. We may see it become a player.

Environmentalists do a more complete economic analysis than those who do their math based only on how large their utility bill will be this month. When you include the cost of climate change, the cost of coal-caused health, and other external costs you get very different outcomes than if you ignore some very important costs.

It’s cheaper to not change the oil in your car.

Greed is what drives short term prices. How they can save a little this month even if it’s going to cost them far more over the long run. They, I guess, figure that they will somehow be able to dodge that bullet. Probably the old farts figure they’ll die before it gets bad and, well, screw everyone else.

When someone who has been hanging around this site uses “wind doesnt blow much during the peak times of the day in the hottest parts of the country” you know that even they know they’re posting crap.

If you don’t have a good handle on the reliability issue by now it could only be because when you get up in the morning and flush your brain free of facts.

1) Natural gas is dispatchable. We can efficiently turn it on and off as needed, unlike coal and nuclear.

2) New NG capacity is cheap, compared to other new capacity.

3) NG is cheap to store.

Those facts work to give us a good way – right now – to fill in around wind and solar. We don’t – yet – have a good storage solution.

Because we have NG we can install wind and solar as rapidly as we like, close coal plants, and end up putting a lot less GHG in our atmosphere.

50% wind, 30% solar and 20% NG is a heck of a lot better than 100% coal.

That’s not to say that we should look at NG as a solution. It’s nothing more than a bridge, and a very deep backup. As we develop better storage (or install more pump-up) we can cut back on NG and hopefully eliminate it at some point.

“2) hope the environmentalists will let us keep the hydro we have
already; have no idea what the economics on the other are. Seems like a
lot of talk about Geothermal but not much action”
Why wouldn’t they? The Economics are better then new nuclear and coal.

“3) I’ll take fossil fuels over any combo of wind at 4PM on a hot summer day”
So natural gas is superior because the modern world frightens and confuses you?

2. Hydro (all types), Geothermal, Solar Uplift tower.

3. Hook all the wind turbines in a 200 mile radius together and 30% of the power is as reliable as coal. Which incidentally is the amount of baseload power the utilities have been claiming is necessary for years.

“Well, there goes the myth that cheap shale gas would price renewables out of the US electricity market. Xcel Energy, one of the country’s biggest utilities, has just announced a planned major expansion of its solar and wind investments – because they are “cheaper and more reliable” than natural gas.

In a filing to the public utilities commission in the state of
Colorado, Xcel Energy requested permission to include 170MW of new, utility-scale solar capacity and 450MW of wind energy capacity in the state.

The reason, Xcel Energy said, was not to meet renewable energy targets (which in Colorado happen to be 30 per cent by 2020), but because these technologies were best placed to fill basic generation needs. Solar and wind, it said, were competitive with the cost of gas-fired generation.

“Based on generation needs, the most reliable and most cost-effective resources happen to be solar and wind,” Xcel Energy spokeswoman Michelle Aguayo told the online publication SRN. “We are not taking on solar because we have to, but because it is cost-effective and economical.”

A lot has been written about the shale gas boom in the US and its apparent impact on other technologies, particularly renewables such as wind and solar. But its principal victims in the short term appear to be coal-fired generation and nuclear, with neither able to compete on cost – particularly with the additional burden of emissions and/or safety regulations.

Part of Xcel Energy’s plan out to 2018 include the closure of a 108MW coal facility and the switching of another to natural gas.

Wind is now priced at less than $50/MWh in the US, and the proposed build out of wind will take Xcel’s total wind capacity to 2,650MW – nearly equivalent to Australia’s entire capacity.”

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/us-utility-chooses-wind-and-solar-cheaper-and-more-reliable-79876

Solar is really taking off. That means that midday demand is going to drop and NG will get turned off during those hours.

Offshore wind is just getting going. It won’t have a big impact for a few years, but it will turn off gas during both day and night. We’ll build more onshore which will mean less gas use at night.

Unless the uptake in EVs speeds up and nighttime wind goes to charging.
We should know in a few months if Ambri’s liquid metal batteries deliver cheap storage. If so, gas will take another drop. Some Midwest wind farms are selling (without subsidies) for 4c. Store that at 2c and it will undercut NG.

We’re doing pretty well with efficiency, so demand isn’t likely to cause an increase in gas use.

The only thing that is likely to drive NG use higher over the next few years is all the coal plants going offline. I suspect for a while CCNG plants are going to get a lot of use, then plateau and start dropping.
Oh, yeah. If a few more nuclear plants fail that will keep gas use up for a while.

I can’t put month and year on when NG starts down. I can just see the sequence and I think we’re talking short years before NG use starts to drop.
I suspect coal will be gone off the US grid ten years from now and NG will be on the decline. I doubt we can get most fossil fuel off our grid in less than 20 years. However, if we get another nice hearty El Nino like the 1997 one then things might change. Let the US get hit with some super heat waves and the desire to fight climate change will change the rate of change.

Also, we’re really close to melting out the Arctic. It’s not clear how that will change our weather. If we get slapped really hard we might decide to convert to renewables faster.

Melt a reactor and the public will force most/all reactors to close. That would extend NG’s life a bit.

Force the gas industry to clean up their leaks and the price of gas goes up. That will speed up renewables.

Too many variables to make accurate forecasts.

You live in a state of denial.

Coal goes first, then NG follows into oblivion….

Our emissions are very low on a unit of GDP metric. We just happen to have the worlds largest GDP without the world’s largest population. Sorry that bothers you.

No evidence of fracking polluting ground water, although I am sure someone told you it does.

We are dramatically reducing our coal consumption.

Unfortunately, flammable and explosive substances do explode from time to time. Happens every where unfortunately, but a lot less often due to the tremendous effort of safety professionals.

Dead zones in the Gulf? You can thank the Ethanol subsidy program that has led to an over farming of corn.