Re: F**K!

On Feb 7, 1:07 am, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Bruce Richmond wrote:
On Feb 6, 8:38 am, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Bruce Richmond wrote:
On Feb 5, 11:05 pm, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Bruce Richmond wrote:
On Feb 4, 11:17 pm, "J. Clarke" <jclarke.use...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Now, how many sites are suitable for geothermal and how much
power
can be gotten from them?

Have a look for yourself.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geomap.html

Most any of the dark red areas will work easy. The orange and
yellow
areas are more of a challenge but can be made to work.

Yeah, and we need lots and lots of power plants in the Rockies.

The coast of California is in the Rockies? Between the red and
orange
about a third of the country qualifies as potential sites and you
don't think there are enough. Even if the only sites were in the
Rockies, you don't think there are a few energy intensive
businesses
out there that might think it worth their while to move to a
location
where they had an almost unlimited source of nearly free energy?

The coast of California does not appear to be in a "red or orange
area".

Sure looks like it is to me.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/geomap.html

We are talking about the lower left edge of the US aren't we?

You're confusing the coast with the mountains a little bit inland.

You seem to have a problem with your eyes. The coast, where the land
meets the ocean, is red. As you move inland it goes to orange and
even yellow before going back to red.

As for "moving to a location where they had an almost unlimited
source of nearly free energy", a few might move, but have you SEEN
the Rockies? It's not an area conducive to bulding exensive
industrial facilities unless you're into blasting away whole
mountains.

I see a lot of red on that map that is not in the moutains.

Not that much.


Yeah, only about 40% of the area west of Texas. I notice the
Bonneville salt flats are in a red area. And the Chena Hot Springs
plant is using 165 F water, at the low end of the orange range. If
you include the orange areas you're looking at over 50% of the area
west of the Mississippi.




This site has a write up on equipment that can produce power
when
there is a 100 F temperture difference.

http://www.yourownpower.com/Power/

The yellow area on the map has a low end temp of 100 C or 212 F
so
it
will work just about anywhere in the US. Back in the 1970's the
OTEC
project was making power from warm and cool sea water with a
temperture difference of just under 40 F degrees.

Sure you can make power at tiny efficiency, resulting in massive
plants for the power to be derived and thus huge costs.

That might apply to the 40 degree difference, but not so much to a
150
degree difference. That installation shown here

http://www.yourownpower.com/Power/

uses 165 F water and the equipment seems reasonable enough. They
give
a maintenance cost of 1 cent per KW hr. Sure beats the 30 cents
per
KW hr they used to pay for diesel.

Efficiency remains low, so size per unit output has to remain
large.
This is a basic law of thermodynamics that you can't work around
with
cleverness and bullshit. The lower the temperature differential the
lower the efficiency.

The low efficiency just means that you use more BTUs per KW.  That
is
important when you are paying for the BTUs, but much less so when
they
are free.

You also need a larger physical plant, which increases costs.


Which is offset by a rapid payback due to not having to buy any fuel.




From the web site that you keep linking "Two well-known
manufacturers
of binary ORC systems for geothermal applications were approached
in
2002 and 2003 about designing a system for Chena Hot Springs. One
manufacturer declined the opportunity due to the low resource
temperature, and the second manufacturer was more than willing to
build a one of a kind system for Chena, however the cost
per kW output would be very high.

In 2004, Chena Hot Springs was presented with a new opportunity of
working with United Technologies Corporation (UTC) to demonstrate
their existing PureCycle technology on the geothermal resource at
Chena. UTC was awarded funding from the Department of Energy to
complete design work on the system, and the power plant modules
were
designed, assembled, and tested at UTRC in Hartford, Connecticut
beginning in late 2004. The first unit (ORC1)underwent 1000 hours
of
qualification testing before being disassembled and shipped to
Chena
Hot Springs. The second unit (ORC2) was partially assembled but not
tested before being sent to Chena several months later."

In other words the only reason that it was cost effective was that
they got a government grant. Which reinforces my point. Yeah, you
can get energy out of low temperature differentials, but it's not
cheap to build the facility to do it. Further, that was a very
small
scale plant--how will it scale?

The reason for the government grant and one manufacturer not wanting
to work with them is because this was experimental.  They are
adapting
air conditioning equipment for use in power production because the
AC
market is big enough to have brought the price of the equipment down
much lower that the power industry.  Now that the concept has been
proven to work the system can be duplicated at an affordable price.

What part of the other manufacturer wanting a prohibitive price are
you having trouble with?

Not all manufactures want to do experimental projects. It's not just
me or Chena saying that the systems will be affordable and applicable
to more sites now.

http://dwb.adn.com/opinion/comment/rose/story/8138873p-8031233c.html

The same type of problem has been working against geothermal using
more traditional equipment as well.  Investors don't like to take
risks.  There have been plenty of coal or gas power plants built, so
they are a known quantity.  There have been far fewer geothermal
plants built, and they are still undergoing development to see what
works best.  Until they become more of a known quantity they will
have
a hard time finding investors for big projects.

Have there been any large ones at all built?

There have been some fairly large ones built. That government link I
posted told about some. I don't believe there have been any large
ones of the Chena type built yet. The next logical step would be to
go bigger but not huge. That and maybe to even a bit cooler water.
Not sure where I read it but they want to try building one near the
east coast. If that works they can put them most anywhere in the US.

Then there's the refrigerant issue--such low differential
facilities
require R134a, which is a greenhouse gas the banning of which has
already been proposed--the ban was defeated because right now
relatively little of it is used. If in fact it is banned at some
point _then_ what happens to all of your nice little geothermal
plants?

There are other working fluids.  I seriously doubt they are going to
ban AC, so whatever is being used for AC will work for geothermal
systems.

Actually there was discussion of doing exactly that and the reason
they didn't was that the actual amount of R134 in use was too small to
justify it.

Yes, there are other working fluids, but what is the downside on
those?

Like I said, they are not going to ban AC and these systems can use
whatever AC uses. It is not an issue.

<snip>

And you have still not addressed the effect of your proposed tax on
commerce.

<snip>

Like I said once before, I was playing the devil's advocate.  I
think
the tax would suck too.  I do think we should be making an effort to
conserve, and the tax would encourage that, but there are too many
problems in trying to implement it in a way that wouldn't screw
everything up.

So why are you continuing to defend it, except where you are asked to
address the effects on commerce, which you dismiss by saying "I wasn't
serious"?


The "I wasn't serious" applies to the whole thing. If we are going to
raise the gas tax at all it should be done over a period of several
years and not go any higher than Europe.


Bruce

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