[Marklar]

Oil and gas seems to have its ups and downs and fluctuates quite often but what about the electricity rates (megawatt per hour). They seem to be in an upward trend going up, alot. What's the story on this? I assume it has something to do with natural gas prices. I tried a google news search and nothing really comes up on it.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Marklar', 'O')il and gas seems to have its ups and downs and fluctuates quite often but what about the electricity rates (megawatt per hour). They seem to be in an upward trend going up, alot. What's the story on this? I assume it has something to do with natural gas prices. I tried a google news search and nothing really comes up on it.

[frankthetank]

I think are local rates are going up after the first of the year...

[Revi]

I think they will all be going up soon. The rates for commercial users of electricity have already gone up, and I'm sure residential isn't far behind. It's really eating into the wallets of people around here. Like me!

[Dukat_Reloaded]

I think one positive for gas powered electrical generation plants is that they could be converted to coal burners with some upfront costs if gas becomes too expensive.

[ozkrenske]

How do you convert a gas turbine (effectively a stationary low maintenance Jet engine) to burning coal?

I'm serious, I've seen a turbine come apart from bad air turbulance and intake vibration, adding solids to the mix of such delicate mechanisms would seem to be a recipe for widely dispersed metallic fragments.

Also the Gas plants are put in because they have no local coal access etc. It would probably be easier to build new coal plants close to coal mines then lay rails for coal delivery to the site of an ex gas power plant.

[ChumpusRex]

I would imagine it very difficult to modifiy a gas turbine plant for use with coal.

It would be possible to use a coal processor to partially burn coal and produce "synthesis gas" - a flammable mixture of hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. This could then be used to power a gas turbine.

However, the chemical processing is complex and expensive. Whereas the popularity of gas turbine plants lies in their extreme simplicity and low cost.

Modern 'Clean coal' plants are of this type (called IGCC - integrated gasification combined cycle) and a number have been built. However, they are very complex and large pieces of equipment. Indeed, recent experience has suggested that they are as complex, as expensive and as time-consuming to build as nuclear plants!

[Dukat_Reloaded]

I assumed gas plants heated up water and the heated steam passes through a turbine. Thats what I assumed, if the gas plants use a combustion engine to generate electricity then I can see how coal would not work. But if they used gas to send steam through a turbine, then instead of gas heating up the water, coal would heat up the water, I can't see how hard that would be.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dukat', 'I') assumed gas plants heated up water and the heated steam passes through a turbine.

[ozkrenske]

OOOhh Bob that was a touch harsh (We've all made some assumptions at some time or other that we regret.)

Dukat:

All Mainline electric power is created by turning things realy fast in a permanent magnetic field, Or turning a magnet very fast in a permanent wound array. (Photo Solar, Fuel cell, thermocouple and MHD are very minor suppliers of power and do work differently.)

This turning is in many cases caused by heating water to steam and using ther high pressure steam to cause rapid rotation of generator elements. Wind and hydro use the rotation conversion of its power source thru gears to do similar. Small diesel and petrol generators use normal ICE rotation engines.

Gas turbines though are pemanent stationary Jet engines. These can power up and down quickly (good for peak loads) and burn gas very efficiently. There is effectively only a burn rotation transformation so energy transformation losses are low. Steam plants have burn, heat, pressure, rotation cycles that are normally less efficient overall. Also the minimum size of a basic Coal plant is quite a lot larger than the minimum size of a Gas plant. They also need smaller crews etc. For example a local gas turbine near me has an actuall night shift minimum of three, and two of them are there to make sure the other guy stays awake. Gas turbines are also easier to hide due to size and have much reduced exhaust systems etc, so they can be put all over the place. Of course if you run out of gas then too bad.

I believe much of the US has built almost all new capacity for a decade as Gas plants and some even run continuously now as base load. This is not good. Interestingly I believe a 150% greater amount of wind power production can be built now for the price of a gas turbine of equivalent output along with it's first years supply of gas if it is to run as baseline. Most comparisons have historically ignored the actual fuel costs but they are now so severe they are making wind very tempting if it wasn't for those who don't like windmills.