Natural gas passes coal in electrical production

Fuel Fix:
The evidence of natural gas’s rise over coal as the fuel of choice on the nation’s power grid continues to pile up.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Monday that for the first time on record last year the capacity factor of natural gas plants – the percentage of a plant’s total potential electrical output that is actually generated and put onto the grid – beat out that of coal plants. U.S. natural gas plants ran at a capacity factor of 56 percent, compared to 55 percent that of coal.

The numbers illuminate a dramatic shift away from coal in recent years, as gas and renewable energy sources like solar and wind take an increasingly larger share of the grid.

In 2005 coal plants ran at capacity factors of close to 70 percent, while gas plants were running at less than 40 percent on average, according to EIA.

But the huge surge in natural gas production across Texas, Pennsylvania and other states has flooded the market, forcing down prices and making gas a more attractive option for power companies. Not only is gas plant construction surging, coal plants are retiring at a fast clip – 80 percent of all plant retirements last year were coal.

At the same time, EIA said, utilities are shifting to combined-cycle gas plants that uses both gas and steam to generate electricity, producing up to 50 percent more electricity from the same amount of fuel.

Those have been running longer hours than traditional gas plants, pushing out coal plants that have traditionally served as what electrical engineers like to call base-load demand – the steady flow of electricity needed late and night and early in the morning when human activity is at its lowest.
...
The transition to natural gas is well underway. It is less expensive and more reliable than alternaive energy being pushed by the left.  It is also reducing CO2 emissions.  Even areas that are trying to rely on alternative energy have to have gas plants for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more