I do not post much at all or ever but I do read irregularly. ***Disclaimer*** I work installing vibration monitoring for industry (Coal, Natural Gas, Oil refining, Chemical Production, Paper Mills) I have an Engineering degree, 3.4 for those concerned. I have oil covered FRC for the oil refinery I am currently working at sitting on the hotel room floor.
I would love to see coal go away and be replaced by something better, but at current prices/technology coal mops the floor with any "green" energy for base load. Natural gas mops the floor with "green" energy for peak load. Most of the information below has been acquired from people working in the industry and the dollar examples are made up. I am to lazy to research actual prices and they are used to show how some choices are made.
1. Coal is cheep, basically dirt cheep
2. Coal plants are cleaner now that we burn very little of the shit coal that was dirt lignite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite 3. Coal plants switching to natural gas has very little to do with the nominal price of natural gas. Example a coal power plant may need to spend 10 million dollars to meet new EPA standards or close down. The cost is say 5 million to convert to a natural gas boiler (side note these things are not efficient). If you say coal is $1/mega watt, natural gas is $5/mega watt an power sells on the open market for $40 a mega watt. Then the 10 M is the deciding factor for the switch not the raw fuel price. (second side note in some cases the new equipment can cause more emissions due to its own power consumption.
3. I have worked at 1 plant that has one main steam turbine, a handful of gas turbines (peakers) and in the next year will have a large solar installation. in the last year when the gas turbines would be dispatched it was cheaper to buy power on the open market.
4. Chasing wind regulations make emissions worse. One combined cycle plant I worked at quoted a 4x increase in emissions to chase wind because they would just chase load 24 hours a day as wind and solar changed outputs.
Solutions in my personal opinion.
The grid stays mostly the same.
1. We actual approve new nuclear plants to replace the coal base load to phase it out. Build this base load to cover a high percentage of peak load. Building on existing power plant ground can help if sourcing fuel is not a problem. Power transmission infrastructure is already in place and can help the job loss.
2. Develop some form of mass energy storage (batteries are less than ideal). The I believe it was ethanol from carbon dioxide if scale able could do this well. Use this energy storage during peak loads to make up any short falls. (before quoting thermodynamics read point 3)
3. Run any large base units at peak efficiency no mater the true grid load. Let solar and wind run whatever load it can. Use point 2 to soak up any excesses power and store it for peak hours.
4. Have sprinter units normally fast dispatch gas turbines that can make up any short falls or unplanned shutdowns
Cons. Potentially high costs, lack of adequate tech.
Redesign the power grid into semi-decentralized units.
Start with new housing developments. Require the houses to maintain solar or wind capable of supplying most of their energy needs. This small grid is connected to a storage bank. Think the ethanol example above due to its high energy density and storage capacity being limited only by tank size. This combined with a reasonably sized battery or capacitor bank. This can give the micro grid stable power while an ethanol fulled electrical generator starts to make up for lost generation. Multiple micro grids can be linked together to be able to support lost generation and upsets in another micro grid. This larger collection could have a conventional fuel generator for a last line backup.
The bottom line is most solar and wind applications would go tits up if not for government support. People would still adopt it but the forward progress would be a slow crawl. In this case when the prices reach an inversion point "green" being truly cheaper than cave power. There is a large chance that we would not have enough energy to make the transition as it takes energy to build solar/wind production.
Not the article I was looking for but page 3 paragraphs 3 and 4 make the point most people miss. How fast we can build these things. We can raise the productions rates but money will probably be the limiting factor.
https://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Renewable-energy-cannot-replace-FF_Lyman.pdf
