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The Almighty Buck Power Science

New York's $6 Billion Plan For Offshore Wind Shows That Oil Drilling Really Is On the Way Out (businessinsider.com) 399

Posted by BeauHD from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan earlier this month to develop $6 billion of offshore wind projects off the southern coast of Long Island by 2028 and predicted that the industry would bring 5,000 jobs to the state. The plan calls for developing 2.4 gigawatts -- enough to power 1.2 million homes -- by 2030. It's all part of New York's Clean Energy Standard, which requires 50% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources like solar and wind. The move comes as President Donald Trump earlier this month announced a five-year plan to open up areas of the East Coast to offshore drilling.

"While the federal government continues to turn its back on protecting natural resources and plots to open up our coastline to drilling, New York is doubling down on our commitment to renewable energy and the industries of tomorrow," Cuomo said in a statement. Cuomo has asked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for an exemption from the drilling plan, saying in an open letter that the plan "undermines New York's efforts to combat climate change by shifting from greenhouse gas emitting fossil energy sources to renewable sources, such as offshore wind." The report identifies a 1 million acre site approximately 20 miles south of Long Island that would best support the wind turbines, and "ensure that, for the vast majority of the time, turbines would have no discernible or visible impact from the casual viewer on the shore." The report also notes that New Jersey announced a similar plan last Wednesday to develop 3.5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity off its coast.
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New York's $6 Billion Plan For Offshore Wind Shows That Oil Drilling Really Is On the Way Out More

New York's $6 Billion Plan For Offshore Wind Shows That Oil Drilling Really Is On the Way Out

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  • Eletrical grid Energy doesn't come from oil (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JDAustin ( 468180 ) on Monday February 05, 2018 @11:40PM (#56074705)

    Oil is not used in the generating of energy for the electrical grid so how does a subsidized wind project show that oil is on the way out. Oil is used in heating via heating oil, but the alternative is natural gas which is far more efficient then electric heating. Natural gas is whats used (along with coal, nuclear, etc) in generating electricity...but natural gas != oil.

    Finally...what happens when the wind is not blowing? The electrical grid requires a base level going through it and when its a calm night, you have no solar or wind power going into the grid.

    • your full of base load (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Stop throwing your "base load" from your pants at everybody!

      Niagara Falls is used already. Solar and Wind can meet all their needs if combined with storage. Ocean WIND is much better than land. Battery storage as well as LONG DISTANCE TRANSMISSION works far better than people realize. It's so stupid to say the same stupid obvious stuff about the sun, moon, wind, while ignoring the less obvious power storage and distribution!

      This plan a step forward.

      OIL is something they don't want off their coast; even if

      • Hello!? This Is NY/NJ We're Talking About! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BlueStrat ( 756137 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @05:03AM (#56075381)

        I expect any projects of this magnitude in NY/NJ to have immense constructions cost overruns, constant delays, labor union disputes, slowdowns, strikes, and lawsuits, along with massive corruption and embezzlement. If I were a betting man, I'd lay odds that at least some of these projects will be virtually forever "under construction" and will be sucking the citizens dry of money for decades beyond the original planned completion date.

        Strat

    • Re:Eletrical grid Energy doesn't come from oil (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rjnagle ( 122374 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:14AM (#56074817) Homepage

      I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake), but one explanation is that there are 2 ways to use the offshore area: 1) for producing wind power and 2) to drill for oil for cars. Cuomo's decision may pre-empt using the land for oil exploration and drilling. That's my two cents anyway.

      Marc Jacobson has done a lot of research into the viability of renewables. (Indeed, he presented this very idea to NY a few years ago. https://news.stanford.edu/news... [stanford.edu] ) He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.

      • Re:Eletrical grid Energy doesn't come from oil (Score:5, Informative)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @04:09AM (#56075271)

        maybe the headline is a mistake

        The headline accurately reports what Gov Cuomo is claiming. It is Cuomo that is spouting nonsense.

        one explanation is that there are 2 ways to use the offshore area: 1) for producing wind power and 2) to drill for oil for cars.

        That is technically implausible and from a legal standpoint, very unlikely. The states control out to 3 nautical miles, and the feds control from 3 miles to 200 miles. So the jurisdictions don't overlap.

        ( https://news.stanford.edu/news... [stanford.edu] ) He found that using solar and wind are complementary. Wind tends to be highest at night; solar by day.

        This is true for on-shore wind. Offshore, the wind patterns are different, and offshore winds are stronger and rarely stop at the latitude of NY (~40N). This is why it is worth the extra expense of building offshore. It costs three times as much to install and maintain an offshore turbine ... but the better power production more than makes up for it.

      • I don't know about the fuel mix in the state of New York (and maybe the headline is a mistake)

        I won't claim to be an expert either but I in places like New York oil for heating is still quite common. Here's a somewhat old source on this, and likely still quite relevant:
        https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]

        I still think that Gov. Cuomo is an idiot but he may have been not too far from the truth, likely by accident. Oil heating is on the decline with electric heating in many cases replacing it. Heat pumps are more practical now than they used to be. What's perhaps ironic on this is that the electricit

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Entrope ( 68843 )

          Oil heating is on the decline with electric heating in many cases replacing it. Heat pumps are more practical now than they used to be.

          Heat pumps work terribly when the outside temperature is low, which is the common condition for winter in New York. The coefficient of (heating) performance for a heat pump drops from 4 or more when heating is barely needed to about 1.5 when the outside temperature is below 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Oil furnaces are about 85% efficient, because they generate enough exhaust ga

    • In the transition from where we are to where we will be with respect to energy, the idea of an "energy portfolio" is crucial. Societies will mix and match sources to accommodate geography, locale, weather, seasons, time of day, and available resources as well as user load. Transition from one portfolio mix to another will take decades, and will depend on exisiting and projected infrastructure and engineering projects, the economy, public policy, and political will. "Wind is a blowin' in, and oil is a bur

      • Electric cars have developed traction almost overnight.

        How old are you? To make that kind of statement means a level of ignorance that can almost only come from youth.

        Electric cars have been trying to compete with internal combustion for over a century. Oddly enough the final nail in the electric car coffin was the electric starter. Before then the operation of a gasoline engine was a very complicated and physically demanding process, but electric cars were push button operated. We might have electric starters, electric drive trains, and all kinds of other

        • Electric cars have been trying to compete with internal combustion for over a century.

          They really haven't, though. At least the majority of the 20th Century saw little competition in that area; The existence of electric vehicles is not the same as competition.

          By your metric, steam powered cars have also been "trying to compete" with internal combustion, because once upon a time steam powered cars were a thing.

          It wasn't really until circa 2009 with the Nissan LEAF that all-electric highway vehicles became a viable mainstream option.

          We didn't go to the moon on wind power and a trip to Mars won't be powered by wind either. The future will be very energy intensive, and wind is not going to be enough.

          Oddly, the trip *itself* might not be wind powered but using

    • Oil is refined into gasoline to run cars. If only someone would invent an "electric car" that ran on electricity instead, we could power them with wind energy.

    • Oil is used in heating via heating oil, but the alternative is natural gas which is far more efficient then electric heating.

      Natural gas is not always an alternative to oil. My brother lived out in Indiana, and my sister out in North Carolina, neither had natural gas available to them. Natural gas is only viable for heating if it is possible to bury the gas lines. In places where running underground pipes would run into bedrock it's not economical to run gas lines. This is a common problem in northeast USA. These people then have to heat with oil, propane, wood, or electricity (hopefully a heat pump and not resistance).

      I'll

      • "Do you know what also stores energy? Oil, coal, natural gas, wood, and uranium."- Oil, coal, natural gas, wood are single use, they are not reuseable.
        "Wind power only works as an energy source if it has another source to back it up. Which is just another way of saying it doesn't work." - does a nuclear power station produce electricity without any fuel?
        "The problem with using wind is that we have to account for the intermittent nature of wind" and what do we do went a fossil fuel power station goes offli

    • Oil is used in heating via heating oil, but the alternative is natural gas which is far more efficient then electric heating.

      The absolute best gas furnace will top out at around 97% thermal efficiency, giving you 97 BTU of heat for every 100 BTU of natural gas consumed.

      Straight electric resistance heating can be considered 100% efficient.

      Even a mediocre electric heat pump system today will get you a COP of 3.5, giving you 350 BTU of heat for every 100 BTU of electrical energy consumed. (100 BTU = 30 Watt-Hours)

      Finally...what happens when the wind is not blowing? The electrical grid requires a base level going through it and when its a calm night, you have no solar or wind power going into the grid.

      Even if you take this increasingly bad argument at face value; You burn natural gas to make the extra electricity. The ov

  • Underpants gnomes reasoning ? (Score:3)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Monday February 05, 2018 @11:41PM (#56074711)

    1. New York Builds Windfarm for electricity
    2. ....
    3. Oil for liquid fuel, Feedstocks, plastics and lubricants on the way out ?

    • Vegan Soy Plastic!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      1. New York Builds Windfarm for electricity

      2. A huge number of politically connected firms split up $6 Billion in construction contracts.
      3. Who cares about 3, we get the profits on $6 Billion in contracts!

    • Re:Underpants gnomes reasoning ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @05:14AM (#56075407)

      1. New York Builds Windfarm for electricity 2. .... 3. Oil for liquid fuel, Feedstocks, plastics and lubricants on the way out ?

      ~48% of oil is used to make gasoline.
      ~23% is used to make diesel and heating oil.
      ~10 % is used to make jet fuel.
      ~5% is used to make asphalt.

      The vast majority of oil is used for transportation. Feedstocks, plastics and lubricants fit somewhere into the remaining ~15% of oil that isn't used for transportation. Wind and solar are getting cheaper than oil and gas, oil extraction costs are only increasing, the cost of wind and solar is still on a downwards trend and will stay there for a while. Finally, electric vehicles are starting to take over the transportation sector and not just cars, people are even working on electrically powered ships and thinking about electric aircraft on short haul flights. All of this collectively means that the bottom is going to slowly fall out of the fossil fuel market over the next two or three decades and I don't think feedstocks, plastics and lubricants are going to sustain the oil industry in the long term at it's current levels of production. There is a reason the oil companies are starting to have trouble recruiting young people for the industry and it isn't just because all 'Millennials' and 'Generation Z' is a bunch of lib-tard tree huggers, they just see this coming.

      • There is a reason the oil companies are starting to have trouble recruiting young people for the industry

        I work in the energy industry (side note: "oil" companies don't exist anymore, they're all rebranded as energy companies, and what you think of as oil companies are actually the largest investors in renewable energy, far more than whoever you think is your saviour) and this isn't the case at all. Hydrocarbons are still where all the big $$ is however. Energy companies are usually some of the best employers in the world in terms of benefits, compensation, and job enjoyment. Take your lies elsewhere.

  • Wind is great, wind is awesome. But wind alone will never be able to meet all of societies demands for power. There is only one real solution: Nuclear. Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by haruchai ( 17472 )

      Wind is great, wind is awesome. But wind alone will never be able to meet all of societies demands for power. There is only one real solution: Nuclear. Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.

      Who's building it and how much does it cost?

    • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Monday February 05, 2018 @11:57PM (#56074761) Homepage
      I agree that in the long-term nuclear is a pretty good idea. But right now, isn't practically an option; the politics of building new nuclear plants are extreme and it can end up taking a decade or two to build them. We need carbon neutral power sources now. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

      • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:23AM (#56074841) Journal
        The politics of building offshore wind isn't much better [bloomberg.com]. There will ALWAYS be people fighting any new development, and slowing (or, in the case of Cape Wind, killing) deployment of new power sources. So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.

        • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:10AM (#56075653) Homepage Journal

          So you might as well go "for the best" because going to a lower-grade solution won't relax the difficulties in the first place.

          Right, that's why stopgaps with nuclear are stupid. There is more than enough excess solar energy to cover all of our needs. We could be building solar power satellites with little to no new technology, and here we are arguing over what kind of baroque arrangements of steam turbines you would like to build here on earth. What year is it?

    • 2.4 gigawatts

      Yeah, that's only two time-traveling Deloreans.

      Nuclear is the way to go. There are risks, for sure, but they can be mitigated until we invent Mr. Fusion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Nuclear is the way to go. There are risks, for sure, but they can be mitigated

        Which risk would you mitigate first and how?

        • Which risk would you mitigate first and how?

          I'd first mitigate the risk of the lights going out. I'd do that by building some fucking nuclear power reactors. Lots and lots of them. Big ones too.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Today's nuclear SUCKS. it costs TOO MUCH. solar beat it years ago. with battery it probably also beats it today. Nuclear will take at least 5 years at best to build but more likely 10 years. It will cost a ton and the fuel is NOT cheap or plentiful. All that next gen BS is always 5 years away for the last 20 years; only gradual progress has been made to grandfather's nuclear - the next gen stuff still has not happened.

      Better off dumping 1 billion into more fusion research for 10 years instead of 1 more

      • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer.earthlink@net> on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @06:19AM (#56075537)

        All that next gen BS is always 5 years away for the last 20 years

        And it will remain that way unless we start building nuclear reactors.

        It's quite amazing this hypocrisy on nuclear power vs. solar and wind. We'll see the government dump all kinds of money into wind and solar. They'll issue permits to build solar collectors. Set aside land for windmills. And they do this because, so they say, that if we don't build these things then it will never get cheap enough to compete with coal.

        How do they treat nuclear power? Well we can't waste money on this expensive energy. We need to "know" it's cheaper than coal first. But no one can "know" this until we try. We'll likely fail the first few tries, just like we've been failing to get cheaper than coal with wind and solar for so long. Maybe it will never be cheaper than coal. But we can't know that until we try.

        Better off dumping 1 billion into more fusion research for 10 years instead of 1 more nuclear plant.

        Right, let's just ignore that there are currently over 400 nuclear power reactors working on the planet right now. Let's just dump more money into that pit so... we can "feel good"? Facts don't care about your feelings. As much emotion you express on this we have in fact proven nuclear power as viable and safe.

        Let's just dump more money into research until the lights go out and we all freeze and starve. That's how we can all feel good about saving the planet or something.

        • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @09:59AM (#56076181) Journal

          Nuclear power plants need to be big, which means that you're never going to get the same kinds of economies of scale as wind turbines, where a wind 'farm' is a load of identical turbines that can be the same as the identical turbines in the next one.

          Nuclear also has a really awkward risk profile. About the worst thing that can happen with a wind turbine is that the blades break and spin off at very high speed. The worst thing that can happen with a nuclear power plant is that it vents nuclear material and makes a large area uninhabitable for a long time. The failure mode for a wind turbine is far more likely, but that actually makes the insurance easier: a fairly likely risk that will probably happen to someone is much easier to deal with than an insanely expensive risk that has a very low chance of happening to anyone. This means that you end up with the government carrying most of the risk, because private insurers aren't willing and able to issue a policy that will almost certainly be a cash cow but will bankrupt them if there's a claim.

          This risk profile also means that everything in a nuclear power plant needs to be very tightly regulated. You don't want a contractor cutting corners in a nuclear power plant. If they do in a wind turbine, the risks are fairly low and they're mostly risks to the owner of the plant (i.e. it stops working, it doesn't cause widespread damage). This pushes up the costs a lot, because everything needs to be redundant and independently checked. It's also not something that we're good at: all of the large nuclear accidents to date have been caused by factors that people identified as a problem before they happened, but which were not addressed.

          Nuclear also comes with a load of security concerns. Access to things like uranium and plutonium is strictly controlled, for good reason. This adds security to the costs and also has some knock-on effects. For example, the US still doesn't reprocess fuel rods because of proliferation concerns (which, these days, means that they ship the spent fuel to France, where it is reprocessed and shipped back).

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Viol8 ( 599362 )

        "the fuel is NOT cheap or plentiful"

        It doesn't need to be given how little of it is used in comparison to fossil fuels for the same number of joules of energy produced.

        "Better off dumping 1 billion into more fusion research for 10 years instead of 1 more nuclear plant"

        Fusion research has been going on since at least the 80s and is still nowhere. Right now its a money pit whereas fission is tested and proven.

        "Yeah, it's over a billion per plant."

        And? How much do you think a wind farm that had the same averag

        • It doesn't need to be given how little of it is used in comparison to fossil fuels for the same number of joules of energy produced.

          You're failing to take into account how many acres are strip-mined because uranium is literally the least concentrated ore we mine. The environmental impact of nuclear is all out of proportion to the amount of material used for this reason.

          Great - and what charges the battery? Solar? Yeah, right, that'll work well in northern latitudes in winter. Idiot.

          Places which don't have sun tend to have wind, and vice versa. Some places have both.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            "You're failing to take into account how many acres are strip-mined because uranium is literally the least concentrated ore we mine. The environmental impact of nuclear is all out of proportion to the amount of material used for this reason."

            Clearly you've never seen an open cast coal mine.

    • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nostalgia4Infinity ( 3752305 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:32AM (#56074865)

      Solar could do it for about 101 square miles.

      https://inovateus.com/2017/08/... [inovateus.com]

      Elon Musk: “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah. You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States. The batteries you [would] need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”

      Even if he's off by 100% 200 square miles IMO is a good price for relatively clean renewable energy. Add wind farms, hydro, etc I don't see the need for the risk of nuclear. Unless you want to go (far) into space.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Elon Musk: “If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah. You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States. The batteries you [would] need to store the energy, so you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile.”

        Did he, perhaps, mention that factoid as the upper-limit of his market for selling solar panels and batteries in America when he went looking for investors?

        Curious, how many square miles of solar panels have the federal government subsidized since we started subsidizing residential and commercial solar panels?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )

        Unless you want to go (far) into space.

        At least until conjoiner drives come on line.

    • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Informative)

      by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @01:40AM (#56075019)

      Completely and totally false. http://www.pnas.org/content/10... [pnas.org]. From the abstract:

      The analysis indicates that a network of land-based 2.5-megawatt (MW) turbines restricted to nonforested, ice-free, nonurban areas operating at as little as 20% of their rated capacity could supply >40 times current worldwide consumption of electricity, >5 times total global use of energy in all forms.

      • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Informative)

        by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer.earthlink@net> on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @04:20AM (#56075301)

        I won't dispute the math that it is possible to provide all of our energy from wind but I'd like someone to tell me how much it costs. I have a paper here on my desk from Morgan Stanley that gives me some idea.

        Wind takes ten times the steel and concrete per installed megawatt compared to nuclear, coal, or natural gas. To meet current demand and replace existing electric supply we'd have to build 1200 windmills every week for 50 years, assuming 1.65 MW rated output and 35% capacity factor. Then after 50 years we'd start over and do it all again, assuming those windmills last that long.

        For comparison we have nuclear power. We'd have to build 1 per week for 50 years, assuming 900 MW rated output and 90% capacity factor. Sounds like a lot? Well, it takes no more materials than the current steel and concrete we use now to build our coal and gas power plants. I know we can do this because we already are dong this. Just stop putting those resources into coal and gas and put it into nuclear. Oh, and like the windmills we'd have to start over again in 50 years because by then those nuclear power plants would have also reached end of life. This also assumes no new technology. With technology that's in development now we could easily cut these resource requirements in half, if not far less.

        We can't switch to wind power, not any time soon, because doing so would require many times more steel and concrete than is currently produced in the world. We could divert all of our steel to windmill towers, and all of our concrete to windmill anchors, and fall very short in getting enough energy from wind.

        Wind power will not power the world. Solar power won't either as the resource requirements are similar to wind, we can currently produce only 1/10th of the materials we need for solar to replace coal and gas.

        • I won't dispute the math that it is possible to provide all of our energy from wind but I'd like someone to tell me how much it costs.

          It costs much less than cleaning up the mess from burning fossil fuels, because we can't actually do that so the cost of that is effectively infinite. We live here, so cleaning up the mess is important. In fact, it is necessary for our continued survival as a species. If we can't clean it up, we need to not make it.

          This stuff is understandable to some children, but it seems to escape most adults.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          Can you post sources for any of these numbers? In particular, the materials information is interesting.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.

      Grandfather's waste is pretty bad. No one want's to be near grandfathers spent fuel, even Dad thinks it's toxic.

    • How about sun & wind?
      Or sun & wind & storage?
      We don't need mineral, we don't need nuclear.

    • New York has how many million inhabitants?
      And you think you can build a nuclear plant there without causing a civil war?
      Dream on ...

    • Re:Let's move into the modern era... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:09AM (#56075649) Homepage Journal

      There is only one real solution: Nuclear.

      [citation needed]

      Not your grandfather's nuclear, TODAY'S nuclear.

      I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear. But what I do see actually being installed today is wind and solar. We should have been ramping up solar in the 1970s, since even the PV panels of those days would repay their energy investment in less than seven years, and most of those panels would still be functioning today. But people like you fought that tooth and nail, and now here we are today, with people like you clamoring for something which doesn't exist: safe nuclear power. There is no such thing, which is why the private sector can not and will not ever insure one. Decommissioning costs are always multiples of estimates and we still have no viable plan for dealing with nuclear waste. Even reprocessed fuel leaves waste behind, and the waste from that is spectacularly nasty. The solution for nuclear waste isn't to double down and produce worse nuclear waste. It's to stop producing it at all, because it's wholly unnecessary [theguardian.com].

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by judoguy ( 534886 )

        I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear.

        Try naval nuclear. Reactor design has been forging ahead over the years. We just don't get to use it because of fear.

        I'm not even saying current military design is the best since it must be portable but I have to assume that current engineering practice, unencumbered by politics, can build pretty good reactors.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by TheSync ( 5291 )

        I'm looking around, but I don't actually see any of today's nuclear.

        Unit 2 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province has successfully completed pre-operational testing. Sanmen 1 is expected to be the first Westinghouse AP1000 to begin operating later this year, with Sanmen 2 also set to start up in 2018. (source) [world-nuclear-news.org]

        Construction of China's 600 MWe demonstration Fast neutron reactors at Xiapu, Fujian province, has officially begun. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation by

        • Unit 2 of the Sanmen nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province has successfully completed pre-operational testing. Sanmen 1 is expected to be the first Westinghouse AP1000 to begin operating later this year, with Sanmen 2 also set to start up in 2018.

          The AP1000 is not a great design [wikipedia.org]. It's not a spectacularly new design, either; all but the most minor details of the design are over twenty years old. Sodium-cooled reactors are only adding additional hazard [wikipedia.org], and anyone championing them is batshit crazy.

    • Why does there have to only be ONE solution? Distributed power generation is a far better solution, i.e. not a single point of failure for a large area.

  • Oil will only go out of style when... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Paleolibertarian ( 930578 ) on Monday February 05, 2018 @11:46PM (#56074729) Journal

    the energy density of batteries approaches that of diesel fuel.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      Minus the weight of the deisel, plus that of a genset, because power-to-weight ratio of the motor matters too. Also vehicle weight is only one factor in total cost of ownership.

    • Re:Oil will only go out of style when... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @01:03AM (#56074923) Homepage

      Gas currently has 100 times the energy density of a battery but go nowhere near 100 times as far. If a Tesla's batteries stored 100 times as much energy, the car would go like 30,000 miles between charge-ups.

      Basically, the point you made is stupid and you should feel bad.

      • If a typical car's gas tank held 500lb of fuel, it would have a range of 2000 miles. My average-sized car with average mileage has a 16 gallon tank. 16 gallons is about 60 liters. Gasoline is about 80 pct as dense as water, so that's about 100 lbs to go (in the worst case of all city stop-and-go traffic) of 300 miles to empty, in the best case over 500 miles to empty, and in the average case about 400 miles to empty. If I took on 5x as much fuel, I'd roughly quintuple my range.

        Air drag dominates the waste,
      • If you want to argue from an energy efficiency standpoint, gas ICE vehicles are about 20%-25% efficient. That is, 20%-25% of the energy in the gasoline gets to the wheels to push the car forward.

        Electric vehicles are almost the same. The average coal plant and gas plant are about 33% and 43% efficient respectively [eia.gov]. Power line transmission losses are about 5%. Battery charging efficiency is about 85% [teslaliving.net] (that is, to put 85 kWh into a battery requires about 100 kWh from the wall socket). Electric motor e
      • "Gas currently has 100 times the energy density of a battery but go nowhere near 100 times as far."

        But he is stupid?
      • People who actually own electric cars, especially pure electrics say they get used to starting with full charge every day, and gets used to thinking about their trip and a little planning. After that when they get into the other car with half empty tank or suddenly forced to look for gas station, they find it irritating.

        I usually drive my cars to death, taking 12 years per car with very little maintenance. Otherwise I will be speaking from my personal experience. My 2006 Prius is still going strong, on th

    • Re:Oil will only go out of style when... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @07:00AM (#56075627) Homepage Journal

      the energy density of batteries approaches that of diesel fuel.

      When will ICE efficiency approach that of batteries? (never) When will ICEs permit regeneration? (never)

      Sounds to me more like on a technical level, ICEs will never be competitive with EVs, not the other way around

  • $2.5M per megawatt (Score:3)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:20AM (#56074833)

    That's a hefty pricetag. Even solar would be significantly cheaper, why not offshoring some solar panels?

  • Awesome (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:41AM (#56074875)
    Awesome! I think it's too bad that the federal government won't be doing any large scale, forward-thinking, society-improving things for the immediate future, so I'm thrilled that the Big Blue states are picking up the slack. Go, New York and California! Better late than never!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Yes, go California and New York - drive up the costs of living in your state and then cry like stuck pigs when your property taxes aren't deductible any more...

      California has this fantastic idea called a bullet train that will be slightly faster than taking a plane, and is already enjoying unprecedented delays and budget-busting cost over-runs.

      California has another great idea, it's called single-payer universal healthcare - it will only cost 2x the current state budget, but hey, I'm certain your residents

  • wow that seems to be some seriously expensive power generation. are the number really correct? surely that would massively drive up power costs buying from such costly power generation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      surely that would massively drive up power costs buying from such costly power generation.

      Pish-posh, it's wind power, it's free.

      Let's see, at $6 Billion to generate power for 1.2 Million homes, that's only $5K per home powered.

      Now, about that 5,000 jobs, is that to maintain the windfarm or is that just to build them?

  • New York is building wind farms for whatever reasons, good or bad.

    Offshore oil drilling is on hold because oil prices are not high enough to justify building new offshore rigs given whatever tradeoffs good or bad.

    But if/when oil prices get high enough, there definitely will be offshore drilling off the New York coast, most likely NOT for local consumption, but for export. If there's enough financial motivation, projects will get approved.

    And the wind farms will still be there... and may even have mor

    • I heard the same thing about ANWR. We can't drill there because it'd take 5 years before it can produce any oil. We also can't drill there until oil prices get high enough to make it profitable. I had someone make this same argument to me and 5 years later oil prices hit record highs.

      That was real smart there, Einstein. It sure would have been nice to start drilling for that oil FIVE YEARS AGO!

      We can't have that oil in five years, when the prices might be high enough to sell at a profit, if we don't sta

  • Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a plan earlier this month to develop $6 billion of offshore wind projects off the southern coast of Long Island by 2028 and predicted that the industry would bring 5,000 jobs to the state. The plan calls for developing 2.4 gigawatts -- enough to power 1.2 million homes -- by 2030.

    The report also notes that New Jersey announced a similar plan last Wednesday to develop 3.5 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity off its coast.

    Why was New Jersey's plan to build 3.4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity tossed in as an afterthought, but the article focuses on New York's plan to build 2.4 Gigawatts...

  • You could go back to 1955, check out the girls at the "Enchantment under the sea" and then to your time again...and you would still have some juice left.
  • Seriously, we have tons of old oil platforms out there. Once done with oil, turn them into wind turbines. Or even put one up while drilling so it provides electricity for drilling/pumping.

  • "But it's in direct conflict with President Donald Trump's plan to open up the Atlantic Coast to offshore oil drilling."

    How is adding wind in conflict with offshore drilling? There's plenty of room for both in the Atlantic ocean.

    "Cuomo has asked Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke for an exemption from the drilling plan, saying in an open letter that the plan "undermines New York's efforts to combat climate change by shifting from greenhouse gas emitting fossil energy sources to renewable sources, such as

  • Okay (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @03:03PM (#56078079)
    I'm all in favor of this on one condition: the first oil wells and wind turbines need to be located within a golf ball's flight distance of Mar-a-largo!

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