Interesting article and I wonder if it means a rebound in coal traffic and if so for how long and how high a rebound?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-natural-gas-prices-set-220000277.html
“Natural gas prices are set to soar.”
Soar. Sky rocket. Words that should be banned.
For the price to increase to $3 per million BTUs, we are talking roughly the equivalent of 42 cents for a gallon of #2 Diesel. Yes, wholesale, but it is still an energy bargain. The projected price is gas recovering from the price having crashed owing to the Virus Crisis.
We are talking the equivalent of $84/ton of a low-ash coal? Doesn’t coal run about $50/ton? Coal power plants are also less thermally efficient than the best gas-fired plants. I think gas would have to get much more expensive to get people’s attention to switch back to coal.
Soar? Skyrocket? Yes, I can see it. So what?
While some coal plants may be able to be restarted, many others are gone. Replaced by gas plants that can’t be easily converted, if at all. The energy companies will just pass on the increased cost as much as possible.
Jeff
Just like a illicit drug dealer - hook them on the product and raise the price.
My understanding is that a brand new coal plant can hit 45% in thermal efficiency and still meet some fairly strict emissions standards. OTOH, the best combined cycle plants are running about 60% thermal efficiency.
The main issue with a coal plant is that it tends to be more expensive and take longer to build than a combined cycle plant and thus would need to run at a high capacity factor for economic reasons.
Coal plants usually have more restricted turndown, too. That makes them better for baseline operation than variable or transient demand.
My former employer - I am retired - has shut down and mothballed half of its coal fired steam electric stations. The others are on or near the chopping block. They are not coming back.
It is not just the economics of coal vs alternative fuels or alternative sources, i.e. wind, solar, etc. It is also emotions. The political winds, which are driven by emotions, are blowing against coal. It is unlikely that any new coal fired power plants will be built in Texas, and the push will be to retire the existing ones as soon as practicable.
Natural gas also has total cost advantages, right?
Until it doesn’t.
I take it a person has personal experience on the marketing practices in the sale of “street” drugs?
I take it then, that you agree with the supposition that the closing of coal plants is driven by a misplaced concern of climate change from CO2 emissions? And that keeping coal plants open would
Natural gas has much more price volatility than coal. It has nothing to do with some monopolist oil and gas companies manipulating its price in the manner of a “first taste is free” drug dealer. The drug dealer who manipulates the price to "get you hooked&quo
Well said, Paul M. Lots of foolishness get posted uncritically as though it were accepted facts.
As my father once told me, “Misery loves company.”
And oil and gas prices? They’ve see-sawed back and forth for decades, nothing new about that.
A good portion of the natural gas in the US comes from Frac’ed wells, where the initial burst of gas production last for a few months. The consequence is that new wells have to be drilled in order to keep production going, which is entails risk, albeit a relatively low risk.
Not to mention the amount of carcinogens produced by burning wood.
Coal-firing causes a lot more wear and tear on boilers than gas firing, due to the abrasive effects of ash. You also have to maintain exhaust precipitators to capture fly ash, and possibly additional scrubbers if you are burning high-sulphur coal.
The previous centre-left NDP (New Democratic Party) government in Alberta initiated a coal phaseout here, and the power companies are continuing with it even though a centre-right Conservative government with pro-coal leanings is once again in power.
A lot of maintenance jobs have disappeared at our converted power plants.
Natural gas prices crashed about 12 years ago due to the fracking boom, and have never recovered. We had two new coal-fired power plants (Genesee 3 and Keephills 3) planned and built during the time of high gas prices, and several large industrial plants considered converting to coal for heat/steam production. One, Inland Cement in Edmonton, actually did, to the great annoyance of many city residents (their plant is upwind from most of the city).
Even those two newest coal plants are scheduled to be converted to gas by 2030.
Alliant Energy had a two unit coal plant outside of Marshalltown IA. They converted both units to gas. There was talk going around for a few years afterwards that they were considering converting one ot the units back to coal. The converted units didn’t burn gas as efficiently as coal, making energy production more expensive. They never did convert back.
They planned to build a new coal plant but of course ran into a lot of objections. They changed their plan to a gas fired plant and it was built. It had it’s objectors too, but not as many. Today it’s producing electricity and the old plant has been removed.
Jeff
Alas, some people think their power comes from some magical fairyland…
We probably have enough hydroelectric power in this area to keep us running - except the major power producer (NY Power Authority) ships most of it to NYC. Several communities in the area have their own dams.
It seems the issue with gas is heat transfer in the furnace which gets caught in convection. Requiring harder firing of gas to get more BTU’s to push steam to it’s optimal temp. I would’ve have liked to seen more research domestically into an OxyFuel coal fired plant. It’s always been my thought it’s not the fuel it’s how you combust it. All fuel is dirty if we really wanna look at the negatives each one carries. It might burn clean doesn’t mean it was procured in a clean manner…
A local co-gen here ran their boiler(s) with “fluidized bed,” which I believe involves crushing the coal (or petcoke, as they ran a lot of) into relatively fine particles.
They also ran a scrubber on the flue, so smoke out of the stack was extremely rare.
More recently, the plant was changed over to biomass, which put a crunch on the price of firewood, as those seeking to supply said biomass (mostly shredded trees) were shredding whole trees, and not just waste branches from other logging activities.