End to All Power Problems

I'm not sure about advantage of this technology (other than size). Solid oxide fuel cells used by Bloom Energy have efficiency up to 60% while standard gas turbines have also 60% efficiency.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell was similar hot technology that ended up being a fiasco. Not only for security reasons but also for poor efficiency (in order of 10%) making it a really dirty fuel. Efficiency can be improved obtaining hydrogen by running hot steam thru the methane or coal containing methane but then huge amounts of CO2 would be produced.

Well, even if you use a gas turbine, such as GE, Seimens, Mitsubishi, Rolls Royce or Mitsui 7 series or the like, with new heat rates below 7, which acutally ups the effciency, you still need to put that power over transmission lines, which creates a rather sizeable line loss in the transmission of power. This would allow for production of power, at the source of use, and would not have any line loss. That means it's in reality much more efficient.

Also, you forget that if methane is used for these units, the first power units to be taken offline will be No 2 and No 7 Oil based units, then baseload coal units, that create HUGE amounts of CO2. Gas fired units will remain in the qeue for back up. Also, nothing is more expensive in the power business than the constrution and maintenence of transmission lines. That cost should be greatly reduced to eliminated.

Also, the efficiency of these now is 60% comparable to existing combined cycle natural gas fired generation, plus the upside of no transmission which makes them much cheaper, since you are not only not paying for the line loss, but for the cost of transmission across the utilities power grid. The more this efficiency goes up, the more in the money this gets. Even with a subsequent rise in gas cost that could be expected from increased Nat Gas demand, you are still way in the money since the US is now SO LONG nat gas. Also, the increase would not be 1:1, since it would be offset by large generation units that would have used natural gas being taken off line.

Macdadtexas, I remember when what my relative in London said in 70's after highly publicized push for much cheaper gas heating instead of electric heating. He said "Now when I finaly installed gas furnance gas cost doubled. They are not stupid"

Distributed energy sources to avoid transmission losses (if there aren't any in gas pipelines by friction and leaks) is good but solar is good as well since the peak demand for energy comes around noon while residential power can be returned to grid for credit. Silicon solar cell prices are dropping, sand is widely available and panels last 25 years. China is powering whole villages/towns with local solar power stations (in addition to nuclear power plants they build).

Some countries invest heavily in alternative energy. Denmark for instance, gets 20% of their energy from the wind.

I wish you COULD make silicon solar cells from sand. While sand may be part of the raw materials, the silicon is extremely pure and has to be 'grown' as a pure crystal, usually using the CZ method.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czochralski_process

This is a pretty energy intensive process. Solar cells take a while to 'pay back' this energy investment.

Magfan, Just only one of Chinese solar companies LDK has annual silicon production capacity of 18,000 metric tons (40 million pounds). Countries like Germany, Italy and Czech Republic invest heavily into solar panels. Look at 2009 numbers:

Germany, Italy, Czech Republic = 68% = 4.96 GW
Other Europe = 9% = .66 GW
US = 7% = .51 GW
Japan = 6% = .43 GW
Rest of World = 10% = .73 GW

I know that about 8GW total is not a lot but it is not installed capacity but rather annual demand. It is predicted to jump to 20GW in 2011. 150% growth in 2 years (in slow economy) ain't bad but this is just the beginning.