End to All Power Problems

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.

Solar cells would be great for certain regions of the country, or if they could make them sensitive enough to work everwhere, but alas we are not there yet. Solar and wind, along with a quantum jump forward in the storage of power are the holy grail, and hopefully the future.

Also, those countries you named with Huge Solar % are miniscule as compared to the US as far as power consumption, and their gov'ts have underwritten the cost, so it's some of the most, if not the most expensive power on the planet.

Solar is not an answer right now, it's way too expensive. We are very long natural gas, in fact the US is about to start EXPORTING natural gas, when a few years back we were set to begin importing up to 15% of our natural gas by 2020. Well, thank God for shale gas, now let's use it to get away from foreign oil, and develope exportable technologies using it such as this.

I have been in the power and natural gas business for close to 20yrs now, and I am always shocked by how little people know about the biggest business in the world Energy. These new gas developement, which the US is helping other countries develope as well, could be a bridge from fossil fuels to economically viable sustainable, renewables. Plus, it's a huge new industry. Watch it, it's going to happen.