Comments on: Morro Bay Power Plant shutdown saves fish, kills birds

By: Barry

Barry — Sun, 07 May 2017 07:13:25 +0000

Hey Folks, Aren’t you forgetting something? The big cost of a natural gas fired power plant is the CONTINUING FUEL COST and NOT the initial construction cost. If the 250 MW PV power plant is replaced by a high efficiency natural gas fired power plant, about 6,500 BTU of heat will be needed from natural gas for every kiloWatthour of electricity generated or 6,500,000 BTU for every megaWatthour of electricity generated. If the California Valley Solar Ranch puts out 250 MW for “24 hours” at a capacity factor of 0.22 (if we use the figure in this article. Sunpower claims 0.29 due to the single-axis tracker) it will produce 1,320 MWhours of electricity per day. In one year it will produce 365x this or 482,000 MWhours. A natural gas plant will require 6.5 million BTU from natural gas for every MWhour or 3,132,000 MILLION BTU per year. At the current cost of natural gas, about $3.20 per million BTU, which is cheap, it will cost approximately $10,020,000 every year to fuel the gas turbine power plant. The solar plant has NO fuel cost. If the gas turbine ran all year at a 0.88 capacity factor the fuel cost would be four times this or $40,080,000 per year. (Of course, this would be for four times the electricity produced.) Neglecting inflation, the gas turbine would use over $200 million in fuel over 20 years. With inflation this would be $300 million to $400 million for 20 years. By the way, today’s photovoltaic modules will probably last 25 to 30 years or more, although their output does degrade half to one percent each year, so it might take 25 years to get “20 years” of life.

By: Joey Racano

Joey Racano — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 16:43:36 +0000

The shut down of all coastal power plants using once through cooling seawater intakes is long overdue. This was especially true on the Morro Bay National Estuary. However, to say we traded killing fish with that power plant for killing ‘birds and bugs’ at California Solar Ranch is untrue. Solar panels belong on our rooftops, not out in the desert. And those aren’t even solar panels, they are mirrors. When you can generate electricity simply by passing sunlight through a photovoltaic solar panel, why should you take an extra step of reflecting that sunlight with a mirror to heat water to generate electricity? It sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine.

Also, there are no tortoises on carrizzo plain, that’s in the mojave. Finally, to say that solar ranch supplies juice for Morro Bay is baloney- that juice goes to new development. Here’s your homework: http://www.drivingthefuture.com

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 19:41:41 +0000

Let’s hope that California has some pretty good extension chords hooked up to neighboring states that have more rational energy policy. By the way, I saw an interesting statistic. It turns out that Texas gets a net of ~$350 million dollars in Federal subsidies for wind power generation while California ends up loosing about half that amount, subsidizing renewable energy in other states. http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/State-Level-Impact-of-Federal-Wind-Subsidies.pdf

By: John

John — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 14:36:47 +0000

Natural gas power plants cost about $1,000 per kw not per MW. The correct number for comparison to the solar plant is $1,000,000 per MW. That’s still vastly cheaper to build than that solar plant. But you should focus more on the cost to generate the electricity to get a comparison relevant to consumers. John