What is the best fuel source to create electricity?

Question

We know oil is not a good fuel source, what fuel source would you use to take its place?

Answer 1

I think solar is the best.   It's the most abundant and it is free and never needs fuel.  

Mean Mr Clean mentions sending solar from Arizona to Vermont.  We can do just that at a suprisingly low cost, with technology we already  have.  It has already begun in California which could have over 2 gigawatts of new solar from power plants, in just a few years.  We already have 355 megawatts now.

I gigawatt = 1000 megawatts

I gigawatt would power San Francisco, or the equivalant of 775,000 homes.  A medium size nuke plant,  or Hoover Dam would be about 2 gigawatts.  Two of the proposed solar plants for the Mojave Desert are up to 800 and 900 megawatts each.

  I don't agree with Mean Mr Clean about oil being cheap though.  Estimate of what gasoline would cost, if the real hidden costs of petroeum were included, would be about $12 per gallon.

  Estimates for total hidden costs of petroleum are over $800 billion annually.  Over $100 billion for military protection of oil supply.  $80 billion in tax credits and subsidies to oil and gas industries.

Health costs, environmental costs, damage to buildings from smog, increases trade inbalance by up to $300 billion.  Then there's the wars and we know what that cost in lives and money.

And nuclear has some hidden costs too.  There are the issues of transporting potentially dangerous materials all across the country. The dismantling of nuclear plants, when they reach the end of their usefull life, are problematic and expensive.

2006  from  http://www.earthtrack.net/earthtrack/lib...

"Federal subsidies to new nuclear power plants are likely between 4 and 8 cents per kWh (levelized), and could well be the determining factor driving the construction of new nuclear power plants.  $9 billion per year in the U.S.

Tens of billions of dollars have been earmarked for the nuclear sector on the grounds that it is the only large scale, currently available, low carbon power source. "

Solar Electric Grid Plan

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...   Scientific American  

How to have 65% solar grid by 2050 and nearly all solar by 2100.  At a small fraction of what oil really cost.  Then electric cars would be charged on clean energy too.

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/

Green Wombat has several stories on the companies working on solar thermal power plants in California.

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."  

GABY says solar is unreliable.  Not so.

"Solar thermal power plants can store energy during daylight hours and generate power when it's needed. Ausra's power plants collect the sun's energy as heat; Ausra is developing thermal energy storage systems which can store enough heat to run the power plant for up to 20 hours during dark or cloudy periods."

GABY says solar uses too much land.  Not so.

"Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

from  http://www.ausra.com

Concentrating photovoltaic power plants are viable for  this also. They both use parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight.  One converts light to electricity, the other uses the heat of the sun.

And other clean energies can add to the grid as distributed energy, including roof top solar panels, wind, waves , geothermal,etc.

We already have about 100 nuclear plants running, so for now, at least,  they are part of the mix.  

Fuel cells, that run on natural gas, are commercially available for power plants. Heat from the fuel cells is also captured and used.

Much cleaner than burning the gas.

Manure and plant waste from farms is good source of power and eliminates methane that would add to greenhouse gases otherwise.

I was impressed with the following.

"Wild Rose Dairy in Webster Township, WI is home to an innovative renewable energy facility powered by cow manure and other organic waste. The farm is home to 900 dairy cows, and an on-site anaerobic digester creates methane-rich biogas from their waste, which is used to generate 750 kilowatts of electricity per hour—enough to power 600 local homes 24/7."

    That's one home for every 1 1/2 cows.

and

"Environmental Power’s Huckabay Ridge is the largest renewable natural gas plant in North America, if not the world. Huckabay Ridge generates methane-rich biogas from manure

and other agricultural waste, conditions it to natural gas standards and distributes it through a commercial pipeline. The purified biogas, called RNG®, is generated by Environmental

Power’s subsidiary, Microgy, and is a branded, renewable, pipeline quality methane product."

A large dairy farm near where I live is also doing this.

Also,  photovoltaic prices are coming down and efficiency is going up

Answer 2

how come electricity can not be created from a generator, a generator powered by electricity

Answer 3

How about Geo Thermal.  Drill a deep hole loop.  Get the heat from the earth.  Boil water from the heat.  Use the steam to create electricity.  If carefully done it may not even kill any moles or ground hogs.   Maybe some ants.

Answer 4

Nuclear.  Not to mention the fact that the latest US Submarines are using it, and the government is holding back on development...of course, the environmentalists have scared the pants off all the easily scared...but, if you research the pro's opinions...we could be incredibly free of oil and coal as fuel sources...due to the abundance of nuclear energy resources.

Answer 5

water-- hydroelectricity

Answer 6

Can't use oil: environmentalists complain it gives off too much CO2 and causes global warming

Can't use coal: environmentalists complain it gives off too much CO2 and causes global warming

Can't use hydro: environmentalists complain it disrupts the lives of slugs, snails, and carp

Cant use wind: environmentalists complain it kills birds

Solar?  Can't supply enough today and environmentalists will complain about lead batteries.

Let's just ask the Sierra club, et al, what they won't tie up in court until the power company goes bankrupt and our houses go dark

Answer 7

I like Nuclear as the basic source, complemented with Wind and the Sun(Solar). Wind and sun are good, but not always reliable, and requires enormous space to get much power.

Answer 8

coal.

Answer 9

it depends on what you mean by "good."

For oil has advantages....that's why we still use it

It is established and cheaper to run in the short term then it would be to build a whole new solar or hydro plant...

However, it ain't that clean and it shows our dependance on it....so the cleanest with the least amount of envirnmental impact is solar.....but unreliable here in Vermont......Arizona is a different story.

Hydro must dam rivers and that greatly effects the envirnment, and wind requires particular locations that are usually good views (mountain tops, etc.)

So I'd say solar COULD be the best......once the equipment goes down in price.......we could always build the plants in Arizona nad send the power to places like NY or Washington state.

Answer 10

Well technically speaking oil is a good fuel source, if it wasn't it wouldn't have been used all these years, every source of energy has its drawbacks, and its not likely we will ever find one that is perfect. I would say the best source to create electricity, is EVERYTHING. The world's population is growing and more and more nations are developing technologically and demanding electrical infrastructure, this is a good thing, I believe, because it means more people around the world will have access to lighting, indoor plumbing with clean water, and communication such as the internet, all things we in 'developed' nations take for granted. This means, however, that we will have to develop more and more ways of creating power that is efficient, economically viable, and environmentally safe. This begins by exploiting all possible power sources that do not create CO2 (the leading green-house gas as we all know) these include, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro-electric and the possibility of technological breakthrough in hydrogen and 'clean-coal'.  In order to make these processes economically viable, considerations must be made toward geography, and locally available resources. Too much of our current energy production, worldwide, is centralized, in America we get our oil all the way from the Persian Gulf, or a Power Plant in California burns coal from West Virginia, this creates tremendous inefficiency and increased pollution due to the large amount of transportation required. We have to decentralize our power supplies and make use of local resources. The U.S. for example has the worlds largest potential wind-energy reserves, almost all of which is untapped. The Great Lakes states have an endless supply of fresh water which could go to efficient running heavy-water nuclear plants. China has a vast amount of hydro-electric potential it is just beginning to tap into, and the deserts of Africa could possibly offer enough solar energy to power much of the continent. So you begin to see my point, the best fuel source to create electricity is that which is most available to you, not one shipped from a foreign nation, half a world away. In order to supply future generations with the power they will need to run society our energy policy must be to become independent and sustainable.

Answer 11

Use Coal as it is difficult to burn Coal in cars.

Answer 12

Sun.

Answer 13

Best for initial capital - Coal, we're already 50% coal on the US grid..

Best environmental - Solar, it never runs out, comes back every day, needs no fuel.

Best bizarre solar but could be used with any fuel that burns - Stirling heat engines.