Rolling Blackouts In Denver - Natural Gas Shortage

[Strelnikov_]

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060218005010&newsLang=en

Feb. 18, 2006--Xcel Energy is experiencing reduced natural gas supply into Colorado. This situation is affecting natural gas supplies along the Front Range. It is also affecting the generation of electricity. Xcel Energy is asking customers along the Front Range to reduce their usage of natural gas and electricity until the situation can be rectified.

The company is currently working to increase the amount of natural gas flowing into the state. Until the issue can be resolved, the company will curtail electric service to groups of customers in the Denver metro area on a 30-minute rotating basis. It is anticipated that this will last for the duration of the day.

http://www.denverpost.com/

[rodeodance]

1. whow.

[htuttle]

2. It's 11F in Denver today

We'll be seeing a lot more of this soon, btw.

Russia is already seeing a lot of black outs, loss of heating gas, etc... this winter, if you've not been paying attention to the situation there.

[acmejack]

4. Russia has been seeing people freezing to death.

[teryang]

3. natural gas prices are oversold at this point

Last night the CEO of Dow Chemical was saying that they were moving 8 of their facilities to the Persian Gulf region because of the natural gas "shortage" in the US and "Americans would lose jobs as a result."

[NickB79]

5. The North American continent has peaked for NG production

The US peaked years ago, and in 2003 it appears Canada peaked as well. A google search for "peak natural gas north america" turns up a lot of information.

As I sit here, shivering in my drafty 64-degree apartment in the middle of a deep freeze (Twin Cities, MN, current temp of -3F with -20F windchill), I am very worried that Peak Natural Gas, not Peak Oil, will be the first to start the recession/depression that is coming our way.

While there are still large global reserves, importing them to the US via LNG tankers will become very expensive, and will require the contruction of thousands of new ships and the ports to recieve them.

[Porcupine]

6. Peaked and Declining. Say goodbye to "The American Way of LIfe"

So many people simply do not understand that the power genie requires constant care, work and repair to function. I spent a fair amount of time Friday explanining that I simply did not have an electrician in my back pocket to send out to thier personal problem.

Multiply that method of thinking by about 200 million and you have the American populace. They will sit there befuddled in the face of freezing temperatures and rising natural gas prices. At some point there just won't be any gas in their pipes to keep them warm. Some will freeze waiting for the gas to come back on by itself.

Buddha save us all.

[hatrack]

7. Y'all remember the 2003 blackout, right?

That's what happens when power companies neglect their infrastructure for decades, while some of them at the same time decide to "reinvent" themselves a la Enron.

A friend of mine runs his own electrical contracting business and has for about 20 years. He had an interesting comment one time - when he started out, the utility for the city we both live in had some of the best crews, equipment, response times and infrastructure upkeep he's ever seen, while the rural electric cooperatives in neighboring counties pretty much sucked.

Now, the situation is almost completely reversed. Cost-cutting, cost-cutting and more cost-cutting has led to really shitty service levels here in town, while the RECs have absolutely first-rate service and upkeep. Weird.

[Porcupine]

20. I live in California, Enron played our power like a three year old....

with a light switch. They were shutting down the power in MARCH!! In California that is on of our months with the lowest power usage. No Enron, no blackouts. Funny how that turned out.

[jpak]

8. These blackouts were predicted last summer after Katrina

If there's a prolonged cold snap in the East before spring - it could happen there too...

[Strelnikov_]

9. Sounds Like It Was Equipment Problems, Combined With High Demand

Taintor, anyone?

http://9news.com/acm_news.aspx?OSGNAME=KUSA&IKOBJECTID=7e338803-0abe-421a-00d2-14853d3ca3a1&TEMPLATEID=0c76dce6-ac1f-02d8-0047-c589c01ca7bf

A natural gas supplier to Xcel had equipment problems, causing a significant loss of electricity generation at the company's natural-gas power plants, company spokesman Tom Henley said.

Frozen liquid at the supplier's well head slowed the flow of natural gas. The problem was enhanced by increased demand because of the freezing temperatures.

Beginning about 8:45 a.m., up to 100,000 customers in the Denver area, Grand Junction, Vail, Aspen and Basalt lost power for about 30 minutes at a time. The outages occurred during a two-hour period.

By 1 p.m., Henley said, supply problems were ending.

"Those gas supplies are starting to flow again to Xcel Energy's generation system," Henley said. "Those generating units on natural gas are starting to come back online."

[rfkrfk]

10. using NG to make electricity is insane

NG is excellent transportation fuel,
I predict increasing NG use, in fleet vehicles.

sorry, I have no sympathy for people using
NG to make electricity, I hope they go
broke and freeze

as time goes on, the price of NG will converge with
the price of gasoline

......................
does anyone know the 'consumer' price of NG in Europe?,
I don't understand ....
gasoline is 4 dollars plus per gallon,
cars can run on NG with conversion,
unless the NG is extremely expensive,
something does not add up

at some point, depending on the prices,
it would be worth it to
simply fuel up with NG at home, and spray
the NG into the intake as supplemental fuel,
because if the NG price in Europe
is comparable to that in the US,
the NG would essentially be free, compared to
the European price for petrol.

In the US, such a thing would
be marginaly economic

[phantom power]

11. Well, remember...

it's not like anybody asks "the people" who use electricity how they think it should be generated.

[rfkrfk]

13. somewhat disagree

I refer to the situation in California about the year 1999.
they didn't want coal, they didn't want nuke,
supply from other states was getting tight,
solution, use lots of natural gas, bidding up the price for everyone

one way or the other, the people have some influence
in the matter of electricity generation

[phantom power]

15. True, people do exercise influence.

Maybe what I should have meant was that there's little conscious or deliberate dialogue, as it were. The kind of influence people exert is driven largely by negative reaction to local effects. Anger at prices, fear of radiation, what-have-you...

I'm not familiar with any cases where citizens, utility companies and government all got together and really talked about the pros and cons of energy sources, with a view toward future issues as well as present. What are the risks, what are the rewards, etc. The public "dialogue" seems to be conducted more on the level of corporate reactions to public outrage, at various "single-point" issues.

[NNadir]

12. Personally I believe all energy uses for natural gas are insane.

Actually natural gas fills a niche in electrical generation that is difficult to fill, that of peak demand.

Through the use of combined cycle technology, natural gas right now can achieve the highest thermal efficiency of any form of fossil fuel or, at least for the time being, any nuclear reactor.

However thermal efficiency is not the whole story. One of the things that makes natural gas really dangerous, besides the potential for explosion, which kills a fair number of people every year, and asphyxiation, which also kills a fair number of people, is its greenhouse gas potential. It's not just the CO₂ released by combustion. Methane itself, released by the inevitable leaks, is a very potent greenhouse gas. It is methane, released from warmed sea clathrates or melting permafrost, that may push us completely over the climatic edge, if we are not there already.

My personal opinion is that the world should move as quickly as is possible to ban all fossil fuels for all purposes, including the allegedly "safe and clean" natural gas.

[rfkrfk]

14. Why would NG have a different efficiency than fuel oil...

if the fuel oil is burned in a turbine?

or, do mean something like,

NG has more energy per specific carbon

[NNadir]

16. The reason is combined cycle technology.

When natural gas is burned in a combined cycle plant, the hot gases produced are directly applied to the turbine. The exhaust gases from the turbine are quite hot. These exhaust gases are used to heat water to make steam to drive a second turbine. The energy recovered is typically on the order of 50% or greater. Note that this type of technology is only applicable to gaseous fuels, for practical purposes today, natural gas.

Many similar strategies can be applied. Nuclear reactors now under development in Japan and China will use the sulfur iodine cycle, a series of cyclical chemical reactions, to thermochemically decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen. The temperatures required to drive one part of this reaction, the decomposition of sulfuric acid into oxygen and SO₂ gas, is 830^oC. Another step in the cycle, the decomposition of hydrogen iodide into hydrogen and iodine, takes place at 320^oC. A third step, the iodine oxidation of SO₂ to sulfuric acid in the presence of water takes place at 120^oC. If water is used to effect the temperature step downs required, it is obviously hotter than the boiling point of water, and thus can be used to generate electricity as a side product from the production of hydrogen.

It is expected that nuclear reactors operating in this way will have thermal efficiencies higher than 60%.

[jpak]

17. Nuclear power plants emit more GHGs than gas-fired plants

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15822495%255E1702,00.html

NUCLEAR power generates more damaging greenhouse gas emissions than gas-fired power, an Australian scientist says.

As federal and state politicians debate the merits of starting down the nuclear power path to help reduce Australia's contribution to global warming, scientists say it may not be so clean after all.

University of NSW Institute of Environmental Studies senior lecturer Dr Mark Diesendorf says nuclear power stations do not emit carbon dioxide (CO2) themselves, but the processes involved in creating nuclear energy do.

Mining, milling, uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel production, power station construction and operation, storage and reprocessing of spent fuel, long-term management of radioactive waste and closing down old power stations all require the burning of fossil fuels, he says.

<more>

Not a solution

[NNadir]

18. In response, I refer to one of my other posts made earlier today.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=30857&mesg_id=42982

I cannot help but to note that much of the anti-nuclear case consists entirely of stuff that has simply been made up. When you scrutinize anti-nuclear propaganda the claims of which it consist almost always fails to hold up to the light of day.

[jpak]

19. Please contact the University of NSW Institute of Environmental Studies

and the editors of Australasian Science, and tell them that Dr Mark Diesendorf is "making stuff up"...

I'm sure they will appreciate your efforts...

:rofl: