| Energy is also important to our economy, and on the negative side, is a reason to go to war or to trash the Global Climate system, based on how much CO2, methane and N2O is present in the air. It would be nice to make our own energy in a way that does not involve a huge export of money to buy fuels or electricity, and do so in a manner that does not trash the Global climate control system. But, in Erie County, New York, is it possible?
So, let's start with some Erie County facts. The estimated human population is 910,000 people dispersed over 1044 square miles with "title" to 183 square miles of Lake Erie surface (bottom-lands of the lake are owned by all of us New Yorkers via the entity known as NY State). Via the Census Bureau, our income is a bit less than the average for NY State, but typical for the US. We have 423,000 households, and a home ownership rate of about 65% (NY average is 53%), and the vast majority of the population lives in either Buffalo or its surrounding sub-urbs. The northern part of the county is relatively flat, and the southern part is quite hilly, with a number of ridges in a NNW to SSE direction, getting higher as one goes south. Given half a chance, the native vegetation is hardwood forest, such as maples, oak, beech and ash.
Climatewise, for the Buffalo area, the average insolation (percent of direct sunlight) is about 50% of maximum (time of no clouds/rain/snow/fog). However, due to "reverse lake effect" (cold lake, warmer air), summers tend to be fairly sunny (65% insolation); winters and fall tend to be cloudier. Precipitation tends to be uniform across the year. Winds are significantly directional, especially by the Lake Erie coastline (prevailing is WSW; most winds flow from the SW quadrant). There is a windy season - from October to April, peaking in December. The NY State Wind map for Erie County is shown below. The fastest winds are estimated to be near Sturgeon Pt in Angola; winds are estimated to be 8.55 m/s at 100 meters above the ground - almost worthy of the Lakota Sioux lands in South Dakota.
Note: anything with dark green or better on land is commercially viable (especially for turbines with large rotor diameter to generator ratios, like the Vestas V-100 x 1.8 MW units), and even more so if near transmission lies or a dedicated customer. But, light purple or better leads to commercial grade winds. As for offshore, winds are estimated to be between 7.5 to 9 m/s at hub height (generally 8 to 8.5 m/s), which are commercial scale for "moderate speed" wind turbines, such as this other Vestas V-112 x 3MW system. However, there are other vendors for wind turbines, both on and offshore, like GE, Siemens, Gamesa, Clipper, Nordex, Fuhrlaender, Acconia, and Suzlon, and perhaps others like Enercon (with manufacturing in Quebec) who might want to enter the US market.
Assumptions:
Let's say that Erie County residents decide to go renewable, electrically speaking. Given the high cost for PV, the inaplicability of solar thermal electric, the two choices for electricity seem to be run-of-river hydro and wind turbines. Some important questions that need to be answered are how much electricity is needed, and what are the available resources. Any photovoltaics (PV) added is "gravy". And while the case for solar hot water and passive solar/active solar residential/commercial heating is MUCH more logical than for PV (lower investment, energy yield of at least 800% of PV as low grade delivered heat), that too is assumed to be "gravy" - and a fine addition to our energy mix, too.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, NY consumed 141,102,467 MW-hr in 2008, an average of about 16.064 GW. This averages out to about 0.82 kw of continuous usage per capita (19.4 million people). On a prorated basis, Erie County would need an average supply of 746 MW.
Niagara River: The average flow is about 5796 m^3/s, and the drop between Lake Erie and the intakes above the Falls is about 3 meters (most of this drop happens by the Peace Bridge). The total energy potential is 170 MW, but not all of that could be captured. If 20% of this was tapped, that is 34 MW of run-of-river (no dams needed). If each run of river unit could tap an average of 25 kw, that would be 1400 of these units. A company named Free Flow Power (Gloucester, Mass)
has already applied for permits for this part of the river (840 of them). So far, no local politician has mentioned the manufacture of these items in Buffalo....
Biomass co-gen: Lets assume that 12 MW of electricity is co-produced by biomass fired boilers. That leaves 700 MW to go...and it would also eliminate a lot of natural gas usage at some major users (UB?, Buffalo State?, downtown Buffalo?). At about 1.5 ton/hr of wood per MW, this would require a source for 18 tons/hr of wood. At 5 tons/acre per year, about 32,000 acres would be required to grow this resource (160 wood farmers at 200 acres/farm, crop sold at $40/ton). While that sounds like lots of land, that works out to 50 square miles, or about a 7.1 x 7.1 mile square (4.7% of Erie County land). The by-product heat could displace 1.6 billion cubic feet per year of natural gas, saving customers about $16 million in avoided natural gas purchases (at $10/MBtu); it would also avoid the export of that money out of the area. The wood crop (willow, for example) would cost about $6.3 million/yr to grow/harvest/transport.
Wind: With 46 MW down, that leaves 700 MW to be extracted from wind. This could be done via a combination of on and offshore wind. The offshore part is easiest to estimate, so that will get calculated first.
Offshore: There are 183 square miles of available water surface. If ~ 25 % is assumed to be reserved for shipping lanes, that leaves about 135 sq miles of "tappable" water with a depth that is less than 20 meters, in general. Since the Lake Erie bedrock is a limestone composite with the characteristics of concrete, a foundation capable of withstanding ice flows seems a definite possibility (wind turbines located in the Baltic Sea have been dealing with such problems for over a decade, so the problem of ice is solvable).
A reasonable turbine "density" is about 8 MW capacity per square kilometer (Horns Rev 160 MW wind farm in Denmark waters), or about 20 MW per sq mile. At 135 sq miles, total capacity is thus 2700 MW of capacity. At an average output of 40% using wind turbines suited to the "mild" offshore conditions (relative to the North Sea, for example), this is 1080 MW on a delivered basis. This is enough to completely power up Erie County, electrically speaking, on average. However, there may be some days when the winds are slack, and other days that the wind is more than sufficient, but electrical energy storage is easily dealt with Erie County.
If only 1/3 of the 1080 MW delivered is used (or 25% of the available offshore resource), an average of 360 MW output could be obtained. Using 1/6 of the offshore resource (12.5% of the water surface would be used in offshore wind arrays), 180 MW could be obtained. Since offshore tends to be more expensive than onshore, let's go with 180 MW delivered, or 450 MW of capacity, worth about $1.8 billion in capital investment. About half of that is likely to be local (foundation and marine work, substation, cabling, etc) spending/labor/business, worth about 14,400 job-years as well as associated spin-off jobs.
Onshore: Subtracting 180 MW from 700 MW means that "only" 520 MW on a delivered basis of wind derived electricity would be needed. Since onshore yields tend to be lower than offshore yields due to slower winds at hub heights (estimate is about 30% of capacity), this would require about 1730 MW of capacity. The investment required is about $3.4 billion, and the number of turbines required depends on the size of them, and the particular characteristics (some new turbines are designed for lower winds and might get an average of 35% output, requiring "only"1485 MW, using the same winds that would push another turbine attuned for higher wind speeds to a 30% output level). Between 700 to 825 wind turbines would be needed for this effort. The $3.4 billion investment would make 54,400 job-yrs - mostly wherever the turbines and components were manufactured. Obviously, it would be in Erie County's best interest to land some wind jobs, and wind component manufacturing facilities.
Is there enough area to house 700 wind turbines. The short answer is yes. For example, there are 159 x 1.5 MW wind turbines in Wyoming County, but just next to Erie County (Sheldon and Whethersfiled 2 wind farms, total capacity of 238.5 MW, and probable output averaging ~ 83 MW. BNut, to put this into perspective, assume that 6 rows of 21 miles of turbines (2.5 MW) were deployed along the coastline, as well as along the ridges, spaced 300 meters apart and perpendicular to the prevailing WSWwinds. Misson accomplished. Or, try this as a thought experiment - imagines a 20 mile x 20 mile (400 mi^2) portion was largely avoided - as being part of the city, or of various sub-urbs. Of the 644 mi^2, assume that half of this is located on the wrong side of the ridgeline, or in a valley. That leaves 322 mile^2 to put turbines on. Assuming a turbine "density" of 6 x 2.5 MW = 15 MW per square kilometer. This is equivalent to 38 turbines per square mile; a total of 19 square miles would be needed, out of 322 mi^2, or about 6% of Erie County's likely wind turbine suitable land area (1.8% of total land area). In fact, there is room for plenty more. Since the "actual area used by the turbines is quite small (1/16 of an acre per turbine, but lots of space between them), only 44 acres of actual landspace (tower diameter, transformer) would be needed for 700 turbines.
Since a number of wind arrays in Erie County (on and offshore) would still produce a variable output, connections to other regions with renewable energy potential would be needed - such as Ontario and Quebec, as well as other parts of NY State. Fortunately, there is a very oversized electricity grid in Erie County, mostley cenetered around the Buffalo area, with massive substations in Buffalo, Tonawanda (Huntley facility), Elma, West Seneca and Lackawanna, interconnecting Niagara Falls, Huntley, the Dunkirk and Somerset generation sites, and also connecting Erie County to Pennsylvania (Seneca Pumped Hydro, Kinzua Dam, other parts of NY (especially the Utica "junction box") and Ontario. There are also 3 existing pumped hydro facilities nearby (Seneca at Kinzua, 430 MW, Niagara Falls USA (240 MW) and Niagara Falls Ontario (170 MW), as well as the emergency reserve of up to 2 GW of deferred hydro (when both sides of Niagara Falls "drain the Falls". There seems to be no need for any more pumped hydro in this region, but if that was necessary, it could be arranged. For example, a 200 MW system composed of a 100 acre pond 100 feet deep on a 800 foot drop (such as areas seen along US 219 near 10 to 15 miles north of Springville), or in the Boston Hills south of Buffalo (could use Lake Erie water). The 100 care pond/100 ft deep pond with an 800 ft water drop could produce 100 MW for close to 24 hours, or 200 MW for 12 hours; it would provide significant energy buffer to "weather" slow wind time periods. Correspondingly, during high wind events, it is a great way to store energy which can be exported to regions during their peak consumption (and most expensive energy) times.
Liquid Fuels:
Unfortunately, Erie County is highly sub-urbanized (beneath urban?), and this sets up County residents for significant fleecing from oil producing parts of the world, some of them (Equatorial Guinea, Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Angola, Libya) who are amongst the nastiest and/or most corrupt governments/ruling cliques in the world. And sub-urbanization is, at present and for the forseeable future, an acronym for petroleum consumption, and petroleum addiction. Totally not wise.
Some of this consumption can be reduced by using electricity for transportation - such as the Metro Rail, obviously, this system needs to be expanded, and subsidized more by taxpayers until the effects of Peak Oil are really felt ($6 to $10/gallon gasoline, for example). A good way to lessen gasoline and diesel consumption would be a 50% x 50% plan - 50% less miles traveled in cars, and 50% fuel consumption rate per car (i.e. doubling milaeage from US average (~ 23 mpg) to 44 mpg, the present European average. Since NY State consumes about 5.8 billion gallons per year (bgy) of gasoline and 2.8 bgy of diesel (well below U.S. national averages - a result of the MTA system centered around NYC), on a prorated basis, Erie County would consume 270 million gallons/yr (mgy) of gasoline and 130 mgy of diesel. Dropping that by eventually 75% would lead to a yearly demand of 67.5 mgy of gasoline and 32.5 mgy of diesel. There is also a lot of jet fuel consumed (kerosene); however, a decent high speed rail system connecting Albany/NYC, Erie (Pittsburgh/Cleveland) and Toronto could also take most of the need for short haul air traffic away.
As it turns out, yields of biodiesel (plus protein by-product) from oil seeds like canola produce around 100 gallons/acre per year. Corn based ethanol has a productivity of about 500 gallons/acre-yr (175 bushels per acre, 2.85 gallons EtOH per bushel); it takes about 1.3 gallons of EtOH to match gasolines performance, unless high compression engines are used (performance then becomes about 1.3 gallons of gasoline per gallon of EtOH). And cellulose to fuels (EtOH, gasoline and or diesel-like) can produce about 400 gallons of fuel per acre.
Thus,for liquid fuels, 67.5 mgy of gasoline would require approximately 135,000 acres, or 211 square miles of corn, or 264 square mile of cellulose crop (usually harvested at 5 tons/acre-yr, but only once every 3 years on any given acre. Celloluse harvesting can take place throughout the year, but crops like corn, potatoes and sugar beets don't work that way. For diesel, about 127 square miles of cellulose would be needed, or some combination of 100 square miles of oilseed/protein crops and 100 acres of cellulose. In any case, up to half of Erie County land would be needed for energy (fast growing wood and shrubs) and/or energy food (corn, canola, potatoes, sugar beets, etc) crops.
Economically, this would be a major boost to rural Erie County - the conversion of many socially destructive "ex-urbs" back to farm/woods would actually be economically viable. At present prices, Erie County EXPORTS $1.2 billion/yr out of NY State for gasoline and diesel. However, when prices rise to $10/gallon and above (say, by 2020), the money drain/"needle in the arm" will cost Erie County inhabitants over $4 billion/yr. This is a disaster on so many levels.... However, re-injecting and recycling most of that money from urban to rural Erie County (and also providing jobs in Buffalo and towns like Angola (Lake Erie cooling water/rail access) to convert the crops to fuels would actually create hundreds of jobs (farming plus biofuels). Keep in mind that a typical ethanol facility produces 55 to 110 mgy.
In addition, as more and more transport is electrified (most car users only travel 20 miles per day in Erie County, a perfect application for a battery powered car), more electricity would be required. But since fuel and fuel-food crops are perfectly compatible with wind turbines, no additional land would be required for the dual crop + wind turbine arrangement (also great for farmer incomes).
Probably the one energy usage that is rarely considered is that of natural gas (Ngas) for heat. But, like garbage put out once a week, the natural gas for heat is also a 20th century concept that has to go the way of the garbage. On that same note, any garbage that cannot be recycled/composted also has to be incinerated and converted into electricity (but there is a facility in Niagara Falls that already does that). After all, there is nothing clean about Ngas (in extraction or combustion); but it is "less dirty" than coal. On a statewide basis, NY uses about 1.2 trillion cubic feet/yr (tcf) of Ngas; on a pro-rated basis, Erie County would use about 55 billion cubic feet per year (bcfy). Some of this could be displaced by using wood in co-generation systems, and some would be difficult to displace for high temperature heat. In NY, Ngas usage is approximately equally divided between electricity production, residential/commercial use and industrial use. Since there are presently no Ngas electricity users of note (5 MW co-gen at General Mills in Buffalo), Erie County's Ngas consumption is probably near 38 bcf/yr. At the current low price of $10/MBtu delivered, this is $380 million/yr; but when gas prices potentially triple by 2020 (to match oil price rises), this will also be an EXPORT of over $1 billion per year. Uggh.....
If an 85% thermal efficiency for Ngas consumption is assumed, that means that only 32.3 bcf of Ngas is actually used as 100% delivered heat. Taking into consideration the 1.6 bcfy biomass equivalent, about 30.7 million MBtu (30.7) bcfy of Ngas replacement is needed. This works out to 1026 MW of direct resistance electric heat. Most of this would be seasonal use - basically, when the windy season (winter) occurs. If 40% of this is assumed to be used as direct resistance heat, and 10% as heat pump compressor motor energy, then winter usage of electricity for heat would require about 500 MW of electricity.
Going back to the wind turbine numbers, the required wind energy needed on a delivered basis would rise to ~ 1200 MW, from around 700 MW, or an increase of 71%. If this is split equally between offshore and on shore, then the wind turbine capacity would be:
Offshore:
309 MW delivered = 771 MW capacity = 21% of water surface in arrays = 257 x 3 MW turbines
Capital Cost = $3.1 billion (40% net output per turbine assumed)
Total jobs made (manufacture + installation) ~ 50,000 job years
Onshore:
891 MW delivered = 2742 MW capacity* = 3.2% of land surface in array = 1097 x 2.5 MW units with an assumed efficiency (net output) of 32.5%.
Capital Cost = $5.5 billion
Total Jobs made (manufacture + installation) ~ 88,000 job years
Anyway, that's a plan for Erie County to go homegrown, energy wise, create 138,000 job-years of mostly manufacturing jobs. Over a 20 year period, that is another 6900 direct jobs, and close to 30,000 support jobs (grocery clerks, real estate agents, bartenders, teachers, nurses, government workers and business bureaucrats) and about $21.5 billion (multiplier of 2.5:1 for manufacturing only basis) of economic activity. It would also avoid the export of $80 billion over a 20 year period; on average, about $4 billion/yr (assuming energy prices are 3 times present levels in 20 years, and on average, prices rise in a linear manner). Note: this is a 5%/yr growth rate in energy prices (rate = [Ln(3)]/20; multiply by 100 to get percentage).
The result of this would be significant independence from foreign (Texas, Louisiana, Saudi Arabia) oil sources, methane (Ngas) sources and coal (West Virginia, Wyoming), essentially no CO2 pollution for electricity, heat and transportation, and a lot more manufacturing and rural employment (farmers, not ex-urbs). And by not exporting all that money and instead recycling it into local manufacturing, economic growth might actually occur. Some of the money should be plowed into mass transit, of course, as this will lessen the quantity of money exported for liquid fuels, which could be more concentrated to construction and farming uses (difficult to electrify). Another great use for renewable fuels would be back-up electrical power.
Some future tweeks to this would include making ammonia (farm use - this puts the protein in plants) in a renewable manner - involving renewable electricity and also possibly cellulose plus renewable electricity. And the yield of EtOH from an sugar/starch to EtOH plant can be increased by 50% if the CO2 by-product from fermentation of sugars is reduced to EtOH or some other fuel by hydrogen made from water and renewable electricity. Thus, that 110 mgy EtOH facility could go to 165 mgy with no increase in crop production, but a need for ~ 288 MW of electricity. The oxygen by-product from water electrolysis could then be used to convert cellulose to fuels via the syn-gas intermediate. You know, better living though chemistry...
Anyway, none of this will happen unless the price of the energy (electricity, biofuels, heat) justifies the investments. But, the alternative is to import impoverishment by importing fossil fuels form other parts of the US and especially from other parts of the world. Now, some may like the high unemployment rates in Buffalo (they won't spread to the 'burbs, right?) as a way to keep labor wage rates depressed, but to most, such thoughts are evil. Unfortunately, there are more than a few people with such attitude in positions of political or economic (business, banking, etc) power, and their main arguments will be that energy prices won't rise so fast, Peak Oil won't happen so fast, Ngas is going to be cheap for decades, and besides, there is no such things as Santa Claus and Global Warming. Except of course when it comes to government handouts for the upper income brackets; then it is expected to be Christmas at least every other day.
And as for the micro-hordes of nuke, coal, Ngas and petro-whores who get feverishly overwrought with visions of wind turbines within their field of view (and with non-polluting energy as the dominant energy source, you can see that much farther, thus magnifying the manufactured and imaginary tizzy), grow a suitable pair. Don't like wind turbines - then plunk your money down for a non-polluting electricity source that odds are will be much more expensive. And grow up. After many years, whoring for mega polluting energy concerns wears heavily on people and society, and it's no longer cute. I'm personally sick and tired of Oil Wars, and seeing people in this country forced by economic necessity to fight as mercs for the likes of evil corporate entities like Xi (ex-Blackwater) and in the US armed forces. Cannon fodder on behalf of the upper class as a career choice sucks - it's not much of a choice, anyway, and is almost always reserved for those with minimal amounts of money in the family lineage. Aren't we sufficiently in debt yet - that IraqNam misadventure will end up costing $3 billion in just money costs, not to mention the American dead and wounded and the Iraqi dead and wounded (between 10 to 100 times the US casualties)? How many must die so that a few have a view of the sunset that doesn't have the occasional wind turbine (and remember, 3.5% of the land surface might be within 1000 (2/3 of a mile) meters of a rotor blade and tower)? And a world ravaged by Global Warming in preference to seeing a wind turbine on the horizon - yeah, the kids and grandkids will really give thanks for that one..... yeah, right.
So, any comments? If so, send them to Tantalum73@verizon.net, or your political representatives.
Also cross-posted at http://wagengineering.blogspot... |
