'A lot that is still not understood'
Asked whether his ideas need detailed studies, given the complexity of the grid, Wellinghoff said the technology is already moving that way.
"I think it's being settled by the digital grid moving forward," he said. "We are going to have to go to a smart grid to get to this point I'm talking about. But if we don't go to that digital grid, we're not going to be able to move these renewables, anyway. So it's all going to be an integral part of operating that grid efficiently."
In response to Wellinghoff's comments, James Owens, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an association of shareholder-owned utilities, issued this statement: “While our industry is making very major strides in expanding energy efficiency and the use of renewables, we’ll still have to add new baseload generation capacity to help meet the growth in demand for electricity. As we intensify the transition to a low-carbon future, we will need to have all generation options on the table, including advanced new nuclear, advanced clean coal with carbon capture and storage, as well as natural gas.”
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. reported last week on challenges in integrating a twentyfold expansion of renewable power into the nation's electricity networks but did not specifically address whether additional baseload generation would be needed. A spokesperson for NERC did not have an immediate response to Wellinghoff's comments.
Revis James, who directs energy technology assessment for the Electric Power Research Institute, said recently that it is not clear how fast renewable energy can be added without creating reliability issues. "No one knows what the magic number is," he said. "Are we moving too fast? On the policymakers' side, there's a lot that is not still understood about the implications of a large share of renewables."
Impact on nuclear power
Wellinghoff's statement – if it reflects Obama administration policy – would be a huge blow to the U.S. nuclear power industry, which has been hoping for a nuclear "renaissance" based on the capacity of nuclear reactors to generate power without greenhouse gas emissions.
Congress created significant financial incentives to encourage the construction of perhaps a half-dozen nuclear plants with innovative designs, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu has promised Congress to accelerate awards of federal loan guarantees for some of these proposals.
But a major expansion in U.S. nuclear energy would require a high effective tax on carbon emissions from coal plants, or an extended loan guarantee and tax incentive policy, according to the Congressional Research Service and outside consultants. The leading energy bills before Congress do not provide more loan guarantees.
"If expansion of nuclear plants is the nation's policy, then Congress has to recognize that the U.S. energy companies cannot afford to do this alone," said Paul Genoa, policy director for the Nuclear Energy Institute, in a recent interview.
"The president needs to show his cards on nuclear energy," said energy consultant Joseph Stanislaw, a Duke University professor. "He cannot keep this industry, which must make investments with a 50-year or longer horizon, in limbo for much longer."
"I think [new nuclear expansion] is kind of a theoretical question, because I don't see anybody building these things, I don't see anybody having one under construction," Wellington said.
Building nuclear plants is cost-prohibitive, he said, adding that the last price he saw was more than $7,000 a kilowatt – more expensive than solar energy. "Until costs get to some reasonable cost, I don't think anybody's going to [talk] that seriously," he said. "Coal plants are sort of in the same boat, they're not quite as expensive."
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Add Commentnow the earth fist crowed are in the oval office, peoples needs now come last.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no question that we can generate all the power we need from all the available sources. Someday, geothermal is possible with carbon nanotube constructed pipes to run deep enough to boil water into steam to generate electricity. What we do in the next 20-50 years to minimize CO2 is more easily and predictably accomplished with nuclear plants which are more reliable now than 30 years ago. Wind and solar are wonderful decentralized power generation sources. Where are the objective statistics on cost, availability, feasibility for all electrical generation methods? We should diversify our portfolio. Geothermal temperature differential heat pumps could eliminate rural and suburban winter oil and gas heating requirements. It's not what we don't know that bothers me. It's what we know that just ain't so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering Wellinghoff's unbelievably ignorant comments on computing power and his apparent inability to understand the importance of baseload power, it is safe to say that everyone would be better off ignoring this guy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with Wagner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is truly a courageous statement that is a credit to any public official. It demonstrates a dedication to the facts, to truth, and to facing the overriding reality of our time: Global Warming and its cause, environmental pollution caused by "dirty" industries. This nation has the capactiy to grasp that, to appreciate that, and to survive the consequences of needed rapid change. A new day is ahead for the US and the world populations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is truly a courageous statement that is a credit to any public official. It demonstrates a dedication to the facts, to truth, and to facing the overriding reality of our time: Global Warming and its cause, environmental pollution caused by "dirty" industries. This nation has the capactiy to grasp that, to appreciate that, and to survive the consequences of needed rapid change. A new day is ahead for the US and the world populations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is incredible that the American people are so deceived by the conservationist movement that the obvious planned agenda of sabotage of the US nation is being implemented with such little resistance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is very interesting that coal and nuclear are getting lumped together, seeing how one does not lead to global warming nor general pollution. And of course i know everyone is afraid its going to kill there babies, but seeing how 20% of our power comes from nuclear and there has not been one baby killed from nuclear, i think its safe to say we should build more. I bet even wind power kills a few people a year with construction and maintenance accidents. Lets all ignore this guy and let engineers and scientist make such decisions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisModern nuclear power is by far the lowest producer of greenhouse gases per watt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf nuclear power is handled correctly it is the best electrical source for reducing greenhouse gases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with nuclear power is how to store all that spent fuel? It doesn't just go away and can take quite a long time to cool properly and even longer to stop being radioactive.
My only concern about moving to nuclear is that we might replace one issue with another... we move from having too many greenhouse gases to having tons of nuclear fallout to deal with. Then we decide we can put it all on the moon, I guess...
No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We may not need any, ever," Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.
This is the smartest statement I've ever read coming from anything dealing with the EPA. Wellinghoff is 100% correct. Coal and nuclear power plants produces very dangerous garbage. Where are you going to store all the coal waste and all the nuclear waste? This deadly byproduct just doesn't disappear. There are no safe nuclear power plants and there are no clean coal power plants. You cannot, not in our life time, produce safe nuclear energy and you cannot produce clean coal energy. Start developing and producing geothermal power plants; we already have them in, I believe, 14 different states. It is as clean as the water you pour down the hole to produce the steam that hits the turbines that generates the electricity. You can even build a large box, fill it with salt; build a solar and wind plant next to it...the solar and wind will melt the salt...the salt will store a great amount of heat...when the sun goes down and the wind dies down; shoot water through the hot melted salt...creating steam that hits a turbine...generating electricity. This box of melted salt can store enough heat to keep the turbines turning for 12 to 14 hours. The only pollution you have from a geothermal salt plant is the pollution coal and nuclear power plants placed in our water supplies. The steam can even be captured and reused.
These people pushing dirty coal and deadly nuclear would have to be leftovers from the Bush administration looser flunkies. Coal and nuclear will continue to bring Bush's death, destruction, and poverty to America. We can no longer afford the expense of the deadlyness of coal and nuclear.
Remember when everyone thought Bush and his administration were soooo stupid. Well they look like geniouese compared to team Obama. This guy is a complete idiot. You absolutely need 100% always ON base load generation to keep the lights on all the time. What a complete moron.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is utterly devoid of any rational consideration of costs. It is not purely a matter of scientific capability. It is a matter of what people are realistically able to pay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUS power generation is comprised, I believe, of roughly 50% coal and 20% nuclear. Has this writer realistically considered what it is going to cost to change the sources over, over time, while still meeting the energy demands of a (hopefully) healthy economy?
In a word, the answer is no. He hasn't.
Naive bleatings like "we can't afford not to" miss the point. You can't double or triple the cost of electricity without imposing an incredible burden on consumers and on our economy as a whole.
Keep in mind that China has no interest in joining in with these plans, but continues to start up 50 coal plants a year. They are increasing carbon emissions at a faster rate than the US could ever reduce them, and they already put out more than we do.
It's all about energy density. Fossil fuels and especially nuclear have high energy densities. That is what makes them useful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more I hear about wind and solar power, the more disappointed I become in them. I had really hoped that they would prove viable alternatives. From a cost perspective, alternative energies are a bust.
Nuclear makes the most sense, but waste is an issue. Gen IV reactors are still in the design stage, but they have the promise of solving this issue as well.
I think I'd rather bet on a horse (Gen IV nuclear) rather than wait for wind.
Nuclear is great, until you get to the part about waste disposal. Only Nevada has been willing to take waste, and Yucca mountain, though years from completion, is already full. Perhaps you'd like to help the country and store some in <your> backyard? I didn't think so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo more coal or nuclear power plants means a lot more natural gas power plants. Message to Speaker Pelosi: natural gas is a fossil fuel subject to wide price fluctuation. High electricity prices mean less economic growth and a lower standard of living for Americans. Respectfully, Albert
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames you obviously know nothing about electricity or how the grid works. .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can't be so stupid to think that we can actually replace base load generation with windmills and solar panels. They have neither the power density nor the availability (the wind doesn't always blow DUH!!) to replace coal and nuclear.
Bush knew that. Obama obviously doesn't. At least on this issue Obama is heck of lot dumber than Bush.
How do you replace baseload with wind? It's a statistical thing. Not all of the wind generation capacity counts as baseload, but if you have a bunch of wind generation capacity spread out over a large area, you can pretty much guarantee that a certain percentage of it will always be available. See http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf for the paper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, one thing's for sure. As more and more people are laid off, the demand for power from the industrial sector will be plummeting. 1,000,000 people use a lot more electricity at work operating machine tools than they do at home watching TV.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe demand for power will continue to drop as those who are out of work have their electricity turned off for lack of paying the bill (or for being thrown out on the street when the house is foreclosed - same result).
So yeah, I can easily believe that there will never again be the need to build another power generating facility.
This statement sounds like that of an Admiistration official made recently in Atlantic City that predicted all of our energy couldbe derived from offshore wind. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests there is a slight problem. The three largest coal plants in New Jersey (about 1800 mw) would require 900 wind mills (2 mw) with full time wind. There would be 9 windmills every mile of the aproximately 100 miles of NJ shoreline. In addition, there would be over 3000 mw of nuclear generation to replace. 'Nuff said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the problem you get when you let politicians meddle in busness and technology . They try and make business and technology decisions based on politics. They don't mix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't even have an electricity problem per se. We have reliable low cost electricity that is not dependent on foreign fuel sources.
All adding expensive, inefficient wind and solar will do will drive up your electric bill which will hurt individuals and business. It's time the Obama admin starts thinking about being reducing he cost of doing business not increasing it. How the heck does increasing the cost of doing business help out the economy?
Once again this new FERC guy and his boss are idiots.
Does this guy have any technical energy credentials or is he just another political hack? Actually, he is a lawyer. Enough said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this guy have any energy technical credentials or is he just another political hack? Actually, he is a lawyer. Enough said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor far too long, the US economy has been dependent on cheap energy, both electricity and transportation fuels. The entire infrastructure in this country has been based on cheap energy (suburban sprawl, insufficient insulation in homes, etc.). Energy has been priced too low for too long. The real costs of electricity generation have not been accounted for: the environmental and health costs of coal (mercury emissions, acid rain, particulates, fly ash, etc.), the risks associated with nuclear - no insurance company will insure a nuclear power plant because of the costs of an accident are too high and the probabilities are not completely known. These are just a few examples, many more can be found by searching for environmental/true cost of electricity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe best alternative right now for solving some of the serious electrical energy issues is to change demand for electricity through price signals. If the true cost of electricity was reflected in retail rates, consumers and industries would be forced to re-evaluate how they use electricity. I'm talking about real-time price signals (ie. smart grid) that reflect the cost of generating electricity at different times of the day based on the generation equipment in operation. A flat rate price structure is sending the wrong message to consumers, that all electricity costs the same to generate. Introducing time-of-use pricing gradually will allow consumers the time necessary to adapt their behaviors. I realize that an increase in energy prices are a very hard sell to industries, but if high prices during the day are balanced with low prices at night (reflective of the true cost) then the industry can shift the more energy intense operations to the night when the rates are lower. This would also result in a flatter load duration curve for the utilities.
I support parts of what Wellinghoff says with regards to not needing to add additional nuclear or coal to the electricity generation mix. We realistically have all the baseload that we could need. The problem arises with meeting the peak loads for electricity.
My vision is that we will have centralized plants providing base load power (nuclear, wind - use it whenever its generated, solar thermal electric - not PV) and distributed peaking plants such as load-following natural gas plants to supplement the times when the wind is not blowing and the demand cannot be met by stored solar thermal or nuclear.
We need to stay positive in order to meet the challenges of a growing economy dependent on energy.
Remember why the space shuttle Challenger exploded: "NASA managers ...disregarded warnings from engineers".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe assumption that man's emissions cause global warming remains just an assumption. http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2674e64f-802a-23ad-490b-bd9faf4dcdb7
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the main problems we have is that non-engineers, especially non-power systems engineers pronounce about things they no nothing about. A lawyer pronouncing that the US will never build another coal or nuclear plant??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA few weeks ago I read an article about solar energy that included the space it took for the megawatts it would produce. I scaled that up to megawatt size and it took square miles of area to produce 1000MW. And we are going to build a lot of these type of plants? With the NIMBY syndrome so prevelent, how will this much area or some large subset of it, ever be cobbled together? Some will say that the plants will not be that large. If not, then many more transmission lines will be needed to connect the smaller but more numerous plants. Enter the NIMBY syndrome again.
One of the problems being studied right now is how to deal with the variabilities of large scale wind and solar power connected to power systems. Remember, one of the goals is that the lights can never go out! Although some of the variabilities can be flattened out when controlling power over a large area, you will still need the spinning reserve of base load stations to take up the slack when the sun does not shine and the wind stops blowing.
All the people against nuclear power obviously have zero education on the matter and shouldn't speak about it. Waste storage is a political issue, not an engineering issue. The power generated is as clean as it gets, and 100% safe. Until we have magically efficient and cheap solar panels nuclear is the way to go if you are worried about global climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is not with the engineers who already know that we need additional nuclear and coal generation. It is with the politicians who spout out partisan nonsense that the general public just eats right up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil the general public realizes that government does not know best about virtaully anything we will have our tax dollars spent on boondoggles that yield no benefit. How about that ethanol?
We are poised right now to throw enormous sums of money down a rat hole that will benefit a lot of folks(Al Gore?) but not the electric consumer.
The public has to get over Bush derahgement syndrome and Obama mania and start evaluating what our government is doing to us.
Climate change is not the only issue here. Do you have any idea just how much tonnage of nuclear waste is produced by a single plant in the course of its lifetime? We have literally astronomical amounts of the stuff sitting around, so much that a very high percentage of it isn't even being stored in proper facilities because the space no longer exists. Try to consider, also, that this stuff is dangerous on a timescale of hundreds to thousands of years. Can you put a pricetag on the efforts which would be required to truly ensure lack of environmental impact from this waste? When I say expensive you better understand that there are other forms of payback than dollars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd there's another factor here which so far nobody has even hinted at: nuclear power isn't as efficient as everyone seems to think. It isn't a magical cureall. Bear in mind that our reactors are based on -fission- processes. Fission not only requires a high amount of energy to initiate, it requires continuous power and additional material to ensure the reaction doesn't stall out. Guess where that power is coming from.
Please keep things in perspective. Options aren't made viable solely by the fact that they won't produce greenhouse gases. Solar power doesn't produce gases either, but we aren't relying on it because it's bloody inefficient and expensive as hell. So is nuclear power.
Also, I'd like some explanation on the idea of 'baseload' because from what I'm reading here it doesn't make any sense. If all it is is a buffer against power outage, then there's a very simple solution for preserving it: turn off the freakin power when you go home at night! Honestly, if people would simply put large complexes and buildings in a low-power mode during off hours, they could save literally thousands of dollars a night in generation costs. Get off the 'more more more' train and realize that if we would just fix our wasteful habits we could solve half of our problems by default.
azzguitarboy at 04:01 PM on 04/23/09 "you can pretty much guarantee that a certain percentage of it will always be available"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes. That figure is 30%. It is the capacity factor of wind turbines. Not much good, for much of, base load.
Jon Wellinghoff is spouting naive nonsense and so are you.
Wow, some of the clueless areguments I hear. Does people realize that baseload power has to be there all of the time? Also that load follow is an instantaneous process. When you turn a light switch on generation has to be added immediately to compensate and vice versa. Nuclear and coal are constant highly reliable power suorces. Wind and solar are highly variable unreliable sources. It should be obvious that one cannot replace the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems that a lot of people forgot why building of new Nuclear power plants was put on hold. The problem of how to deal with the waste products of the power generation has not changed. Nor has there been any wonderful new solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe waste from nuclear power production is toxic and dangerous. It is highly radioactive and stays that way for a VERY LONG TIME - thousands of years in some cases.
Whereas we may be able to store these wastes for decades we can not yet do so for millenium.
no problem with burning coal, natural gas, or turning either into liquid fuel because clearly since 1998 the climate is not warming, sea levels have not risen even a millimeter, and it overwhelmingly appears that the greatest threat at the moment is a new ice age due to a maximal period of solar minimum sunspot activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClimate change is not proven science. Touting it is however successful politics. Reality is at best we could generate possibly 10-20% of our electricity with renewables. The cost would be great because these generators only have a 30%capacity factor. Thus to get 20% of our power out you have to have to have 60% installed. Does anyone seriously realize how many windmills and solar panels this is? After your done the remaining 80% would be coal, nuclear and natural gas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the cost would go way up so would our electricity rates. Politicians would subsidize so some of the cost would be hidden as higher taxes.
Producing power has it's tradeoffs. You either want the lights on or not. What you'll get with this administration is a bunch of well subsidized fat cat windmill vendors (e.g GE) that sop up government subsidies. The taxpayer/electric consumer just gets the bill.
Wake up!
Same business model as ethanol.
Distributed energy storage - like the VRB-ESS - would make it possible to rely less on "baseload" and more on renewables. www.Utility-Savings.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLots of ignorance here buying the utilities, coal, nuke line. Let's go through each.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWind while variable is no more variable than loading is which we easily handle. While big single wind farms are a little problem, they as solar farms are not the future, home, business size units are. Over a large area small wind averages out so it is not a problem as when it doesn't work, biomass, hydro or NG can kick in.
Solar not only isn't a problem to variable demand but the answer because solar happens when demand peaks!! Think about that. Just as power is needed, solar is hitting it's max. And CSP home size units, just solar 5hp steam engines not only supply 25-35% eff electricity but much of the heating and all the hot water needed. And if power. heat is needed when the sun don't shine it can be fired by wood pellets or any other fuel or heat stored.
Kinetic hydro is a great base load as river currents are steady and tidal ones are predictable. Plus tidal by placing them in different places they make power at different times so if well placed can average constant power.
My only problem with nuke is it costs 2-3x's as much s most RE so why? Now add every nuke plant has had cost overruns of 50-100% makes it even worse.
Coal is poisoning our land so bad we can no longer eat fish more than 1/wk or our mercury levels go over max safe levels. A reporter tested this by eating 2 fish meals, one he caught and one from a store and went 50% over max levels. That is just one of many costs of coal from mining to burning. And coal is no longer 50% as it has dropped 12% over the last few yrs as few new ones built and many older ones converted to NG cogen at 55-60% eff.
Those who think coal, nuke is our future should invest in them so their pocketbooks will be as poor as their thought processes. RE is now the low cost energy source and once all the costs are in oil, coal, nuke instead of our income taxes, infrastructure and health care costs we wil all be better off.