[Rematog]

Engineers?

They don’t send engineers out on routine maintence calls…we are too useful in the office producing budget reports.

[Rematog]

It also points out the effects of economies of scale.

The plant I work at has a total capacity of 1725 MW. We have about 200 full time employees, or over 8 MW per employee. So, if FF is in 5 MW blocks, you could have about 1/2 of an employee per block for the same staffing levels.

This would be challenging for a site with a well set up operations and maintenance staff. If it had to be done with remotely, where a crew has to drive out to check on any problem, O&M;labor may be the limiting factor for power cost.

[Rematog]

“Local security situations may be more complex…” Understatement….

Union Card… there is plenty of good work available for Boilermakers, Ironworkers, Pipefitters, Electricians, etc. Go to a good trade school, then start talking to construction companies and union halls about apprenticeship programs. But, you have to be willing and able to:

1) Go to where the work is (you may spend a lot of time living out of a hotel or trailer, far from home, this is called “booming” or being a “boomer”)
2) Show up on time
3) Show up ready to work (clean and sober)
4) Work when you get there.

Sounds easy, but suprisingly, there is a shortage of skilled craftsmen in this country (USA).

[Rematog]

So literal….

The point is that the cost of O&M;can, in some cases, be the deciding fractor in the economics of a proposal.

[Rematog]

But the cost of running it is a very important question.

What if you could make power with only the power of your mind… no fuel, no capital…free power!

If 5 people, without requiring any capital equipmemt, no parts, no fuel, nothing but the power of their minds, could stare at a transmission line and make 5 MW appear…..

It would not be cheap power if they were paid a good union wage.

1880 hr/yr x 5 MW = 9,400 MW- hr/yr (52 weeks, less 3 weeks vacation and 10 days of holidays x 40 hr/wk = 1880 hr/yr productive time… (gee, what, no coffee breaks)

Base pay $25/hr x 1.5 (employment taxs, workers comp, fringes, etc) x 2080 (40 hr/wk, 52 wk/yr) = $78,000/person/yr x 5 persons = $390,000 / yr

$/ MW-hrs = $390,000 / 9,400 MW-hr = $41.50 / MW-hr.

This is about what the cost is to product power at a coal fired plant, including coal and capital cost.

So men staring at wires is not an option…..

[Rematog]

Hmmm…. In Louisiana a water crisis is when the levee breaks……..

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Yes, many of the loudest proponents of Biofuels are those that consider the Midwestern United States “Flyover Country”… i.e. they fly over it in their jets going from New York and Washington to Los Angles and San Fransisco. Because the can’t see very much that’s man-made from 40,000 ft, they assume it’s empty.

[Rematog]

Just “Food” for thought…..

I just attended a seminar on biofuels….

Switchgrass is one of the leading contenders for biofuel crops (as opposed to wood waste from logging).

To generate the 5 MW that a FF module would, you would need, roughly, 2,900 acres of switchgrass growing. At the very least, an alternate use for this land would be grazing and forage…. so it will reduce potential food production.

This assumes a reasonably efficient boilers/turbines (10,250 Btu/kw heat rate) and…. very high crop yield (no crop failures, storm damage, etc) and low spoilage of the switchgrass crop.. remember, very large quanties (small mountains) of “dead grass” would have to be stored between harvests to fuel a boiler running 365 days a year.

Something to chew on….

[Rematog]

The other costs for the water purification system would be cost of capital for the funds used to build it and O and M costs. These O and M costs would include operating staff and maintenace parts and services. If you want an idea about staffing, maybe you could compare it to a water treatment plant.

I’ve seen several proposals from academic types for industrial plants. One that sticks in my mind, was for growing algae using the high CO2 fuel gas from the boilers.

They assumed O&M;to be a percentage of revenue. When you did the math, they would have a 1,000 acre algae farm operated by one person at night, 2 during the day, with a management staff of 2-3 people….Totally un-realistic (they didn’t take into account it takes a miniumum of 4 employee’s to provide 24-7 coverage of one person, and that if they work overtime to cover each others vacation, sickleave, training, holidays, etc, so you have to divide the operating staff by 4 to get actual people on site at any one time). Just based on safety, you don’t have someone alone on a site… second, too many jobs take more then one person… etc.

Then the management effort needed to meet H.R. requirements, environment requirements, safety requirements, planing, purchasing, etc. mean that 2-3 management people CAN NOT do the work needed.

Example, as a plant engineer for a small tile manufacturing plant (did this for three years during the utility down-turn in the 90’s), I attended a EPA seminar on toxic’s reporting. Plant’s of any significant size have to file detailed inventories, cradle to grave tracking, of all “toxics” (you can guess the EPA includes many, many things in this definition). The speaker, trying to bond with the paticipants, said that they understood how difficult compliance is, “especially for smaller sites, with only two or three environmental compliance staff”. The EPA feels that having 2 or 3 people on staff, full time, with degree’s, is insufficent to deal with the regulatory requirements. And they are not wrong.

I’m sure if I tried to do hard science research, I’d be way out of my depth… but someone with no industrial experience also is out of their depth when they handwave away the realities of maintaining and operating an industrial plant.

[Rematog]

Thats ok, I’m more of a mega-engineering kind…

[Rematog]

The perfect example of “a little water” is California’s central valley. Irrigation turned a dry cattle ranching area into one of the US’s best fruit and vegetable gardens. One bonus of FF is that the irrigation water can be run thru a reverse osmosis or other de-salination process, and avoid one problem with conventional irrigation using river or ground water….salt.

[Rematog]

But, more seriously.

FF holds to promise of greatly increased material wealth for everyone….and in this case, that everyone means every human on planet earth.

Material wealth, don’t look down you nose at it!

Even if in the poorest areas of this planet that just means clean drinking water, sanitary sewers, elec. power for lighting, heating and cooking, cheaper food (lower cost for fertilizer and pumps for irrigation), affordable transportation, cheaper raw materials for homes, etc.

In other words, they will be able to achieve what we take for granted.

[Rematog]

Hurrah for sloth and luxury…..as long as it’s mine!

[Rematog]

Brian H wrote:

…

The same may well apply to the culture of nihilism and anomie and condescending post-modern deconstructionism in the West.

Didn’t Plato say something like this?

[Rematog]

Regarding loss, HVDC is only lower loss if lines are long enough that the line loss is greater the the inverter/rectifier loss.

ALSO… note that HVDC is harder to connect into a complicated system (network). Is is generally used to take power from point A to point B….No C’s allowed.

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