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UPDATE: Drought threatens US electricity supplies

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If you have solar or wind energy and are off the grid, you don’t need to read this. Everyone else…

The U.S. Drought and Electricity Generation
By John Daly | Mon, 03 September 2012
Oil Price.com

…virtually all power plants, whether they are nuclear, coal, or natural gas-fired, are completely dependent on water for cooling. Hydroelectric plants require continuous water flow to operate their turbines. Given the drought, many facilities are overheating and utilities are shutting them down or running their plants at lower capacity. Few Americans know (or up to this point have cared) that the country’s power plants account for about half of all the water used in the United States. For every gallon of residential water used in the average U.S. household, five times more is used to provide that home with electricity via hydropower turbines and fossil fuel power plants, roughly 40,000 gallons each month.

Add this up:

fracking water + frack sand processing water + power plant water = water bankruptcy

Some water is required to make a solar panel but its not comparable. Same with wind.

UPDATE: As I pointed out earlier, we need to decide which is more important: water for food or water for fracking. I choose solar and wind.

Farmers across the world have begun a mass slaughter of their pig and cattle herds because they cannot afford the cost of feed, which has soared following the worst US drought in living memory, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Source

About Sharon Wilson

Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.

Comments

  1. Donna says

    You have to understand the big picture. Wind energy is part of the problem.

    Public Utilities Commission of Texas. Chairman Donna Nelson stated on September 6th, 2012 the following:

    “Federal incentives for renewable energy…have distorted the competitive wholesale market in ERCOT. Wind has been supported by a federal production tax credit that provides $22 per MWH of energy generated by a wind resource. With this substantial incentive, wind resources can actually bid negative prices into the market and still make a profit….The market distortions caused by renewable energy incentives are one of the primary causes I believe of our current resource adequacy issue…this distortion makes it difficult for other generation types to recover their cost and discourages investment in new generation”.

    • TXsharon says

      Oh, we totally get the big picture and we are ready to pay more for our energy and use less if it means we don’t have to be poisoned and have our property devalued so we can’t sell which leaves us trapped to get poisoned more.

      The fossile fuel industry has been subsidized by the American taxpayer for decades to the tune of billions. It’s time to more forward now and let wind and solar take over.

      “In the United States, credible estimates of annual fossil fuel subsidies range from <$10 billion to $52 billion annually, while even efforts to remove small portions of those subsidies have been defeated in Congress, as shown in the graphic below." Source

      The fossil fuel industry also gets major tax incentives and tax breaks.

    • Fracking Crazy says

      Donna,

      Let’s put this in laymen’s terms:

      How much money in tax subsidies do oil and gas get?

      How much money in tax subsidies do wind and solar get?

      Facts only please.

  2. Donna says

    No you don’t get it. Wind and solar cannot possible provide baseload power with the technology we have today. And the current government subsidies do not encourage innovation. I may have been raised on a farm, but I had enough education to keep an open mind.

    Wind doesn’t blow when we need it and solar panels aren’t even close to being competitive – think Solyndra. Do you have any idea how much square footage it would take to provide the power we need? You may say well, it can work in Texas, but what about a large city? Do you realize what that would do to the environment? Massive stretches of desert which will lead to more global warming. And let me remind you -wind and solar both require massive amounts of STEEL, which is MINED from the ground and SMELTED using NATURAL GAS and COAL. Most of it is SHIPPED from CHINA where they have NO ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS!

    And to borrow a line from you regarding the cost – and your willingness to pay more for electricity – Are you okay with certain people making enormous sacrifices for the greater good? Because high electricity prices hit all, but the poor and most vulnerable populations are the only ones who have to make a sacrifice.

    Please get out from under the rock.

  4. Donna says

    F Crazy: your comment illustrates my point, even if it’s innacurate. Oil never gets moneyfor nothing, but that’s besides the point. There should be parity just for the sake of it. When your sick do you go to the doctor and ask for the same dose of each medicine just because? No you want the correct dose of the medicine that will cure your illness.

    • Fracking Crazy says

      My assumption is correct,

      no answer provided.

      case and point.

      As a voter I want more of my money going to wind and solar.

      And my vote ALWAYS reflect that now

      that I had to abandon my dream home for my health,

      thanks to some of our good neighbors:

      Williams, Mockingbird Pipeline, XTO and Gulftex.

  5. kim Feil says

    I’ve been on wind energy for my home for the last two years and it is competitively priced. If it wasn’t for wind, ERCOT says it prevented some rolling blackouts last year. I’m all for using water for energy when it gets the biggest bang for the buck….so if I use water to make a solar panel or a wind mill, then it was water well spent. If I use water to frack with, then it is water that went towards a single, NONSUSTAINABLE use, plus now it has to be disposed of and we have to babysit that injection well for ever now…plus those injectin wells cause quakes and that’s not good for pipelines and cement casings…oops Donna fall down?

  7. Anonymous says

    Nearly EVERY lake in Texas is somekind of cooling lake or a source of water for steam generating at a fossil fuel or nuclear power generating plant. There are very few that are Corps of Engineers lakes and not for power generating. Wind and solar requires only tiny amounts of lake water to make it work.

  8. david says

    Donna think SolarWorld http://www.solarworld-usa.com
    Based in Portland Oregon
    Why waste money building Infrastructure for a Hydrocarbon that will be Depleted. Distributed power generation Using the electrical grid – already built. Germany is leading the way in renewables.
    I find your Comments about farms & rocks tobe insulting.

  9. Donna says

    Tx Sharon why are you censoring my post? I state the fact that Germany is leading in renewables by building 26 coal plants and agree with Kim that wind is distorting the market and shouldn’t recieve subsidies?

    You don’t want informed debate. All i see is a bunch of patting each other on the back.
    You are worse than the oil companies. I think you are afraid of allowing your readers to make their own decisions.
    Dispicable.

    • TXsharon says

      I haven’t censored any of your posts. If you included links it might have ended up in spam.

      However, I am not obligated to post any comments from anyone especially someone who is commenting anonymously and appears to be presenting themselves as someone/something they are not.

    • TXsharon says

      I went through all 727 comments–penis enhancers, payday loans, handbags–in my spam folder. There was nothing from a Donna in there. Are you sure you used the right name?

      Rather than focusing on me, why not address some of the people who have left comments disputing your claims? You seem unusually focused on me.

  10. Donna says

    Of course your not obligated to. Again, here you go trying to discredit me because you don’t agree. Sad you engage in the same smear tactics you accuse the frackers of. I suppose you think its ok – tit for tat. I guess your not used to getting called out for it.

  11. kim Feil says

    Donna if any one energy source is distorting the market, it is the low price of natural gas that is displacing coal fired plants and discourages renewables cause NG is so cheap due to the glut. But once that glut goes away and that “might” drive up the price at which then those power plants will be passing on higher costs to us. Then we still have a dirty fossil fuel (NG), high utility bills, and still haven’t really left the gate on renewables cause gas “was” so cheap.

  12. TXsharon says

    You can bet the price will go up. Industry is pushing hard for CNG vehicles and for LNG exports to Asia.

    The LNG contracts are for 20 to 30 years and we already know these natgas wells don’t last that long–7 years seems to be the maximum life-span. Right now the pending LNG permits would allow 20% of our domestically fracked gas to be shipped to Asia where they can get $16/Mcf for it.

    By design, their plan will cause a price increase. Then we will still run out of natgas because the reserves were all overstated and have subsequently been cut dramatically.

  13. Fracking Crazy says

    With all the turmoil in Bayou Corne, that in itself, may drive the price of Nat Gas up.

    I’m not sure who the engineer was who passed that proposal off to the state, but all parties involved should be forced to camp outside the travesty with no hope of escape.

    That’s part of it, most of the people involved with this kind of decision making don’t have to sleep in the bed they’ve made. Just a lot of other people do.

    Then, leave it to the tax payer to clean it all up.

    Go America!!