Quote:
Originally Posted by Lurch
Not all that important, but working in the power sector I'd like to know where you got the low efficiency # for hydro (6.5%). Since hydro is purely mechanical/potential energy in nature, it should be incredibly efficient. I've seen #'s like 50% to 90% of potential energy is converted into electricity, depending on the size and application. Just curious where you got your # from. Even solar power (commercial not cutting edge) is now over 10% efficient based on the stuff I've seen.
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As well, gas must be burned to either heat a vessel to produce steam to drive the same turbine, or jetted to drive the turbine. Gravity drives the turbine in a hydro power plant, and gravity is free (for the time being anyways) so only infrastructure costs impact the cost of power generation. With natural gas, you must first find the gas (exploration cost), extract the gas (extraction costs), refine the gas (refinement costs), transport the gas (transportation costs), and then burn it in a plant (infrastructire costs). That has to be more expensive and way more inefficient than using gravity to drive that turbine. The infrastructire costs of hydro are probably massive in comparison for petroleum generation, but one is 100% clean and the other is a contributor to our problem. Cost-benefit...