Tech Talk - Coal mining continues to produce

Sadly I was away from home last week to attend a family funeral in Northumberland where, for the past nine generations including mine, our family have been miners. The funeral was for my father’s sister, Linda, who had documented early life in the mining village of Ashington in her books “A Tune for Bears to Dance To,” and “The Pit Village and the Store.” The latter was made into a docu-drama for British Channel Four television. The hotel at which we stayed was next to the Woodhorn Mining Museum which has been built around the colliery offices from the old mine. The rest of the property has been turned into a nature park – with a little twist.

Figure 1. Part of the old mine site, now the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, with a 40 acre lake. Note the wind turbines in the background – all but one of the 14 were turning during my stay. (Hotel on the right)

The site is also now home to considerable bird life – including over three dozen swans that I counted as I meandered around the lake.

Figure 2. Some of the birds on the lake at Woodhorn

Much of this part of Northumberland has changed considerably since the time – over 50 years ago – that I was an Indentured Apprentice in the National Coal Board working at Seghill Colliery, though on day release once a week to Ashington Technical College. One of the greater changes is illustrated in the background to a painting of my father that my aunt painted.

Figure 3. My Dad as Undermanager at Ashington (note the yard stick, the safety lamp is hidden by the coat). (Linda McCullough-Thew)

The large mounds are the pit heaps which were scattered all around the road as the bus carried me from Newcastle to the pit. They are all gone now, and the land is restored and, as the pictures above testify, now visually contaminated by the latest form of energy generation, though that doesn’t seem to worry the red squirrels and the geese.

Figure 4. Pit heap dominating the miners houses (Sunderland Public Library)

I thought of that as the recent reports on the devastation that mining creates are once again headlining the problems as new and enlarged lignite mines are developing in Europe. The transition to mining lignite, which contains considerable quantities of water and is a geological precursor to the black bituminous and anthracite coals that are preferred, is coming because it is considerably cheaper than alternate sources and nations have it at hand, instead of having to spend currency on importing alternate and increasingly expensive fuels from elsewhere. The reason that lignite is attractive is that the black coal seams that used to be mined in much of Europe have been mined out at currently economic depths, and lignite – even though less energy intense – has become an economically viable alternative.

To mine the surface deposits Europeans rely on the Bucketwheel Excavator (video here) with one machine replacing 40,000 men with picks and shovels (the way I was initially taught to mine). The overlying rock and soil (overburden) is first removed and stored, and then, once the coal has been removed, the land is restored with very stringent requirements for the condition of that restoration, so that in many cases the stone walls around the fields are replaced and the appearance of the land is similar to what was there before.

At present surface mining is becoming the dominant method for coal production. The thick seams in Wyoming and Montana have huge reserves, and the coal is very simple to mine and remove. Once mined it is trucked away from the machines and loaded into rail cars which then carry the coal around the nation. Because this coal has a low sulfur content it has proved competitive even against the more local coals of the East, which must often now be expensively mined from the underground. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted two counties in Wyoming now account for 40% of the US coal mined, while underground mines are closing in Appalachia.

After seeing a drop in coal production of around 9% as coal fired power plants were replaced by natural gas in the 2011 to 2013 time frame, the EIA is now projecting that US coal demand will increase by 3.6% this year, as natural gas prices rise. This will be followed by a 2.5% decline in 2015 as the new EPA regulations bite harder in driving the closure/transition of power plants. However US natural gas prices continue to be much lower than those in most of the rest of the world, and thus, as the WSJ notes , overall coal production in the USA is likely to stabilize around current levels for the next three decades, while domestic demand reduction is offset by increasing demands for coal from other countries which will continue to find it a cheaper alternative.

Much of the alternative replacement fuels for coal (and in some cases nuclear) are presumed to be from the increased levels of shale gas that are being produced in the United States, and which are projected to become domestic sources of fuel in many other countries around the world , including Europe. However while the plans and actions to close coal fired power plants proceed apace the rate and scale at which alternate sources of energy, particularly European shale gas, will appear are much less certain.

And in the interim, as coal mines have found better ways of processing the coal to meet power station demands, the potential for growth still exists, as the recent example in the Illinois Basin shows, where Sunrise Coal are planning to open a new underground mine in Vermillion IL this year, producing around 3 million tons of coal a year. The mine will use room and pillar mining to ensure that there is no surface ground subsidence, which can be a problem in the Illinois Basin.

And those who anticipate that China and India will reduce coal demand in order to overcome the problems that they have with air pollution, should remember that air pollution in the UK was at least as bad in the early 1060’s but by changing the way in which coal was burned the air was cleaned, and Britain continues to rely on coal for a significant portion of its electrical power.

Tech Talk - Wind and Water in Southwest Scotland

It was an unexpected encounter! Last Tuesday we had come back to my Mother’s childhood home at St. John’s Town of Dalry in South-West Scotland on family matters, when we heard that the Town Hall was hosting an informational visit by representatives of E-on. Their topic was the planned new wind farm at Loch Urr, itself part of the development of the South West of Scotland as an energy source. Not unexpectedly, there were also protest posters outside, and an earnest young lady inside with a handout to provide an opposing point of view.

Figure 1. Location of the planned new wind farm near Dalry (E-on)

Figure 2. Planned wind farms near Dalry (Save Loch Urr)

I had barely made it into the room when I found, to my surprise, that I was entangled in the debate. It was raining, which it does a lot in this part of the country, and a gentleman visitor was wondering why this “gift of nature” was not being used. None of the folk there (on either side of the argument) was willing, nor perhaps even knowledgeable enough, to comment. Sigh! As a child I was first aware of the turbines on the river Ken, which runs past the bottom of the village, when one afternoon while I was still under the age of five, the local power station turned them on, and as the water in the Ken downstream of Earlstoun dam started to rise, my pants got wet, as I sat along the bank.

Figure 3. Earlstoun Dam spilling water after heavy rains in October 1953 (I have similar photos from March 1955, courtesy of Nora Little)

There are six dam/hydro-electric power station combinations around St. John’s Town of Dalry, collectively forming the Galloway Hydros, a complex with an installed capacity of 104 MW that was built in the 1930’s.

Figure 4. Layout of the Galloway Hydros dams and power stations

They have been there all my life, as part of the national power grid since they were installed, and I don’t recall there ever being much controversy over their existence or use, apart from the question of manning levels and automation. Apart, that is, from the minor inconvenience that their use causes due to the rise of the river when the turbines are running. The increase in water flow floods the stepping stones across the river that were a part of the Southern Upland Way (but have been replaced by a small footbridge upstream) and raises the level of the water, at a slow but inexorable rate that can catch unwary children by surprise. (Fast enough to wet the pants of the inattentive, slow enough that they can easily move out of the way before there is a more significant problem). The claim is that the power can be on line to meet demand within 5 minutes.

Figure 4. Remnants of the stepping stones at Dalry

There is already a wind farm just east of Dalry, which, after some searching, we had found on an earlier visit. It is hard to know that it is even there, and has had very little impact on the surrounding scenery, which is an important part of the attraction to the tourists that bring an important support to the local economy. (There is not a huge global demand for Clydesdales, another village business).

The E-on representatives were quick to point to artist’s renditions of photos on the exhibit that were intended to show that the new additions would not bring much significant change to these important vistas – far away as they lie from Edinburgh in political miles. Scottish energy independence is a critical part of the platform of the Scottish National Party, who are running a campaign to persuade their countrymen to vote next year to renounce the Treaty of Union of 1707 a hundred years after events brought James 6th of Scotland down to London as the first King James of a United Kingdom.

Unfortunately there was not a whole lot of information at the Town Hall on what exactly was planned for the wind farm, nor what the contribution would be to the promise by the SNP leader that the country will become energy independent after a sufficiency of these turbines are installed. On our journey north we had seen how ubiquitous the installation of turbines has been in the past few years. They are part of the landscape from Sherwood Forest on north, and line the coast in Northumberland and Durham, around where the coal pits used to be.

This is the land of the golden eagle, where red kites have been successfully reintroduced after disappearing in an earlier time. Will the turbines impact that population? And is it an important enough question to influence a scheme that will bring potential sources of power that will be independent of foreign sources? The trials of underwater turbines seeking to harness tidal power are a lead in to possibly more ambitious plans in the near future. But they have also reminded engineers (as other columns at this site have shown) how aggressive the combination of sand and water can be in cutting apart structures introduced into their environment.

A greater percentage of the wind turbines were rotating than I had seen in the past, but this is the time of year when that might be expected. In the less windy days of summer and winter when the need will certainly be greater there is less assurance of their contribution. This is unfortunate since the local economy is not doing well, the housing market is almost non-existent since there are few jobs outside the struggling tourist trade. The roughly 70 long-term jobs that the turbines will bring to the region won’t compare with the numbers that might have come with a resurrection of the coal trade, nor will it replace the disappearing wealth that the declines in production from the oil and gas fields offshore are already imposing on the Scottish economy. Nevertheless the Scottish Government is committed to an energy policy that ambitiously anticipates producing all its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

There is no doubt that the UK needs a better energy policy than any of the major political parties is espousing right now – but whether putting hundreds of turbines into a land of great scenic beauty (when visible through the rain) is the right step requires a more detailed answer than was available at the meeting.

Editorial Note - my apologies that the Tech Talk post was delayed this week, but the local inn in Dalry changed hands last week, and that meant that the internet was down for the time that we were there, and a series of unanticipated other problems stopped my being able to post until I returned home.

Wind Energy Makes Progress, but will it be enough?

Over the last few days there have been several stories of wind energy, none in themselves remarkable, but which, put together show the progress that the technology is making. Consider, for example, the small community of Tocco Da Casauria in Central Italy. It is a small town of around 2,700 inhabitants that, because of its remote, mountainous location, has had to face expensive power costs in the past (about 3-times that of the average US household). However it has recently installed four wind turbines, and now not only has enough power for the community, but also exports a sufficient amount that last year it earned about $200,000, enough to significantly help with municipal expenses. (Though the turbines are privately owned the town gets a lease on the land, and a percentage profit from the power sale). Similarly, but on a smaller scale, the town has a solar array that lights the cemetery, raising about $2,000 which helps pay for the upkeep of the place. There have been six turbines in the farm which is one of 249 sites in Italy for which data is easily available, the first two turbines (which generated around 400 kW) were not successful, but the new set averages 2,500 operating hours/year and produces 3.6 MW.

However wind is not yet a major player in the Italian energy mix, and though Italy has a target of 17% renewable energy by 2020, it is still only at 7%, and is not reaching target goals. On the other hand, at the other corner of the European Union, consider the case of Scotland. Although the target is now to have 80% of that nation’s power come from renewable sources by 2020, recent successes have led the First Minister there to predict that 100% of the national power will come from renewable sources by 2025. The target of 80% by 2020 has only just been announced (last week) , up from the previous 50%, based in part on the perceived ability to reach an interim target of 31% by next year. Much of the increase will come from offshore wind farms, though the onshore Whitelee farm (which is expanding) already produces enough electricity to power Glasgow. Another onshore farm is planned for Shetland, but following protests from the local community, Viking Energy has just announced that the farm will be reduced by 23 turbines from the original 150. In addition the farm cannot be justified without a cable to carry the power to the mainland. Permission for that cable has not yet been given. Part of the problem has been the impact of the turbine installation on the deep peat bogs on the islands.

The level of local resistance to the farms, and its potential impact on overall rates for installation of the farms, and thus their contribution to future energy supply may have been underestimated in government. Which could be embarrassing in the future, since the provision of affordable, and sustained power is considered one of their responsibilities.

Whether the potential problems in Scotland presage similar problems for the overall power mix for the entire United Kingdom is similarly a question. The UK has just seen the opening of the Thanet Wind Farm, in the estuary of the River Thames.

London, September 29, 2010 — Vattenfall officially opened the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm, off England’s southeast coast. The wind farm has 100 turbines and will generate electricity equivalent to the annual consumption of over 200,000 British households.

The construction of the 300 MW Thanet Offshore Wind Farm has taken just over two years and the wind farm is expected to operate for at least 25 years. Between 2009 and 2011, Vattenfall plans to double its wind power electricity generation, constructing nine wind farms in six countries to supply electricity equivalent to the demand of 800,000 households annually.

Thanet is so far the company’s largest offshore wind farm . .

This moves the UK into the lead in regard to power from offshore wind farms. The islands have sufficient wind potential that it could provide a greater slice of the energy supply in the future.

The Offshore Valuation Group, made up of government and industry organizations, estimates if Britain were to develop just 29 percent of its potential offshore resource, this could deliver 169 gigawatts of capacity by 2050 and turn Britain into a net exporter of electricity.

This would involve installing 7.2 GW a year -- roughly equivalent to 1,000 7.5 Megawatt turbines -- with fixed offshore wind accounting for 5.4 GW of the average annual build rate needed.

The supply chain needed for this would have annual revenues of 62 billion pounds in 2050 and employ around 145,000 people directly, according to the Offshore Valuation report.

The other side of the story, however, comes from the costs involved. With the increase in the price of steel, and maintenance costs going up current projections may also be low.

However the UKERC have calculated that the cost per unit of energy – known as a Megawatt hour – over the 25 year lifespan of the farm is expected to be £149. That compares with £80 for coal and gas, and £97 for nuclear power.

(An) Onshore wind farm – at £88 per megawatt hour – is almost as efficient of fossil fuels but is hampered by complaints they ruin the landscape.

Current government plans are to have as many as 6,000 turbines located onshore, and some 4,000 offshore. However, as the scale of operations grow, so it can be anticipated that the size of the opposition may also increase. This has been, for example, the case in the United States where Senators such as Kennedy on the East Coast, and Feinstein on the West have objected to farm installations. Though the Cape Wind project is now approved. As sites move closer to construction it may be that more of this opposition may arise.

There is also, as the Scottish experience is indicating, the need to install the power cables that will carry the power from where it is generated, to where it is needed. And those cables themselves are sometimes controversial. It seems much easier to install the smaller systems, for local use, as in Italy, where the benefits are more visible.

Problems for the Pickens' Plan

It is a relatively cool, overcast day here in Cambridge, MA, a little damp and after yesterday being chased up the New York Thruway by a storm carrying hail and cutting visibility to yards, (and the Fusion getting 41.6 mpg), only the occasional tree moved in an almost still day. Which is to suggest that it is not a good day for the prime candidates promoted as the sustainable fuels of tomorrow, here in the North East. That does not stop the tourists, however, and I noted as we came back to the hotel earlier this evening, that it was full and turning folk away. (Though it was easier for us to get rooms this year than last, and it is now offering a premium for those that stay over a weekend, and is giving away Internet services, neither of which held true last year).

The larger blow to the sustainable energy story today, however, is not the chill of an autumn day in July in Massachusetts, but rather the colder stillness of the lack of movement by Boone Pickens on his wind farm in Texas. The reasons for the turn around depend on who you read. The Wall Street Journal notes

Mr. Pickens, who has spent the last year pushing his "Pickens Plan" to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, said the wind farm project was scuttled in part because of the lack of adequate transmission lines to carry the electricity from remote locations to cities. He had hoped to build new transmission lines but ultimately was unable to secure financing.

while Daily Finance noted the problems of raising money

Pickens, 81, was undaunted declaring at press conference on Capitol Hill, "I didn't cancel it ...Financing is tough right now and so it's going to be delayed a year or two."

"Cancel" may not be the right word. How about review? Pickens, who gained fame as a corporate raider in the 1980s, was planning to build the world's largest wind facility, at a site in the windy, flatlands near Pampa, Texas, which would generate enough electricity to power about 1.2 million homes.

The initial problem that Mr Pickens faces is that he has ordered the turbines and “like I said, my garage won't hold them," the legendary Texas oilman said. "They've got to go someplace."

There are 687 turbines involved, each to produce 1.5 MW of power and the question of where to put them, given that there are problems with the initial siting due to the need for connection to the grid, is likely to be a challenge. The problems have been visible for some time. Back in November there were signs that the credit crunch was hurting the program, and the drop in natural gas prices (which were the other half of the coin) has meant that there is no rationale for changing from natural gas to wind at the present time.

On the other hand, back this time last year the Texas legislature approved putting in the connections to bring the wind power into the grid.

Texas regulators have approved a $4.93 billion wind-power transmission project, providing a major lift to the development of wind energy in the state.

The planned web of transmission lines will carry electricity from remote western parts of the state to major population centers like Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. The lines can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.

The project will ease a bottleneck that has become a major obstacle to development of the wind-rich Texas Panhandle and other areas suitable for wind generation.

The transmission lines are needed since, at present, there is more capacity than can be delivered through the existing grid.

"When the amount of generation exceeds the export capacity, you have to start turning off wind generators" to keep things in balance, said Hunter Armistead, head of the renewable energy division in North America at Babcock & Brown, a large wind developer and transmission provider. "We've reached that point in West Texas."

Unfortunately that plan, shortly thereafter, ran into the Justice Department. The initial idea had been to integrate a water pipeline into the right-of-way so that Mr Pickens could also pipe water to Dallas and the water-short folk in East Texas from his holdings in West Texas.

At the time, Mesa General Counsel Bobby Stillwell said the company "got too clever."

Said Stillwell: "We had thought that doing them jointly would be a convenience and maybe even a cost savings to us and the landowners. There were two things that we misjudged. To do that we would have to acquire a 250-foot right of way instead of just a 150-foot one for electricity. That was enough difference to the landowners," he said. "Secondly, they were criticizing the whole project, both water and electricity, when they were really concerned about water. We didn't want both to be subject to the same criticism."

And so, last September, the water pipeline idea was scrapped, then the plan to use the wind power to displace natural gas was also put aside, and now the idea of the large wind farm itself has had to be laid aside.
But

Pickens continues to buy up water rights and says he expects to build smaller wind farms in Texas, as well as in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wisconsin. He's still hopeful about his hedge funds, too.

This is occurring just as the President is sending out a team to encourage rural America to become involved in sustainable energy. It is not the best juxtaposition of events to see the sales pitch for wind included in their statements.

Wind energy offers rural landowners a new cash crop. Although leasing arrangements vary widely, royalties are typically around $2,000 per year for a 750-kilowatt wind turbine or 2% to 3% of the project's gross revenues. Given typical wind turbine spacing requirements, a 250-acre farm could increase annual farm income by $14,000 per year, or more than $55 per acre. In a good year, that same plot of land might yield $90 worth of corn, $40 worth of wheat, and $5 worth of beef." (Original Blogger's note: This report and its numbers are 5 years old. I've heard of lease payments of $5,000 per turbine.)

So just as I thought that wind was taking the commanding lead in the alternate energy stakes, we have days like today. Such events are bound to slow the growth of alternative fuels to the fossil fuels we now use, which makes the ongoing concern about the long-term viability of supply of those fuels ( worrisomely summarized by Sam Foucher at TOD) that much grimmer news.
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P59. Pick Points

Some of the oil that is being held in tanks near the Mt Redoubt volcano is to be removed by a tanker this weekend The tanks are protected by an earthen dam, that is still holding, but the tanker will remove about 840,000 gallons of the 3.1 million gallons that is held in each of the two storage tanks.

The amount of oil that is held (as kerogen) in the oil shale of the Piceance Basin in Colorado may be more than 50% greater than at first thought, according to the latest U.S. G. S. figures. However it is still not that easy to extract, and while the Department of the Interior is encouraging research and development of concepts for extraction, they are not encouraging development of the leases, as yet. Shell, for example, is now testing the freeze wall concept for keeping water from the refractory zone during the heating of shale in place to convert and extract the oil. General Synfuels International have announced a breakthrough in extracting the energy through gasification they have also secured a parcel of land, and are acquiring the components to build a production prototype with testing next year.

Predictive production numbers from Mexico have been dropped an additional 30,000 bd, down to 2.72 mbd. This will, in turn force a cut in exports, which cut may reach 18% next year with overall production falling below 2.5 mbd, and exports falling below 1.125 mbd. This implies a drop of 245,000 bd and the question, since most of that comes to the United States, is where will the volume come from to make up the loss? Export levels for this year are already below prediction. In order to raise money for more investment in production Pemex has sold $712 million in new bonds. And while the company promises more investment, and new wells for Cantarell the overall prognosis does not look good, as the company continues to fail to meet targets.

In the continuing saga of the wind farm projected to be built where Senator Kennedy sails, the Interior Department is promising a ruling on Cape Wind. The project has seen numerous challenges as it has moved forward, which led to publication of a book, (which I reviewed over on TOD). The ruling is anticipated to come about in a couple of months, with the implication of the Secretary’s remarks being that the project may be allowed to move ahead. In the UK there are plans for a new wind farm off Norfolk, capable of generating 315 MW. Construction is slated to start early this summer, with production from the 88 turbines anticipated to start coming ashore in 2011. British plans do not, however, seem to be keeping up with earlier predictions in terms of the volume of renewable energy that will be available to meet targets. And there has been some heated debate in Dekalb county, outside Chicago about plans for a 133 turbine farm to be installed near the Windy City.

The predictions for Hurricane activity in the Gulf have been lowered to only 13 named storms this year. Only 3 – 4 of these should reach major strength.