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1,550 MW Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at Grand Gulf. The company however has not yet decided whether it will build the new reactor.

If the company decides to move forward with the new reactor, it could cost an estimated $6.2 billion (at an industry estimate of about $4,000 per kilowatt) and could enter service post 2017.

Reuters quote in story "One MW powers about 500 homes in Mississippi"

The cow waste produces 250 to 300 kilowatts of electricity daily, enough to power 300 to 350 homes, according to the utility.

If the remaining geophysical data continues to point in the right direction, a $40 million geothermal power transmission plant could be built in or near Chalk Creek Canyon, a hotbed of geothermal activity along CR 162 in Chaffee County.

The envisioned geothermal power plant could generate 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 10,000 homes.

177 MW solar thermal power plant Ausra said that project is expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 120,000 homes.
Plant:
Ausra started up the reflector production line at the 130,000 square foot plant, which the company said would also supply the absorber tubes and other key components for solar thermal power projects.
Ausra said the Las Vegas facility would employ a staff of 50, producing more than 700 megawatts of solar collectors annually at full capacity.

The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.

The coalition plans to buy at least 200 megawatts of renewable power, enough new generation to serve 200,000 homes

Nathan John Hagens

We then arrive at 2,400 X 6,400 BTUs =15,360,000 BTUs per cord. Therefore, in the 52 US states, we have 34.7 million cords of annual volume growth of wood available times 15.36 million BTUs per cord => 533 Trillion BTUs that can be presently be accessed sustainably from hardwoods.
....
Seasoned wood approaches 20% moisture content and releases about 6,400 BTUs per pound of wood. (Pure bone-dry wood tops 8,000 BTUs per pound but is not practical for home use). Almost all wood types create the same amount of BTUs per pound (6,400), but depending on their individual densities and other properties, differ in how many pounds make up 1 cord. Some examples are:

Hickory => 4,327 lbs per cord => 27.7 million BTUs per cord
Red Maple => 2,924 lbs per cord => 18.7 million BTUs per cord
Cottonwood => 2,108 lbs per cord => 13.5 million BTUs per cord
Cedar => 1,913 lbs per cord => 12.2 million BTUs per cord

...
THE ENERGY CONTENT OF FOSSIL FUELS

Each cubic foot of natural gas, depending on its origin, has about 1,027 BTU’s. #2 Heating oil has 149,793 BTU’s per gallon. Kerosene, used in some places for winter heating, produces 134,779 BTUs per gallon. In total, the amount of fossil fuels used for winter heat in the United States equates to over 7,000 Trillion BTU’s. (2001/2, a much colder winter, was 13% higher).
...
Cost per Million Btu's (MBtu) Useful Heat Into the Room:

1) Fuel oil at $2.70 per gallon: There are 149,793 Btus per gallon of fuel oil and oil furnace efficiency equals 0.80:
1,000,000 Btu x $2.70/gal
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149,793 Btu/gal x .80 = $22.84/MBtu

2) Natural gas retail at $14.00/1000 cu ft, 1007 Btu/cu ft, and efficiency equals 0.85:
1,000,000 Btu x $14.00/1000 cu ft
--------------------------------------
1,007 Btu/cu ft x .85 = $16.36/MBtu

3) Wood ( red oak) at $180/ cord, 19.6 MBtu/cord, and efficiency of airtight stove equals 0.55:
1,000,000 Btu x $260/cord
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1

419,000 on 11/2007

11 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 6000 homes

The larger factory's annual production of solar panels is expected to be equivalent to the number necessary to generate 200 megawatts of electricity. That amount of electricity would power 40,000 homes.

Company officials calculate their solar panels will be produced at a cost of less than $1 per watt of electricity, or a third the cost of the current leading solar technology, which relies on semiconductor-grade silicon.

AVA Solar's technology relies on a continuous automated manufacturing process. Two sheets of glass encapsulate a thin film of cadmium telluride, resulting in a 16-inch-by-16-inch solar panel.

Other utilities are planning or considering the technology. In Long Island, N.Y., a group of utilities plans this summer to install an NaS battery at a bus depot. The battery is charged at night, when power prices are low, and discharged during the day to pump natural gas into tanks to provide fuel for the buses, says Mike Saltzman of the New York Power Authority. That cuts electric costs for the bus company and eases stresses on the grid. Pacific Gas & Electric is leaning toward installing a much larger, 5-megawatt battery by 2009, enough to power about 4,000 homes, says PG&E's Jon Tremayne.

The biggest drawback is price. The battery costs about $2,500 per kilowatt, about 10% more than a new coal-fired plant. That discourages independent wind farm developers from embracing the battery on fears it will drive the wholesale electricity prices they charge utilities above competing rates, says Christine Real de Azua, spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association.

Mass production, however, is expected to drive prices down, Mears says. He predicts NaS batteries will start to become widespread within a decade.

Meanwhile, other storage devices are gaining traction, too. A group of Iowa municipal utilities plans to use wind turbines to compress air during off-peak hours that will be stored in an underground cavern. The air would be released at peak periods to run turbines and generate power for about 200,000 homes. Another technology, the flywheel, has a massive cylinder that can spin for days after being started by a generator. The cylinder can then activate a turbine to supply electricity for a few seconds or minutes when it's needed, for instance, to head off an interruption to a computer center from a lightning strike.

"We'd like to see storage ubiquitous," says Imre Gyuk, head of energy storage for the Department of Energy, which helped fund the AEP project. "Stick it any place you can stick it."

An NaS battery, by contrast, uses a far more durable porcelain-like material to bridge the electrodes, giving it a life span of about 15 years, Mears says. It also takes up about a fifth of the space. Ford Motor pioneered the battery in the 1960s to power early-model electric cars; NGK and Tokyo Electric refined it for the power grid.

Since the 1990s, Japanese businesses have installed enough NaS batteries to light the equivalent of about 155,000 homes, says Brad Roberts, head of the Electricity Storage Association. In the USA, AEP is using the 30-foot-wide by 15-foot-igh battery to supply 10% of the electricity needs of 2,600 customers in north Charleston, says Ali Nourai, AEP manager of distributed energy. The battery, which cost about $2.5 million, is charged by generators from the grid at night, when demand and prices are low, and discharged during the day when power usage peaks.

By the end of last year about 6000 Australian homes connected to the electricity grid had solar power panels, representing about nine megawatts of electricity. The Federal Government offers a rebate of $8000.

OK, the numbers: suppose you use 1000 gallons of oil to heat your home (that’s how most of us heat here in the Northeast despite the fact that we don’t like refineries). At $3.00/gallon (my guess for next winter), that costs $3000 (duh). According to my favorite government spreadsheet, there are 138,690 BTUs in each gallon of No. 2 fuel oil so you’re buying about 140 million BTUs to keep you warm. However, because even a good furnace is only 78% efficient, only 108 million of those BTUs do you any good.

If you were to create all the useful BTUs with conventional electric heat, you’d need to buy about 32,000 kilowatt-hours (3412 BTUs per kWh). At the $.16/kWh we’ll be paying here next winter, that’s $5000 dollars. Stick with oil!

But, according to the same spreadsheet, geothermal is 3.3 times as efficient as conventional heat (because you’re just pumping up what you need). With geothermal you’ll need less than 10,000 kWhs and pay about $1500; you save 50% compared to oil!

According to Excel, the present value of $1500 per year over 20 years at 6.5% interest (actually your heat pump system should last longer) is a little more than $16,000. If you can get a heat pump system with the capacity you need installed for that amount or less, you’ve got yourself a bargain – no subsidies involved. Actually, if it’s a new installation then you have to take into account what a furnace and fuel tanks would have cost as well. Distributing the heat inside the house is best done with circulating water but can be done with hot air as well. Either you already have a system to do that or you’d need to pay for one anyway. You can also get your domestic hot water from the heat pump and save a little more. If the price of oil goes up faster than electricity, you save more – and vice versa.

Can you get geothermal heat with this capacity installed for this amount? Depends. It depends on whether you have land that’s easily dug down into, a well, or a pond. If your ho

Three thousand feet below the surface, a sandstone aquifer (caverns that now hold water) will be injected with pressurized air, temporarily displacing some of the water. The electricity from wind turbines will power the compressors. A pipe will deliver underground air compressed to 900 to 1,000 pounds per square inch. The compression of millions of cubic feet of air will be scheduled for nights and weekends, when wind power often sells for next to nothing.

Wind parks pay for themselves when demand and electricity rates are higher - during weekdays and on hot summer days. But when electricity is most needed, sometimes the wind isn't blowing.

The stored-energy park would get around that problem by slowly releasing the pressurized air from the aquifer to provide most of the energy needed to turn the blades of a generator otherwise powered by natural gas. Metered valves would control the release of the pressurized air. Similar operations are used now to store natural gas underground across the nation.

The cavern complex would produce 268 megawatts of electricity to be sold to Midwest utilities on the grid. That's enough to turn on the lights in 268,000 homes.

Kent Holst, development director of the stored-energy park, said the plan could transform the economics of wind power.

With the storage park option, the utility owners are expected to be able to store and produce energy at a price equivalent to 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour, then sell the energy at peak times for 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour.

“We’re trying to go from a million-dollar company to a billion-dollar company,” he said.

United Solar Ovonic opened its first production facility in 1996 with capacity to produce enough solar panels annually to generate 5 megawatts of electricity. By comparison, the two Greenville plants under construction will be able to produce enough solar panels to generate 60 megawatts yearly.

Early last year United Solar Ovonic embarked on an aggressive five-year expansion plan to ramp up production from 28 megawatts annually to more than 300 megawatts.