Power Generation - What are the alternatives?
Nuclear Q&A - Answers to common questions: What about radiation? What about waste? Why couldn't Chernobyl happen in the U.S.?
Electric Cars - The personal transportation of the future.
Reduce Impact - Are you concerned about the inherent dangers in any power generation technology? Try consuming less!
The Evils of Coal - If you want to get steamin' mad about a power generation technology, try coal. Coal Power kills more people each year than Nuclear power ever has, worldwide, including Chernobyl.
The generation of electrical power is a balance between benefit and cost. In this page, we'll examine the other (than nuclear) major technologies. We need some type of large-scale power generation, since both our per-capita energy consumption and our population are rising.
Coal: Environmental Impact: High Cost in human lives: High Monetary cost: low
Burning Coal to generate power involves using the heat from burning coal to generate steam, which turns a turbine, which turns a generator. By any sensible metric, Coal is easily the worst of the major power generation techniques.
Visit a modern coal power plant.
Hydro: A technique with low cost - save for the environmental impact. The falling water turns a turbine, which turns a generator. There are no direct impacts from this technology - but the environmental loss and the long-term siltation effects are both fairly nonquantifiable. Obviously, this technique does can only be performed where rivers with significant vertical drop occur.
Visit the C. H. Corn hydroelectric plant.
Visit the Grand Coulee hydroelectric plant.
Information on hydroelectric impacts.
Alternative Energy:
In general, there are two types of electrical energy generation techniques: Tuneable, and non-tuneable. Tuneable power plants (huclear, hydro, coal, natural gas, etc) are easily able to modulate their output in response to demand. This is a wonderful characteristic - a power plant serving a residential population will not need to deliver as much power at 4AM as it will at 4 PM. So, the power plant may vary its output as needed.
Unfortunately, the majority of the "alternate energy" techniques, (wind, solar, etc.) are not tuneable. We need to generate as much energy as we can when it is sunny/windy, so that we can save it for use when it is night/calm. This means we need to store the energy somehow so it can later be released. There are two common solutions for this problem: Batteries and mechanical energy storage (ex: pumping water up a hill with the extra energy, and letting it flow back down through a turbine).
This requirement of energy storage is the biggest single obstacle to widespread use of alternative energy sources, since batteries have large environmental impact, and hills are not everywhere.
In addition, even if the storage is already in place, the system is still vulnerable to long periods of cloud/calm. Practically, this means Solar and Wind are relegated to peak-load-shaving, and they will never represent the bulk of our energy generation.
I'd love to see an increased investment in power storage technology. Improvements in energy storage are effective on two fronts: They expand the viability of "green" energy generation technologies like wind and solar, and they may enable a useful electric vehicle.
Solar: A popular "green" alternative. I like it too, but I have three major problems with solar power:
1) Solar power generators only work in the day, when the sun is shining. This precludes its use in continually-cloudy places. Also, the fact that it is not there when it is needed the most (Winter, due to the shorter length of days) is problematic.
2) The manufacture (per domicile) of several square meters of solar panels is hardly environmentally benign. Ditto for a bank of batteries to store the power. Plus, there are significant efficiency losses in charging and draining the batteries.
3) Sunlight is relatively diffuse - just over 1000 W/m^2 - and the best solar panels today convert well under half of that to electrical energy. This makes it unsuited for a large-scale power generation technology.
Still, it can be useful in remote areas, and it is environementally defendable on a per-domicile bases.
Visit the National Solar Power Research Institute
Learn about concentrated solar power
Wind: Wind power is my current favorite among the alternative energy options. It is low-tech, and it can work at night. Still, the problem of battery banks remains. Large-scale wind power generation, such as this wind plant above (about 40 miles North of me as I write this, near the Wyoming/Colorado border) is in its infancy.
Visit a wind-power plant.
Visit the American Wind Energy Association.
Fuel Cells: Fuel cells are not a power generation technology, they are a power storage technology. They're a better battery. Fuel Cells burn hydrogen. Hydrogen burns (oxidizes) into H2O - water. That's right, the only output from burning Hydrogen is pure water. That certainly sounds environmentally benign - and it is. The only current problem is that today it costs more energy to create a fuel cell than the fuel cell delivers. So, a fuel cell is a net polluter. But, it is an outstanding remote / portable energy source, one that I expect to become increasingly popular.
There are two major types of fuel cells, one that strips hydrogen off of an external hydrogen-rich source (like methane - natural gas - CH4), and one that is completely self-contained.
Learn more about fuel cell technology
Visit the U.S. Fuel Cell Council
Natural Gas: Natural gas is used in many places in the United States to heat homes. Recently, it is being used in some places as a power generation technology. It is relatively clean-burning (for a fossil fuel).
Additional info on natural gas, environmental impact, etc.
Natural Gas, the cleanest-burning fossil fuel
If you have questions, comments, praise, or criticism for these pages, I'd love to hear it. Send mail here.