Let's do the numbers: California's electrical generation at a glance:
Source:
(All numbers in Megawatts)
Total: 63,813
Coal: 389
Petroleum: 754
Natural Gas: 38,556
Other Gases: 282
Nuclear: 4,390
Hydroelectric: 10,041
Other Renewables: 5,734
Pump Storage 3,688
First thing people should note is that California has the worlds 8th largest economy if it were a separate nation. Secondly, 63 GW is a LOT of capacity. Thirdly, about a full 1/4 of this number is very unreliable, subject to outages and, seasonal supplies. Most notably hydroelectric, which is subject to extreme demand from agriculture and, is effected by draughts, a lot. Additionally, Pump Storage, by definition is not an energy source but like it states "storage" from the other sources noted above. Lastly, a word on renewables. I'm glad they do NOT include hydroelectric among renwables as it's simply too old, established, and, as noted the energy itself is often not renewed at all but diverted to other markets like drinking water and growing rice.
Other Renewables is where solar, wind are along with California's geothermal power which, as we discovered, is not truly 'renewable', since they think the steam packs are actually more fossil than renewable. Wind and solar, for the time being are simply not relevant enough to be counted separately. From 1990 to 2007 renewable capacity has actually dropped. It was 6.9% in 1990, in 2007, it wa down to 5.8%. Some of this was a drop off in geothermal. Other reasons include the shutting of older wind turbines. Also, wind and solar, in California, are barely run at 22% of their 'name place' capacity since they are intermittent or only available at certain times of the day.
The big number is, of course, natural gas. California has been the market for the oil and natural gas industry. One could make the argument that California and it's 2001 energy crisis save natural gas' ass. From 1990 to 2007, natural gas a % of electricity generated from it, rose from 53.3% to 60.4% of California's electrical generation. If would be even higher but a large percentage of this increase of 7% resulted in the closing of a lot older conventional fired thermal plants; the new plants all being combined cycle gas turbine, usually larger frame units in the 500MW-1000MW category but many in the simple-cycle, lower efficiency peaker units. The end-of-2009 numbers (the EIA does a month-by-month table as well) should seen natural gas approaching 64%. It's good to be into fossil fuel in California since the whole "green myth" is totally predicated on two things: a relatively lower CO2 output (4th lowest in the nation) and...the increase in natural gas no one on the Green movement wants to really point too.
Of course nuclear as an overall % has slipped as well. With the increase in natural gas generation, nuclear has slipped from 8% down to 7% from 1990 to 2007.
But there is another chart as well worth looking at. It is the daily Cal-ISO forecast of actual MWs in demand (what we in the industry call The Load), MWs forecasted to be needed and, available generation resources. Here is the chart: http://www.caiso.com/... This last one is very important. I'll return to it in moment.
Cal-ISO was set up in the wake of the California energy crisis but originally developed as part of the terribly conceived "privatization/de-regulation" scheme starting in 1985 and initiated by PG&E. The chart above only shows Cal-ISO jurisdiction. Most municipal and state hydro units are not included and thus this chart only covers about 76% of the entire states electrical demand.
So the state's real numbers on any given day are thus 1/4 higher than actually shown in the chart.
Cal-ISO doesn't deal with "Capacity". Mostly because it has little meaning. What's more important is "capacity factor" or, on any given day, what the ISO can actually truly use, that is "Available Resources", and this includes everything from Pacific NW hydro power to Palos Verdi Nuclear power from Arizona and Hoover Dam Hydro power.
The low point of the 'demand' in the chart is the minimum, or base load. The ISO's base load almost never dips below 21,000MW. This means the states entire baseload is about 25,000MWs or 25GWs.
4400MWs of the states base load is nuclear energy. Thus this contributes to lowering the states CO2 output a lot. The 4400MWs is, approx, 20% of the state's baseload. The rest of the base load is made up by a number of the gas plants that represent 60% of the total available load, usually the remaining conventional gas fired thermal, no GT units, and, some hydro. However, since natural gas is expensive, and hydro is often cheap, hydro can be bought from out-of-state and lower natural gas use. There is 1800 MWs of geothermal that is run in baseload mode as well.
The Fresno Nuclear Group has proposed building a nuclear power plant: two French designed EPRs, for a total of 3600MWs in California's Central Valley, away from the coastal earthquake zone. A bill to allow for the one time exemption from California's ban on new nuclear energy, AB719, went down to flaming defeat in the overswhelmingly anti-nuclear, Democratic Party State Assembly. The Bill was sponsored by Chuck De Vore, a very conservative Orange County Republican (is there any other kind one might ask?).
However, one should look at this proposal in light of climate change, fossil fuel use, state energy 'security', etc. This plant would significantly lower the state's CO2 output by shutting down many of the remaining conventionally fired natural gas plants in Orange and L.A. countries, perhaps even Contra Costa county as well. It would mitigate a large amount of natural gas firing as a result and the power would be produced in state and not cause additional revenue drain to the Texas gas consortium, who oppose nuclear energy. I endorse this AB because it was intrinsically progressive despite the author's own ideological affiliations.
De Vore previously stated that the state needs another 8,000MWs in nuclear and was the basis of an earlier, also defeated, bill a few years. I've proposed a similar piece of legislation for consideration that would of stated a 100% replacement of all base load MWs with nuclear, or an additional 16,000 MWs, or 8 new plants with at least 2 reactor units, based on the earthquake exclusion zone in De Vores original proposal to rescind the State ban.
Having 20,000 to 24,000MWs of nuclear capacity in the State would assure the states baseload would by 100% carbon free. If would also allow a more judicious use of the states dwindling hydro resources, allowing for the conversion of hydro electrical generation from it's current base-to-intermediate load to an intermediate-to-peak load capability, more spill water for fish and agriculture, and cutting down natural gas peaker loading. Natural gas prices would drop and stay down.
By building new nuclear in the Central and Southern parts of the state, this new generation could "anchor" the much needed new high-voltage lines being planned for the State to new, desert based wind and CSP units being planned for the region. Oh...and we could then demand/mandate the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power CLOSE their two coal plants in Nevada.
David Walters
