-----Original Message----- From: Horace Heffner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 2:51 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Mostly Wasted
On Dec 11, 2007, at 6:13 AM, Terry Blanton wrote: > Not me. The energy used to make electricity: > > http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf > > Out of 40 quads consumed to make electricity, only 13 quads makes it > to the end user. > > Terry > It seems like something might be done to reclaim some of that lost heat. There may be some money to be made building bigger better cooling towers and also reclaiming stack heat, both methods using sterling engines to reclaim the heat. It is interesting that geothermal is about half as efficient as generator plants, which might be expected due to the low grade heat coming from geothermal. If waste power plant heat is about the same as geothermal, Waste power plant heat is much cooler than geothermal. That is what makes this heat low grade, and nearly worthless. Meticulous iterative calculations are done for each plant design to optimize the performance of both the condenser and the cooling tower based on the incremental costs of upsizing these expensive components verses the projected fuel costs. Getting these calculations right for the projected life of the plant is what gets the customers their lowest possible rates. That is what I did during my early engineering days, and we did it with calculators, not computers. Jeff No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.17.0/1180 - Release Date: 12/10/2007 2:51 PM
