Recent Doings
I just got back from an NSF Cutting Edge Workshop on Teaching about Energy in Geoscience Courses. The workshop was well-organized and quite enlightening. Everyone takes different things from a meeting like this one. It became clear to me that our nation’s energy paradigm will change significantly over the next fifty years.
Electricity is generated in centralized facilities capable of gigawatt outputs using coal as the predominant fuel. Efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will probably succeed. Solar photovoltaic and wind power are getting cheaper. Utilities will have to operate in a world where many residences generate a portion of their own power from solar photovoltaic and where wind energy comprises a significant portion of the electrical power grid. Thus the utilities will have to provide base level power (sufficient to meet the needs of industry and a portion of residential use) combined with sufficient peaking capacity to meet demand when wind supply is poor, it is overcast, or other factors increase demand.
That is a far more challenging environment than exists today and was one of the messages that I took from Nic Woodward’s talk. As Dr. Woodward pointed, out similar transformations have occurred previously. This transformation in our electrical power system will be accompanied by increased competition for petroleum as a transportation fuel. Plug-in hybrid cars might serve as electrical storage capacity and be used to help “buffer” the system. The next fifty years are going to be interesting.
Posted: May 22nd, 2009 under Uncategorized.