Breaking News, No New Coal Power Plants Needed

Most agree building more coal fired electric generating plants is not in the best interest of the country.  There are plenty of reasons, but it’s hard to discount or argue the economic reasons.  Since electricity must be consumed at the moment it is produced, we have an excess of generating capacity to satisfy the highest demand usually on the hottest day, and the hottest hour, and the hottest minute of the year.  The lions share of our peak electric demand is needed for seasonal air conditioning or heating. 

In general 40% to 50% of our generating capacity is base load. We use base load for things like lighting, predictably around the clock.  We need 15% to 20% of our generating capacity as a safety margin to prevent brownouts and blackouts.  The remaining 40% to 50% is for the seasonal and daily variations in our power use. The major challenge with electric power is it must always be used when it is produced. You can’t economically save it for use later. 

There are currently few or no economically viable methods for storing electricity.  Electric energy can be converted to thermal energy, hydro energy and compressed air energy for storage.  Hydro and compressed air is limited and very site specific.  Thermal energy can be stored almost anywhere making thermal storage the best solution to solve the energy storage problem. Since we can build thermal storage in our homes and buildings there are no need to build another power plant for a very long time.  Power plants operate more efficiently when they have a stable constant load.  

We can use thermal energy storage in our homes and businesses to reduce or eliminate the peak load and the amount of safety margin needed to prevent brownouts and blackouts.  That gives us more than 50% excess generating capacity.  Why would we invest in another power plant when we can invest in thermal energy?