I willI am available immediately.
Funny thing, though. I just did a search on monster.com. There is not one power plant startup engineer job listed in the entire united states.
Really?
Where do you think the gas is going to come from and at what price? Existing storage masks the fact that production is down and there is no sign the decline will stop. Adverse tax, environmental, and business policy at the state and federal level is destroying capital formation in this industry also and the consequence is that people are not drilling holes in the ground looking for gas at the bottom.
Moving unused existing gas here from Alaska or southeast Asia will have a real cost around $6.50 or $7.00 (not the $4.50 the LNG industry claims) and it will take a long time to get the facilities to move and use the gas in place.
What's lost in all the noise about round-trip trading and creative accounting is the fact that the United States still faces a host of energy problems but has yet to come up with any viable solutions.
On the one hand he rallies for "deregulation" so the crooks he described would come up with the solution on the other he wants the government (regulators) to come up with solutions.
(Texas') PUC staff suggests $7 million fine for Enron
the companies artificially created shortages on transmission lines by overscheduling power at certain times. Those companies were then paid to remove electricity from the state's power grid so other providers could meet their demand.The PUC report said Enron Power Marketing, or EPMI, a unit of Enron Corp., engaged in "enormous overscheduling" of power during a test of the deregulated market.
a fact the staff took into consideration in recommending the hefty fine. Lanford said other factors are the "egregiousness and repetition of the violations" and "previous history of violations."
Enron scheduled load more than 500,000 percent over its power needed to cover the demand in the north zone and more than 1,000,000 percent over its actual load for the west zone.
Reliant Energy Services earned $3.5 million by overscheduling power last summer.
There's an example of deregulation Texas style. Deregulation is at best a joke and at it's worst a scam on the captive rate payers.
Coal-fired plants are the only way to currently meet demand. The same people who say we must lessen our dependence on foreign oil are many of the same that supported the Clinton administration making the largest reserve of high-grade coal in the world part of a "wildlife preserve".
If we are serious about ending this impending "crisis", Let us all encourage the Bush administration to reverse this idiocy and open up the vast coal fields and give incentives to companies to build more coal-fired plants.
A local inventor has developed a process for burning even high-sulpher content coal cleanly without the use of scrubbers.
See this story: http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/02/06/18534925.shtml?Element_ID=18534925
I remain skeptical of the "deregulation" panacea, not only because of the fincancial gymnastics by which Enron screwed their own stockholders, but also because the focus is merely on financial deregulation, not of the other burderns that are placed on various forms of power generation.
IMHO, even those companies that are innocent of Enron type misbehavior are still short-sighted in their investments. Natural gas is the "easiest" route to take because it is so clean-burning. But what happens in aggregate if, as a nation, we put all our eggs into the natural gas basket? (including automobile companies looking to replace gasoline engines with natural gas powere fuel cells?)
Additionally, many of the natural gas plants being built are smaller "peaker" units. While these may be financially "efficient" (minimal investment, maximum revenue charged at "peak" rates), they are still not as "efficient" as the very large "base-load" power plants which require a much larger investment initially.
Prior to the deregulation phenomena, the "public utility" model served our nation well for many, many decades. To date, deregulation has yet to prove itself. Yes we need more power plants, both to replace antiquated plants in addition to satisfying new demand created by growth. But what we need to emphasize are the large base-load plants: nuclear and clean-coal technologies. Not over-reliance on a slew of little natural-gas peaker units misapplied to base-load demand.
A little simple math tells me we need an average of 30 plants built per state. Do we need to build 30 in one year or two per year over fifteen years or one per state per year
How many do we have on line currently? How many can be upgraded?
Also, does this projection take into consideration better efficiency and materials to conserve power consumption?
I don't see a train wreck coming, maybe a pile up with a bunch of rubber neckers getting in the way.
I will Q: Isn't it because of all these millions of additional illegals one of the reasons we need the power plants?
A: Yes, and that is why we have to open the border even more so we can provide them with the power they are entitled to have.
What a ridiculous statement. If its so benign, then why is W foisting all that "safe" waste on the citizens of NV? Why don't the states that generate it want it in their back yard? I'm no greenie, but statements like this go far to give the nuclear industry a black eye.
That will never happen. There are a few direct lines between the Texas grid and the other grids, and they are very controlled, and easily disconnected. At this point in time, Texans probably would sooner secede from the Union rather than tie their power system to a national power grid. It seems to me one time, they did in fact try to connect the grids and a group of Texans cut the lines.