So you want to shut down electric power plants? Say goodbye to aluminum production in the US
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE99311P20131004?irpc=932
Smelting of aluminum is done with electricity using electrolysis – the process is more agreeable to being sped up or slowed down than heat smelting process for making steel. Canada has an excess capacity of hydroelectric power from the dams they built by flooding the reservations of the First Nation peoples, which means that during low usage periods that power is consumed by aluminum smelter at very low cost – several of the big smelters are in the United States around the Great Lakes.
Push the cost of electricity above the value of the aluminum, bankruptcy follows.
The cost and availability of aluminum used in cars becomes a problem? Now the car business has issues trying to make cars lighter. Hello carbon fiber!
I lived in the Columbia River Gorge (White Salmon/Bingen, WA/Hood River, OR – about 50 miles east of Portland OR). A large aluminum smelter facility, located about 30 miles to the east of where I lived, closed down. There may have been other reasons for the closing, but the rising cost of the locally available electricity, generated by the hydroelectric dams along the Columbia, was the reason stated by the locals for the closing.
What is changing is not that it costs more to generate hydro power, but the demand for “renewable” green energy by government regulations is forcing up the price. There are efforts underway also to store off-peak energy in battery farms, stored water facilities, etc
Yes. In NJ it is illegal to buy power from a supplier that doesn’t include a minimum amount of high price solar – that it so you can pay an inflated price for electricity generated by your neighbor’s and businesses that buy expensive solar cells.
Scientists are working on a solution so that you can sell power back to the power companies at a higher rate than they charge you for it – using low cost nat gas.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/08/14/redox-power-plans-to-roll-out-dishwasher-sized-fuel-cells-that-cost-90-less-than-currently-available-fuel-cells/
I have a plan!
Put up a sunlamp powered by the power company and shine it on a solar cell and sell that back to the power company!
Profit!
That is great!