Wholesale prices of natural gas rises above $0.012/megajoule.

[NNadir]

There has been huge enthusiasm for building gas fired electrical generating plants in the United States through most of the 1990's, reflecting typical American indifference to global climate change.

This week the price of natural gas hit $13.23/million BTU which translates to $0.0126/MJ of thermal energy. Since electrical generation from natural gas operates at best at 40% efficiency, this translates (liberally) to a cost of $0.031/MJ to generate electricity from natural gas. Translated into more familiar units, cents per kilowatt-hour this means the wholesale costs only for fuel is 0.11/kw-hr, which is near the retail price for electricity here in New Jersey.



Typically natural gas plants provide for peak loads - the capacity load factor for gas plants is only 29%, not quite as pathetic as a PV solar plant, but close.

At this rate, electricity from natural gas could actually hit one-half the price of electricity generated from PV solar power, which of course would be a disaster for electricity consumers, at least middle class electricity consumers.

For comparison, the O&M (fuel and maintenance) operating cost for nuclear power plants on a national average is less than $0.02/kw-hr or $0.005/MJ.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nuclearpower.html

Most of the 1990's planning for the use of natural gas for electrical generation assumed that the worst case would be natural gas would possibly rise to $6.00/MBTU, or $0.006/MJ, less than half of its current price, the price increase being generated, ironically enough, from global climate change induced effects - Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

As usual, since Americans are completely indifferent to small matters like global climate change, the external costs appeared nowhere in these price calculations.

http://www.externe.info/results.html

[firefox]

1. Yeap, electricity is going up

This month my basic phone bill went up 13.4%. The guberment raised its mileage allowance to rise from like 40 cents to like 48 cents or some 20 percent in September. Electric bills will have to rise for people that use natural gas as you indicate with your cost figures.

It sure is hard to survive as a wage slaver these days.