What Some Of Us Will Be Talking About Tuesday; GE Closes Huge Deal; California Drought And Global Warming Not Related -- September 29, 2014

GE continues to focus on fossil-fuel: is reporting:

General Electric’s new high-efficiency gas turbines, fired at temperatures 200 degrees hotter than an erupting volcano, will see their U.S. debut at two gas power plants near Houston and Dallas.

GE is getting paid more than $500 million to build four of its most advanced gas turbines and other equipment to power two of Exelon Corp.’s planned combined-cycle gas turbine units at its existing gas-fired plants in Texas. Combined-cycle units are more flexible than plants that rely only on gas or coal.

GE’s new 440,000 horsepower gas turbines, each as powerful as about 1,000 Ferraris, use advanced air-cooling technologies to cut into electricity costs and carbon output, features that the Chicago power generator says will make its Texas power plants “among the cleanest, most efficient” units in the United States.

“Being mindful of increased water efficiency in drought-prone Texas, the new units will be cooled with air instead of water,” Exelon said in a written statement Monday. GE is also building two steam turbines and six generators for Exelon.

The new combined-cycle units will each add 1,000 megawatts to the Texas power grid, which means they can light up 2 million Texas homes combined. The four turbines combined could save Exelon up to $32 million a year in power costs.

Interesting:

[Update: a reader seems to have caught an error. The story was a bit confusing. $500 million for four turbines, but they will be used for two combined-cycle units which will each provide 1,000 MW of electricity. So $500 million / 2,000 MW = $250,000 / MW.  I will correct the error below.]

$500 million / 2,000 MW = $250,000 / MW. What does wind and solar cost?

From an earlier post, March 20, 2014:

• Solar: $3 million / MW
• Wind: $2.5 million / MW
• Natural gas: $865,000 / MW

The Wall Street Journal

Top story, front page: hundreds of thousands face health law subsidy deadline. The hundreds of thousands face a deadline Tuesday to reconcile their state income when applying for ObamaCare and the income reported to the IRS. Not gonna be a pretty picture.

Ford sharply cuts earnings outlook. And I thought they were doing so well. Ford cites "higher than expected costs of auto-safety recalls in the US and economic weakness in Europe.

Huge story: Encana will buy Athlon for almost $6 billion. By acquiring Texas-based Athlon Energy, Encana will acquire a large position in the Permian Basin.

Microsoft to give "sneak preview" of its new Windows software on Tuesday. 

PIMCO is in a race to keep investors after Bill Gross exits. Too big to fail?

A US judge declared Argentina in contempt of court.

Deep pockets: Bank of America will pay $7.65 million in penalties.

Venezuela's currency hits a new low. I wonder if Venezuela is still giving away free heating oil to Massachusetts?

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From The Los Angeles Times: early snow blankets Sierra Nevada, delighting drought-weary Californians, stunning warmists. 

An unusual early snowstorm blanketed the Sierra Nevada over the weekend, but the welcome sight isn't expected to last long as a warming trend spreads across California.

The first snow of the season dumped up to 3 inches along the Lake Tahoe Basin, forcing authorities to shut down California 108 at Sonora Pass, which remained closed Monday, said Tom Dang, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

It was the first time in several years that a storm had dropped so much snow on the Sierra this early in the year, he added.

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Global Warming

From The Los Angele Times (I think this article was previously posted, but it has a September 29, 2014, dateline): no evidence that California drought and climate change are linked -- study.

Global warming contributed to extreme heat waves in many parts of the world last year, but cannot be definitively linked to the California drought, according to a report released Monday.

The third annual analysis of extreme weather events underscored the continuing difficulty of teasing out the influence of human-caused climate change on precipitation patterns.

One of three studies examining the California drought in 2013 found that the kind of high-pressure systems that blocked winter storms last year have increased with global warming.

But another study concluded that a long-term rise in sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific did not contribute substantially to the drought. And researchers noted that California precipitation since 1895 has "exhibited no appreciable downward trend."

Overall, the report editors concluded that the papers didn't demonstrate that global warming clearly influenced the drought, which is one of the worst in the state record.
In the report, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 20 research teams explored the causes of 16 extreme weather events recorded in 2013, including torrential downpours in Colorado, heat waves in Korea and Australia and a blizzard in South Dakota.

That's refreshing. And reassuring.