In reply to Jed Rothwell's message of Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:40:53 -0400: Hi, [snip] >Robin van Spaandonk wrote: > >>That makes sense for an electric power plant, where the cost of capital >>equipment is well known, but not much sense for e.g. CRUDE OIL/GASOLINE, where >>the cost can the calculated any of a thousand different ways, >>depending on what >>one decides to include or leave out. > >I am sure industry experts have a standard metric that covers most >costs. It would be impossible to run an oil business if there were a >thousand different ways to estimate costs. As shown in footnote 14, >the $1000 rough estimate is based on a DOE "staff communication." I >am sure it is not $100 and not $10,000. > >- Jed
This is supposed to be a global measure of cost efficiency, however in order to do that for the oil industry, one would have to know how much had been invested in the oil industry - ever, and how much of the that sum actually went into equipment, and how much of that equipment was still in use, and that on a global scale. Good luck trying to get hold of those numbers. Then take into consideration that the rate of oil delivery is not only determined by production capacity, but also by other factors, e.g. politics and weather. A cost / kWh is easy to calculate - just use the price of oil - but a "power plant" cost is near impossible. One could look at it on a cost/oil rig basis, but these vary considerably, depending on lots of factors. A.o. location, weather, operator, whether or not oil is found soon or late while drilling, or at all, the size of the find etc. etc. In short, I find the comparison given in the diagrams only of value in that it provides comparative conversion efficiencies for various technologies. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/ Competition (capitalism) provides the motivation, Cooperation (communism) provides the means.
