Gas well

admin

I was also thinking I might look into drilling a nat gas well. My LP cost is 10G a year and going up. I heard here contracted it was about 30G,, I know a bunch of people in the biz.  I bet I could get a discount on the rig. We could pipe.  I wonder how much well it would take to run 2 big block V8's ?
Reply:Or, if yer near a cow or pig farm, you could go with manure processing, and even set up yer own powerplant.  There's even government money available, and you can use the leftover product on your strawberrys.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:Dairy farms are using that to re-coupe electric cost and they sell back power at peak. Ones I have read about are 150k setups and the repayment time is 5 yrs.  I dont have those farms near here but do have gas underground and a well would be cheaper to set up.  I could heat in winter and pump water in the summer, maybe even make power for cooling in summer.  My location setup here at home site could be very central.Last edited by Sberry; 01-29-2004 at 01:25 PM.
Reply:Ha, made some calls, talk to the owner of a production company, he grabbed on to the idea, is going to get me some pricing idea, I know some drillers, maybe even do some horse trading here, weld, sandblast and paint drilling rig for drilling well..
Reply:Ok, the gas well idea is not a good payback at my rate of use.  But, I been looking for a job for a couple weeks and all this chater is looking up.  Maybe some oilfield work, moving some pumping units and replacing some bearings.  Ya never know where stuff pops up,, local too, bout 30 mins away backroads.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:S, the last I heard around here drillin the hole is the cheap part, then it has to be fractured, witch is the expensive part.  In your area if you just drill can you get enough gas to run your place, or will you have to fracture too?Bout the only way I can get gas here is to eat a lot of beans.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:Those cow guys with the methane plants sell their unused power back to the poco.  I wonder if the poco has to pay a premium for buy backs for power during peak hours similar to what they would have to if they bought off of the grid.www.urkafarms.com
Reply:S you gotta be smokin dried strawberry leaves if you think a poco is going to buy at anything resembling a fiar price.  Fortunately, for small producers, there is Federal Law going back to the 80s that mandates poco buying.  Unfortunately, the law is vague, so the companys buy at lo wholesale.  Some medium producers have been able to negotiate a decent price with CoOps.The thing that is helping small producers is the NIMBY people who are preventing siting of new generator plants.Baby Enron here figured how to screw the goose by establishing a tariff requiring self generators to pay a monthly network capacity charge for being connected to the network.  We have a school district here that has a bank of 350 Chevys turning generators that burn natural gas.  They went on TV one day to brag how smart they were producing power at a lower per KWH cost than Baby Enron, and a month later went back on TV bitchin about the Net Connection Charge.About the only honest producer participating in shut to electric generation is Penn Power, who incidently is running a plant of their own off the sewage from Allentown.  PPL is also involved in several cow production operations, where over 1000 cows are providing fuel.If it weren't for politicians, there would already be a couple experimental pigshut operations, but politicians just gotta be involved when shut is involved.I'm waiting for one of these setups to hook up a Capstone Turbine to the methane, that little gem ought to increase cow to KWH numbers signifigantly.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:I realize the thing about the prie they are going to pay in general,, but was curious if they had to pay a premium during peak the way a timed or commercial customer would.
Reply:S I don't think wholesale power price varies according to time.  Around here, peak metering isn't time sensitive, technicly it's based on your peak half hour of demand in a 30 day period, and demand charges here increase the charge for a KWH by a factor of 50%.It's very interesting here because we now have competition for our power, and some local municipalitys have even gotten into the power business.  Oddly, the same provider and transporter that can bill me for deamnd peak because of the physical plant they are required to maintain to sserve my needs, cannot bill the village for the same physical plant requirements.The only time sensitive metering we have here is residential, where customers can buy off peak power at about 1/3 normal price.  About the only way to use this power residentially is to use electric heaters to charge a large thermal mass battery that then heats the house.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:All these idea's look great. UNTIL! The beauracraps  get involved with environmental studies, permiting, Documenting waste removal, and anything else they can think of to make life harderAnd to increase their power.We put in a new lift station. Florida DEP wanted us to document where we put the dirt removed from installing the wetwell. Nevermind that it was clean dirt, never exposed to sewage. The Magic word "Lift station" caused more paperwork and expense You can't win a arguement with the bastards. They'll get you on something else Thats my rant for this morning. Later My buddy 1911man is coming by. Wer'e going to the Spanish resturaunt fot Blackbeans and yellow rice, and pork chops. Then to the Harbor Freight store.
Reply:My rate is somewhere near 10 cents kw hr, I buy some off peak on a seperate meter for 2 and 3 depending on time.  I know my poco had to pay upwards of 45 cents from the grid on peak, what was wondering, if when they buy power from small producer are they required to pay a premium for peaks?www.urkafarms.com
Reply:A few years back Baby Enron here got into a covert program to eliminate all the small producers, because they didn't like not being the only game in town.  One of the little guys had somehow taken over a dam Niagra Mohawk had abandoned because it wasn't big enough, and installed a new genset in the dam, under the utility's radar.When the poco was forced to buy the powwer the guy was making, they flat out screwed him to the wall because while he was more than able to pay off his loan at the 5 cents mandated by the state, the utility wanted to pay 2 cents.  It went to hearings, and both NiMo and RG&E testified it wasn't economicle for them to buy at 5 cents because their cost of production was 2 cents/kwh.  The BIG boys managed to screw the guy around and burn time till he went bankrupt, and then NiMo bought back the dam rights for a few cents on the dollar.   A year later, both companys went to PSC for rate increases, and claimed their cost of production had been in excess of 5 cents over the last 3 years, and they needed to play catchup.  Unfortunately, some sumbich remembered their testimony a year before, and brought that to the attention of PSC, witch screwed the BigBoys out of that rate increase quite nicely.How and how well a utility will work with an independant producer is largely a matter of geography.  If you're dealing with a utility that is following the Montana Power business model, you pretty much don't stand a snowballs chance in hell.   Fortunately, since the Feds have now opened up Production, if you are an independant with capacity, you can now deal with producer companys, such as Penn Power, who has become a major producer company.  PPL now owns all of Montana Power's generation, and is buying generation across America.  PP&L is also a working partner on a number of the biomass plants, along with Caterpillar.PP&Ls Allentown sewer plant project aparently demonstrated far greater cost effectiveness than they had projected, so they are using that as a test bed, and moving forward with new installs.Meanwhile, I sit in an area where 4000 gallons of #2 fuel oil is burned every day to dry sludge at a shut plant while millions of cubic feet of methane are flared off.  20 years ago, I sketched out a simple methane reclaimer/burner that would have dried the sludge for free, and was chased out of the room for the suggestion.  I figure I just wasn't putting $$$ in the right pockets.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:Franz-I work for a big investor owned utility, and I believe the $/mw varies by the minute-IF demand is up... Like anything else,there is an average or common price, and the price when you REALLY need it.   Glad to see your fingers haven't frozen to the snowshovel.Went out at 06:15 hours to put some wire back in the air,temp. was -10 or -12F
Reply:PJ I sure hope you were flyin a good bucket, and not the grunt.The business of buyin power seems to have at least 50 different sets of rules, and Enron did a wonderful job of screwing every one of them up.My understanding of that end of the business is the electrons are sold in "base blocks" and "demand blocks" where base is sold as a future use product at one price, and Demand is sold at whatever the market will bare NOW, cause we NEED it NOW.The whole damn industry is changing, and the suits in the front office wouldn't know if they were getting choked with a western union splice or a brownie jack.  The worst part is those damn suits are royally screwing up a good system that was built by men who did know what they were doing cause they started on the smart end of a tamp.Were it not for the suits, the last blackout would have been a local event, thanks to the suits, it went regional cause line operators no longer have the authority to pull off grid.  Today, we have regional power centers where educated morons watch a blackout roll across country rather than stop it as a local event, and in about 10 years we may well get to the point of not being able to bring powerhouses back on line for the lack of house generators.Last time I hung wire back on the poles was in 91, and that was a fun 13 days.  We got the job done cause the suits stayed in their damn offices, and a lot of retired people came in and helped.We had another "ice storm" in 2000 and 2003, and thanks to new management, and the way they treat people, restoration took twice the necessary time because the MBA suits know more about hanging wire than the old men do.  I guess they should have just left Reddi Killowatt on the truck door, cause since he retired things have gone to hell.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:Altec 55' Material HandlerYou're right on target-again!
Reply:Is that tthe fiber optic controlled knuckle with the hydraulicly operated bucket -stinger rotation, for guys who never had the pleasure of learning to set a 30 - 5 with a dead man and 4 pikes?RG&E now only hires college graduate linemen who have no damn idea what a pike is, and although we still have a few corner mounts with augurs left, the company does NOT permit the use of augurs to drill any holes in the ground.  All holes are now contracted out for hand digging.Yes, I do have my standby generator hooked up.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-
Reply:Just old fashion hydraulic.  Two man bucket that rotates a little over 90 degrees.  Hydraulic tilt on the jib boom.  Breaks over center and will set the bucket on the ground.     Don't see how your electric co. can wait for some contractor to come out and dig  on a broken pole...Bet there is a history of fiber optics and no locates behind that decision. Don't worry, those managers can't reproduce-the babies go out with the bathwater. I would keep that generator in top condition...
Reply:The No Drill decision came into play when the Lawyer who was the last president of the company saw how much trouble it was to drill into your own gas line was running the company.  He also collected a 10 mil bonus for retiring after he followed the Montana Power model and sold off the company in pieces.  The lawyer not teaches Business Ethics at RIT, the Nuke now belongs to Baltimore G&E, and the coal powered generator, that stayed on line during the blackout, is scheduled for shutdown so the polution credits can be sold.  A 2800 man company is now a 1200 man company owned by a water company called Eastern Utility, and they desperately want to sell, cause there ain't been a lick of maintainence done in 10 years, beyond T&D.  A once proud company that services from Lake Ontario to Pa now has 40 knuckles and 20 line rigs.The new computer plan for restoration is to shut down entire blocks of distribution, and bring  in the lo priced contractors.  Last spring, the hookers from Long Island told me they had to put 1.5 miles of primary back on the glass cause all the tie wires were broke before the storm, and the company didn't have enough tie wire in the warehouse to do it.  Just to add further insult, the company sent out an advisory that customers who install NG standby generators should contact the company to assure they have an adequit NG supply.  Care to guess how they maintain NG pressure, and what company doesn't have emergency generators at their NG pumping stations?Electricity, it's too good to waste.  Let em freeze in the dark.Appreciation Gains You Recognition-