Florida's Energy Essay

The topic of this paper’s research is Florida’s energy; where it comes from, and how Florida’s power compares to the rest of the nation. The purpose of this paper is to discover and analyze Florida’s power sources, as well as my personal power provider, their plans for energy generation in Florida, and show where Florida stands on energy when compared to the rest of the nation. Then lastly propose my own ten-year plan for future power generation in Florida.

The topic of power consumption and where we get that power is very important not only as responsible citizens of our country, but to future generations of the world. Climate change is particularly important to Florida, as Florida is very flat and most of Florida is surrounded by water. Rising

In Florida, electric utilities use natural gas as their main source of generating power. In 2015, Florida generated 156 Terawatt hours of electricity from natural gas (PSC). This vastly overwhelms other sources such as coal, at 47 TWh, nuclear, at 28 TWh, renewables, at 3 TWh, or oil, at a meager 592 GWh (PSC). This excessive use of natural gas puts the majority of Florida dependent on a resource that probably will not be around in a hundred years. The capacity of Florida’s renewable sources is rather disappointing. The total capacity is only 1,860 Megawatts, compared to a total non-renewable capacity of 56,561 MW (PSC). Additionally, solar only accounts for 14.2 percent of Florida’s renewable capacity (PSC). This means that Florida’s capacity from solar in 2015 was only 264 MW. The potential solar capacity for Florida is estimated to be 2.8 TW (“Renewable Energy”). This potential capacity is ten thousand times the current capacity. My power provider, Florida Power & Light’s ten-year plan is as follows. FPL plans to add 2,086 MW of solar capacity by 2023, reduce coal-fired power generation of 636 MW by 2019, modernize old fossil-fuel units with extra efficiency by 2020, and pursue new nuclear generating facilities by 2021

Unfortunately, in Florida there is a very low potential capacity with current turbine technology. On land, the potential is a tiny 400 kW, and off shore, a better 9.64 GW capacity (“Renewable Energy”). These numbers do not get close to the 36.8 GW capacity of natural gas. For wind power to be viable in Florida, the wind turbine needs to have a hub height of 140 meters, which is equivalent to the height of the Great Pyramid of Giza (DOE 19). In 2013, the average hub height of wind turbines was 80 meters tall (DOE 8). The next generation of wind turbines will not be ready within the next 10 years, so wind power is just not practical in Florida right now. When it is ready, transporting the pieces of the next generation of wind turbines will be even harder than it is now. Currently, turbines can barely clear some bridges. The future turbine components will have a diameter too large to pass under these same bridges (DOE 23). One final concern for wind in Florida is hurricanes. While turbines do have storm modes that stop the rotors from spinning during severe weather, sometimes this fails and causes massive damage. Certainly, many more advances must be made before wind can become a viable power source in