Seems to me if somebody could invent a cheap solar roof tile that could tie into a houses electric, that would be incredible.
misle
Diamond Member
- Nov 30, 2000
- 3,371
- 0
- 76
As someone who works in the Power industry, a big problem seems to be building transmission lines to the wind farms. It's not that hard to find an isolated area to build the wind farm, but no one wants to have transmission lines running out to the farm.
Wind is great, but we still need base load power. Texas damn near had a brownout last summer because the wind stopped and ALL the wind turbines stopped for a few hours.
In wyoming the wind blows like no tomorrow. It seems to blow non-stop all the time.
I think we need multiple sources. Think of a giant solar array in the desert areas. North of El-Paso,TX is nothing but sand and sage brush.
I see an awful lot of water going by in the Mississippi river.
I also see a methane powered electric plant powered from a landfill.
I think we need multiple sources. Think of a giant solar array in the desert areas. North of El-Paso,TX is nothing but sand and sage brush.
I see an awful lot of water going by in the Mississippi river.
I also see a methane powered electric plant powered from a landfill.
OutHouse
Lifer
- Jun 5, 2000
- 36,410
- 616
- 126
i had a train go by my house today with flatbed cars with those massive blades on them. they are damn big. i also saw them being transported on the highway and the trailer is so long that they have to have a driver for the trailer, he rides in a little cab under the trailer.
So
Lifer
- Jul 2, 2001
- 25,923
- 17
- 81
The problems with wind are severe and twofold.
1. Intermittancy. Despite the "free" cost of the fuel, there are real, large capital costs to building and maintaining a wind farm. Government subsidies may fix some of that, enough to make wind profitable, but not enough to nearly make wind reliable. Pokerguy is right. There is only one way to store large amounts of energy, and that is pumped storage. Unfortunately, pumped storage costs much more than the wind plants themselves, and more importantly, building seawater lakes on the coasts produced by pumped storage is even less politically feasible than nuclear power. Wind developers, out for a quick buck simply ignore intermittancy and trust the grid to survive it, the result is that you have gas turbines spinning up and down constantly, burning more fuel than they would in a steady state (wind free) system and putting more wear and tear on them. Additionally, once you surpass a certain percentage of wind penetration (probably around 20%) you start to get flicker issues. It will become really hard for the gas turbines to keep up. The result will be a suddent drastic decline in power quality. Your lights will get brighter and dimmer, motors will break and underfrequency events will happen, leading to more common large scale blackouts (northeast, 2003 or texas 2007 -- which was caused by high wind penetration).
2. Peak matching. What is the day where the grid uses the most power? A hot still day where everyone has their air conditioner on. What won't be producing power on a hot still day? Wind generators. On summer peak, wind generation will be worse than useless, because it will have diverted dollars from real power plants that keep air conditioners on and in turn, old people alive. See france earlier this decade.
You want renewable energy? I'm all for it. Build geothermal plants which generate nearly 100% of the time and solar plants which at least follow the peak (good generation on hot days)
1. Intermittancy. Despite the "free" cost of the fuel, there are real, large capital costs to building and maintaining a wind farm. Government subsidies may fix some of that, enough to make wind profitable, but not enough to nearly make wind reliable. Pokerguy is right. There is only one way to store large amounts of energy, and that is pumped storage. Unfortunately, pumped storage costs much more than the wind plants themselves, and more importantly, building seawater lakes on the coasts produced by pumped storage is even less politically feasible than nuclear power. Wind developers, out for a quick buck simply ignore intermittancy and trust the grid to survive it, the result is that you have gas turbines spinning up and down constantly, burning more fuel than they would in a steady state (wind free) system and putting more wear and tear on them. Additionally, once you surpass a certain percentage of wind penetration (probably around 20%) you start to get flicker issues. It will become really hard for the gas turbines to keep up. The result will be a suddent drastic decline in power quality. Your lights will get brighter and dimmer, motors will break and underfrequency events will happen, leading to more common large scale blackouts (northeast, 2003 or texas 2007 -- which was caused by high wind penetration).
2. Peak matching. What is the day where the grid uses the most power? A hot still day where everyone has their air conditioner on. What won't be producing power on a hot still day? Wind generators. On summer peak, wind generation will be worse than useless, because it will have diverted dollars from real power plants that keep air conditioners on and in turn, old people alive. See france earlier this decade.
You want renewable energy? I'm all for it. Build geothermal plants which generate nearly 100% of the time and solar plants which at least follow the peak (good generation on hot days)
SunSamurai
Diamond Member
- Jan 16, 2005
- 3,914
- 0
- 0
1. Coal sucks and causes alot more deaths than all of the new sources
2. No one wants solor roofing. Give me something practical. You would eed it out of the way, just like...
3. Wind power. Ever lived by one? No? Then shut the hell up. They would need to be far-ass away too. The costs of doing that in a place that wont screw up the weather patters of the nearby region (agriculture anyone?) would mean you put them on some snowy-ass mountain no one goes to. Billions of dollars that would not make its money back before that propellers flew off and hit some poor farmboy 20 miles away.
4. Geothermal could be a practical sourse but the initial costs scare away most.
5. Nuclear. Wont get build because coal/gas is run by pricks that can manipulate sheep into thinking three-eyed fish will start forming in the rivers of their communities within ten light-years and after a few years will systematically explode because that's build into the design. When actually it is far safer than coal even with every disaster and cleaner than solor (do you know what it takes to build/recycle solor panels?).
I think that sums it up.
TL
R
Fuck coal/oil monopolies and the media.
2. No one wants solor roofing. Give me something practical. You would eed it out of the way, just like...
3. Wind power. Ever lived by one? No? Then shut the hell up. They would need to be far-ass away too. The costs of doing that in a place that wont screw up the weather patters of the nearby region (agriculture anyone?) would mean you put them on some snowy-ass mountain no one goes to. Billions of dollars that would not make its money back before that propellers flew off and hit some poor farmboy 20 miles away.
4. Geothermal could be a practical sourse but the initial costs scare away most.
5. Nuclear. Wont get build because coal/gas is run by pricks that can manipulate sheep into thinking three-eyed fish will start forming in the rivers of their communities within ten light-years and after a few years will systematically explode because that's build into the design. When actually it is far safer than coal even with every disaster and cleaner than solor (do you know what it takes to build/recycle solor panels?).
I think that sums it up.
TL
RFuck coal/oil monopolies and the media.
misle
Diamond Member
- Nov 30, 2000
- 3,371
- 0
- 76
Taking any power line underground is roughly 7 times as costly and less reliable than overhead. Not to mention underground lines of the same diameter cannot carry as much power as overhead lines.
If a terrorist cut a transmission line that was underground, it could take many hours to find the damage. With overhead, damage is very easy to find and much easier to fix.
I agree that underground is nicer (especially with distribution lines in residential areas), but with Transmission Lines, it's not worth the extra cost, man-hours, and loss of reliability.
I've always thought wind was a better option than nuclear or coal, however it needs to be done in the right location. There are maps available that show how fast the wind blows in a given area. In windy spots they should be building wind farms. I'm sure there is a great deal of money to be made.
There is also potential for solar. I saw a program recently that showed a power plant they built in Spain. It used thousands of mirrors to focus the sun's light onto a single location. It heated it up to something like 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, boiled water, and generated enough electricity to power an entire town.
They say that wind and solar used together is ideal. Apparently it is windier on cloudy days.
There is also potential for solar. I saw a program recently that showed a power plant they built in Spain. It used thousands of mirrors to focus the sun's light onto a single location. It heated it up to something like 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, boiled water, and generated enough electricity to power an entire town.
They say that wind and solar used together is ideal. Apparently it is windier on cloudy days.
And the power companies can afford it, considering the obscene profits being made. I'm really, really getting sick of these "cost" arguments. The investment will pay for itself.
cubeless
Diamond Member
- Sep 17, 2001
- 4,295
- 1
- 81
as much as everyone believed in cow burps being a problem a few years back...
actually it seems that an interesting way to store excess power is to use it to generate hydrogen... then use that to run turbines in the off hours...
brave new world, and probably no more of a screwin' than the whole ethanol thing is...
vailr
Diamond Member
- Oct 9, 1999
- 5,365
- 54
- 91
They could store the power output from wind turbines by splitting water into hydrogen + oxygen.
See youtube Stanley Meyer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRE8ghD9Ee0
See youtube Stanley Meyer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRE8ghD9Ee0
Oil/gas/coal is cheap because we aren't paying for the full price of the goods. If we had to pay for the entire thing, soup to nuts, coal would probably be the most expensive fuel out there. It produces, by far, the most CO2 emissions of any fuel. It produces more radioactivity than a nuclear power plant. It produces more solid waste than any other fuel.
Renewable fuels need to be subsidized to comepte with fossil fuels or fossil fuels need to be priced accordingly to the full damage they wreak on the environment. It's that simple.
Renewable fuels need to be subsidized to comepte with fossil fuels or fossil fuels need to be priced accordingly to the full damage they wreak on the environment. It's that simple.
Arkaign
Lifer
- Oct 27, 2006
- 20,736
- 1,379
- 126
Originally posted by: SunSamurai
1. Coal sucks and causes alot more deaths than all of the new sources
2. No one wants solor roofing. Give me something practical. You would eed it out of the way, just like...
3. Wind power. Ever lived by one? No? Then shut the hell up. They would need to be far-ass away too. The costs of doing that in a place that wont screw up the weather patters of the nearby region (agriculture anyone?) would mean you put them on some snowy-ass mountain no one goes to. Billions of dollars that would not make its money back before that propellers flew off and hit some poor farmboy 20 miles away.
4. Geothermal could be a practical sourse but the initial costs scare away most.
5. Nuclear. Wont get build because coal/gas is run by pricks that can manipulate sheep into thinking three-eyed fish will start forming in the rivers of their communities within ten light-years and after a few years will systematically explode because that's build into the design. When actually it is far safer than coal even with every disaster and cleaner than solor (do you know what it takes to build/recycle solor panels?).
I think that sums it up.
TL
Fuck coal/oil monopolies and the media.
I haven't seen you around here before, as your post count says that you are pretty much a lurker
But you are 110% accurate here.
sandorski
No Lifer
- Oct 10, 1999
- 70,858
- 6,394
- 126
Coal/Natural Gas can be put online/offline rather quickly. So having lots of Wind/Solar/Other Alternative source available with Coal/Natural Gas as backups makes sense. I think with Wind you have to plan for Overcapacity, because Wind can change, but with Overcapacity you are less likely to run into severe shortages.
misle
Diamond Member
- Nov 30, 2000
- 3,371
- 0
- 76
What?!? The power company I worked for had their stock go from $30+ per share to less than $4. They were then bought out by another power company (who really isn't doing too hot right now either).
At the time, my company was allowed to make up to, but not more than 13% profit per year. And most of the time, we could not make that much. We had a run of 6+ years of selling electricity for less than it cost to generate because fuel costs went up. We eventually were able to get the board to allow us to adjust pricing based on fuel costs. Which was followed by newspapers and local media screaming that your electricity bill may go up by as much as 25%!! Of course, I'm one of their customers as well and my electric costs went up by 7 or 8%.
I don't think you realize how much power companies spend on lawyers (to get new power plants built, purchase land to build power plants & substations, purchasing easements to run Transmission & Distribution lines), spend of Union Labor (at my company, apprentice lineman (less than 2 years of post-HS education) started at $54k per year, plus overtime), not to mention electrical engineers to design the systems, drafters to create maps in CAD/GIS, and managers to make sure the work gets done.
It is an incredibly costly business and I really don't see how they make enough to stay afloat.
Pickens isnt just wanting to buy land build windfarms. He has other motives. All the land he wants to buy is over one of the largest auqifers in the United States. He buys the land, he owns the water rights, and can tap the fuck out of the auqifer.
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