[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Not all cloudy days are accompanied by storms.

Over thousands of square miles they are, at least AFAIK. High voltage AC can carry 2GW over 400 miles no sweat, I've never heard of clouds w/o any increase in wind covering 160,000 square miles, but if you've got some convincing evidence it can feel free to share.

Originally Posted by Duffman

I know you didn’t bring him up but since Avory Lovins was brought into it here is another chance to take a shot at his credibility. I believe that they probably can match supply to demand 100% of the time but what nobody is showing you is the demographics of their supply. If you look at the Ontario link I provided, 90-95% of peak demand is still there in the evening once the solar is gone. So you need 1x peak capacity in wind, 1x peak capacity in solar (to cover when there is no wind) and 1x peak capacity in your peaking supply to cover if solar and wind are both down at the same time. So your grid is consisting of 3x peak capacity when a conventional grid might be (guessing here) 1.2 to 1.25X required avg peak.

That depends on the grid makeup AFAIK. What I will say is that peak grid capacity isn't what matters. It's the cost/kWh generated that we should look at when comparing sources. We also need to include the externalized costs of conventional sources in order to accurately compare different grid mixtures.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Avory has the nerve to say that nuclear is more expensive (which it isn’t Wh for Wh) and totally ignores the fact you need multiple times the capacity on an already more expensive power supply. Nobody is going to pay for a utopian grid over a nuclear one if their power bill goes up by a factor of 4x or more.

Based on what I've read new wind is cheaper/kWh than new nuclear, although not by a lot, something around ~3c/kWh compared to ~4c/kWh. This is from the cost figures of Florida's two AP1000's, fuel cost percentage from the NEI, and inflation adjusted non-fuel operating costs from "An Analysis of Nuclear Power Plant
Operating Costs: A 1995 Update".

Originally Posted by Duffman

I am not sure if you are supporting the huge HVDC network that Neil is proposing but nobody will go for that either and here is why. You will have areas like the NE and SE that will be the big importers because they are poor sites for solar and wind yet they have all the population. They would be connected by a few corridors of HVDC lines (we are talking long lines here maybe half the length of the county. You are putting millions of people on a circuit now. When lines go down for normal accidental reasons, unlike now when blocks or even a city goes out now regions will be without power and the line you need to trouble shoot the fault on won’t be 50 miles it could be 5000.

Problems on one side of an interconnect usually don't manifest themselves on the other side, and buried lines tend not to present many problems over their lifetime. In fact, based on what I've read most of the trouble we've had recently is due to degregulating the electricty market with a grid that wasn't designed for deregulated operation. Given the track record of a grid designed for what it does I doubt this would be a problem. That said, if the entire region being supplied by a high power HVDC line/s goes dark I don't think there would be any question as to what line/s are the source of the problem.

Originally Posted by Duffman

The U.S. has shown that they can even defend their border from immigrants, how will they defend a 5000 mile power line from terrorists. Lastly nobody is going to put their energy supply in the hands of another govt. The people of the NE will not rely on the SW for their power because the day that there is a shortage, the govts in the SW will make sure that their needs are met before exporting power to other areas of the country. It is basic physics as well, current takes the shortest path.

Um, the U.S. Can't defend it's border from immigrants because the U.S. doesn't really care to defend it's border from immigrants. Sure, we'll put up some fences and run some guys around to make it look like we're doing something, but until we have Americans willing to work for minimum wage or less w/ no benefits scrubing floors, picking produce, or whatever else, we won't "defend" our borders much. Thanks to deregulated markets, people already rely on power from other locations/governments. Lastly, it's basic physics that current follows the path of least impedence.