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Originally Posted by Duffman
I am not a meteorologist and I am not going to debate weather, but I have experienced periods of about a week many times when it is cloudy/raining and the wind still comes and goes. Thats all I have to say about that.
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You may want to familiarize yourself w/ it, especially when claiming we can't do something that's already been done over a smaller area, which will see less variability in weather.
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Originally Posted by Duffman
Hell Yeah it matters. Right now we have a grid that is capable of supporting our worst summer and our worst winter day of the year, every year, if you want to compare apples to apples then your grid has to meet peak demand every day all day.
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A kWh is a kWh, and it's cost is it's cost. Even if we have to build ten times what peak demand is in nameplate (wind) capacity in order to to keep up with supply, since we're talking about the overall lifecycle cost of energy, then we'll still pay roughly the same.
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Originally Posted by Duffman
From what I have seen 4 cents represents the low end of a very large range for the cost of wind power. I have not seen a study from a credible source showing wind to be cheaper than nuclear.
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What, the
NREL isn't credible? Neither are Florida power, the DOE, and the NEI?
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Originally Posted by Duffman
One thing to note is these studies are hugely dependent on the interest rate that you borrow against to build your project. I would like to drill down on an actual economic analysis of wind cost but have not been able to find it.
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And that's something that nuclear is just as exposed to, if not more so. They have to sink twice as much capital just to build half the capacity, even including the difference in utilization.
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Originally Posted by Duffman
A HVDC transmission line is not like your everyday AC line, you need an inverting station to get the DC back to AC. I am not an expert but I don’t think you are not going to have them all over the place, it is more likely HVDC will be used for long distance bulk transport and fed from and distributing into a high voltage AC network. Also we won’t be burying lines.
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If we're using HVDC to transport electricity I doubt we'll have to worry much about weather. You can't claim that we'll have trouble w/ weather over a small area while having to worry about terrorist attacks on HVDC, that's bringing in electricity from hundreds, possibly thousands of miles away. If we have a HVDC transmission network, weather won't be much of a concern, and if we don't, then terrorists won't be. Not that I think they would bother w/ power transmission, but ya can't have both as potential problems for renweables when they're contradictory.
That said, we could bury lines if we're really that worried about a terrorist attack, but considering that would involve (for the terrorists) exposing assetts in this country, w/ the result being a power outage/inconvience, as opposed to actually killing anyone and causing serious paic, I don't think we have much to worry about in terms of HVDC/terrorism.
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Originally Posted by Duffman
Immigrants is really irrelevant to the issue, the issue is can a 5000 mile power line be protected from a terrorist attack? Its relevant because you have tied your energy security to a power line.
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You really think someone of middle eastern descent is going to be able to slip through with a bunch of migrant workers? They'll be tossed out on their ears so fast they won't know what hit 'em. And in terms of energy sercurity, jeez, we get a third (IIRC) of our transportation fuel from one of the most unstable areas in the world, where our soldiers are getting picked off via IEDs and the like, and you're worried about HVDC transmission lines on our home turf?
Dude, seriously... You're saying that you're not a meteorologist, and don't want to debate the weather, yet claim what's been done in Germany, with a grid much smaller than what we have in the U.S. or Canada, is still theoretical? That the cost estimates of wind power from the U.S. Government aren't credible? That we need to worry about terrorists cutting off our power, because why kill us when they can inconvience us? To top that off, you're worried about the interest rates of capital for wind power, but $24 billion for nuclear plant construction doesn't faze you? C'mon man, at least run the numbers. Even at the ~30% capacity of wind, it still was only $12 billion in capital for ~2,000MW last year, as opposed to the $24 billion in capital for ~2,000MW of nuclear power at it's 90% rate, which hasn't been built yet and may see cost run-ups.
Dude, seriously, what gives?