Al Gore's 10 year challenge to the USA

[Whoops]

I'm not keen on anything Al Gore has to say. I got pretty disillusioned when I found out that his claim to utilizing totally green energy on his estate, stemmed from the fact that he is purchasing energy credits. His credibility was totally shot, for me, at that point.

The man is a politician, first and last. He's interested in telling you something to make himself stand out as a good guy and pointing the finger at someone else, as the bad guy.

[Arminius]

I agree that Gore is one of the worst examples of how to live. His annual use of electricity and fossil fuel is more than some use in 10 years. He has a Prius in his fleet of cars, but flies all over the place in a jet. However, if the foolish speak the wisdom of the wise, who is harmed?

[cfg83]

Duffman -

Originally Posted by Duffman

Not an electrical engineer are you?
HVDC is very efficient. I know Hydro Quebec uses it and it is used extesively by Manitoba Hydro where the bulk of the provinces power is generated in the north and used or sold to the south.

http://www.hydro.mb.ca/corporate/ar/...ilitiesMap.pdf
Converter Stations

As I understand it, there is no inductive resistance with DC and there is a phenominon in AC where the current clings to the perimeter of the conductor, so the conductance of the core is wasted.

I thought the big reason DC lost was because of transmission line losses :

War of Currents - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Transmission loss
The advantage of AC for distributing power over a distance is due to the ease of changing voltages with a transformer. Power is the product current × voltage (P = IV). For a given amount of power, a low voltage requires a higher current and a higher voltage requires a lower current. Since metal conducting wires have a certain resistance, some power will be wasted as heat in the wires. This power loss is given by P = I²R. Thus, if the overall transmitted power is the same, and given the constraints of practical conductor sizes, low-voltage, high-current transmissions will suffer a much greater power loss than high-voltage, low-current ones. This holds whether DC or AC is used.

Transforming DC power from one voltage to another was difficult and expensive due to the need for a large spinning rotary converter or motor-generator set, whereas with AC the voltage changes can be done with simple and efficient transformer coils that have no moving parts and require no maintenance. This was the key to the success of the AC system. Modern transmission grids regularly use AC voltages up to 765,000 volts. [10]

If you generate the electricity locally, i.e. your roof, then DC is fine. The problem, of course, is we live in an AC world, so you need the DC-to-AC inverter to "work with" the legacy infrastructure.

CarloSW2

[Duffman]

Check my 2 links above Carlos, it exists and the reason they use it is because it works.

[cfg83]

Duffman -

Originally Posted by Duffman

Check my 2 links above Carlos, it exists and the reason they use it is because it works.

I wasn't disagreeing with you. I am talking about the historical context.

CarloSW2

[atomicradish]

Originally Posted by Arminius

I agree that Gore is one of the worst examples of how to live. His annual use of electricity and fossil fuel is more than some use in 10 years. He has a Prius in his fleet of cars, but flies all over the place in a jet. However, if the foolish speak the wisdom of the wise, who is harmed?

To be fair, a politican hardly has the time to drive across country.

[Arminius]

Originally Posted by atomicradish

To be fair, a politican hardly has the time to drive across country.

His life hasn't changed since he was a politician. He's one of the ultra-rich, and he lives like it. But he's not the subject of this thread, per se. I'd rather have someone lives like David Suzuki (a Candadian, however) to be the poster boy. He lives like he believes what he's saying, and he did it when there was nothing personal to be gained from it.

[LUVMY02CREW]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

to build 1.5 million 2MW wind turbines

WOW......1.5million/50 states=30,000 per state.....30,000 here in TN/95 counties=315 per county (not that all counties would even be wind worthy of a tower)

I personally am still undecided on these huge turbines...I was watching a few minutes of the Tour de France the other day and the helicopter shot of the peleton gracefully flowing through the countryside was, for me, rather ruined when they passed a turbine field that stuck out like a sore thumb....

It's also hard for me to listen to someone(A.G.) talking the talk, when it's pretty obvious he's not walking the walk

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

Texas has the most wind turbines of any state at the moment. And I think California has a lot. Every farm in the upper midwest could have dozens of wind turbines, and off both coasts are perfect places for turbines.

The town of Hull, Massachusetts has two so far, and they are building 4 more. I've been able to get very close to them.

When they produce your electrical power, they are a beautiful thing. Much better than a smoke stack, don't you think?

[dcb]

I'd rather see windmills than nuclear cooling towers. Nuclear just makes some nasty byproducts that we will be leaving behind for the next generation to deal with. It would be much better stewardship to shoot for renewable all the way, and money well spent IMHO.