The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[NeilBlanchard]

Massachusetts To Pick Developer Of Nation's 1st Industrial-Sized Offshore Wind Farm

How much power would get generated?

The 1,600 megawatts is about two and a half times the output of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant, and when it's totally built out that will meet the electric needs of more than 1.5 million homes.

So, what kind of jobs, and how much money are we talking about?

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has estimated that the emerging offshore wind industry could inject up to $800 million directly into the state's economy over the next decade.

And construction could employ about 2,000 people. Wind turbine technicians are in very high demand.

But the real employment is in operating and maintaining the hundreds of turbines at sea, and developing an infrastructure for a large industry on land. All the projects promise to use the state's new port staging area in New Bedford.

The energy is supposed to help wean the state away from fossil fuels. But what about sea life and birds?

Offshore wind farms can kill seabirds -- hundreds of thousand a year -- but it's nothing like the tens of millions killed by fossil fuel plants. So the Audubon Society, for example, has embraced offshore wind.

Off shore wind has been happening for a long time, and those people there had all the same concerns than some people here, are now having. Like concerns about fishing - and what we have now learned, is that there are many, many more good things that result from wind farms, than there are bad things.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Most people in the world do not have their own roof or availble land that faces the equator. And the weather in my area of North East USA will provide near zero output for many days during the winter. And we don't have enough resources to produce batteries for 1.2 billion electric cars to replace our growing fleet.
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So the original poster's premise to offer an opposing view to the statement "all we have to do to solve our problems is to put solar panals on our roofs and buy an electic car", is correct. Personal transportaion is a very small portion of our total energy consumption as a civilization. If everyone does a little, we will gain... a little.
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Our whole society model needs to change. People will ride bikes to get around. And do work for survival instead of holding a "job".

Yeah,it's hard to reflect the past into the future.What a ride!

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

It isn't feasible now. The only people that would say we need to do as you say either are economically ignorant, or don't care if they live in mud huts and eat insects for nutrition.



The problem isn't one of education. Even if all of the US were convinced that GW was a dire problem and committed to drastic reductions in CO2 production, the rest of the world would continue on consuming at a rapid pace considering that fossil fuels would be even cheaper if the US wasn't consuming them (more supply). Our economy would be left in the dust.

The second problem with the call to education is that even if people know their actions contribute negatively to the environment, they don't really care since they account for hardly any of the overall impact. It's like sharing the bill at a restaurant; if the check is being split evenly, then we'll have the steak dinner since it won't increase the bill that much compared to everyone 's combined cost. Now consider the check is being split several billion ways...

Our public education fails in way more than just teaching energy consumption and externalities; the vast majority of people lack an elementary understanding of economics, yet hold strong opinions of what should be done about things that massively affect the economy on topics such as subsidized healthcare and other entitlements.



If somehow solar were economically advantageous, some country would implement it and soar ahead economically.

The only reason solar is economically advantageous for some homeowners in the US is because a large part of the cost is distributed across the taxpayers.

I don't know what the rest of the world will do.I do see evidence that some countries are running full-speed-ahead into a alternative energy future.That's inspiring.
If we had education,and it was agreed upon that Earth was important,it might follow that we'd be aware of things that threatened us,and we'd be paying attention,and be willing to act on it.
That would be for individuals to decide.And only if they they were educated.
I just turned 66 and I've yet to be educated.Funny country!

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

It should be code for all new homes and buildings with a pitched roof to have the major roof section built to the optimal orientation for solar PV.

We already have national/ISO building codes for construction in all urban jurisdictions,and many extraterritorial jurisdictions.
The roof code would be as simple as moving the ink around on a page.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Putting PV on buildings up north could end up being a waste of money, between having lots of trees around your home like my parents in maine and week or more with no sun at a time or being covered with snow for a month or 2 at a time.

Also if you finance the solar as part of the house it is going to cost more like $20k by the time it's paid off.

A 5kw system system, which is about all you're going to get installed for $10k could reduce your bill by $80 a month if your electric power is stupid expensive.
Here in new Mexico a 5kw system would reduce my bill by around $50 to $60.
But I'm expecting $10k to get me up near the 9kw range. No loans for this guy, cash and carry, install it my self, no hidden loan costs, no green washing.

But for me 9.6kw is the max I can install with my existing service.

yeah,AeroStealth says that his mortgage company is getting most of the benefit of his PV array.Had he been able to do the whole install himself,he figures it would have come in a half the cost.

[sendler]

Please try to familiarize yourself with the scale of our energy consumption. It would take 130,000 square miles of land and 75 million roof tops (if there were that many pointing south which there aren't). And 1 million, 2.5 MW wind turbines and 50,000 grid scale solar farms. Just to replace all energy for the USA. And then rebuild every wind turbine every 20 years. All mined, refined, and installed with liquid fueled machines. And this would still leave many days of widespread black out per year due to the equally incomprehensible quantity of storage it would take. And try to shift heavy machines to corded electric? and heavy transport to electrolytic Hydrogen with it's terrible round trip efficiency.
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And many times more raw materials for the rest of the world to do the same. It just does not add up. By a factor of 10. This wishful thinking without ever running the numbers is impeding logical discussion of what really can be done to come down for a softer landing after liquid fuel leaves us.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The law applies to new apartments and condos, and there are exceptions for structures that are shaded or otherwise a poor location for solar. That said:

The financial incentive to go solar in CA is why mandating it is thoughtless. CA already has among the highest utility rates and the most sun, so the incentive to install solar is already there. Government has no business dictating the precise method of alleviating the symptoms of some problem (picking technology winners and losers). Perhaps wind power makes more sense in some location than solar. Why mandate they install solar anyhow? The role of government isn't to drive specific technologies or pick arbitrary goals, but instead to identify real problems, and set reasonable limits that will make the problem acceptable. Mandating solar to solve the problem of high electricity consumption is like mandating sales of the Nissan Versa Note to solve the problem of people driving too fast.

In other words, only bad things can happen when the government assumes the role of the free market, just as only bad things can happen if business is allowed to assume the role of the government and set its own rules and limits.

Regarding impact to the utility, CA is a great location for solar since peak electrical consumption is somewhat related to peak solar energy. It's good up until a certain percentage of electricity generation, and then as you point out, it becomes a problem as the infrastructure isn't designed to handle enormous amounts of power being fed back onto the grid. Parts of Hawaii are already experiencing this problem as solar installs have approached the limits of the grid to handle it. There are people on wait lists for approval to install grid-tied solar due to this problem.

Grid electricity is a very complex problem because electrical output must exactly match demand at all times. That means if a cloud shades a bunch of solar and the output drops off quickly, the grid generators must instantly ramp up production to compensate. If the clouds quickly disappear and solar production spikes back up, generators must quickly respond. Any excess energy produced has to be shunted to ground (wasted), and any lack of electricity causes brownouts.

A program on China's solar industry showed a photovoltaic farm with grid-scale batteries during a cloud transit.
The output was a flatline,with batteries filling the void as PV power fell off until the sun 'came back.'
It was seamless!

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Mandating PV will kill the solar hot water business.

In 2007,China had rooftop solar how water heaters on 40-million homes.
For 2020,their plan is to be up to 300-million units (displacing 54-coal-fired power plants)
As of 2008,China had 100,000 rooftop PV systems in Shanghai.
Looks like they're dabbling in both technologies.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Xist

Anhydrous ammonia sounds interesting.

My Arkla Servel refrigerator used it for its absorption cooling cycle.The company bought all of them back from consumers due to the lethal risk posed by a potential leak.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

A program on China's solar industry showed a photovoltaic farm with grid-scale batteries during a cloud transit.
The output was a flatline,with batteries filling the void as PV power fell off until the sun 'came back.'
It was seamless!

How big? How much was the Tesla BigF'nBattery in South Australia? that is called 100MW/ 125 MWh but is never seen to output more than 40MW and only for a few minutes at a time. And how long will it last?