The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[freebeard]

The rain just keeps the panels clean. It's the overcast. An overcast gets 5-50% of the sunlight to the ground. Then there's the aerosols, they act different to the white clouds.

Effect of cloud-scattered sunlight on Earth's energy balance depends on wavelength of light

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by sendler

This sea level rise world map is interesting. Look around as you select back and forth between 0 and 3 meters rise.

The sea level has already risen about 8" in the past 100 years. Where are the hordes of people that rant about how horrible their lives have been in the past century because the seas rose 8"?

Raising sea levels 3 meters will take centuries; longer than the US has been around to build everything it has now. Replacing old things with better things is what we do. It's hard to imagine great cities coming to ruin, but that is inevitably what happens to every city.

I played with the slider and set the sea level to 60M rise, and the world still pretty much looked as it does now, with the vast majority of the land mass still available.

Sure, rising sea levels is probably bad and I would choose against it if there was a realistic choice, however it won't make the top 20 list of worst things to happen in most peoples lifetimes, just as it hasn't made the list of the worst things to happen to our current elderly population.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by sendler

They almost showed me what I have been searching for: a year total or average % of nameplate output for a wind farm.

I think your focus on "nameplate" is misleading. It's like bragging about your 400 HP engine...

[sendler]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I think your focus on "nameplate" is misleading. It's like bragging about your 400 HP engine...

They are the ones doing the misleading by selling us on nameplate capacity versus cost. The best solar farms in the world are doing 30%. And the US wind average is 25% of nameplate. So next time the solar panel salesman gives you a quote for a home installation, or you read in the news how solar or wind is cheaper than coal, better chop that by 80% depending on where you live to find out what you are really going to get out of it. And also keep in mind that these systems have no storage so if wind gains more than a few percent in the local grid, it must be carefully balanced by throttling a rapid form of generation to balance and smooth it. Minute by minute.

[NeilBlanchard]

https://iub.iowa.gov/wind-powered-el...ity-generation

Typical wind power capacity factor is about 40%.

https://wind-watch.org/faq-output.php

[sendler]

From your link...
.
On average, therefore, wind turbines do not generate near their capacity. Industry estimates project an annual output of 30-40%, but real-world experience shows that annual outputs of 15-30% of capacity are more typical.
With a 25% capacity factor, a 1.5-MW turbine would produce
1.5 MW × 365 days × 24 hours × 25% = 3,285 MWh = 3,285,000 kWh
in a year.

.
Seems like they are more realistically talking about 25%. I would love to see some real, measured and published annual data like there is from some of the Euro wind farms. But it seems this info is not published.. I found the 7 day rolling samples I posted earlier from the Pacific North West. Which didn't look good. But that is too small a sample to hold against them. Off shore UK in the Atlantic seems to hit 40%. Any data from farms in the midwest US is hidden.

[freebeard]

Let's see what others are doing:

Chinese province runs on 100% renewables for 7 days - Climate Action Programme

Hundreds of US mayors endorse switch to 100% renewable energy by 2035

Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotors enable 50-megawatt wind turbines that may reduce off-shore energy costs by 50%.

[sendler]

Lot's of fluff everywhere. They can endorse all they want. The only areas that stand a chance by 2035 would have to have 65% hydro already in place such as the Chinese company that was mentioned or the Pacific North West US that I posted about so that they have a ready hydro storage already built. You can't just run on 100% solar and wind without massive storage.

[redpoint5]

Is there an advantage of mounting blades on the wind-leading side? Otherwise, I don't see why they haven't always been on the wind-trailing side. It seems the blades would automatically point into the wind when the blades are mounted downwind of the nacelle.

[Fat Charlie]

Blades on the upwind side may help by making the wind push the blade assembly up against the turbine, rather than having the wind trying to remove the blade assembly.