Why We Have No Wind or Solar Power

[Blue Bomber Man]

Even if we have that much fuel left... That doesnt mean we have that much time left. The ecosystem will only tollerate so much. As temperatures rise, first world nations will spend more energy to cool buildings down, raising demand for more fuel. Additionally, world population is growing, basically doubling every 50 years.

Smart Grid is DESIGNED for intermittent use for varying demand that electric automotive would need. By nature varying power sources such as solar and wind are well suited for this because they cause the main fluctuations in supply, demand can be regulated with technology.

Finally, you state that coal/oil etc are practical and affordable. Sure if you are fine with global warming and all the expenses associated with it. GHG in the atmosphere are already estimated to cause in the hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars of damage.

I do not mean to make any of my points personal, but it seems that your view of what is affordable and practical are too narrow minded and only analyze the costs from the coal mine to your electric bill.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hiya,

Peak oil discoveries was in 1961.

Peak oil production was in ~1980.

Oil consumption is going up, and production is going down. The price goes up, and eventually oil supply is effectively gone.

Gee, we can blow through 200 million years worth of sunshine in around 200 years; releasing all that trapped carbon in a virtual instant.

++++++++++

The sun rises every day, and each hour of every day, more energy strikes the Earth that we use in a year. That's 8,760 X more energy than we use. This will continue for a few billion years, at least.

Wind blows almost all the time in many places around the world -- as long as the sun shines and the Earth spins.

Deep in the Earth's crust, the temperature is ~300C all the time, until the sun explodes.

The Moon will be orbiting the Earth longer than we can contemplate.

As long as we don't have any mass extinctions, plants will continue to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into concentrated energy -- this is how oil and coal were formed in the first place.

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Its talk like legislating all new buildings be energy neutral, or a % of generation must be this. A great example was California stating that a % of their cars had to be zero emission by year 200X. While all noble ideas, legislating YOU MUST is not the way to go about doing it. It’s like Price and Wage controls, its a fantasy.

That figure is currently 2015 Originally, the goal was 2003. Arguably, it isn't/wasn't perfect - but equally arguable, more vehicles that meet the ZEV program specs have been sold in CA more than any other state. This in their effort to enhance public health safety.. maybe reduce the number of spare the air days (although free BART was nice )....

I don't live in CA at the moment, but legislation such as YOU MUST sell all new houses with hurricane shutters (or impact rated windows) exists.... And, YOU MUST have exterior doors open out.... etc.

Wrong. The turbine blades are a lot more like airplane wings, and I can assure you that those do ice up.

But, while in operation, they wont... If it's installed in a location where that's an issue - de-icing measures are taken... ice isn't an issue - plenty of operating turbines are evidence of this

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

It is unfortunate; I thought I was engaging in a debate with people who were fairly well versed in this technology. You clearly do not understand what the power capacity factor or duty cycle is. If a wind turbine has a generous PCF of 40% that means it either generates 40% of peak 100% of the time or 100% peak for 40% of the time, because wind is intermittent it really isn’t either but a summation of values in between. Another simple concept is cost, if I have to keep a natural gas plant as backup reserve for wind it has a cost. Even if I never turn it on, it still has employees waiting to turn it on, people doing maintenance, the capital cost is sunk as well, backup capacity always has a cost. Now if you have 10X overcapacity in wind as you suggest, when wind is giving you 100% of rated capacity all you can do is turn the machines off. Since there is zero fuel cost you have saved nothing, you are still stuck with maintenance costs and winds huge capital investment which is every bit as much as nuclears. When wind is 10% of your grid, you never turn it off, you turn your fueled generation off, when the bulk of your grid is fuelless your cost per kWh rises a lot faster when you turn the supply off.

Again with the confounding factors. If you wanna claim we'll build 10X demand that'll all be used at the same time, then not at all, that's fine, but that's not what a distributed renewable grid is about. Notice the distributed part... If we build a distributed renewable grid, we won't have 10x demand at once, unless we really screwed it up or constructed it to fail. Look at what the Germans did. They built enough wind/solar in different areas such that it along w/ biogas and pumped hydro provided enough energy for demand, and when wind/solar was over what demand required, they used it to refill, so to speak, the pumped hydro storage. They didn't build every single wind turbine in one spot so they would all provide peak power at the same time. Assuming they would is a total straw men. And again, like I said before, cost is still just cost. If they design it properly, which they already have, unlike building it all in one place, they won't need much in the way of backup gas powered generation. Yes, it'd be incredibly costly if we built all of our wind power in one location and it pumped out 10X demand for only a few hours after which we had to rely on natural gas, but that's not a distributed renewable grid d00d.

Originally Posted by Duffman

How So?

The longer the transmission distance the greater the area is for renewables. One ~2000 mile HVDC line along w/ a few hundred miles worth of connections from the American southwest/Texas to the ERCOT/WECC/etc interconnects would provide access to wind from Wyoming and Texas to name a few, as well as sun from the southwest deserts, w/ less worry about intermittent operation than Germany has w/ a much smaller area. If we actually have a bonafide renewable HVDC grid we're talking about millions of miles of area, and provided it's setup right, i.e. we don't build all of our wind power in Texas then complain when it goes over demand by a factor of ten, and doesn't meet demand at other times, in other words build a distributed renewable grid, then local weather variability becomes even less of a problem. If Germany can do it w/ over ~140,000 square miles w/ less pumped storage, the U.S. can do it over 25 times more area w/ more pumped storage.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Is that really being done for long high capacity lines anywhere? Why is that?

Yup, it's done for riskier areas like underwater AFAIK, and maybe in some cases for aesthetics, although I'm not sure if that's been done yet.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Get real, north America is already full of Arabs, remember all of those Arabs wanting to take pilot training years ago, getting into the country is the easiest part, they come in legally.

Full of Arabs? And not every "Arab" who every wanted to take flight training is a terrorist, just the actual terrorists, and not wanting to learn how to land was a pretty big give away... Jeez, comments like that, even if you didn't mean for it to sound the way it does, are freakin' racist. That said, even the FBI knew about the Al-Qaeda operatives taking lessons, they just dropped the ball. I doubt that'll happen again any time soon, or that they'll target transmission infrastructure considering how pathetic that would be. Why would they go from killing thousands and causing massive property damage to cutting power lines and inconviencing the public? C'mon... Even they wouldn't waste their assets on that.

Originally Posted by Duffman

If you don’t think there are consequences to cutting the power off clearly you have not been in a situation where you have been without it for an extended period of time. Do a search on the “Quebec Ice storm”, this **** happens. When you put 100 million peoples power supply dependent on a few cross country lines then you definitely have a target and real consequences when it fails.

The problems from the ice storm were the result of T&D failures, which, ironically enough, wouldn't have happened w/ HVDC that's on the ground/buried. It has nothing to do with renewable generation, just flakey transmission and nasty weather.

Originally Posted by Duffman

While I am not a meteorologist (by the way are you?) I do understand math and when I see a PCF of 20% or 30% or 40% I know that that is not a reliable supply.

Yes, great, it's not relaible if we build it all in the same place according to what you stated, but guess what, that ain't a distributed renewable grid. This is...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4

Notice at ~2:30 there are different sources w/ different capacity factors, that all combine to meet demand over a hundred thousand miles. Even if the installed capacity factor is 20X what peak demand is, those sources are not always active, and believe it or not, are distributed to meet demand over the course of the day. Granted, the U.S. probably has more in the way of biogas feedstocks, but w/ more hydro as a percentage of generating capacity we also have less need for it.

Originally Posted by Duffman

It’s like you clearly ignored everything I said in post 78.
Also if you got links then provide them, I'm not doing your research for you.

The NREL link is in my last post, and I hadn't seen your earlier stuff so that's my bad. Going off of the first link in your post (78), the 4.8c/kWh figure assumes a 34% capacity factor, which isn't far off from the ~30% capacity factor seen in the real world. Now the drop in capacity factor probably comes from using wind sites that aren't as favorable in terms of utilization, but provide power at peak demand, which they can charge more for. The EIA has operating costs at 1.8c/kWh for nuclear, as of 2002, w/ fuel costs at less tha .5c/kWh, lets say .4c/kWh, before Uranium prices went from $10/lb to ~$70/lb. Not to mention captial costs are wayyy higher and require much longer loans for the ~70-80 year amortization. Going off a current example, over a 75 year lifespan w/ no cost run-ups, capital costs are ~1.4c/kWh. Assuming Ur settles at $50/lb we'll see ~2c/kWh in operating costs, and ~1.4c/kWh in other operating costs for a total of ~4.8c/kWh. Now, those are both (NREL/EIA) government estimates, so saying either is biased w/o proof is highly suspect IMO.

Originally Posted by Duffman

I apologise if my tone has worsened. I expect people to return the courtesy and to carefully read my posts and if not taking the posts at their word then opening up the links provided. I don’t feel this is happening.

That's fair enough, and I feel the same way. Just like I missed your sources earlier, which I've gone over again and apologized for, I feel that you've grossly over-simplified the idea of a distributed renewable grid. We wouldn't build it so that everything would be making 10X peak or little to nothing. We would have distributed resources that made different amounts of power at different times, such that we could meet demand effectively, even if the nameplate capacity was 10X peak demand. Also the Arab/pilot thing was downright racist IMO. I was probably a dick about pointing it out, but that **** doesn't fly here AFAIK

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Oh sooo much complexity and challenge and cost to add more electric supply!

Pfft. People: have 2 or fewer kids, turn the heat down, and shut the damn lights off when you leave the room. Simple!

The cheapest thing is to offer rebates for more efficient stuff and play commercials telling people to reduce power consumption. At ~2-3c/kWh w/ the high end being ~8c/kWh, it's pretty damn cheap, esepcially considering that it's replacing power from peaker plants.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

There is probably 100 years of oil left, 300 years of coal, 1000 years of fissionalble material. Yes we need to start making intelligent decisions to extend those numbers but there is no need to panic yet! And there is no need to phase them out prematurely either.

We don't need to phase 'em out, just account for their externalized costs properly. Course, that may result in their phase out to some extent, but if that's what happens then that's what happens. In terms of fissile material, we've got way more thana thousand years AFAIK. Thorium alone can provide a ton of energy.

[Duffman]

Blue Bomber:
I very much believe that GW is a problem, which is why I argue in favour of nuclear energy, it has the best combination of carbon footprint, reliability and cost of all of our available options that are producible in the quantities we need (that’s a shot at Hydro and Geo-thermal which I prefer more but have limited supply). That said CO2 sequestration is also a GW friendly option when combined with reliable fossil powered sources, lets not throw that option out until the time is right.

Neil:
The numbers you cite are for the U.S. wrt to peak oil. In fairness I pulled my numbers out of memory but all the media is saying we just hit peak oil, so there is still allot left in the ground. The price is irrelevant to what exists in the ground.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by trebuchet03

I don't live in CA at the moment, but legislation such as YOU MUST sell all new houses with hurricane shutters (or impact rated windows) exists.... And, YOU MUST have exterior doors open out.... etc.

I am not arguing against a strong building code, its important to build houses that are strong and stormproof, its important their walls arent insulated with only drywall but lets be real here, PV have nothing to do with building safety and add significant burdens in terms of additional cost for owners. These systems arent exactly maintenance free either.

My point was/is, if you want people to drive EVs and put PVs on their roofs, create a situation that they want to have them because you cant force people to buy something they dont want to buy (look at SUV sales right now!). When you force people to do things you distort the market and drive up costs, for example people may decide to stay with their old car if new car prices are too high. This is not a good thing as usually newer tech is more efficient.

[Concrete]

Originally Posted by conradpdx

Concrete...is it really that expensive. If the ability to go solar was opened up it'd be easy and cheap, all that would really be need to start as a property owner for a solar array would be about $1000.

Yes, it is really that expensive
try ohh... 30k and a reduced standard of living
(20 year old data from a friend who built solar/battery off grid for his cabin
that does not include his maintenance and battery replacements
attaching to the grid would have cost him 70K he needed a lot of power poles)

okay, time to get personal (I will try to be nice)
do any of you supporting solar have any solar panels?
(I do and I have ecomodded my home for solar thermal design - no PV though - too expensive)

If you want investors, the government or me to support Billions in investment
you should have solar installed right now
or else we may start attach the H word to your replies just kidding

secondly - if you do - what is your cost per kilowatt?
and if you can make PV pay vs. a grid connection - you should patent it


Duffman,

you do not have to physically trace wires
you do have to electrically tap them - but for power wires this could be permanently available
you send a high freq pulse thru line and it bounces off the "end" & get how far away it is
then you can go to that point of up the wire and start digging

also Denmark is not the US/Canada
they are a small sand bar in the North Sea - not much chance for different weather
The US/Canada are hugh in comparison, we truly have some very different weather
at the same time
you can at least give distributed guys a little more credit than Denmark
they will obviously need the EU to help balance their grid

to any Danes reading
no slight here, I highly respect what you have done with what God gave you
Let the wind blow


for those wanting real data and having insomnia
here is some good - real life data on wind energy
Wind Energy
last two items in "kansas topics" are very pragmatic look at wind
(I would have linked them direct - but they are down loads)
Kansas is very conservative
- we try not to buy things that don't work just because we like the concept
check it out - laissez faire wind

summary - for those with short attention spans
Kansas has real installations with load factors ~30-40%
& wind is not cost competitive without tax credits (in kansas)
(not subsidies, they just pay less tax. Don't frown, most energy forms are supported like this)
if your state has a lot of natural gas powered generation (TX, CA)
- wind power may be for you - it is comparable cost to gas

[Concrete]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

We don't need to phase 'em out, just account for their externalized costs properly.

I agree
but here in the real world - that is never going to happen
the status quo rules - even in our own lives
the best we can hope for is to not "distort the market"

good words Duffman
(still don't want more nukes though )