Why We Have No Wind or Solar Power

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Roflwaffle,

I am not going to quote your posts because it’s pretty long, but I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up.

You refer in post 103 “You really think someone of middle eastern descent”. If drawing a connection of the habitants of the middle east region being of the Arabian race (because it’s pretty clear we are not talking about the Israelis) or identifying members of Al-Qiada being Arab as well makes me a racist then I guess I can live with that, my fiends won’t hold it against me. If you want to Ad Hominum me on that then fine.

Saying that some members of a terrorist organization are of a certain race isn't racist if they are. What's racist is tossing in statements like "The U.S. has shown that they can even defend their border from immigrants". When there's nothing to defend! Anyway, where was the Ad Hominem in103?

Originally Posted by Duffman

Regarding the NREL link, I can do a 40% duty cycle, there will be rare cites that will give you that, it definitely represents a best case solution.

Again, the NREL link wasn't using a 40% duty cycle, it was using a 34% duty cycle.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

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 42%/34% capacity factor depending on wind speed, and the low end isn't far off from the ~30% capacity factor seen in the real world.

And as usual feel free to scale it to account for the 30% U.S. wind average.

Originally Posted by Duffman

There will be a lot of sites that give you 30% and there will be many sites that give you less, real world examples reflect that.

The U.S. average is ~30% IIRC, which is all the sites.

Originally Posted by Duffman

If you go to that site, they are pretty clear as to what they are doing for the lost part wrt formulas, but if you open their sheet they multiply their O&M by 0.6 and never explain why, I corrected that and lower the production to 40 and 30% duty cycles which I think are again fair to generous and resulting in 4.27 cents and 5.7 cents/kWh.

It looks like the change in O&M costs comes from the change in observed versus projected costs

Originally Posted by NREL

The detailed baseline numbers were developed in the DOE WindPACT project started in 1999. These costs have been adjusted in certain categories to bring them in line with cost data available in late 2001, when the DOE Low Wind Speed Turbine project was established.

That said, using the full O&M amount and dropping production from 42% and 34% utilization to 40%/30% seems fair. With the end result being right at the ~4.8c/kWh for nuclear using the EIA's figures and current pricing. Course, we're neglecting the higher capital costs and greater financing needed for nukes, but either way they're neck and neck.

Originally Posted by Duffman

What about what I have done do you not like? I didn’t open your links as I think that 5 cents/kWh is a very fair price for nuclear, most of my links put it in that ballpark, it all depends on the interest rate.

It isn't about "fair" it's about accurate. And ~4.8c/kWh does seem to be accurate as per the EIA's info and current prices.

Originally Posted by Duffman

That said how is nuclear any more expensive than wind on a kWh basis? Yet if you look at the NREL link from post 78, they clearly state their cost does not account for backup generation. Again I will concede, not a problem, keep your wind under 5-10% and I will accept your ballpark 5 cent cost for wind. Crank up the wind capacity and now you have to idle some reserves which destroys winds ability to deliver ballpark 5 cent power, additionally studies for carbon footprint go out the window as well.

That's exactly why we don't have a 100% wind based grid. There's pumped hydro, biofuel, and demand side management to deal w/ supply side variability.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Regarding the German experiment, we don’t know how much overcapacity they had for their small scale, but I bet their bio-gas and hydro capacity together was close to the required capacity.

Just like our nat gas overcapacity is close to our required capacity most of the time. We do have greater hydro, so we would probably need less in the way of biogas, not that we couldn't do it. In terms of the optimal layout for the NA it would undoubtedly be different compared to what's optimal for Germany.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Roflwaffle,
Again continued from the bottom up.

I’ve let this distributed grid go on long enough, you need to pick your battle here, are you going to generate only in good locales or are you truly going to distribute and generate everywhere including some really crappy sites. See links for graphic example of my next point.

Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States

Now take those wind speeds from the calculations in post 78 and find your 42% sites and your 33% sites (8.4 and 5.8 m/s wind). Are they not geographically clustered? Does the bulk of the power fall in one time zone? Are there not great areas of the eastern portion of the country that are completely unsuitable?

Check out the seasonal variations:
Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States

This was the same thing that I was trying to reflect in the Danish data, that was not a fluke.

What you need to look at are the certainty ratings of class three/four wind resources, and then show that it's impossible to generate enough for baseload via high certainty class 3/4 wind resources. The unsuitability of a particular potion of the states doesn't matter if we have a distributed renewable grid. If you want to talk about local renewable grids then the lack of available wind resources matters, but again, that's not a distributed renewable grid.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Now lets look at solar:
America's Solar Energy Potential

Again it’s largely geographically clustered (again time zone issues) and again the N. East is totally piss poor. I don’t have an American link for seasonal variation but I think a Canadian one really illustrates it better anyway.

Again, if you're looking at local renewable energy, having piss-poor generating potential in the NE is a problem, but that's not a distributed renewable grid. The time zone issues are only a problem for the western states, and they would only be insurmountable if there weren't any suitable resources available to pick up the slack at that time.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Yes the Ice storms are a result of T&D failure, natural disasters happen. There were people in Quebec that were without power for 40 days, most at least 10-20. My uncle who lives on the island of Montreal (big big city) was around 20 days. This happened because Hydro-Quebec generates far away from the consumption. And yes Hydro-Quebec does have a HVDC line in its system.

Again more to follow.

Um, d00d, I'm pretty sure the T&D failures were the result of the ice storms, unless those hosers let their superscientists loose. That said, don't cut corners on T&D. Build it properly and foreseeable natural disasters won't be a problem.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Roflwaffle,
Again continued from the bottom up.

The next point was already addressed but let me say this. The U.S. is full of white people, black people, Indians, Chinese, and yes Arabs meaning they are everywhere there, nothing more intended.

Esta bien.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Yes there are underwater cables, but they don’t work everywhere. I’m not getting into this buried cable debate, its so far down the rabbit hole.

I agree, it's about as likely as terrorist attacking out electricity T&D. They might as well bomb an empty parking lot.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Next point was pretty well covered earlier, the Midwest all falls in the same time zone, and it is possible that a large weather system can effect half of the country at a time, its not common but its not impossible either, you have to prepare for all possibilities. Anybody who has ever done a physics experiment knows that you add your measurement errors together, you hope they all cancel each other out but Murphy's law states that they can all work against you at the same time, so you have to add them all up.

Murphy's law isn't exactly scientific. What you need to show is that there are lulls in all the suitable/available baseload generating capacity that could not be met by intermittent generation. You can't just say they can happen because bad things happen, you need to show they have happened. According to that logic we might as well give up now, because black holes exist, and according to Murphy's law...

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Concrete

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"

We're already distorting the market. The best we can hope for is to stop doing that, or at least limit it.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Saying that some members of a terrorist organization are of a certain race isn't racist if they are.

Except for the fact that there's no such thing as a "Arabian race". This whole "terrorist" thing would be a whole lot simpler to understand if you folks could just get your heads around the idea that it's all about religion, and anyone, of any race, can convert and become a Muslim.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Except for the fact that there's no such thing as a "Arabian race". This whole "terrorist" thing would be a whole lot simpler to understand if you folks could just get your heads around the idea that it's all about religion, and anyone, of any race, can convert and become a Muslim.

Listen you Americanese *******, I don't wanna hear about it! It's all about religion, nationalism, economics, etc... So more or less everything.

[webrey227]

Originally Posted by SuperTrooper

A funny Mother Goose & Grimm in the sunday funnies.

Nowadays there are some inventors that will make some solar power useful to us but they are very careful with their actions.

[jamesqf]

Oh, I don't know about that. Right now there are over a dozen backyard wind turbines within about a 10 mile radius of me, installed since this thread was started. And a number of solar PV installations, too.

[neilzero]

I agree with conradpdx 10-09-2008. All systems capable of putting 10kw on the grid or less, should be exempt from rules as long as their wave form is reasonably sinusoidal and reasonably in phase. The power company should give them a credit for the full retail price of the electricity put on the grid in excess of their usage. This will happen rarely (mostly in June in the Northern Hemisphere) for solar, so it is not a big penalty to the non-generating customers who will pay about one dollar more to cover the reduced revenue of the average utility. Each utility should also offer free classroom instruction/club to entrepreneurs and other interested persons about co-generating. A million customers doing cogeneration at an average of 5 kw = 5 gigawatts, so it does not solve our energy problem, but it does produce a large pool of knowledgeable people who are learning hands on. Some great breakthroughs may occur. I suggested a 10 kw upper limit as more could possibly damage the power companies transformer which supplies that house and typically 3 other houses. Clearly 4 houses each putting 10 kw each on the grid is some threat to the transformer, but that will be extremely rare. The new Neil

[neilzero]

Hi Jamesqf 10 -13 - 2008 I like the thorium breeder reactor with a nuclear waste blanket, but it will not be mass produced before 2023, perhaps never. We do not have consensus on which nuclear power plant technology we should go with.
Likely we do not have even till 2013 to show that the USA has a future. Much of the rest of the world will collapse economically with the USA in my opinion. We know how to build wind turbines, we have the World's best wind corridor from West Texas, North to Canada. We need about ten 1000 mile HVDC = high voltage direct current power lines to move about 22% of our power needs from the wind corridor to major population centers. If we start soon with the enthusiasm which put 12 men on the moon, some of the rest of the world will believe that USA has a future, other than 3d world country. The new Neil