Why We Have No Wind or Solar Power

[roflwaffle]

There's a difference between getting tangled in litigation and gettting stopped by litigation. Altamont has been generating this entire time, and since the newer larger windmills tend to turn at a lower speed the whole raptor death thing is kinda moot too since replacing the older/smaller stuff w/ newer larger stuff would only reduce the number of deaths per year. Probably why the case was thrown out.

If Prop 7 (CA) passes, the state gets priority when it comes to placing T&D as well as renewable infrastructure. Granted, people will still go to court, but at the same time the state will still declare imminent domain and the cases themselves won't impact anything getting built, just whether or not the people were treated/paid fairly.

[Concrete]

Dave,

A lot of this litigation aggravates me too, but...

if a company puts a high power line over my family home
I'm getting a lawyer and they will pay to move me safely some other place
It is the American way

but guess what - if that power line is needed - it will go thru because it is worth it
there is a hugh project going on in my state right now
power poles with 15' dia footings drilled +70' down full of steel and concrete
no expense is spared - relocating people is a tiny issue in the scale of these projects

if it makes economic sense it will get done

you are completely right that these alternate energies are not ready for prime time
conventional energy is too cheap here for alternatives to compete

but if I lived in the middle of Europe with little or no natural energy resources
I'd be doing exactly what the Danes & Germans are doing
Making the most of what I had available!

The reason is a deliberately created false mythology regarding the nature & effects of nuclear radiation. Maybe the best place to see & understand it is in the movies: whenever a '50-60s B-movie producer wanted an excuse for whatever monster his special-effects department dreamed up, there were good old atomic testing & nuclear radiation, ripe for the taking.

James,

I strongly disagree
the reality of radiation is much worse than monsters
you cannot see it, tastes it or detect without a mechanical device
it last for tens of thousands of years
it cannot be cleaned up or remediated in any way other than burial & time
and it kills you in horrible ways, often slowly and grotesquely

I would take Godzilla instead of radiation any day

[trebuchet03]

Originally Posted by Concrete

it cannot be cleaned up or remediated in any way other than burial & time

The whole idea is that with Nuclear, you can bury it... We don't (we vitrify, immerse [etc.] and store it), but we have the capability. Compare that to coal; all the tasty nuclear by product bits (uranium, thorium, radon - other decayed products that are just as dangerous) are not capture and released directly into the air I'm breathing while taking deep breaths on my daily bike commutes I get choked up enough from local emissions

I'm not saying it's our end solution, but it seems many of us agree that other alternatives aren't ready as primary sources of power (like coal [~50%], nuclear [~20%] and NG [~17%] -- in order of top 3 sources). Until they are ready, immediate and mid term solutions are needed. I'd personally take a Nuclear plant over a coal plant (which is why I support the expansion of turkey point - not too far away from my hometown).

All my opinion, of course, just laying out a few details on my reasoning behind it

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Guess what happens when a storm system moves in? The winds tend to pick up... Granted, forecasting isn't 100% accurate, which is why we have dispatchable power from biogas and pumped hydro in sufficient quantity to account for the potential shortfall in production. This isn't anything new, it's already ben demonstrated. All we need is the appropriate mix of renewable energy..

Not all cloudy days are accompanied by storms.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Guess That's why, along with wind and solar, we also have geothermal and wave for baseload, pumped hydro for storage as well as dispatchable power, and biogas for dispatchable power. What's done is forecasting and implementation of a resource mix that can provide the energy needs of a given area, along with enough dispatchable power so that any drop in output can be handled. It's not like the wind will stop blowing, the sun will stop shining, the water will stop moving, and the Earth will grow cold, all at once over thousands of square miles. And if that happens, I'm pretty sure we'll have bigger fish to fry than worrying about electricity.
It's not just MW for MW, it's MW for MW over the same time period, and they've successfully demonstrated they can follow demand with renewables just like coal and nukes follow demand..

I know you didn’t bring him up but since Amory Lovins was brought into it here is another chance to take a shot at his credibility. I believe that they probably can match supply to demand 100% of the time but what nobody is showing you is the demographics of their supply. If you look at the Ontario link I provided, 90-95% of peak demand is still there in the evening once the solar is gone. So you need 1x peak capacity in wind, 1x peak capacity in solar (to cover when there is no wind) and 1x peak capacity in your peaking supply to cover if solar and wind are both down at the same time. So your grid is consisting of 3x peak capacity when a conventional grid might be (guessing here) 1.2 to 1.25X required avg peak. Amory has the nerve to say that nuclear is more expensive (which it isn’t Wh for Wh) and totally ignores the fact you need multiple times the capacity on an already more expensive power supply. Nobody is going to pay for a utopian grid over a nuclear one if their power bill goes up by a factor of 4x or more.

I am not sure if you are supporting the huge HVDC network that Neil is proposing but nobody will go for that either and here is why. You will have areas like the NE and SE that will be the big importers because they are poor sites for solar and wind yet they have all the population. They would be connected by a few corridors of HVDC lines (we are talking long lines here maybe half the length of the county. You are putting millions of people on a circuit now. When lines go down for normal accidental reasons, unlike now when blocks or even a city goes out now regions will be without power and the line you need to trouble shoot the fault on won’t be 50 miles it could be 5000. The U.S. has shown that they can even defend their border from immigrants, how will they defend a 5000 mile power line from terrorists. Lastly nobody is going to put their energy supply in the hands of another govt. The people of the NE will not rely on the SW for their power because the day that there is a shortage, the govts in the SW will make sure that their needs are met before exporting power to other areas of the country. It is basic physics as well, current takes the shortest path.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by Concrete

James,

I strongly disagree
the reality of radiation is much worse than monsters
you cannot see it, tastes it or detect without a mechanical device
it last for tens of thousands of years
it cannot be cleaned up or remediated in any way other than burial & time
and it kills you in horrible ways, often slowly and grotesquely

I would take Godzilla instead of radiation any day

I have to disagree, James is not off the mark.
The reality is radiation is naturally occurring all around us. Our bodies are even more radioactive than the atmosphere we live in. The facts get lost in the fear mongering. Look into the chernoble disaster and the 3 mile accident. First off let me say that Chernoble could never happen in the west, the reactors are different as is our society. But look into the body count of chernoble and 3 mile and look into the radiation levels of 3 mile.
Secondly the waste, most of it is reprocessible into new fuel, what is not is a small amount, how much are we currently sitting on? The other thing that gets lost is the hotter the radiation is, the shorter the half life is. Also it is an exponential decay function, so while waste may be around for 100,000 years, it is not dangerous for that whole time period.

I think if you find these answers yourself you are more likely to believe it that if I tell you, but the fact of the matter is Godzilla would kill a lot more people in 30 seconds than the nuclear industry has killed to generate electricity.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Concrete

the reality of radiation is much worse than monsters
you cannot see it, tastes it or detect without a mechanical device
it last for tens of thousands of years
it cannot be cleaned up or remediated in any way other than burial & time
and it kills you in horrible ways, often slowly and grotesquely

I would take Godzilla instead of radiation any day

Thank you for so effectively demonstrating my point :-)

You've been so - yes, let me use the word - brainwashed by the "evil nuclear radiation" meme that you can't or won't separate truth from fantasy.

Fact is, "radiation" doesn't last for tens of thousands of years, it lasts forever (or at least until the heat death of the universe, a good few trillion years from now). Everything is radioactive, to some degree, and always will be. We are bathed in a constant sea of radiation.

(Possibly apocryphical story: a former co-worker told me of a time when he worked for the state of Oregon in an engineering capacity, and was called to testify before a legislative committee on proposed legislation to regulate nuclear radiation. His response: "Well, you could do yada & yada (pointing out the costs), but you're going to have real problems when it comes to turning off the sun".)

Likewise WRT the dangers: sure, too much radiation can kill you. So can too much of almost anything else, from food (more people die each day from the consequences of over-eating than from all the nuclear accidents in history) to sunlight to drinking water. If you need a mechanical device to detect radiation, so what? You need much more complicated devices to detect many hazardous chemicals. It's also far easier to clean up the radioactive products of a nuclear reactor (which non-Soviet bureaucrats put inside a containment structure) than the fossil-fuel exhaust that's dumped in the air. And so on...

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Duffman

Not all cloudy days are accompanied by storms.

Over thousands of square miles they are, at least AFAIK. High voltage AC can carry 2GW over 400 miles no sweat, I've never heard of clouds w/o any increase in wind covering 160,000 square miles, but if you've got some convincing evidence it can feel free to share.

Originally Posted by Duffman

I know you didn’t bring him up but since Avory Lovins was brought into it here is another chance to take a shot at his credibility. I believe that they probably can match supply to demand 100% of the time but what nobody is showing you is the demographics of their supply. If you look at the Ontario link I provided, 90-95% of peak demand is still there in the evening once the solar is gone. So you need 1x peak capacity in wind, 1x peak capacity in solar (to cover when there is no wind) and 1x peak capacity in your peaking supply to cover if solar and wind are both down at the same time. So your grid is consisting of 3x peak capacity when a conventional grid might be (guessing here) 1.2 to 1.25X required avg peak.

That depends on the grid makeup AFAIK. What I will say is that peak grid capacity isn't what matters. It's the cost/kWh generated that we should look at when comparing sources. We also need to include the externalized costs of conventional sources in order to accurately compare different grid mixtures.

Originally Posted by Duffman

Avory has the nerve to say that nuclear is more expensive (which it isn’t Wh for Wh) and totally ignores the fact you need multiple times the capacity on an already more expensive power supply. Nobody is going to pay for a utopian grid over a nuclear one if their power bill goes up by a factor of 4x or more.

Based on what I've read new wind is cheaper/kWh than new nuclear, although not by a lot, something around ~3c/kWh compared to ~4c/kWh. This is from the cost figures of Florida's two AP1000's, fuel cost percentage from the NEI, and inflation adjusted non-fuel operating costs from "An Analysis of Nuclear Power Plant
Operating Costs: A 1995 Update".

Originally Posted by Duffman

I am not sure if you are supporting the huge HVDC network that Neil is proposing but nobody will go for that either and here is why. You will have areas like the NE and SE that will be the big importers because they are poor sites for solar and wind yet they have all the population. They would be connected by a few corridors of HVDC lines (we are talking long lines here maybe half the length of the county. You are putting millions of people on a circuit now. When lines go down for normal accidental reasons, unlike now when blocks or even a city goes out now regions will be without power and the line you need to trouble shoot the fault on won’t be 50 miles it could be 5000.

Problems on one side of an interconnect usually don't manifest themselves on the other side, and buried lines tend not to present many problems over their lifetime. In fact, based on what I've read most of the trouble we've had recently is due to degregulating the electricty market with a grid that wasn't designed for deregulated operation. Given the track record of a grid designed for what it does I doubt this would be a problem. That said, if the entire region being supplied by a high power HVDC line/s goes dark I don't think there would be any question as to what line/s are the source of the problem.

Originally Posted by Duffman

The U.S. has shown that they can even defend their border from immigrants, how will they defend a 5000 mile power line from terrorists. Lastly nobody is going to put their energy supply in the hands of another govt. The people of the NE will not rely on the SW for their power because the day that there is a shortage, the govts in the SW will make sure that their needs are met before exporting power to other areas of the country. It is basic physics as well, current takes the shortest path.

Um, the U.S. Can't defend it's border from immigrants because the U.S. doesn't really care to defend it's border from immigrants. Sure, we'll put up some fences and run some guys around to make it look like we're doing something, but until we have Americans willing to work for minimum wage or less w/ no benefits scrubing floors, picking produce, or whatever else, we won't "defend" our borders much. Thanks to deregulated markets, people already rely on power from other locations/governments. Lastly, it's basic physics that current follows the path of least impedence.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi,

If a terrorist breaks a long distance electrical line (which we already have and use all the time), what happens? We lose electricity.

If a terrorist blows up a nuclear power plant, or gets a hold of some plutonium and uses it in a dirty bomb, or dumps it into a water supply, what happens? You get a lot of dead people and/or a ruined area.

Over the 1,700 miles from San Antonio up to Calgary, do you think that there will be no wind blowing anywhere?

In the 500,000+ square miles in the sunniest areas of the country, do you think that there will ever be a time when it is all cloudy?

Did you know that enough sunlight energy strikes the earth in 40 minutes to power the whole earth for 1 year? The fusion reactor we call the sun is at a fairly safe distance: 91-94.5 million miles away.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Over thousands of square miles they are, at least AFAIK. High voltage AC can carry 2GW over 400 miles no sweat, I've never heard of clouds w/o any increase in wind covering 160,000 square miles, but if you've got some convincing evidence it can feel free to share.

I am not a meteorologist and I am not going to debate weather, but I have experienced periods of about a week many times when it is cloudy/raining and the wind still comes and goes. Thats all I have to say about that.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

That depends on the grid makeup AFAIK. What I will say is that peak grid capacity isn't what matters. It's the cost/kWh generated that we should look at when comparing sources. We also need to include the externalized costs of conventional sources in order to accurately compare different grid mixtures.

Hell Yeah it matters. Right now we have a grid that is capable of supporting our worst summer and our worst winter day of the year, every year, if you want to compare apples to apples then your grid has to meet peak demand every day all day.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Based on what I've read new wind is cheaper/kWh than new nuclear, although not by a lot, something around ~3c/kWh compared to ~4c/kWh. This is from the cost figures of Florida's two AP1000's, fuel cost percentage from the NEI, and inflation adjusted non-fuel operating costs from "An Analysis of Nuclear Power Plant
Operating Costs: A 1995 Update".

From what I have seen 4 cents represents the low end of a very large range for the cost of wind power. I have not seen a study from a credible source showing wind to be cheaper than nuclear. One thing to note is these studies are hugely dependent on the interest rate that you borrow against to build your project. I would like to drill down on an actual economic analysis of wind cost but have not been able to find it.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Problems on one side of an interconnect usually don't manifest themselves on the other side, and buried lines tend not to present many problems over their lifetime. In fact, based on what I've read most of the trouble we've had recently is due to degregulating the electricty market with a grid that wasn't designed for deregulated operation. Given the track record of a grid designed for what it does I doubt this would be a problem. That said, if the entire region being supplied by a high power HVDC line/s goes dark I don't think there would be any question as to what line/s are the source of the problem.

A HVDC transmission line is not like your everyday AC line, you need an inverting station to get the DC back to AC. I am not an expert but I don’t think you are not going to have them all over the place, it is more likely HVDC will be used for long distance bulk transport and fed from and distributing into a high voltage AC network. Also we won’t be burying lines.

Originally Posted by roflwaffle

Um, the U.S. Can't defend it's border from immigrants because the U.S. doesn't really care to defend it's border from immigrants.

Immigrants is really irrelevant to the issue, the issue is can a 5000 mile power line be protected from a terrorist attack? Its relevant because you have tied your energy security to a power line.

[Duffman]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Hi,

If a terrorist breaks a long distance electrical line (which we already have and use all the time), what happens? We lose electricity.

The difference being right now we dont supply geographic areas with 1-3 lines, we generate power in the region to supply the region, blowing up lines may only affect a city or city blocks because there is redundancy in the grid. Also terrorism is not necessarily about killing people, creating chaos or economic disruption are weapons as well and have spin off effects.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

If a terrorist blows up a nuclear power plant, or gets a hold of some plutonium and uses it in a dirty bomb, or dumps it into a water supply, what happens? You get a lot of dead people and/or a ruined area.

Nuclear plants are already bomb proof, the containment structures are designed to contain a small scale nuclear blast in the event of a failure. Do you not think that this has not been the holy grail of the terrorist movement, its extremely well gaurded stuff. You probably have 1000x better shot at killing the pres.