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I try to provide links so I may support my position and so that people not simply assume I'm making stuff up.

As do I, I was just mentioning that you got a little basic there - I generally post links for any specific statistics or information, not general stuff.

However neither solar nor wind should need nearly as much of either than a nuclear power plant will.

Solar, well, it depends a LOT on the specifics of the installation. Biggest user of concrete would probably be a stand alone plant with concrete supports, but you could probably substitute metal for a lot of concrete. On the other hand, the concrete needed for monopole type wind turbines will surprise you.

Though I'm not sure I'd think 200 pylons for 5 megawatt wind turbines would use less concrete and steel than a 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant.

First, I'd like to apologize for crashing your machine. I simply ended up closing the browser after a while. Today I saved the pdf before opening it, works fine. Apparently Adobe's downloading system is messed up.
Do you have a counter for the Berkeley study, showing that wind needing 10 times the steel and 4 times the concrete per MW? (Duplicating the nice html link with the excerpt)
Back on topic - Have you ever seen how much concrete goes into putting footings in for a simple chain link fence? Now consider your 5MW turbine.
Some relevant parts, pulled from the article:
"The machine has the capability of generating approximately 17 GWh of power a year" - 17 GWh/year. Including a 90% capacity factor, a 1GW nuclear plant would produce ~7,884 GWh You'd need 463 turbines to equal the power generation of the nuke plant. Much longer, and you'll be looking at 2 GW plants, right now 1 GW is on the low end for 'big' plants, 1.4 and even 1.6 GW are showing up.
"Winds as low as 3.5 m/s will disengage the electromagnetic disc brakes and the turbine should have peak performance during winds of 13 m/s. Winds of 25 m/s or more will cause the turbine to cut-out."
Minimum wind to produce power: 7.8mph, Max: 55mph, Max power: 29mph.
"The world's largest wind turbine, a 120-meter (394-feet) behemoth" - It's 120 meters tall, and given even the lightweight blades is a monopole design, requiring a good base to withstand the wind in all weather.
Hmm - 45 foot tower, requires a base 3' deep, 6' in diameter. 1/15th in depth, double the depth as width. Scale that up, the 120 meter tower would require a base 8 meters deep, 16 meters wide - 1.6k cubic meters of concrete. To replace the nuke plant you'd need 740k m^3 of concrete.

How much would the nuke plant itself take? Modern nuclear reactors need less than 40 metric tons of steel and 190 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt of average capacity. Alternate site, Berkeley study(PDF warning)

So, using 1970s figures, of which modern plants are designed to 'use even less', a GW plant would require only 190k m^3 of concrete. 40k tons of steel (Imagine how much steel those 463 turbines would need!)

Oh - found a link to that 5MW turbine with steel usage - 1100 tons of steel PER TOWER, for the tower alone. Various parts in the 425 ton head are also made of steel. 509.3k tons of steel to replace that nuke plant. 469k more tons than the

Of course, some people might think it is condescending to insist that $0.25 (annually!) of electricity will be transformative (and that price even includes a healthy premium over the actual KW-hour charge).

Another issue is that the competition is a lot cheaper:

http://store.altenergystore.com/Solar-Panels/1-to-50-Watt-Solar-Panels/c675/

A village spending $100 (or otherwise obtaining/being provided) for 5 or 10 watts of solar makes a hell of a lot more sense than spending $125 or $250 for the same thing.

It isn't about hating the third world and thinking that the only solution to their problems is for them to live just like me, it is about not putting a lot of hope on a (at best) marginally practical contraption (good ideas will essentially deploy themselves...treadle pumps, peanut mills, pot-in-pot refrigeration).

" If a solar panel has less than a 25 year warranty or uses thin film in any way, shape or form, or has a negative tolerance rating of 6% or more, you won't find it on our website !"

You've got to factor in the price of complete replacecement. Hell, lets say he gets really lucky and they last 10 years..

HAHA! Twenty years if he's unlucky.

• 20-year Mnfg. warranty
• Warranties from 10 to 30 years
• Kyocera Solar Inc. KC Multi-crystalline Solar Panels 25-year power output warranty.
• Sharp ND-L3E1U 123W 12V Solar Panel 25-year limited warranty on power output.

Falcon

" If a solar panel has less than a 25 year warranty or uses thin film in any way, shape or form, or has a negative tolerance rating of 6% or more, you won't find it on our website !"

You've got to factor in the price of complete replacecement. Hell, lets say he gets really lucky and they last 10 years..

HAHA! Twenty years if he's unlucky.

• 20-year Mnfg. warranty
• Warranties from 10 to 30 years
• Kyocera Solar Inc. KC Multi-crystalline Solar Panels 25-year power output warranty.
• Sharp ND-L3E1U 123W 12V Solar Panel 25-year limited warranty on power output.

Falcon

Did you bother to read my reply to you? The link you provided wasn't recent enough to be valid - PV prices spiked last year.

I read yours are replied, did you read mine and TFA? TFA linked to is dated 1 May 2008. It's not even a month old. Here's a pertinent sentence "Solar power cost about $4 a watt in the early 2000s, but silicon shortages, which began in 2005, have pushed up prices to more than $4.80 per watt, according to Solarbuzz." Even at $5 a watt 2000 watts of PV would cost $10,000. Or look here, the cheapest per watt cost for a PV is $4.68 whereas the most expensive is $6.25, There are 6 PVs listed below $5 with 13 between $5 and $6 per watt.

As for the economic analysis, please check the post by LMWatBullRun right above yours

That post says "$0.06/KwH from the grid", I pay more like $0.10/KwH.

12 Kyocera 130 watt panels @ $610 each dlvd = $7320

It doesn't say what the voltage is, but here's today's prices Sharp NE-170U1 170W 24V Solar Panel for $813.96. That's $4.79/watt. As for the rest like the number of hours of sunlight, that really depends on where. It uses 6 hours, in the dead of winter in Florida, the shortest day is longer than 8 hours, so say 6 hours of electrical generation. During the summer we got more than 12 hours, say 10 good hours of generation. The problem is with clouds and rain, however that's not too much a problem now. Whereas older PV panels had to have full sun to steadily generate electricity some new ones can continue generating in partial shade. Further north while winter daylight will be shorter summer daylight is longer.

The post also does not take into consideration inflation. Most of the electricity in the US is generated by coal and natural gas. While the US has plenty of coal, I heard more than 200 years, it is a major contributor to CO2 in the US and who knows how much it will cost in 5 years, because say a CO2 tax? And who would have thought a year ago oil would be above $120?

Did you bother to read my reply to you? The link you provided wasn't recent enough to be valid - PV prices spiked last year.

I read yours are replied, did you read mine and TFA? TFA linked to is dated 1 May 2008. It's not even a month old. Here's a pertinent sentence "Solar power cost about $4 a watt in the early 2000s, but silicon shortages, which began in 2005, have pushed up prices to more than $4.80 per watt, according to Solarbuzz." Even at $5 a watt 2000 watts of PV would cost $10,000. Or look here, the cheapest per watt cost for a PV is $4.68 whereas the most expensive is $6.25, There are 6 PVs listed below $5 with 13 between $5 and $6 per watt.

As for the economic analysis, please check the post by LMWatBullRun right above yours

That post says "$0.06/KwH from the grid", I pay more like $0.10/KwH.

12 Kyocera 130 watt panels @ $610 each dlvd = $7320

It doesn't say what the voltage is, but here's today's prices Sharp NE-170U1 170W 24V Solar Panel for $813.96. That's $4.79/watt. As for the rest like the number of hours of sunlight, that really depends on where. It uses 6 hours, in the dead of winter in Florida, the shortest day is longer than 8 hours, so say 6 hours of electrical generation. During the summer we got more than 12 hours, say 10 good hours of generation. The problem is with clouds and rain, however that's not too much a problem now. Whereas older PV panels had to have full sun to steadily generate electricity some new ones can continue generating in partial shade. Further north while winter daylight will be shorter summer daylight is longer.

The post also does not take into consideration inflation. Most of the electricity in the US is generated by coal and natural gas. While the US has plenty of coal, I heard more than 200 years, it is a major contributor to CO2 in the US and who knows how much it will cost in 5 years, because say a CO2 tax? And who would have thought a year ago oil would be above $120?

As a quick illustration of the point, one of these systems costs $22,610 before freight and installation, and (depending on where you live) puts out about 20% of its peak wattage over 24 hours. That's roughly 15 kwh per day, or 5475 kwh annually - or, in round figures, about $600 worth of electricity at retail price - and, at the typical surcharges for green power, around $800. The cost of borrowing the money, just for the kit, is around about $1600 a year.

There is an interesting discussion at an alternative energy site:

Definitely appears to be alot of skepticism.

http://www.backwoodssolar.com/

One other site I found interesting: http://store.altenergystore.com/Kits-Package-Deals /Sunwize-Power-Ready-Systems/c692/

bah. a wind power station is easy. hell I can make one that does not need to turn into the wind and will operate from all wind directions, PLUS have good power output at low and high Revolution speeds.

How about reducing power consumption first? It's easier and certianly will have the largest benefit to all way before a 99.997% efficient wind,solar,thoughwave power system.

Your fridge, stove, etc does NOT need to use as much power as they currently do. No advances in making them more efficient have been persued cince the american public chooses cheap over efficient every single time.

what would you choose? the standard refridgerator that uses gobs of electricity for $399.95 or the EXACT same item that uses 1/10th the the energy for $2599.95?

I am betting you'll tell the salesman he/she is nuts and buy the cheaper unit.

and yes these super high efficiency appliances do exist. start here alternative energy

There are even more effieiencies that can be gained by adding home automation, something that also is not only ignored by the general consumer but it downright SCARES them. I had to completely remove my system from the last house when I sold it as the prospective buyers were all afraid of it or were putting in bids $15,000.00 less to cover the cost of removing it. (no it does not cost that much to remove it)

Efficient wind power would be neat, but it would be useless if we can not get the gluttony public to start buying efficient appliances and other items first.

Check out THIS STORE. Click on the "hydropower" link to the left. They have high flow-low head, low flow-high head, and low volume-low flow hydro-turbines for "home use". I didn't see anyone else post this place but if they have feel free to mod me redundant:P