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When you burn natural gas in a gas turbine, which is I think routinely done in the USA, the burning gas/air mix directly spins a gas turbine. There is thus no intermediary medium as you claim.

That is one of the reasons gas is cheap to use. There's simply less capital involved in handling the intermediary medium. No boiler, steam generator, steam turbine, condenser, heat exchange.

https://powergen.gepower.com/r...

--PM

There's a fascinating new invention called "batteries," you should check into this technology, it's even popular with wind farms.

It's one thing when someone responds to a Slashdot article that the didn't read, and it another when someone links to an article that they didn't read.

I read your link. From your link:
"Predictable power: It is critical that power producers provide the grid with consistent power, but changes in the wind can sometimes hinder successful grid integration. Over periods of 15-60 minutes, the Predictable Power application smoothes out any short-term wind peaks and valleys, making it more consistent, and more predictable. "

The average night lasts much longer than 15-60 minutes, and El Nino periods last even longer.

There's a fascinating new invention called "batteries," you should check into this technology, it's even popular with wind farms.

If each Hammerfest machine delivers its advertised 1MW of power, then you need 1,000 of them to hope to match the output of a typical gas or coal-fired power station.

No, that's not "typical" at all. The largest coal-fired plants are 1-2GW; currently I believe there is no gas-fired plant anywhere in the world that is 1GW. So it would be more accurate to claim 200-500, while 1,000 is pure exaggeration.

Well, that depends on how you count. A single coal unit really maxes out at about 1200-1300MW, although these are pretty rare. More typical is a unit in the size range of 400-900MW. Note that the viability point is somewhere 150-300MW right now in the US for a coal plant. Anything smaller will have a hard time making money right now given economies of scale and the low low price of natural gas. Multiple small units still aren't cost-effective. You need the big machine to make money nowadays in the US. Many coal plants have multiple units on site.

As for gas power plants, they are at 1000MW now, and have been. Turkey Point uses 3 gas turbines and 1 steam turbine in one "block" to produce around 1150MW, and was completed in 2007. 2 on 1 (2 gas turbines, 1 steam turbine) blocks are more common in the industry. Recently gas turbines have increased in size to the point where this can also break 1000MW. The Mitsubishi G and J class turbines, Siemens H class turbine, and GE's 7HA.02, are all of the size to build 1000MW+ natural gas power blocks. Keep in mind that for a typical unit of this size, each gas turbine will put out around 300-350MW, and as a rule of thumb, the steam cycle can utilize the waste heat to recover about 50% of the MW of the gas turbines. So for a typical large gas turbine plant in the most-common 2 on 1 configuration, there are 330MW from each of the 2 gas turbines, plus another ~330MW from the steam turbine, for a total of around 1000MW. That's without additional duct firing (burning additional fuel in the waste heat recovery boiler), which most US gas plants utilize since gas is so cheap here.

The interesting thing to me is how completely inaccurate all of the media has been in this entire "nuclear crisis". I work for a very large energy company with some of the guys that go visit those nuclear plants every year, most of them with PHDs in Nuclear Physics. Their concerns right now focus mainly on the nuclear fuel rod storage and how they are going to handle the excess amount of heating and unspent fuel rods sitting in empty cooling pools. There are absolutely no major concerns around the radiation levels past the power plants property lines. There has so far been ONE casualty to this accident, and people think that nuclear is unsafe? People in California are taking Potassium Iodide and several of them have gone to the hospital for their stupidity. If you are interested in the information about the nuclear event, and information about the actual power plants and exposure levels? Here's some reading, enjoy :)
Things it would be nice for the news media to have read before they started talking...
GE BWR Manual
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers/03.pdf
GE ESBWR - Latest Design: Unbuilt.
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/nuclear_energy/en/downloads/gea14429g_esbwr.pdf
Wiki Concerning Accident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_nuclear_accidents
Wiki BWR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BWR
Spent Nuclear Fuel Calculations
http://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/ir/bitstream/1840.16/2309/1/etd.pdf
Graphic: Plant Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-reactor-status/
Earthquake/ Radiation Levels/ No.2 / Status
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/03/16/graphics-explaining-japans-nuclear-reactor-disaster/
Tsunami
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-where-the-wave-hit/#more-52826
Inside Reactor 2
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-inside-fukushima-daiichis-most-worrisome-reactor/
Meltdown Dynamics
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/graphic-meltdown-fears/
Exposure Levels
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-how-fast-will-radation-kill-you/#more-52930
Earthquake Data/ H2 Blast/ Radiation Spread
http://news.nationalpost.com/photo_gallery/japan-earthquake-graphic-nuclear-plant-blasts/
Nuclear Fission product Decay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product
NRC: Zirconium Cladding Fire
http://www.irss-usa.org/pages/documents/SGS_213-223_response.pdf
Reactor Status: Excel Spreadsheet
http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_13002

That reactor was designed by Americans at GE and INL in the 1950's and 1960's. It may surprise some that modern reactor designers actually used historical incidents to design better reactors.

Lets see, if electric vehicles take off, who will see a major spike in sales?

Hmmm, maybe this might clarify things GE energy is one of teh world's leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies in all areas of the energy industry..

Switching their fleet to plugin vehicles makes a lot of sense for GE, especially in the long run. If it actually helps accelerate the rate of plugin vehicle adoption, electricity demand could increase significantly. GE would absolutely love that... it would probably help them sell more nuclear reactors, like the ESBWR (near-term) and the PRISM (long-term).

What's really going on in solar is that big US companies with real manufacturing expertise are moving in.

• Dow Chemical is about to release solar shingles. "About to release" means "passed UL certification last week" and "volume shipments in 2011". Solar enthusiasts have blithered about solar shingles for a decade, but Dow actually solved all the real world problems, like the roof not leaking, the interconnect system being safe, and the installation being do-able by a typical roofer.
• General Eletric is now active in solar. They make not only panels, but major parts you need to really get things done, like megawatt-sized inverters.
• 3M now makes solar panels.

This is where the action is. Solar is a heavy-manufacturing business, and it's the companies with experience in running big factories that are now taking over.

Indeed, other countries have been able to build quickly.

Really? If that's what you really think you haven't seen many reports about construction delays. Try this one: Hooked on Subsidies:
"Investors are also wary of nuclear plants because of the construction delays and cost over-runs that have historically plagued the industry. For instance, the Areva/Siemens nuclear power plant being built for TVO in Finland-the first nuclear power plant to be built in a relatively free energy market in decades-once scheduled to be operational within 54 months, is now two years behind schedule and 60% over budget. Nor have these construction delays had anything to do with regulatory obstruction or organized public opposition."

"The General Electric ABWR was the first third generation power plant approved. The first two ABWR's were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW. Two additional ABWR's are being constructed in Taiwan. However these have faced unexpected delays and are now at least 2 years behind schedule."

"CEZ Declines for Second Day as Czech Utility Delays Nuclear Investment
"The company postponed the selection of suppliers for two additional reactors at Temelin until 2011, supervisory board member Eduard Janota said today. Construction may be delayed by as much as several years, Hospodarske Noviny newspaper reported, citing a CEZ employee it did not name. CEZ will also reduce investments in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, the newspaper said."

Those were in the Czech Republic, Finland, and Taiwan not the US, so US environmental regulations can't be blamed. People say how France gets a lot of energy from nuclear power, yet it was the French company Areva which is majority owned by the French government, that was building Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant.

Falcon

Use hydrogen? Its even better for cooling than helium in some applications. I suppose it might not be compatible with some of the process chemistry, but then if you are defining oxygen as an inert gas, hydrogen should qualify as well.

Simpler wiring plans because you don't have to run big industrial power cables up to the top floor

Actually, most high rise buildings use Bus Duct to bring power up through the building, so the feeders are already available.

Risers: Vetco HMF-Class H 21in OD riser; 90 ft long joints with C&K and booster and hydraulic supply line

GE Oil and Gas states: 15 or 20 KSI @ 350F. Up to 7.00 MM ft lbs bending, 18-3/4” nominal bore, 2.00 MM lbs 1st position casing hanger capacity, 2.00 MM lbs 16” sub mudline casing hanger capacity FullBore

BOP:
2 x Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K double preventers;
1 x Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K single preventer;
Cameron DWHC 18¾in *15K wellhead connector
a 15,000 psi pipe that are engineered to be near neutral buoyancy and supports 2 million pound casing string just doesn't fit my definition of thin-walled

The deepwater horizon is a 5th generation semisubmerisble deepwater drilling rig designed to operate in harsh conditions. The vessel is designed to operate at a water depth of 8,000 ft but can be upgraded to a depth of 10,000 ft. She is the second of two in her class, although her sister ship, the Deepwater Nautilus uses fixed moorings rather than dynamic positioning. ...
Risers: Vetco HMF-Classs H 21in OD riser; 90 ft long joints with C&K and booster and hydraulic supply lines
BOP: 2 x Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K double preventers; 1 x Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K single preventer; 1 x Cameron DWHC 18¾in *15K wellhead connector

GE Oil and Gas states:

# 15 or 20 KSI @ 350F
# Up to 7.00 MM ft lbs bending
# 18-3/4” nominal bore
# 2.00 MM lbs 1st position casing hanger capacity
# 2.00 MM lbs 16” sub mudline casing hanger capacity
FullBore

so I think it's reasonable to assume that the "5 foot" pipe leaking oil is in reality a 18 3/4 inch inner diameter pipe at most if its a piece of broken riser pipe, less if it's the drill pipe (18” and 16” casing strings). I've seen reports that the riser now comes out of the BOP, Blow-out Preventer, goes up for 1,500 feet and is bend back and buried in the sea-floor, so this five foot "pipe" could be the mouth of an Asphalt Volcano forming around the leak, in short the article is at best miss-informed conjector. Also the BP execs were not there to celebrate the well hitting oil, but to give an safety award to the rig for working 7 years without a lost time accident which is much more ironic I think.

Your link is a little laughable. Try this one These are the ones used in commercial applications and I guarantee they are more than $10k
As someone who works for a company that boasts one of the largest wind footprints in the world I know a little about the subject. Ironically I work in the natural gas group but I know it is still EXTREMELY expensive to build and maintain the wind turbines. As others have already pointed out wind is sporadic and doesn't always blow when it's needed while at other times it produces so much electricity the existing transmission lines cannot handle the load. Texas has already started a project to build new transmission lines from west Texas to Dallas/Ft. Worth and battery technologies are being researched as possible storage stations.

A LM6000 aero derivative gas turbine will start up in 10-15 minutes. There really isn't much need for stop gap systems like compressed air unless your meteorologists are really bad.

There are plenty of garbage incineration plants around, the biggest complaint are all the heavy metals and toxins that get released that are not found in natural gas. They can be scrubbed, but it is relatively difficult and expensive to do it really well.

Don't worry, I read the summary. I neglected to account for slack-jawed troglodytes like yourself trying to pass themselves off as nuclear engineers. My bad.

Nuclear instruments, like those sold by GE Reuter Stokes and LND detect neutrons -- they infer the power of a reactor by measuring how many neutrons leak out of the reactor core. (They are calibrated by comparing the analog readout under a known power condition ... say, by the flow meters going into a turbine, in a process called a calorimetric.) The DHS detectors mentioned in the article have neutron detectors in them that use He-3 to do the neutron detection.

However, the false alarms alluded to in the summary are not due to neutrons; the false alarms stem from gamma rays, another form of radiation. Coffee beans, kitty litter, ceramics, bananas, and all the other sources of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material emit gamma rays. The equipment mentioned in the summary also has gamma ray sensors, which occasionally produce an alarm on things like kitty litter. I assure you, if one were to drive a truck full of kitty litter through the containment building of a nuclear reactor, the instrumentation would be completely unaffected. The NRC regulators might look at you funny, though.

Admittedly, the summary (and most of the linked articles) did not draw the distinction very well between the gamma detectors (i.e., the source of the false alarms on the older detectors) and the neutron detectors (based on He-3, which is going away). Hope this clears things up.

PS - in the future, I will research my Linux distributions better before making bad analogies on Slashdot. whoops.

There are other neutron detection technologies out there. Commercial nuclear power reactors have used other technologies for years.

Boron-10 lined proportional counters, fission chambers, boron trifluoride, lithium doped glass ... there are lots of other options out there. None of them may have quite the same sensitivity, but you can just pack more sensors in to overcome sensitivity.

To make a slashdot analogy, it's kind of like if all Debian developers caught swine flu and perished. Not a big deal, just move over to Ubuntu or Fedora.

but do you have any figures linked to a real plant that can actually be named so that people know you are not pulling a fast one?

Sheesh, I already said - there are a bunch of them IN THE MIT STUDY. Here, the document under "update on the cost of nuclear power". Page 45. Table 3A & 3B, "Overnight Costs for Actual Builds". There are 11. This is the BASIS for the MIT estimates. E.g. there is Shika #2, an ABWR completed in 2006 at total project cost of 370 billion Yen = $3.9 billion US at current exchange rates. With PPP adjustment it came out to $2,280/kW.

"Ugly? Ugly? As opposed to what?"

I think you aren't grasping the number of turbines that are being proposed. Assuming G.E. could even build them (so far, they've only built 12,000 units, world-wide).

Here's the actual link to the paper:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106.full.pdf+html

Using their numbers for the US, 3,815.9TWh / 2.5Mwh turbines / 20% utility = 7.63 million turbines required.

Or about one turbine for every 40 people.

Even more amusing is that the G.E. turbines being discussed, the 2.5xl, http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_turbines/en/2xmw/index.htm, they cost about 3.5M U.S. each, according to this article: http://www.goodenergies.com/news/-pdfs/Good-Energies-GE-turbine-deal-release-final.pdf, and only have an operational lifetime of 20 years.

So that works out to about $26,705,000,000,000 US (yes, that's ~26.705 trillion dollars). Or slightly less than twice the U.S. GDP of $14,264,600,000,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal).

You could buy a lot of nuclear power plants for that kind of money. Heck, you could buy 13,352 Ohio-class submarines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_class_submarine with 1 Gigawatt pressurized water reactors, and float them to where you wanted to hook them to the grid. But of course, you'd actually only need 400 of them to produce all the power the U.S. uses: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/reactsum.html.

-- Terry

the wind is adding energy to the situation

if you had a very efficient windmill, and a very aerodynamic & hydrodynamic boat-- why is it impossible?

picture a pulley mounted on the sea floor, through which a rope connects two boats, both 100 miles downwind from the pulley

BOTH are of equal mass.

one boat has a large sail and is angled to go with the wind-away from the pulley,
the other boat is very aerodynamic and pointed into the wind

you are suggesting the aerodynamic boat won't move into the wind?

imagine the aerodynamic boat has a windmill mounted on it.
yes- it will be far more efficient to have the boat going in the same direction as the wind
but is it absolutely required? there is no tipping point where windpower can generate enough electricity to move a ship against the wind?

this blade http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_turbines/en/downloads/ge_15_brochure.pdf produces 1500 KW

this story
http://solarfeeds.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5404:cargo-ship-powered-by-solar-panels&catid=129:ggs&Itemid=249 says that a 40kw solar setup supplies 2%
40 going into 1500 37.5 times gives us 75% (37.5*2) of the energy needed for the ship
if one of the GE turbines could supply 75% of the energy needed, two of them would supply 150% of the energy needed-- as I readily accept we are going into the wind- the ship is providing one hell of a lot of counterforce- but it could not be overcome with a third?

A typical 1000 Megawatt coal powerplant such as the behemoth ERGs boondoggle just being completed in SE Wisconsin requires 1215 train carloads of Coal (Carbon) every day. Once burned, each carbon molocule (Atomic Weight 12) will have two Oxygen Molecules (Atomic Weight 16) attached to it and this 'refuse' to be sequestured will weigh 3.67 times as much. All else being equal, this means you would need 4459 boxcars full of carbon junk leaving the power plant. But CO2 can't easily be compressed into boxcars so it is likely the carbon will be sequestered with calcium or silicon (in rock), and weigh much more. And Shell thinks this is cheaper than solar, wind and hydropower? Have I missed April fools day or is someone playing a shell game?

All the wind power generation in Germany (the world leader) in 2007 was 38.5 TWH, or an average of 4.4 GWe (of course, it wasn't a continuous 4.4 GWe, but up and down with wind speed). That is 4.4 GWe average on 22.2 GW rated of turbines, or about 20% of installed capacity. There are 19,460 turbines in Germany for their 22 GW rated capacity.

4.4 GWe continuous could come from 3 Gen. III ABWR nuclear reactors. 3 versus 19,460. An ABWR needs to be refueled once every two years, or an average of 76 tons of fuel per year (one train car worth) per reactor.

really? you're thermodynamics teacher should be bludgeoned if someone sold you that out and out lie. Sure there are technologies like fuel cells that, in theory, can do that but most power plants run off of some internal combustion process, weather it be a steam plant or diesel generator, and that means that you're limited by the efficiency limiting that thermal cycle. For most forms that's the Carnot Cycle, which peaks out at 60% for most real world situations. This is why it was a big fricking deal when GE came out with a 60% efficient power plant which still kicks the crap out of the 37% theoretical limit for most steel IC engines.

I typically start my dishwasher and both the washer and dryer as I head to bed at night.
It is much less of a strain for my home Air Conditioner at night (plus AC runs more efficiently at night because of the lower outside/inside air temperature differential.)

In the future, I plan on re-charging my electric car's batteries and my home's fuel cells at night, when the electric rates are cheaper!

Many large Industries like electric arc steel foundries and large smelters (for the reduction of metal oxides into pure metal) operate at night. There are many many industries that also operate at night taking advantage of the cheaper electric power rate differentials (due to lower demand) Also, many of these industries would not be able to use the same quantities of electric power during the day unless they build and maintain their own costly supplemental/primary power facilities like this one http://gepower.com/prod_serv/products/gas_turbines_cc/en/midrange/ms9001e.htm .

That's not exactly true. They will automatically remove the heat from the reactor in the event of a power failure for a period of time (three days) but after that severe damage can still occur as heat builds up in the reactor. And of course, the passive cooling system is still subject to parts failure.

This kind of fail-safe design is possible due to the fact that reactor output falls as temperature increases. If the primary cooling system fails, the reactor will heat up and the non-powered heat removal system will be able to remove the reduced power generated by the reactor.

There is a video on the GE website that explains how the passive safety system works:

ESBWR Passive Safety Systems Animation

I Bet the turbines are similar to these: http://www.reuk.co.uk/OtherImages/repower-5mw-wind-turbine.jpg
There is a motorized & computer-controlled 360 Degree bearing surface where the generator housing nacelle attaches to the vertical supporting column. The computers on-board each generator keep their own weather sensors for wind speed and direction as well as for power demands of the cluster of wind generators and they calculate how best to pitch their blades and what direction to point or if they need to feather their pitch because of an incoming storm, etc...
General Electric has a detailed drawing of one of their models here: http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_turbines/en/36mw/index.htm

From everything that I have read, seen, heard, etc. there is one small problem with wind and solar power.

As you say, there is up to 330GW of power in the Mid-Atlantic US coast, but, and this is a very BIG but, not all of that power can be harnessed by wind turbines (as of yet at least) Basically, the wind turbines can only operate when the wind speed is between 3m/s and 25m/s (this is for a 1.5MW Wind Turbine)
Naturally the cut in and cut out speeds will vary from one turbine to another, depending on their ratings, but as you can see, there is only a VERY narrow band of wind speeds that each turbine will cater for.

There is a similar problem with Solar energy, and that is that the only power we are currently able to harness from the sun arrives to earth in the infra-red spectrum. Since less than 10% of the solar power that reaches earth is in the infra-red spectrum, there is over 90% of the potential power that is going to waste.

So, as it stands with our current technology, we are unable to efficiently harness the power of either the sun, nor the wind. I understand that there are many projects which are trying to rectify these problems, but there is no telling how long it will take until they are perfected.

GE?

Wrong answer. Too many little turbines not generating enough energy each. Worse, gearing a number of turbines together when they don't get uniform wind pressure means some of them are just sources of drag.

Progress in wind turbines has been through scaling them up. The 50KW - 100 KW machines of the 1970s never paid for themselves. Somewhere above 500KW, the economics start to work, and farms of megawatt and up machines are quite profitable. Here's General Electric's 2.5 megawatt wind turbine, which is typical of current large wind turbines. Total worldwide wind generation capacity is about 75 gigawatts. Wind power is now a serious energy source because, at last, the units are big enough to generate serious power.

I've looked at the cost of photovoltaics, and the ROI, and my conclusion was that I'd rather go with a wind turbine. The same thing applies - in areas that allow it, your excess power runs your meter backwards and the power company pays you for it. A pretty good selection of small scale wind turbines can be seen here. Of course, if you have 5 acres like I do, you can dream about these little darlings that start at 1.5MW power generation and move up from there. No serious zoning issues if you are out in a rural area, and your ROI is as low as 3-4 years - assuming no unusually high maintenance costs and that the power company will pay you a decent rate per kWh not some pittance.

Uh, not exactly. And you get a tax refund if you install solar power panels on your home which makes the net costs cheaper over the lifetime of the system than if you just bought the electricity off the grid at prevailing costs.

Their propellers may have lower RPMs, but because of their size, the tips are still moving quite fast. Take GE's 1.5 MW turbines for example - one of the more common turbines. Its rotor diameter is 77 meters, and its operating speed is 10-20 RPMs. At 20 RPMs, the tips are moving at about 180 MPH.

That's not really a big improvement. General Electric's big wind turbines (1.5 to 3.5 megawatts) cut in at 3.5 m/sec. Vesta large wind turbines cut in at 4 m/sec. At the low end of the size range, the classic Jacobs wind turbines cut in at 8 mph. Magnetic bearings aren't that exotic; they look like electric motors. Bearing losses aren't that big anyway, although wind turbines do have tough bearing requirements. So it's not clear that magnetic bearings are worth the trouble.

The big breakthrough in wind has been in energy conversion. The older large wind turbines were AC syncronous machines, and had to sync to the power grid. That's why, when you see older wind farms like Pacheco Pass, all the blades are turning in sync. Modern units free-run, and there's an AC to DC to AC conversion with rectifiers and inverters to convert the output to 60Hz. This lowers the cut-in speed; with older systems, you couldn't get any power out until there was enough wind to get the generator up to 60Hz speed.

interestingly, enron came up with those huge commercial sized wind power generators. At the firesale, GE bought that division and those are some of the ones going in all over for commercial electrical generation.

Here is what they have now

http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/e n/index.htm

by clean power that is exactly what I meant, well regulated power, good for the electronics.

no law says data centers have to be placed in the middle of expensive high rise towers in large cities, in fact, some of the larger ones being built right now are going out in the sticks in dedicated buildings, the new googleplex, etc. It's nuts to cry poverty when you insist on the highest rent. If your center is large enough, you can get the lines to it.

Again, not sure what you are saying, that alternatve energy doesn't work or it doesn't scale up? Are you calling over 2 megawatt apiece wind turbines non-large scale? You need more than that? One megawatt towers are common now and the larger ones are going in, and they frequently go in as "farms" with dozens of the towers in one place, some of them able to handle all the electrical needs of entire decent sized cities. I would call that large scale, guess you won't or don't..to each their own. Here's one just lately, in LA, a new wind project will be furnishing one fifth the total power needs there..but I guess that isn't significant, huh? As to "enough real estate", well, you slap them in right outside the big cities, they are doing it all over.

http://www.gepower.com/about/press/en/2006_press/0 60506b.htm

And like I said, solar is going in all over as well, and is neat because so many people can take advantage of it and it scales like crazy. It's happening, whether you like it or not, seems *millions and millions* of people are going to it all over the planet, most all the dealers are backlogged with orders and installs. And some of the larger investors in alternative energy are now nations that are dependent on foreign source of energy and see the alternatives as long range cost effective, so they are directly investing with public money and/or offering subsidies to private corporations to help speed up adoption. Examples there are Japan, China, Germany, India..but what do they know, eh? Even stodgy old oil soaked usa is doing it....

As to solar not being cost effective, or quoting some "payback" period,which is a huge variable, here's a challenge I have yet to have any internet alternative energy debunker "expert" meet, so here's *your* chance: write back when you can point to your personal grid electric supplier for your house (I need a URL to look at it where they offer this) that you use or could use in your area, that will give you a ten or twenty year guaranteed priceing contract, so much a kilowatt hour carved in stone. There's your challenge. Non corporate, joe homeowner normal "electric bill". With the alternatives you can purchase and own, with a ten to thirty year warranty, this is a verifiable figure you can get a firm price on *today*.

When you can provide that, you have a point and can start throwing around figures for comparison, without it, it is pure guesswork with no data to back it up on what a so-called "payback" period is. You can *guess* based on your current rates, that's about it. something weird could happen tomorrow to the energy markets, poo, vast price rises. I've seen it happen, particularly during OPEC embargo. Or perhaps another california enron price manipulation scam..you never know. If the stuff you own is installed at home..well there ya go, it's there. It's not perfect-nothing is, but it gets closer to this ownership deal which most folks think is a good idea, like payoff the house, payoff the car, payoff the furniture, etc, not "rent" forever. Myself being a geek and always wanting power, I long ago aquired and paid of a modest solar rig, and it's still running fine. It doesn't do all my power-yet-but eventually it will and in the meantime even if the grid goes kerflooey for some reason I have an immediate "good enough" amount of power to run some critical things around the old abode here. I got less into it then a lot of people have in their big screen TVs and home "entertainmnet" c

Then it's a good thing that wind turbines generate 1.5MW and up :)

http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_tur bines/en/index.htm

Well, at least if the power companies are serious about wind power. Smaller home grown wind turbines might require that many of them.

Don't know about the cells being used on this particular car-top application, but in general modern solar cells are built to resist wind and hail damage.

for example:
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/solar/en /faqs/resid_sys.htm#faq23
Can the modules withstand high winds and hail?

The panels are supported by our roofer-designed mounting system that has been tested to withstand 125 mph (200 kph) winds and can work on almost every type of roofing material. Our modules can withstand one inch (2.5 cm) hailstones at 50 mph (80.5 kph).

Of course, if your car is already doing 50 mph....

And that's the problem. These things are big. 400 feet high, the size of a 40 story building. And that's the old 1MW model. The new 3MW units are even bigger, with a 341 foot blade diameter.

But that's only 3MW. These things need to installed in large numbers to generate enough power to drive whole cities. So thousands of these huge towers have to be built. This is happening. And, let's face it, the result looks like an industrial park. We're not talking about those little hippie windmills from the 1970s. This is serious machinery.

Upstate New York people are bitching about this, as mentioned in the original article. The Cape Cod and Nantucket people are furious. The plan there is to build a wind farm six miles offshore, with 130 turbines. This seems huge, but it will only provide about a quarter of Cape Cod's electricity. Residents are upset about how it will "ruin the ocean view". Six miles offshore.

Actually, the Cape Cod site probably should be about 10x bigger. Someday it will be.

These things are big - the towers are 200 to 300 feet high. It takes 500 of them to equal one coal plant. And bigger wind turbines are coming. The latest General Electric 3MW turbines are so big they're only being considered for offshore installations. The Cape Cod Wind Farm project has produced much grumbling: "A 24 square mile industrial park the size of the island of Manhattan, 40 story turbines permanently scarring our ocean horizon, 580 lights destroying our nightscape, 130 air and sea navigation hazards in the middle of some of the foggiest air and waters in the world..." This is a generic problem with wind and solar energy. Once it starts really working, the installations are huge, because the energy densities are so low.

The downside of wind power, of course, is that it's intermittent. Typically, average power is only 30% of rated power. Of course, you don't get to pick when you get power. So you either need energy storage (like a pumped storage plant) or excess capacity in non-wind generation. Which means building more plant.

Still, wind power is real. Unlike much of the other stuff mentioned, like the "magnet engines" (an entry-level bozo idea), the "neutron generator" (a misunderstanding of a well-understood device), and "blacklight power" (generally considered to be a scam).

Tidal power seems attractive, but there are only about 20 good sites worldwide.

The Athabasca Oil Sands projects are already producing 1 million barrels of oil per day, and that should double by 2010. The scale of the operation is huge. It takes two tons of sand to yield one barrel of oil. That's one Panama Canal every ten months. Want a job as a heavy equipment operator? Move to Fort McMurray, Alberta. They're hiring. Rents have passed Silicon Valley levels, and the apartment vacancy rate is zero.

The future looks like coal. Too much coal. China is building about 50,000MW of coal-fired electric plants per year. US coal consumption has been roughly constant for a while, but will probably go up as oil prices increase.

Nuclear may make a comeback, probably when coal gets too ugly.

There are several hard problems in wind turbine design. One is that, for large wind machines, wind speed may vary considerably across different parts of the blade area. This produces huge stresses in the blade system. Aircraft propellers and hubs don't have that problem, so technology borrowed from aircraft props didn't quite work. That's been solved, but it took years to get past it.

A basic problem, one which this new design doesn't solve, is overspeed protection. Wind turbines above toy size must be able to deal with high wind conditions safely. Some turn sideways; some turn upwards; some feather the props. Brakes aren't enough. There's no way to feather or turn this new design. Even small turbines need, and have, overspeed protection.

There are lots of wind machine designs that more or less work in a small size, but don't scale up to the point where they're worth building. There's a square law; double the blade length and get four times the energy out. So big turbines beat out little ones, once ths scaling problems are solved. Wind turbine size has been creeping up since the 1970s, from about 50KW to a few megawatts.

A 1.5 MW unit was built in the 1940s, but it suffered a bearing failure within a year, then a loss of blade accident which threw a blade 700 feet. Only in the past decade have reliable wind machines in that size range been produced in quantity. With 2800 of their 1.5MW units installed, General Electric can be said to have solved that scaling problem.

The big machines aren't simple. They have active yaw control, active pitch control, hydraulic brakes, AC to DC to AC variable frequency conversion, and lightning protection. But, at last, they work.

So these guys are going to beat that with a little tin model that looks like something used to spin a sign in a used car lot. Right.

YOu got a magic wand that'll turn all of our current coal, gas, and oil generators into something else?

The DOE has a "magic wand" (called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) which effectively converts coal-fired plants to (synthetic) gas plants at about 3x the output and 20% greater efficiency. If we got an economical source of non-fossil hydrogen (like the "green algae" trick) gas-fired plants could be converted to burn it at minimal cost. And oil's share of electric power generation is minimal. It's about half the share of hydroelectric, and "other renewables" are going to overtake it shortly (they are already 20% ahead of oil's 1995 minimum)

If I wanted to do something personally and I had a plug-in hybrid, I could just put solar on my roof to offset the electricity used by the car. At 250 Wh/mile, a 20-mile commute would use about 5 kWH/day. A 1 kW solar system would feed this with some extra, and cost around $5000 at today's retail, uninstalled. Today's panels have 25-year warranties, so they'd be expiring about the time I replaced my current car... for the third time.

If it was really that simple, why isn't it done? Answer: it's not that simple. Our economy would crash right now if we all suddenly stopped driving our cars and walked to work.

Yeah, if America sent its Excursions, Durangos, Escalades and Hummers to the crusher and commuted in Priuses, Neons and Focuses instead, we'd all die.

Oh wait, no we wouldn't.

Nuke power (while I'm all over it, really, I am) is still relatively unstable. I'd rate it right at the level of stability of Windows XP.

Today's PWR's were built in the 1970's or earlier, but I don't see you comparing them to Windows 95. Strange... or maybe not.

Then wind. While there are some very nice designs, some excellent prototypes, and even some small-scale deployments that have worked well, wind still isn't up to production-level.

3.6 megawatt wind turbines are in production. The prototype of a 5 megawatt turbine is on the grid.

Solar failed already. It's not environmentally friendly, it's as simple as that.

Your evidence for this assertion is? Are you repeating the fallacy of associating the waste from chip-making processes with the roll-to-roll process used to make thin-film silicon cells? How about titanium dioxide cells, are you going to argue that TiO2 (used in paint, don't forget that) is an environmental hazard?

You're funny.

"Want to move away from oil" isn't the problem. We all want to.

The first step in moving away from oil is just to avoid wasting it, but I don't seem to see anyone holding a "sledgehammer the Hummer for charity" affair. Plenty of Hummers on the road around me (overgrown things, nobody ever parks one right), and I'd be happy to pay a couple bucks a swing with a ten-pounder, but nobody's volunteering their guzzler for the honors. I guess there are some people who just don't want to.

I bet another $2/gallon in gas taxes would get most of them to want to, though. It would barely affect me; the difference between today's $2/gallon and a hypothetical $4/gallon is about $100 for a fairly serious road trip. I couldn't get a hybrid this time around, but if I had the difference would have been even smaller.

Ask anybody on the street "If I had a better way for you to get around car that didn't require gas, would you do it?" Most would probably say "Yes, if I can be as free as I can with a car" or something to that affect.

They're called plug-in hybrids, and they are al

1. Wikipedia is not trustworthy.
2. The microturbines the authors appear to be talking about are in the neighborhood of 30 kilowatts and bigger, not 15 watts. A non-micro turbine would have an output of megawatts; some are capable of hundreds of megawatts.

If the entire plant is a combined cycle plant or STeam And Gas (STAG), it would be configured exactly as you imagine. The waste heat of the gas turbine is fed into a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) for the steam turbine. This is the most advanced combined cycle system in the world at the moment.

One of the more interesting applications of this is the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant. It's essentially a heavy duty gas turbine that has some modifications made to the fuel supply system. More info here.

Florida could discuss the problems with "fully" exploiting wind energy. Kinda hard to grab eight gigatons of energy, or about half the US's annual electric needs and dump it into the grid over a single day. Hope you have a really good surge protector!

More seriously: insufficient engineering practice at this scale of wind power production (which many people are currently doing something about), load smoothing issues, and environmental impacts (from noise pollution, and from birdbrained birds either flying into the rotor blades and/or nesting inconveniently on the towers).

When wind power started to come back after the 1973 energy crisis, useful sizes were much smaller. There were a few big machines, but they were one of a kind prototypes. Most of the turbines of the 1970s and 1980s were in the 100KW range. That's a convenient size, because all the components can be shipped easily. The entire hub/generator unit can be shipped assembled.

But all those little turbines are a maintenance headache. Farms of big mills generate more power per acre than little ones, because the blades are higher and catch more wind. So size has been creeping up. As the 1970s units wear out, they're being replaced with fewer, but larger, machines. New wind farm machines are running around 1.5MW. That's a commercial technology. General Electric alone has 2300 units of its 1.5MW turbine installed.

Offshore, much bigger machines are the norm. Setting a pylon in the ocean is a big job, so the fewer the better. Big components can be moved in by ship, so the truck size limit goes away. So offshore machines are running around 5MW. But there aren't many of them. Most of the really big machines are still experimental.

Wind power is like hydroelectric power. There are a limited number of good sites. Most of the ones in California, the major passes through the coastal mountain range, are already taken. The East Coast doesn't have a long coastal mountain range, so installing wind farms in passes is out. So the East Coast systems tend to be offshore.

Total installed wind turbine capacity worldwide is about 40 gigawatts, although that's peak, not average, output. This is up by a factor of 10 in the last decade. Much of this is due to better power conversion technology. Early wind turbines synchronized the blade itself to the power grid. Newer ones have inverters and better controls, so they interface much better to each other and the power grid. Many of the early turbines were only tolerable on grid because they were such a minor portion of generation. They were a destabilizing influence, forced into synch by bigger generators elsewhere. With improved controls, wind generators can contribute to frequency stability, rather than stressing it. As wind power becomes a larger fraction of generation, that's essential.

That engine has a top speed of 102 RPM because it's direct drive. Direct drive eliminates the need for motor-generator sets and all the bulk, weight and cost people have been talking about above, but it also cuts the power output and increases the required size of the engine.

Other marine diesels seem to be designed to run at 600-1000 RPM. An engine running at 6x the speed can move 6x the air and fuel per unit of displacement, and thus could be about 1/6 the size and weight for the same power. This becomes even more lopsided for gas turbines; an 85 MW GE gas turbine is a tiny fraction of the size of the diesel of the same power, and an even tinier fraction of the weight.

... and GE bought them out, their industrial wind power division.

They got a deal on that stuff. GE popped 380 million for an installed up and running massive wind energy business that actually had a good product and was selling great. I don't know about enrons other scams, but this wasn't one of them, just a good product that worked and hit the market at the right time. There's farmers now all over the midwest got these things installed and they are getting a decent check every month that pays them better than farming, harvesting wind. Can't beat it with a stick, demand for electricity ain't never gonna go down.

Enron was weird,megalomania wouldn't let them see their own insanity. In todays world, being in the legitimate energy business is a license to print money almost, even a half assed company with any medium ethics can make boatloads of money. You have to go out of your way to NOT make money. Can you imagine being so steenking greedy that you had to have *more* than that? It's mind boggling how far into love of money depravity some people can get.

NBC is owned by GE, which in turn owns GE Energy. With the resent history of power outages on July 13 in Grece, I wonder how they back up against that?

I agree. These SCADA systems can become quite complex. If you are interested, you can even read General Electric's brochures for the XA/21 system.