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Liar.

Here is a paper from 15 years ago from the University of New South Wales.

The above summary shows that energy payback times for modules incorporating thick silicon cells are, at worst, of the order of six to seven years and possibly less than three years. Since warranty periods of 20 years are routinely offered on such modules[ ] it is clear that the embodied energy should be easily recovered.

I'm willing to bet the efficiency has increased.

http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/smt310-handouts/solarpan/pvpayback.htm

Heres another source: (pdf warning)

Energy payback estimates for rooftop PV systems are 4, 3, 2,
and 1 years: 4 years for systems using current multicrystalline-
silicon PV modules, 3 years for current thin-film modules,
2 years for anticipated multicrystalline modules, and
1 year for anticipated thin-film modules (see Figure 1).
With energy paybacks of 1 to 4 years and assumed life
expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy that
PV systems generate won’t be plagued by pollution, greenhouse
gases, and depletion of resources.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

In short you are a liar in at least the solar panel area.

The only problem is that most solar installations aren't 'sufficiently long lived'.

The average energy payback period for a solar installation is 1-4 years. The expected lifetime of a solar installation is 30 years. Source.

Current renewables like well-sited wind and solar PV have energy payback ranging from around three to six months for wind:
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/EnergyBalanceofWindTurbines.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/wind_turbine_lca.php

Solar estimates seem to range around one to four years:
http://www.pvresources.com/en/economics.php
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_payback_time#Sustainables

That last one is citing 2 to 4 years for PV, but it is out of date for thin film solar (if it was accurate back then).

Basically, the power to put in more renewables can come from other renewables in a bootstrapping way. Still, I'd agree that in practice a lot of the energy to make a lot of wind and PV systems quickly is coming from fossil fuels and nuclear. In many way, older nuclear power plants represent embodied fossil fuels used in their construction to pour concrete and mine fuel, too.

These pictures shows how little land or ocean surface is required to power the world entirely from wind or solar:
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequiredWindOnly.jpg
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg

Something like 1% of the USA's surface area is already devoted to things like power line rights of ways, or areas around fossil fuel mining, or roadways, etc..

Something like about 50% of the land in the USA is devoted to animal product production (meat, dairy, etc.) one way or another (mostly growing fodder for animals), and the animal products are actually mostly harming US Americans, so there is plenty of room for renewables from that angle, too: :-)
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html

Also, a lot of land can be dual use, like farming under windmills, or PV used on roofs.

So, the amount of land being talked about to be fully renewable is not disproportionate to other activities like the US interstate highway system or especially agriculture.

I'm not saying nuclear does not have interesting applications following the Hyperion approach or similar designs like the Toshiba S4. But to flat out say renewables are not going to work is just not accurate.

Geothermal, solar, and wind

I look outside and while it's sunny, it's not windy - if my power supply isn't consistent it's worthless, so scratch wind and solar.

Many of those off the grid do great with solar and wind. A national smart grid can be supplied nationwide, solar can provide electricity 8+ hours a day, it's always windy somewhere, and geothermal always works. Ignoring this shows a bias, or ignorance.

Falcon

Fill the Great Lakes and every coast, the Gulf, and all of the Alaskan Coast with towers?

Not needed in the USA. The Rockies contain enough potential wind energy to power the 48 contiguous states. Of course the West Coast from BC to southern CA contains a lot too. Turn eastward in SCal going through AZ and NM to west Texas and there's more. On the East Coast hike up the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine to find more prime wind energy. Of course you can find more offshore but plenty can be found on land.

And that's just considering wind. A Solar Grand Plan goes into how solar power can supply "69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050". Not only does Nevada have a lot of solar potential but it also has a lot of potential geothermal and wind energy.

Of course the pseudo-environmentalists NIMBYs will oppose these.

Falcon

Are you sure? I've been here a while, and every second article is full of Slashdotters claiming that we can all live like kings off of each others' waste products in a giant mouth-to-anus daisychain.

Due to entropy, the only way that can work is to involve the sun. Conveniently, there are numerous ways to actually accomplish this. Unfortunately, the powers-that-be are more interested in making as much money per acre as possible while dodging any and all responsibility for any damage done.

Just to beat this particular mangled pile of horseflesh a bit more, two of my favorite ways to effectively insert the sun between anus and mouth are Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems and biodiesel from algae (which ties in nicely with AIWPS.) And of course, if we could find a way to get past BP, we could be making Butanol. Though if we are very lucky, the problem may sort itself out anyway via the wonders of diversity.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/old/3772.pdf

Its an older study but the first I found on google. I'm sure there are much better sources out there though. Page 33 of the pdf shows a chart I think boils it all down.

NREL is part of the DOE btw.

So which is it - solar panals are too expensive or your already have a solar array? Looking at your later post... Or are you just confused?

Anyway, to dispel your claim of $50k (the cost of 2 Priuses) only being good enough to generate about 7 kWh/day...

The cost of solar PV installed before rebates is currently between $5-7 / DC watt - let's use $6 / watt.

So $50k will buy you about a 8 kW array.

Using PVwatts and assuming you live in San Francisco, your typical system this big will generate over 11,000 kWh / year or 30 kWh / day. You could drive your Nissan LEAF over 37,000 miles / year or 100 miles / day using the EPA's estimate of 3.4 mi / kWh.

So in reality, a $50k PV system will buy you a large enough system to power over 3 typical EVs over 12,000 miles / year. And that system should last 25 years with minimal maintenance. (Never mind that the $50k system is 30% off = $35k thanks to federal tax credits and you can very often get additional rebates depending on where you live).

All this will take up a massive amount of space compared to LFTR and comes with problems of its own.

And we have plenty of space. The National Renewable Energy Lab's Wind Atlas details the wind potential of different regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind energy to supply all 48 contiguous states with electricity. However that's not all. On the Pacific Coast from British Colombia south through southern California then east to western Texas, there's more. Why during California's rolling blackouts in the early 2000s, there was an idle wind farm in the Mojave capable of generating 10 megawatts per hour. Over on the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Cape Hatteras off the North Carolina coast there are good sites for wind farms. As senator before his death Ed Kennedy was one of the NIMBYs opposing one such wind farm, on Cape Cod. On-shore through the Appalachian Mountains north from Georgia then into Pennsylvania's Poconos and New York's Catskills Mountains, hell all along the Appalachian Trail to Maine, there is good wind potential.

That's just wind, solar adds more. Again according to DOE, just 100 square miles of land in Nevada, that's an area of 10 miles by 10 miles, "could supply all U.S. electricity needs with current (~10%) commercial efficiency rates." But Nevada isn't the place with good solar potential. Now let's go back geothermal. According to an MIT led panel sponsored by DOE geothermal can be a "key U.S. energy source". Here's some info on geothermal in New York state, and more for Minnesota and Wisconsin. I've already mentioned California and Yellowstone, recently there was a discussion of how West Virginia Is Geothermically Active.

With today's technology solar and wind can provide the US's peak electricity, while geothermal and existing natural gas and nuclear power plants supply the baseload until more geothermal capacity and storage is developed.

Falcon

Complete BS. Moonlight radiates about 1 milliwatt / sq/m. On your panel of 18" x 48" (848 sq/in or about 0.55 sq/m) which is probably about 15% efficient overall at full sun (1000 W / sq/m), would generate about .08 milliwatts in full moonlight.

Good luck powering your solar powered calculator with that let alone charging a battery to any significant degree.

I should have been more specific, here, because we're splitting hairs. In full moonlight, my charge controller will register enough current coming from the panel to activate its charge mode. It will not, however, charge my battery bank to any significant degree. I mentioned this to support my point that direct sunlight is not necessarily required for a solar panel to generate power.

There is also no way that your panel (perhaps rated at 80W in full sun) would be enough to do anything but provide anything but a tiny dent in anyone's electricity bill - it might generate 125 kWh/year in the southwest desert - most households would use that amount of electricity in a matter of days (average household energy consumption ranges between 500-1000 kWh/month depending on where you live).

I think my panel is 65W, actually. You're not wrong about its capabilities, but it meets my needs and then some. Four lamps with 6W CF bulbs, a small 12V water pump, a modest computer, and a 15W guitar amplifier are the entirety of the appliances in my house, though. Were I to ever need more appliances, I would simply add panels and batteries, or even upgrade my inverter (currently an older 10A Trace) as necessary. I won't pretend that my needs are average, though.

As to how well a solar panel works when it's cloudy, let's look at my very own solar panels (I have 18 180W panels / 3240W of solar on my roof with Enphase microinverters).

On a clear sunny day this time of year, my system will generate about 14-15 kWh. PVwatts estimates that my system will generate about 327 kWh in a typical October, or about 10.5 kWh/day. So it's pretty clear that clouds will have a large effect on energy production. Looking at the past 7 days, none of which have been ranged between completely cloudy/rainy to mostly sunny (no 100% clear days), energy production has ranged between 3.0 kWh to 14.4 kWh with an average of 7.8 kWh/day.

So stating that they work "quite well" when it's cloudy is being quite optimistic at best when clouds can cut power generation by 80%.

It sounds like your solar panels work well in the aggregate on cloudy days based on your own statistics. While clouds can cut power generation by 80% of their optimal output, in practice, you have averaged 52% of optimal output over a period of 7 days, or 74% of your estimated normal average. I have noticed roughly similar performance with my system, and I think it is very reasonable. Not that there is a scientific definition for the phrase "quite well", either. :)

P.S. Thanks for posting the stats about your system, btw -- you have added real, valuable data to the discussion. Cheers!

Mine will even charge my batteries slowly on a clear night when the moon is full.

Complete BS. Moonlight radiates about 1 milliwatt / sq/m. On your panel of 18" x 48" (848 sq/in or about 0.55 sq/m) which is probably about 15% efficient overall at full sun (1000 W / sq/m), would generate about .08 milliwatts in full moonlight.

Good luck powering your solar powered calculator with that let alone charging a battery to any significant degree.

There is also no way that your panel (perhaps rated at 80W in full sun) would be enough to do anything but provide anything but a tiny dent in anyone's electricity bill - it might generate 125 kWh/year in the southwest desert - most households would use that amount of electricity in a matter of days (average household energy consumption ranges between 500-1000 kWh/month depending on where you live).

As to how well a solar panel works when it's cloudy, let's look at my very own solar panels (I have 18 180W panels / 3240W of solar on my roof with Enphase microinverters).

On a clear sunny day this time of year, my system will generate about 14-15 kWh. PVwatts estimates that my system will generate about 327 kWh in a typical October, or about 10.5 kWh/day. So it's pretty clear that clouds will have a large effect on energy production. Looking at the past 7 days, none of which have been ranged between completely cloudy/rainy to mostly sunny (no 100% clear days), energy production has ranged between 3.0 kWh to 14.4 kWh with an average of 7.8 kWh/day.

So stating that they work "quite well" when it's cloudy is being quite optimistic at best when clouds can cut power generation by 80%.

Look - I'm a huge proponent of solar power (I have them on my own roof!), but overstating their abilities does not help promote them.

Good point. Concerning the NREL: it's interesting that under Reagan (for some reason a hero to many) the NREL had its budget decimated, but fast forward to 2010 and we're discussing how cool it is (no pun intended) that the NREL A/C technology called DEVap can cut energy use by 50-90% through the use of liquid desiccants and permeable membranes. Would have been nice if that lab had been adequately funded for all those years [sigh]

Reagan didn't just take the solar panels off the white house, that's symbolic. Reagan also slashed the budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by 90%. This facility currently holds, and regularly held in the past decade or so, the records for the highest efficiency photovoltaics and other types of devices. So if you ask me why solar panels sucked in the past, it was because there was not very much research in solar power going on for the entire decade of the 80s.

I'm guessing Reagan rationalized these actions as reducing the federal budget. The only problem with that logic is that the guy ran up a bigger deficit in defense projects than Carter (or just about any other president besides Bush, Jr.). But that's typical, when conservative politicians speak about reducing the deficit, that is usually code for cutting programs that they just don't like and has nothing to do with the actual deficit.

A big issue with biofuels is the water used. It's sort of dead obvious once you think about it. It doesn't take a heck of a lot of water to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground, but producing a similar amount of ethanol from corn will require a lot of water for irrigation,

Any time someone brings up corn ethanol as a reason why biofuels are a bad idea, you know that they are either some kind of shill or they actually know nothing whatsoever about biofuels. Read this before you attempt to contribute again. Corn ethanol is pure pork, it is profitable only because of corn subsidies and it exists specifically to steal your money in the form of tax dollars spent on subsidies which are given to big agribusiness. Corn for ethanol is almost universally grown "continuously" meaning without the benefit of crop rotation; it is virtually all GMO which in practice means it is purchased from Monsanto and it's fertilized and pesticized (how would I say that both correctly gracefully, anyway?) with chemicals purchased from them as well, chemicals which typically end up in the groundwater; indeed, the soil is also inoculated with known carcinogens to prevent the growth of fungi and harmful nematodes, and these chemicals also get into the groundwater, to say nothing of the damage done to the soil, which is rendered an inert hydroponic growing medium through these means. Literally everything about ethanol fuel from corn is bad. ALL topsoil-based fuels are basically wrongheaded save for animal feed, and then only when the animal crap is returned to the field.

Also, if you can use wastewater or brackish water, water use would be less of an issue.

Also, if you could use google then you would have found out that you can use salt water, which can be pumped for "free" with sunlight once you've made the pipeline system.

Why is that? Could it have something to do with the fact that petroleum is an energy dense substance that's easy to suck out of the ground? No amount of money is going to change that -- unless all of our knowledge of chemistry and physics is wrong.

It has nothing to do with finding the technology. The technology is already there. In fact, they DoE did an excellent study in 2006:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/40116.pdf

The issue is that there is a huge amount of inertia for dirty power, because the costs are purposefully hidden from consumers. Toss in the cost of oil wars and environmental impact and see how much a gallon of gas is. And how did America become so dependent on cars? Because cars are less efficient than mass transit and therefore more profitable. The purchase and subsequent dismantling of rail and bus lines in the 50s and 60s was no accident.

Hell, we could have built nearly 20 million $40,000 electric vehicles instead of waging the Iraq war, and used them with no impact on our electrical grid in the Northeast. And I can tell you I'd rather spend my tax dollars on American technology investment creating American jobs, rather than literally blowing the money on another oil war. (Oh, we get more terrorism too? Awesome!) You wouldn't even have to spend that much money - just subsidize the difference in cost from an average car, and you're talking 40 million vehicles or more.

This isn't about isolationism, it's about independence. We can act more rationally when most of what we need is created domestically. Let's be frank here: the US could no more tell OPEC to go fuck itself than we could say the same thing to China, because "the market" decided to sell American independence in exchange for the pleasure of sacrificing our moral principles and enriching Islamic theocracies in order to keep our oil cheap.

Government subsidies to enrich oil corporations and military contractors are terrible investments. Government subsidies to enrich responsible American corporations to allow us to be energy independent, and as a bonus, reduce the financing of terrorist organizations, are good investments. The trouble is that the old guard has all the money and all of the lobbyists. All of this neo-Libertarian anti-government propaganda is doing is falsely convincing people that once you decouple and deregulate corporations from the government, somehow they are going to stop putting their own profits above the interests of the vast majority of Americans.

New GE plants are tested by the FDA, the NIH, and the EPA.

I got this from "Whole Earth Discipline" by Stewart Brand, page 127. http://books.google.com/books?ct=result&id=1tTtAAAAMAAJ&dq=stewart+brand+whole+earth&q=national+institutes

He seems to be wrong. The NIH has no direct responsibility or authority over foodstuffs. They do regulate gene therapy for humans, but that's completely different thing.

Gene therapy is one area I fully support genetic engineering research, and application.

Here's the real story:
http://www.fda.gov/food/biotechnology/default.htm

The FDA considers GM foods basically safe, and looks over safety tests performed by the company selling the product to ensure they have not overlooked potential dangers. In cases that new proteins or pesticide resistance the burden of proof is much higher then swapping genes already in foodstuff.

Is that the same FDA that approved drugs that were later found to be bad?

I disagree with him on the things that fall outside his expertise of biology and ecology.

I don't see what his qualifications or expertize is on the Google or on the Amazon page. His wiki entry has some info but it doesn't say what those qualifications are either. It says he studied design at an art institute but doesn't say what degree he got if any.

Having said that I like that he worked with The Whole Earth Catalog and started the WELL (which I wanted to join). I wonder what he thinks of (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, I love that song.

For instance, I'm not as convinced nuclear power is our only hope.

I'm a long way from being convinced nuclear power is any hope for energy, instead I believe the oppose and believe that the money used in it's research can better be used in other research. As it is the nuclear power industry is Hooked on Subsidies. The SciAm article A Solar Grand Plan says "A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." And the NREL's Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details the wind potential of different regions of the US. One analysis I read of it concluded the Rockies have enough potential to supply the 48 contiguous states with electricity.

The video you link to brought up one problem with alternative energy, the lack of a reliable baseload. However geothermal energy can supply some. And until storage technology is developed that is large scale, natural gas fired and nuclear power plants can be kept online. However which ever way it goes I want to see an end to subsidies whether it's the billion dollars alternative energy gets or the billions more coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and petroleum get. And that includes external costs such as pollution.

Falcon

Oh, on the FDA, I want it abolished. The NIH, which I'd like privatized, can take over some of what the FDA does. As for drug approvals, I believe people should be able to take whatever drug they want without a prescription.

Thirty year lifespan and it won't pay back cost of production? Where did you get that? Why do people keep repeating this? This has been debunked here on slashdot numerous times now in these discussions.

Here ya go, you offered no citation for your 30 year claim, but I have a counter with citation. Various types of PV panels and energy to build them payback period, goes from one for thin film bleeding edge to four years for more expensive crystalline types, after that, all the power they make is free. OK, double that for some place with crappy sun, 8 years, that leaves 22 years of free or real dang cheap power.

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

The big energy companies really don't like solar all that much, because eventually your home power plant is paid off and no need to send them a check every month. They'll fool around with it, good for PR purposes, but they really don't push it that hard either.

As to government subsidies and whatnot, meh, I can't think of a single form of energy production that hasn't been subsidized one way or the other from government. Heck, centralized power absolutely depends on government subsidy in perpetuity, eminent domain seizure and use with no check cutting to the property owners for power poles and natgas lines. If they had to negotiate transit fees property owner by property owner, coal and nuke power and natgas would be as expensive a way to make power as you can think of. And there wouldn't be nuke one if the government didn't back them up as the insurer of last resort, not a private insurer out there would cover all the liability risks and costs. Now look at making sure foreign oil keeps flowing with our military presence for decades...

Any subsidies or tax breaks for solar are the proverbial drop in the bucket, compared to what the other energy sources have benefited and profited from over the generations now.

My question about the whole benefits of yeast produced ethanol thing is whether, in the long term, it can actually produce enough energy to make the whole process carbon neutral. Can we power all the devices that produce the industrial byproducts with all of the energy from those by products?

The process is, or can be, carbon neutral. It can actually be carbon negative, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than what's released when farmed then used. That's because the residue, what's left after the alcohol is produced, can be added to or buried in the soil keeping some carbon in the ground. A benefit is that that increases the fertility of the soil so more can be grown on poor land.

However is there enough land to grow crops to produce alcohol? Or Diesel fuel? I doubt it.

Does it even make sense, in the long term, to invest the time, money, and fossil fuels in the process of developing this type of technology (biofuels, in general) in favor of more direct methods of harnessing the Sun's energy (like solar panels (and thus necessarily batteries/fuel cells), and sort of by extension, fusion)?

This is my own opinion, which others also have, is that future energy needs will require a number of different energy sources to be developed. In warm arid areas algae can be farmed to produce hydrogen and or biofuels. Other biofuels such as this can be produced on land where food crops will not grow. In places where ground source heat is close to the surface geothermal energy can be used. Geothermal energy can even be used as a baseload. Where sunny solar, concentrated solar, PVs, and solar thermal energy can be used. Then where windy, wind turbines can be used.

SciAm has the article A Solar Grand Plan concluding solar energy "could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." As regards wind the NREL Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough wind potential to provide the 48 contiguous states with electricity. So what's needed next is a national smart grid and baseloads. According to another SciAm article currently blackouts, brownouts, and other power losses cost US businesses $80 Billion a year so it makes sense to build a new grid and make it smart. Then for the baseload, as stated above geothermal can provide some with Natural Gas fired power plants supplying more until a cleaner baseload source is developed.

Falcon

This citation needed parroting of wikipedia has to fucking stop.

[citation needed]

We aren't here writing research papers or even encyclopedias. This is a little niche web forum and most everything we write here is forgotten within 24 hours and will be viewed thereafter only by robots, or in some search engine's cache.

That's a bunch of shit. I refer back to slashdot posts when I can find them on a regular basis. I have many bookmarked for later reference.

You, for instance, failed to include any citations for any of the assertions you made.

Anyone who is familiar with the subject is familar with the relevant citations. They're googled by name so often that they floated to the top of the results if you use a handful of words from the title as they predictably should. For example "a look back renewable" first result is http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf, the link I want. There's places you can find it in other formats but that's what we want for most of what I had to say. Much of the rest is common knowledge. But I can provide citations if needed. So far I see no evidence that there is any (but chew on that one for a minute.)

I, for instance, rightly recognize, just as I did in the OP, that you are just some guy with some opinions you are stating based on your personal experience and beliefs and I would be capable of proceeding with the argument on those grounds, were I so inclined, without engaging in tangential games of demanding excessive investments of your time flitting through search results.

I am here to educate and be educated as well as entertain and be entertained. I often use citations, where they are necessary, i.e. when I am having a conversation and not simply engaging in enumeration of faults.

Also, you wrote a point by point rebuttal. Which is classic. HAND.

I'm a fucking classy kind of guy.

Well a CFD-System for just verifing wind tunnel tests might be a bit too much, but verifying lift and drag for such airfoils is possible.

This is based on my experience in the wind industry, so this means I'm refering to blades which consists of many airfoils attached to a rotor but the basic principles remain the same.

When dealing with windturbine aerodynamic simulations Aerodyn[3] implements the BEM[1] but BEM is based on MT[2] and can caculate Lift/Drag for Airfoils due to a certain wind either constant or
turbulent. Turbulent wind can be generated by Turbsim[5].

And if you don't want to stop there, with FAST [4] you get an "easy" design code for load caculations on a simplified turbine model,
with example simulation models like the NREL 5MW-Offshore Turbine.

In the wind industry CFD will not be used for caculating aerodynamic loads acting on the rotor and drive train, we use reduced theories like BEM[1] (which exists in various even spiced up versions, for things like dynamic stall, tower drag, tower shadow etc..)

CFD is taken into account when the blade design is going to be tuned, for example finding vortices which consume kinetic energy and generate certain unwanted noise levels.

And by the way all NREL-Tools are OSS.

Draw back -> you can't "see" the vortices unless using CFD.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_element_theory
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_theory
[3] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/aerodyn/
[4] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/fast/
[5] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/preprocessors/turbsim/

Well a CFD-System for just verifing wind tunnel tests might be a bit too much, but verifying lift and drag for such airfoils is possible.

This is based on my experience in the wind industry, so this means I'm refering to blades which consists of many airfoils attached to a rotor but the basic principles remain the same.

When dealing with windturbine aerodynamic simulations Aerodyn[3] implements the BEM[1] but BEM is based on MT[2] and can caculate Lift/Drag for Airfoils due to a certain wind either constant or
turbulent. Turbulent wind can be generated by Turbsim[5].

And if you don't want to stop there, with FAST [4] you get an "easy" design code for load caculations on a simplified turbine model,
with example simulation models like the NREL 5MW-Offshore Turbine.

In the wind industry CFD will not be used for caculating aerodynamic loads acting on the rotor and drive train, we use reduced theories like BEM[1] (which exists in various even spiced up versions, for things like dynamic stall, tower drag, tower shadow etc..)

CFD is taken into account when the blade design is going to be tuned, for example finding vortices which consume kinetic energy and generate certain unwanted noise levels.

And by the way all NREL-Tools are OSS.

Draw back -> you can't "see" the vortices unless using CFD.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_element_theory
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_theory
[3] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/aerodyn/
[4] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/fast/
[5] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/preprocessors/turbsim/

Well a CFD-System for just verifing wind tunnel tests might be a bit too much, but verifying lift and drag for such airfoils is possible.

This is based on my experience in the wind industry, so this means I'm refering to blades which consists of many airfoils attached to a rotor but the basic principles remain the same.

When dealing with windturbine aerodynamic simulations Aerodyn[3] implements the BEM[1] but BEM is based on MT[2] and can caculate Lift/Drag for Airfoils due to a certain wind either constant or
turbulent. Turbulent wind can be generated by Turbsim[5].

And if you don't want to stop there, with FAST [4] you get an "easy" design code for load caculations on a simplified turbine model,
with example simulation models like the NREL 5MW-Offshore Turbine.

In the wind industry CFD will not be used for caculating aerodynamic loads acting on the rotor and drive train, we use reduced theories like BEM[1] (which exists in various even spiced up versions, for things like dynamic stall, tower drag, tower shadow etc..)

CFD is taken into account when the blade design is going to be tuned, for example finding vortices which consume kinetic energy and generate certain unwanted noise levels.

And by the way all NREL-Tools are OSS.

Draw back -> you can't "see" the vortices unless using CFD.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_element_theory
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_theory
[3] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/aerodyn/
[4] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/simulators/fast/
[5] http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/preprocessors/turbsim/

That's what I think too: as the dessicant absorbs water, it loses its effectiveness, so could say you have to "recharge" it so that it can absorb more water. The bad news is that that process will be more energy-intensive in humid climes, since you'd have to heat the dessicant to a higher temperature to get water vapour to leave it quickly enough. The good news is that those humid climes tend to have more sunlight, and thus more scope for using passive solar heating for this job. Someone needs to build a complete system and experiment over a full year, I think, before they start claiming energy savings.

I was looking at other NREL pages, and this one takes a more general look at the use of dessicants in HVAC. One possibility that intrigues me is their use in less humid climates over a complete year cycle: allow them to absorb water to dehumidify the air in summer, then heat them to release the water vapour in winter, to humidify the air. I used to work in an office here (Dublin) with an AC that worked OK in summer, but would dry the air out badly in winter. The relative humidity would drop as low as 20%, so people were feeling cold even though the temp was 25C (77F), and suffering problems with dry eyes and skin. The Irish HVAC people clearly didn't understand the need to control relative humidity at ~50%.

I thought I saw something on TV about 10 years ago using zeolites, this PDF mentions it http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/ancillary_loads/pdfs/heat_cooling.pdf

Sheesh, RTFA, already. They mention the coolerado and explain exactly why this new idea has the potential to do better.

Cause Coolerado uses Flash and TFA HTML5?

I hate to double post, but I just found this map. It explains why so little electricity is produced in the Southeast. Its a map of the available annual wind power for the US.

Your definition of viable doesn't take into account 'cost effective.' algae biofuel probably won't be cost effective until oil hits $800 a barrel. That would put gas prices at around $25 a gallon. If that happens, all transportation in the US will effectively stop, thus it's not viable in any real sense. So you are wrong.

Summarized: *handwavinghandwaving* "so you are wrong".

Try reading A Look Back at the U.S. Department of Energy's Aquatic Species Program: Biodiesel from Algae... you can go argue with the USDOE if you like. When even the oil-hungry US gov't says that you can do it, you have good reason to suspect that it's true. All the references you can eat are contained within.

Solar is better, but it still isn't competitive with traditional methods of generating electricity, without government subsidies. If it were, it would be 100% viable, and everyone would be doing it. But it's not. You have to take price into consideration with these things.

If it can be done at a profit, it doesn't have to be more profitable or even as profitable for it to be worth it to someone to do it. Therefore I conclude that the only reason it's not being done is some form of market-manipulating collusion... again, since it's been possible to operate such a business as profitable on a reasonable profit timescale since the 1970s.

Incidentally, even though algae is expensive, there are a number of companies and organizations trying to make algae truly viable. Some of these are even sponsored by oil companies. So in a way, you are also wrong when you say, "no oil company is building biodiesel plants." If it ever becomes viable, they will build the plants.

There's oil companies with small pilot plants, but only one company is serious about biodiesel-from-algae in the USA anyway. ConocoPhilips is doing something interesting with Tyson chicken in Germany...

We absolutely MUST replace coal fired electricity generation with low CO2 methods. Coal is the worst CO2 emitter.

I didn't say anything about replacing coal in the post you replied to. All I said was that nuclear power appeals to state planners not businesses.

I very much doubt that current renewable technologies are sufficient. The only stuff that is immediately deployable is wind and solar.

They are sufficient now. Those who build off the grid do so every day. And yea, solar and wind is employable today unlike nuclear power. According to Infoplease the Palo Verde 2, Ariz. is the largest reactor in the US, at 1,335 MWs. According to Wiki construction started in 1976 with it's first year of commercial operation in 1988, 12 years later. Now take wind turbines, erect and connect 10 5 megawatt turbines a month, and there are larger turbines, and in 1 year you've added 600 MWs or in 2 years 1,200 MWs. That's almost as much as Palo Verde 2 provides, in 1/6 the tyme. SciAm's A Solar Grand Plan says solar power "could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the Unites States, created by the National Renewable Energy Lab of the Department of Energy, details the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains along contain enough potential energy to electrify the US, but that's not the only region with large wind potential. On the East Coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina offshore wind farms could "supply all the energy needs of much of the East Coast and then some". From British Columbia to Southern California on the Pacific Coast could provide a lot as well. Actually hook a hard left in S Ca through AZ and NM to western Texas and the wind potential grows.

For baseloads geothermal is good though not for all of the baseload. Until large scale storage is available currently used power plants could provide the baseload.

Enhanced geothermal is very promising but there is still no commercial size power station.

Ah but there is commercial scale geothermal right now. In CA geothermal provided 13,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2007. It provides 20 percent of Hawaii's Big Island electricity. Geothermal provides 27% of Philippine's energy. Geothermal is even available and used in New York City.

If it comes to raising the planet's temperature by 5C or nuclear power, I'd have to say nuclear is the clear choice.

Fine, let businesses pay for it not taxpayers. No loan guaranties, limited liability, or other subsidies. However left to their own devices corporations will not build nuclear power plants.

When all is said and done, I think that the carbon pollution problem will only be solved by inexpensive clean electricity. Some hard choices will have to be made.

Unfortunately there is no inexpensive clean electricity. Well, except for the Negawatt, the energy not produced due to energy efficiency or simply cutting the energy used. Therein lies the hard choice, people don't want to give up what they have even if they will s

is that they're stupid. ... This has led to:
1) A ban on nuclear power here in California

Except environmentalists or greenies didn't stop nuclear power. As the Hooked on Subsidies article the pro freemarket CATO Institute republished, originally published by "Forbes", said it is state actors not the market that decides what nuclear power plants are built. Even in France and other nations, here's the relevant paragraph:
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

The "Hooked on Subsidies article brings up the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant being built in Finland. The French government owned business Areva and Siemans were building it, however Siemens sold it's interest to Areva. As of this tyme last year cost overruns have caused it's "3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion", to climb at least 50 percent. Market Watch published a story about a study that warns of steep cost overruns at new reactors.

2) The Sierra Club successfully shutting down a massive solar plant. (What? Solar is a green energy? But think of all the DESERT that would be covered by those panels! 25 tortoises live there!) Good luck getting more companies to put money into proposing green power generators, assholes. Similar stories exist for wind and tidal projects across the country.

I'm glad I don't donate to the Sierra Club. They're not the only hypocrites though. On the Atlantic Coast there are those who oppose offshore wind farms. Even Ted Kennedy opposed a wind farm, in Cape Cod. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States" lays out the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone has enough potential to supply all of the US with energy. Meanwhile SciAm published the article A Solar Grand Plan lays out how solar power can "supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." Then there are other potential energy sources as well. Geothermal energy supplied California with 13 terawatts or 4.5% of the electricity used in CA in 2007. One geothermal project in Hawaii is the Puna Geothermal Venture and it supplies the big island of 20% of it's electricity. The SciAm article Hawaii Says Aloha (Greetings) to Clean, Renewable Energy says geothermal energy can be expanded to supply more electricity:

"Last January, Hawaii signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) that would make the Aloha State the country's most aggressive in pursuing renewable energy. By 2030, it plans to obtain 70 percent of its power from clean energy (40 percent from renewables and 30 percent from energy efficiency). Outstripping California's goal of 33 percent by 2020, the Hawaii initiative is a green light for clean-tech experts and enthusiasts to set up shop in the heart of the Pacific and may become a blueprint (or greenprint) for the rest of the country."

Geothermal isn't only available in the west either. It is being used now in

Why not use real numbers? Another post pointed to the a Wikipedia article on the economics for new nuclear power plants.. This includes a section that includes capital cost estimates of $3,000-5,000/kW. These projects new projects are all in the $10B ballpark. These numbers are sourced from a January 2010 report by the World Nuclear Association, a nuclear power trade group, so this is probably as optimistic as you'll get.

For wind power, we can turn to the US government reports a quick search turned up the DoE's NREL annual report on wind power (May, 2008) show an installed cost of "$1,240/kW to $2,600/kW, with an average cost of $1,710/kW." Even accounting for the capacity factor difference, Wind is looking pretty competitive vs nuclear. (Also, from the NREL report, you can see the average turbine size is 1.65MW - using a 3KW turbine to calculate costs is just mind-boggingly silly.)

The other salient point is that while thousands of megawatts of new wind generation is being added annually (according to NREL, 35% of new generation capacity was wind), 0% is nuclear (the last plant that went online in the US was in 1996. The $8.3B loan backed by the Obama administration for the $14B A.W. Votgle plants aren't scheduled to come online until 2016 and 2017).

All this is a long way of saying that I'm quite surprised that your comment could possibly be rated informative. It's a rant based on a hare-brained back of the envelope calculation (although I do admit there's some humor in the fact that the $14B price tag that you're aghast about is the actual cost of a new 2200MW nuclear plant) that seems to have managed to make many claims and conclusions without having done some pretty basic research.

You are actually getting %50 sunlight to hydrogen efficiency at a 0.3 capacity factor with those engines

That sounds about right.

The Mobil M syngas to gasoline (also called methanol to gasoline), is %86 percent energy efficient

That sounds about right as well. And then there's the difference in electricity/gasoline to kinetic energy efficiency for the vehicles themselves.

1kW/m^2 * 1 acre * 1 year = 127,706,349 megajoules.

As I mentioned in my last post, it doesn't work that way. Take a look at what solar farms actually look like up close. Notice all the empty space on the grounds? You have to space them out or they'll shadow each other at any point other than noon and you will have spent a lot of money on hardware that's being used suboptimally. There's also roads and other wasted land. So if you're calculating based on solar input, you need to multiply not just by capacity factor, but a spacing factor as well. Or, conversely, if you want to assume full shadowing, you can't just use the numbers from an existing solar thermal plant; you'll need to calculate that one from 1kW/m^2 as well.

Probably the easiest way is just to compare the efficiencies. Solar thermal plants will generally get you somewhere between 30% and 50% generation efficiency, depending on the tech used (the latter case being the high temperature molten salt plants). Electric motors + inverters will generally get you somewhere in the range of 85-90% average efficiency. Li-ion packs are very efficient (96-99%). Transmission in the US averages 92.8% efficiency. I'm not sure what sort of distribution losses you'd have for your fuel -- I'd wager somewhere along the order of 5-10%. Gasoline engines operate in the mid-30s percent efficiency in peak conditions, but only average about 20% in typical driving conditions. So, putting it all together, you get 23-41% system efficiency vs. ~8% system efficiency. So overall, the gasoline comes off a bit better in the calculations than my first impression, but obviously it's not going to beat out just using electricity.

Still, there is potential if they can do it affordably. That's a heck of a lot more land efficient than biofuels, even algae, and probably cheaper than algae too (the tankage requirements kill it for algae). Still, the hardware costs seem bound to be a lot higher than for solar thermal electricity costs, just judging from a manufacturing complexity perspective.

Also, Rei, are you an energy researcher or something??? You make a lot of really good comments here on /. about energy.

I work in the EV industry, so it's part of my job to stay on top of various battery and fuel technologies. :) My company develops software to provide accurate range calculation to vehicles (including terrain, weather forecasts, etc). While we launched it for EVs since they have particular need for it, it can work with any kind of powertrain, present or future (unless the laws of physics up and change on us!), so I need to stay on top of things. Also, my father works in the oil industry (he's actually the CEO of one of the US's largest refiners), so I get diverse perspectives.

lol... it doesn't deny climate change, what it does do it show where source material came from

And my science link didn't sat where it came from? If you want me to believe that then you didn't read it.

also i think you'll find that little things such as the CRU data leak which showed them to be a bunch of number fiddling and lying turds also throw doubt on the human cause of any climate change.

Where did I say anything about CRU? Without googling it I don't even know what the CRU is.

now where you have people fiddling numbers and using dubious sources i think it's not unreasonable to have reasonable doubt.

Oh, I agree. Let's take for instance where deniers are saying we're in a cooling trend. If fact the 2000s were the hottest decade on record. The only way to make it look like there's been some cooling is by using 1998 as the starting date. Because of El Nino that was a hot year and temperatures spiked as shown by this graph. There is no cooling, in fact the 2000s was the hottest decade.

however i think it you google a little you will find the net awash with 3660 hits for "IPCC student dissertation climbing magazine"

And if you google Syed Hasnain new scientist magazine ipcc you'll find about 200,000. The first one is the link I provided with the two following also from "New Scientist". I don't know, maybe they were both used, so I'm willing to let that go for now.

there also happens to be an ASSLOAD of people making truckloads of money out of ittwinned with a mass of rank hypocrisy

And just as above, about "people fiddling numbers", there are lots of people who could make tankers full of money out of disproving Global Warming. Coal, petroleum, and other fossil fuel industries stand to lose a lot of money if their products are regulated and or taxed. Now which has the deeper pockets, Exxon-Mobile or Greenpeace?

Now I'm not saying we have to do whatever it takes to stop Global Warming. I don't even like that term and prefer Climate Change. What I would like to see is alternative energy sources developed and for the US to work on them before we become has-beens. While China is busy building new coal fired power plants they are also busy building massive wind farms and installing solar energy systems. Mexico and the Philippines are using geothermal energy and so can the US. By one estimate, SciAm's A Solar Grand Plan, solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electricity and 35% of it's total energy by 2050 using just a part of the Southwest. And the NREL's Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the Unites States lays out the wind potential of different areas of the US. The Rockies from Canada to northern Texas for instance contain enough potential energy to supply all 48 continuous states with electricity. However they aren't the only places. On the West Coast from British Columbia to Southern CA then east through AZ and NM to west Texas there's good wind sites. To the east from the Appalachians in the south up through the Northeast there is good wind potential both on-shore and off-shore. NIMBYs, notably the deceased Ted Kennedy, did whatever they could to stop offshore wind farms. In 2007 California, already mentioned for solar and wind power, got 4.5% of it energy from geothermal sources.

Also don't

you will never get enough energy through renewables unless solar platforms in orbit start working -- they will, but I would not count on them this century.

This is way out of date. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab concluded in 2004 that solar panels produce the energy needed to manufacture them in 2 years. Those panels can last 30 years so for 28 years they contribute more energy than it took to make them. Wind turbines can produce as much energy in a few months as it took to make them.

Of course nuclear power supporters disagree with anything that shows nuclear power is not needed.

Falcon

I'll disagree with anything that attempts to be the end, all be all solution that supporters of Renewables attempt to pitch them as.

As someone said earlier, no one is saying "no renewables, period", we're saying we don't have time to play with them right now when our biggest problem isn't something they can actually help with.

No one has ever even contemplated replacing a Coal-fired plant with a renewable source of energy because renewable in no way, shape, or form have the dependability to be counted on to produce 24 hour a day, 7 day a week, 365 days a year Electricity. I'm not making this stuff up, it's simply a fact of life right now.

Does that mean it will always be true? Of course not. The problem I have is that we could be replacing Coal with nuclear NOW, even if we later discover a better way forward.

You can't try and solve every problem at once because all you'll end up doing in NOTHING AT ALL. We can solve a big chunk of our pollution problem right now by switching to Nuclear. We'll tackle the well understood problems with Nuclear when we get to that bridge.

Oh, before I forget, Nuclear Plants repay their "energy to build" bill in about six months of constant operation (to show I didn't forget the original point of the post :)).

you will never get enough energy through renewables unless solar platforms in orbit start working -- they will, but I would not count on them this century.

This is way out of date. The government's National Renewable Energy Lab concluded in 2004 that solar panels produce the energy needed to manufacture them in 2 years. Those panels can last 30 years so for 28 years they contribute more energy than it took to make them. Wind turbines can produce as much energy in a few months as it took to make them.

Of course nuclear power supporters disagree with anything that shows nuclear power is not needed.

Falcon

Photovoltaics routinely exceed 20%.

No that is wrong, please don't disseminate this sort of misinformation. The most efficient PV panels you can buy today are rated less then 20% efficiency, and that's per cell, a whole panel will be several percent lower. That's in ideal conditions - heat, inverters, charge controllers, batteries all knock a big chunk of that efficiency.

No, you are wrong...well, not exactly wrong, but you too are spreading mis-information. My solar panels on Monday produced energy for the day at ~900 Wh/m^2, and that is AC watts, so not your "ideal" number, a real number complete with conversion losses. My city's 30 year maximum flat panel solar radiation exposure for the month of January (from here) was 5.6 kWh/m^2-day. So let's assume Monday matched that maximum, that means my system hit 16% real world efficiency. I don't have the most efficient panels you can buy today, today's most efficient panels outperform mine by over 15%. That's now approaching the 20% quoted by the grandparent. I agree, it is incorrect to state "photovoltaics routinely exceed 20%" in the context of AC watts, but it is correct to state panels approach 20% and therefore cells exceed 20%.

And as I stated in another post, it sure looks to me like economically my panels are kicking the tar out of this idea in terms of cost and production.

Perhaps, but it won't exempt you from considerations of distance and transport between your place of gathering/creating that energy and the places where people need it.

But it applies no matter the energy source. If energy can be generated locally it doesn't have to be transported far. Generate geothermal, solar, tidal, and wind where feasible. While geothermal may not be feasible everywhere wind pretty well covers the nation. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details where wind is good and where it's not. For instance start in the Northwest. Along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Baja California wind is good. In Southern CA make a hook and turn east to western Texas and it continues. Now the Rockies, start in Canada and continue to northern Texas. Then go to the East, Atlantic, Coast. The Appalachians , Catskills, and Poconos Mountains have good locations. Offshore is good from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. Solar is also good along the Pacific Coast and on to Texas. An article I recently read said 10 percent of the land the US government owns in Nevada can produce enough electricity for the US.

The idea is to generate electricity locally but have a national grid so that when one region can't generate enough then other regions will make up for it.

Falcon Falcon

The reliability tests that are used to certify panels today are the result of 30 years of study and testing of panels in the field. They are the best ways we know to test reliability to ensure the rated lifetime. Its fine to be skeptical, but go study the science and at least be an informed skeptic. One good place to start would be this History of Accelerated and Qualification Testing of Terrestrial Photovoltaic Modules: A Literature Review(pdf).

The fact that I have personally seen old panels still working is not an anecdote. Especially as it's used to illustrate the point that there is existence proof that at least some panels can last that long. The facility I visited is called PVUSA in Davis CA, it was built in 1986. Its well worth a tour to see how solar technology has evolved over the last 25 odd years often in response to the reliability issues discovered there.

We respect to recycling, First Solar offers a recycling program today. This is mainly to address the issues of the Cadmium in the panels escaping into the environment if the panels were dumped. However it is very reasonable to assume that the precious metals in a solar panels can be recovered using methods that exist today to recycle old electronics. The materials used are very similar (glass, Silicon, Aluminum, Copper, Silver, numerous organic resins & some polymers). Whether it will be economic or not remains to be seen.

Even with solar being taken seriously, you'd be using up a lot of land (hopefuly not arable) to be able to provide enough to satisfy household + industrial need.

Just as almost everyone else does, you're concentrating on the One Big Energy Source instead of looking at what sources can be harvested in different locations. The "Economist" has the article A new look at solar power about a solar farm in the Mojave Desert in CA. Both it and the article Sunny Outlook: Can Sunshine Provide All U.S. Electricity? says it produces 350 megawatts of energy, enough to power 90,000 homes. According to the SciAm article using the technology available in 2006 building solar farms on a piece of land 92 miles squared in Nevada, that's just 10& the Bureau of Land Management's land, would produce almost all of the electricity of the US.

That's just solar power. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details the wind potential of different regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind energy to supply all of the 48 continuous states with electricity. Then there's geothermal, which is a baseload provider, hydroelectric, and tidal power sources. One geothermal power plant on Hawaii's Big Island provides 25% of the island's electricity. Geothermal generated 13 terawatts hours of electricity in California. Combine these with a rebuilt smart national electric grid, which needs to be done anyways, and almost every coal, Natural Gas, and Nuclear power plant can be closed. Until the bulk energy storage problem is solved some plants can be kept running for more of the baseload.

Falcon

To back this up, there have been substantial job cuts at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory twice in its history. The first time was when Reagan cut the staff by about 50%, and Bush, Jr. cut about 10% in 2005. Considering that NREL is one of the centers of expertise of photovoltaics in the world, and often hold the record for efficiency for photovoltaics it does look pretty suspicious.

Windturbines are hightech products. They seem so easy, but they are not.

1.) the blades
- these are aerodynamic blades
- they are CFD and FEM-caculated
- they are physically tested
- validating caculations with measurements

The technology and engineering knowledge that goes into the blade design is a highly protected secret to each manufacturer.

2.) the power train
- varying loads, from varying directions
- multipiple stress for the main bearing(s)
- dynamical simulated powertrains
- gear boxes with weights from 20 to 70 metric tons
- nacelle masses up to 500 metric tons,
- rotor masses up to 100 metric tons
- flexible blades up to 60 meters and above
made of fiber and carbon composite material

3.) generator, operation & control
- computers and sensor networks measuring with high resolution on the grid side and adjusting the powergeneration to grid spikes and lows
and try to dampen torque spikes on the power train.

Response times within sub 5ms .. for big rotating inertiamass.

Grid complaince, grid safety, load reduction.

4.) hub heights 80 meters and above

5.) rated power from 1 Megawatt up to 6 Megawatts

Wind turbines are highly engineered products,
and if they are not .. they fail.

The higher the rated power of those turbines goes
the more engineering effort has to be taken.

Btw. on the engineering side the U.S.
are head to head with european researchers, and engineers

http://wind.nrel.gov/designcodes/
http://www.ge.com/

Strange, the first part of my post got eaten between preview and submit. I posted the numbers the state used, which are based on research, rather than idle speculation like your argument.

I've seen more strange things happen here then that. Your post does make more sense now.

They came up with the figure that, in the initial phase, this would save a driver $16 a year in gas, and when it's fully ramped up, $20 per year. Overall, they estimate it reducing statewide emissions by 700,000 tons of CO(2). You have a nice-sounding argument; they have the results of actual empirical testing. Even the groups opposing these rules aren't disputing that the rules will be effective, and those guys are industry pros with engineering degrees and everything.

You need to post the results of real tests rather than intellectual exercises.

They are probably referencing material in this PDF. I thought I posted it before but it must have been another thread. Another person pointed me to it and I'll relay the same problems I have with it. The problem is that in order to get the savings on fuel and emissions, it requires a redesign of the AC cooling unit plus systems to be installed that aren't even in existence today. That's fine and all if the purposed law actually required the changes to the cars AC units too. However, it doesn't which is what makes the purposed rule so asinine.

It's like saying that if you build a dam and put in an electrical power generation plant in place, you will save X in pollution and then never building the dam and putting a non-functional power generation system in place. I guess what I'm trying to explain is that it's only part of the solution and it's superficial at that. With how cars currently operate, no difference would be seen at all.

Sure you can; I phrased that poorly. I meant comment formally, not comment on Slashdot. The rules are open to public comments before they're set in stone, but you have to live here to do so.

But you're still a damned fool for arguing that things ain't the way they are, like the man who saw an elephant and said "there ain't no such animal". If you want to argue with the results of controlled testing, argue with the methodology, or find or perform a study that gets different results. Waving your arms and spouting theory is meaningless when compared to empirical research.

I think the argument has been made. I'm generally against regulations that cost more then any potential savings but the glazed coatings or only part of the picture. The problem is that they are ignoring the parts that actually make the differences and realize the savings in both fuel and emissions. If I'm hand waving, it's only because I wasn't more clear earlier. Just as with the old tinted windows, that alone will not realize any fuel or emissions savings because of the way current cars are designed. If they change the designs of the AC units, then the savings can be realized- just not until then.

However, less need for AC only means that the venting controls will mix less or more fresh air across the diffuser/exchanger in order to maintain a comfortable temperature.

Bullshit. Less need for A/C means the steady state load for the system is smaller, which means smaller A/C systems can be installed, resulting in better fuel efficiency. See this report for their conclusions.

We do need to think about our future energy needs both with respect to the environment and energy security. What we don't need is silly government micro management of our lives.

I agree here.

So yes that means we need to subsidize nuclear, wind and solar power.

Here I disagree. There should be no subsidies. Let people pay the full cost of the energy they use and they're more likely to be conservative.

The problem is that the greenies block everything.

What's with the FUD?

greenies don't want to allow wind power on mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire even though no-one lives on the top of a mountain.

Here is one who supports geothermal, solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. And most of those I know also support them. Googling falcon geothermal or solar or wind site:slashdot.org you can see where I have repeatedly supported renewable energy. For instance with the " Wind Could Provide 100% of World Energy Needs" thread I posted a number of tymes in support of alternative energy. I have also posted the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States which details the wind potential of various parts of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind power to supply the 48 continuous states with power. In some of my posts I posted I supported the Solar Grand Plan. In it they conclude solar energy could "supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050."

Falcon

WTF would someone mod that troll for!? Anyways, however dumb his claim about the sky color in Ohio may be. He's pretty much right about solar energy in the Midwest for the most part, I live in SE Indiana: have a look for yourself. Wind power doesn't look much better for us either.

As a person that lives in a region powered mostly by coal, this whole lets tax the fuck outta coal cap & trade bandwagon annoys the shit out of me. I'm sure it doesn't concern all you hippies living out on the East and West coasts with your fancy solar, wind and wave power, your energy will be relatively cheap in the foreseeable future. Oh well, screw everyone else for our agenda! Right?

Explain exactly how places like Southern Indiana for example, are going to be able to completely replace coal fired plants with wind, or solar power. I don't see it being viable, EVER, especially not with current technology. Throw the extra demand on the grid due to everyone plugging their electric cars (that btw, are woefully inefficient in northern climates, especially if you like premium features like... heat and defrost) in, and it becomes even more unrealistic!

I'm all for nuclear power (which AC treehugger above doesn't even acknowledge as a "green" source of power), but even with that; assuming you can get a nuclear plant approved and built in a reasonable amount of time (which you can't with current retarded legislation), where the hell is the funding going to come from for that? The economy is shit right now, all we need is more taxes and higher energy costs, which raise the cost of pretty much everything else produced. Guess where most of your corn comes from?

Wind has about a 30% avaliability factor to it (at least here in the US), so in order to actually have a gigawatt of power availabe at any time you need about 3 times the name plate capacity. So in this case you need about 3 gigawatts of installed capacity to equal a gigawatt of a normal baseload unit (i.e. coal or nuclear, in this case space based solar). The wind doesn't always blow, and the way around that in the US and I'm assuming in Europe and other larger landmasses, is that even though the wind might not be blowing here it is blowing somewhere. Japan has very limited amounts of space avaliable right now and I'm guessing would have a major problem if the wind isn't blowing because there just isn't enough avaliable area to spread out your generation. If you don't think this is a problem try looking up ERCOT (the acroynym for the Texas power grid, yes they are on their own grid) wind event or just click here http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/pdfs/2008/ela_ercot_event.pdf One of the factors of this event was the loss of 1500 Megawatts of wind in 3 hours.

Show me safe nuclear power.

How about any other mass produced energy source (not solar).

Ah, disallow an energy source that can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs and 35% of it's total energy by 2050. Okay, let's use wind, which could supply 20% of the US's electricity by 2030.

Stack the deck against alternatives when nuclear power would not survive without subsidies.

Falcon

The algae based biofuels in the article use salt water and can be grown in places that do not displace food crops. Water usage and food displacement are issues in general, but not for the biofuel in the article. The summary commentary is also wrong about the price per barrel oil. In 1995, the US DOE Aquatic species program concluded that it would only take $60/barrel to be competitive with fossil fuels. A summary done by the National Renewable Energy Lab can be found here: http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/pdfs/jarvis.pdf I don't agree with the article claims that production could displace all fossil fuels, but it's a good start.

5kWhr/m^2 is average for the globe. Flagstaff Arizona is closer to 6, Archorage is closer to 2.5, for a fairly complete list for the US see this page.

Environmentally nuclear is vastly better than all the other serious energy sources.

Prove it.

Now that I asked fro proof I'll provide my own evidence which supports my position as well as contradicts yours. "Report: Wind the Best Energy; Nuclear, Coal and Ethanol the Worst". "For Cheap Clean Energy, Go Geothermal, Study Says". "Oregon Geothermal Energy = Baseload Energy".

Wind and solar are not serious energy sources as is hinted by how much subsidies they need

By that criteria nuclear power is not a serious energy source because it needs massive subsidies. Not only does it need guarantied loans but it also needs it's liability limited and government disposal of it's waste. All alternative energy sources put together including geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, even biofuels only get a fraction of the subsidies nuclear power gets. "While renewable energy may require subsidies for the immediate future, nuclear power needs subsidies forever." From the Financial Times:

"'But those hoping for handouts would be disappointed. The "incentives" for nuclear and carbon capture and storage are only there to "help a nascent sector grow', he said."

"We are not going to achieve a competitive [nuclear] sector by handing out subsidies... we are not in the business of giving out subsidies. We are in the business of maintaining a level playing field."

"It's telling that the 'level playing field' the industry wants and the one the government wants bear little resemblance to each other."

Something is still going to need to provide the power to run the aluminium foundries and nuclear is the cleanest, safest long term solution for that.

Neither you nor anyone else has proven that nuclear power is clean yet I have provided evidence solar and wind are clean. Such as 2 of the links I provide above. Studies linked to say both wind and geothermal and cheaper and cleaner than nuclear. Now will you provide links to evidence says nuclear is cleaner?

Lets run through the check lists.

I provide evidence that this list is wrong, where is yours saying you're right? And for one on that list, "Wind is nice but it's unpredictable and bigger wind farms kill migrating birds", buildings cats, and cars kill more birds than turbines.

Try again.

Together they can never provide more than 20% of the grids needs simply for stability reasons. This is pretty much a hard cap, once you get more than that from unpredictable sources rolling blackouts start to become a real problem.

So you know more about solar power than the writers of the SciAm article "A Solar Grand Plan", and know more about wind power than the writers of a new study in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science" as well as those who created the Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States at the National Renewable Energy Lab? What is your degree in and where did you get it so that you're smarter than they are? The SciAm article says that by 2050 solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs. The National Acad