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Power Electronics Help to Control Electrical Grids
An anonymous reader writes: "IEEE Spectrum magazine has a timely article about how power electronics are proving necessary for the widespread connection of wind turbines to the electric power grid. It explains many issues that currently make it difficult to utilize wind power. Older articles discuss other issues affecting the nation's power grid."
A little ironic that this article on a world wide power grid was published in the September issue of Wired.
:)
IEEE Spectrum magazine has a timely article
It's kind of funny how articles about the power grid appear in magazines across the world every month of every year, but the ones that just happened to appear this month are "eerily prophetic".
The key is nuclear power.
Coal power is ok, it is cheap it is cleaner then it use to be, like everything else technology has improved it 300% since the 1970's.
Natural gas/oil is the favorate right now. Unfortunatly our government isn't allowing us to tap the gigantic resources we have so we are running out of it. We have enough oil in our country to last us another 30 years easy(with projected increases in consumption), yet we depend on the dildo's from OPEC, but that is ending with eastern european countries and russia getting into the market.
Hydrogen economy. What a freaking joke. I can't beleive that people fell for this crap. The energy has to come from somewhere, right now it comes from oil. So hydrogen would actually be wastefull and increase pollution. Why don't we just power our cars from rocks tied to ropes on long poles? We lift the rocks up, tie them to cars, drop the rocks and the rope would be tied to a pully attacted to the wheels. WEEE!!!
Water, wind, solar. Most places do not have enough wind/sun/water to power anything meaningfull. Maybe if we kick everybody out of montana and fill the entire state full of wind farms me MAY just have enough power to run parts of californa. Well only during parts of the year.
Nuclear: Lots of power, lots of fuel. We can power a large city for ten years with a handfull of pellets. The waste is insigificant comparied to the waste from other sources of fuel. The only thing standing in the way is ingnorance. Pure and simple. We have thousands of nuclear plants all over the country, they have one minor burp of gas from one plant and people are freaked out for decades. All these plants are running from late 1970's technology at best and they are perfectly safe. Of course unless they are soviet power plants whose "waste" was designed to be nuclear weapons grade-able. Such a freaking joke. Ignorance is what is standing in the way and the vast majority (not all of course) of anti-nuclear freaks are the modern day equivelent of Luddites
Lots of stories about home fuel cells powered by natural gas, like this one. No trucks, since most local codes would not allow you to store two months worth of liquified natural gas in your garage or backyard. Heavy dependence on the natural gas delivery pipes. Some potential problems (all amenable to solution, I believe, just be prepared to spend money):