Slashdot Mirror
Green Energy Almost Cost-Competitive with Fossil Fuels
js7a writes "As reported in the Houston Chronicle, the sharply rising cost of natural gas and other fossil fuels has caused the cost of renewable energy to finally reach the price of nonrenewables. However, wind still has some catching up to do: 'a 10 percent wind- and 90 percent water-generated mix is about $9 per month less expensive than the 100 percent wind plan.' As more wind generation and grid transmission capacity is built, wind will eventually become more competitive than hydroelectric, but hydro and other sources will be required to balance grid demand in calm areas. Slashdot has been following this trend."
I'm not saying wind power isn't advantageous; it is renewable. But it's unsightly, can be costly (suitable areas for wind farms are often near the coast, where land is expensive), and is noisy. There's some research to complete, some work to do, before this technology becomes "green" IMO.
Sigs cause cancer.
1) Fossil fuels have huge investment, economies of scale and infrastructure already, which bring prices down. As sustainable energy gets more popular, it will get even cheaper.
2) Nobody ever factors in the cost of cleanup (at best) or total extinction (at worst) into the cost of fossil fuels. If you add the cost of removing the byproducts and side-effects to each column, sustainable energy pulls way ahead.
Not that I expect the current administration to do anything about it.
why do 'greens' throw so much effort into things like wind, solar, and hydro, when the only real solution to replacing fossil fuels is nuclear power?
The visual pollution is crazy with wind farms. Nothing like industrial machinery stretching across hill and dale to make you want to get out an enjoy mother nature. No, I'd almost rather have nuclear power plant IMBY than a wind farm.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I'm glad to see research continuing into alternatives. Just because something isn't 100% ready yet is no reason not to pursue it. Just think what weaning the U.S. off oil-dependence (yes, long term thinking here, try not to let your hat fly off your head) would do for its world politics. Whoops. Never mind. This is a message from the oil companies reminding you not to think that way. We now return you to your reality-based TV program.
That might be a good theory if the aim was to start using renewable energy as quickly as possible. However, that is not the main objective. Environmentalists want to transfer to green energy before we pump too much more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Using all of the oil reserves over many millenia may be sustainable. Releasing all of that carbon in one quick burst most certainly is not. Dynamic systems usually respond better to gradual sustained inputs than to large magnitude step changes. The climate is no exception.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
That's price, not cost. The cost of petro fuels includes bills for things like Iraq wars, hurricanes/floods/droughts, oil spills... We'll be paying that off long after the oil's gone.
--
make install -not war
The lip-service paid to inconvenient forms of alternative fuel by United States Federal Government cronies is nothing more than a political ploy to obscure the facts for the benefit of our generation's robber barons.
A real alternative has always been available which can be produced by existing oil-refining equipment and which is capable of powering existing electric generators and sub-generators as well as existing gasoline and diesel engines without modification. That alternative is called biomass.
Pyrolysis, the process of destructive distillation by which crude oil is transformed into usable fuels, is also the process by which fresh plant cellulose--biomass--is converted into charcoal, gasoline, fuel oils such as diesel, and natural gas. By using fresh plant matter instead of ancient plant matter, you establish what is called a 'closed carbon cycle,' in which no new carbon dioxide is being added to the atmosphere.
The most prolific, and also the most sustainable, producer of usable biomass is the industrial hemp plant. It requires no pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, or fertilizer. Its strong, deep roots quickly break up the soil and choke out weeds, and its 3-4 month growing cycle and year-round growing season make it an ideal rotation crop. It also has no mind-altering properties.
For these reasons, several states and numerous agricultural and industrial associations have already petitioned the DEA to issue the hemp farming licenses that it has the authority to issue. In fact, the DEA has already issued pitifully small, ridiculously regulated hemp farming licenses in Hawaii for the purposes of study. The Canadian government--which put an end to hemp farming around the same time our own government did--has recently (1990s) reallowed hemp farming and has experienced no regulatory difficulties.
I therefore recommend that the United States Federal Government mandate that the DEA license and regulate sufficient acreage of hemp farming for the purposes of full biomass fuel production. Additionally, in order that the free market be further stimulated, I recommend that all federal fossil fuel-related subsidies be moved to biomass fuels, and that tax disincentives be enacted on all fossil fuel-related industry.
Thank you, come again.
Art Schools Dietzilla
How is this insighful? Burn all the fossil fuels we can. Lets liberate every bit of green house gas that we can. Lets melt the polar caps and de salinate the oceans and stop the deep ocean currents. Running out of fuel isn't the problem, the problem is the effects of those fuels on our environment.
Have you ever seen a commercial windfarm? The blades are enormous, slow, and waaaay above the ground. The "base of the pole" is relatively small. You could build houses among them without difficulty-- and at least in the midwest, they are typically built in farmland that still functions as farmland. The single windfarm I've seen in california was built in what was clearly middle-of-nowhere desert. The only other thing I saw near it was a parking lot/graveyard for unused commercial airplanes.
Generally, windmills are a way to make the land do something extra, rather than less than it is capable of.
Of course, there's always the offshore farms, too-- and that's even better. The plans for the farm off the coast of new york puts them far enough out you can't see them from land. They're gigantic, so complaints about "hazards to navigation" fall a little flat-- if the boat's captain can't avoid a ginormous windmill, how does he expect to navigate around invisible sandbars and shallow areas?
All that said, I'd love to see working fusion, too, and have nothing against well-run fission plants-- but why not put windmills on farmland or desert? Or even housing editions in the suburbs? The space is there, and adding windmills to the average middle-of-nowhere midwestern farm does very little to its farming output.
Indeed this would be nice but I would like to know if this 20 year span factored in the oportunity cost. One can expect to earn 6-10% a year on investments, does his 20 year plan take that into account. If so I would think everyone would do it.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
Why do "nuke nuts" get so into nuclear power that they fail to see how a mixed power system is more practical?
I love nuclear power. But I don't see why nuke plants should keep us from putting solar shingles on our rooftops-- so what if they only make 50% of the power you need, and only during the day? It's just that much less load on the nuke plants. At the very least, it would soften the peak load from my air conditioner in the summer daytime.
And why not stick a few windmills in the middle of farmland? Indiana farmland is like a giant, flat, patchwork quilt. It's not the sort of grand scenery you'd mind a windmill in the middle of, and you can farm around the poles just fine.
Why can't anybody take a moderate, practical look at things and realize that both solutions *together* are our most likely bet to get out of the coal and oil dependency?
Nobody's going to survive on windmills alone just yet. But why not use them where it's practical?
I've lost count of how many greenies I've driven insane by telling them that letting people use all the oil they can get their hands on is a good thing, in that it will drive people to use alternatives sooner due to supply/demand curves.
They are probably being driven insane by your idiocy.
Why do you think "greenies" want people to switch to alternatives? For the sake of it? Of course not. They want people to switch because using oil is harmful. So suggesting that we increase the harm is just plain stupid, isn't it?
You are hitting on something though. What will it cost to refine this shale oil? We need to reduce our dependence on oil, particularly foreign oil, while it is still inexpensive.
There's a lot that can be done in the US, Japanese and British people consume about 45% less energy than American people, per capita. Should the cost of energy suddenly go up, as I would expect, particularly for political reasons, they will be much less hard hit than we are.
Hydro can not be considered green. Hydro power displaces ecosystems, changes environments, slows rivers down, etc. There are many environmental problems with hydroelectric power. Nuclear is actually a more viable green solution if the waste products are kept onsite in sufficient containment and the waste water is allowed to cool first.
Wind energy is far cheaper that oil. Look at it this way:
The cost of wind energy:
Buy land in windy place
Build windfarm.
The cost of oil:
Forge alliance with dictators, oppressors, torturers and terrorists.
Provide covert funding and weapons to people who will later bite you in the ass, for example: Osama bin Laden, Sadam Hussen, the shah of Iran, the Taliban, etc. etc.
Station tens of thousands of troups in 3rd world countries full of extremists who get off on killing Americans... during PEACETIME.
During war station hundreds of thousands of troops in said countries.
Fight on average 1 major war per decade at the costs of hundreds of billions of dollars to protect oil producing hellspawn from non-oil-producing hellspawn.
I think we need a new tax. No, really.
Gasoline should have an additional $0.50 per gallon tax and traditional lightbulbs should have an $0.10 per bulb tax.
The funds from this should directly fund research into alternative energy, means of conservation, and entirely new technologies.
I've heard that if every household in America installed only 1 compact florescent in place of a standard bulb, it would be the environmental equivelant of taking 1,000,000 cars off the road.
The only way America is going to change is if it's given an economic reason that hits home.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
I agree - we must keep in mind that the True Cost (tm) of fossil fuels is much larger than most people think. This is because many of the drawbacks of fossil fuels are obfuscated, such as pollution and reliance on foreign and sometimes hostile nations. Also, much of the true cost of using oil is subsidized by the military. After all, we don't have a lot of oil here in the US, so going after world oil supplies has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for quite some time. While it is true that, pound for pound, oil is the easiest way to harness energy given current technologies, the equation begins to shift when you factor in what we must do to secure that oil. In some ways, shouldn't the resources being spent fighting in Iraq be tacked-on to the "cost of using oil"? Unfortunately, that is a more abstract concept, and hence, people often do not consider such things... its not quite so easy to measure how much one of our soldier's lives is worth in dollars and cents.
Fossil fuels are *far* more expensive than the market price would indicate.
my religion lies somewhere between buddhism and super monkey ball - pamphlet?
oh, did we successfully transfer the world economy off of fossil fuels when I wasn't looking?
Nothing has been proven yet. Do you have any idea what it's going to take to make such a shift? We either need to have several years left of relatively cheap fossil fuels, minimum, or we should have started this shift years ago. This is not as simple as *poof* we're using green energy now because a price per kilowatt hit a magic number. Green energy isn't even ready to take over yet, nevermind the economics involved with the infrastructure shift.
We're in for a ride my friend. I don't know what industry you're in, but I've seen my manufacturers raise prices 2-4 times this year and our shipping costs are quickly climbing as well. There is a lag between rising energy and rising everything else, and we're just starting to get the effects of the first jump in price. I'm scared of what's going to happen *next year*, and there is no way green power is taking over that fast.
We're not necessarily doomed, but glibly saying "hey, keep using oil" shows a complete lack of respect for the factors at work here. We could very well be in big trouble here because we haven't been diligently working to prepare for a switch from a fossil-fueled economy. We certainly should be NOW, and we still are not. It's starting, but I seriously see it as too little, too late at this point. The math just isn't working out anymore, not with China and India in developement booms.
Sure, there are people who don't like the look of wind farms, because you can see the things, just like there are people who don't like seeing cell phone antennas. I've driven by the Altamont Pass wind farms fairly often, and once looked into renting a house that was located out there, and ok, it was a bit spacey, and if you've got epilepsy it might not be where you want to live, but the wind turbines are nowhere near as ugly as a smokestack or a coal strip-mine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why waste the money placing the solar arrays on empty land? The metropolitan areas in the southwest have plenty of real estate for you to use. It's all sitting on top of homes and other buildings covered in terracota tiles! Seriously.. Why haven't the power companies (with the help of state gov't?) in the area implement a program to get solar panels on rooftops? Cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Diego and such are missing out on opportunity here. They'd be doubly praised by the environuts: 1) for using solar energy and 2) not destroying any habitat (except maybe pigeons, but who cares about them?). I've had this idea in my head for years, but I never see anything happen in this area.
What is your penile percentile?
I'm all for clean low-cost energies, but wind technology just doesn't work. The silicon valley outskirts near Livermore has had wind turbines for decades. Those things are rarely spinning, and are often broken. It can't be cost efficient to replace this giant motor/generator all the time because the technology sucks. If they worked, there would be more of them sprouting on Them Thar Hills- but its just the opposite, they're not rebuilding them as they fail.
And hydroelectric energy is hardly good for the environment either. Anything downstream from where the dam is built will be forever changed, and rarely for the better.
Its silly to invest in alternate energy supplies just for the sake of doing something different. Often the environment is worse of for it.
Dude, they have always hated us, get over it
Maybe you just don't study history, but have you ever heard of the Crusades? Follow that by the betrayal following WWI where France and England carved up the middle east from the old Ottoman Empire rather than putting them in charge of their own land. Then follow that up with the US forcing dictatatorial rule on them from the Shah of Iran (you know we overthrew a democracy to put him in charge, right?), the Saudi royal family, massive support to Saddam from Reagan, etc., etc., etc.
It make you wonder why they hate us doesn't it?
Or maybe history just isn't patriotic enough for you.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
And if you read further, you'd have read that the ENERGY that is causing those cute little wind blades to turn is being generated by the cars pushing the air in front of them.
Now - you add resistance to that air (the little wind blades) and guess what?
The cars now have to work harder to push the air and as a result - get lower fuel economy.
No free lunch there either.
First they burn books, then they burn people.
Great criticism from someone who knows absolutely nothing about me. For all you know I could be the head of Greenpeace.
You know what the problem is? People on slashdot pounding out crazy starry-eyed ideas about zero-point energy, and how we should all be doing vastly impractical things that waste huge ammounts of our time and money, so that there is one ounce less (perfectly safe) scrap metal being thrown away.
As a matter of fact, handing off old appliances to waste management facilities will result in it being properly handled, and recycled into something better, more effecient, etc. The question of price is a big one... If it costs 10Xs more to get an appliance that is slightly more effecient, then you're worse off getting it, because the time you've spent working to get that money is probably producing more pollution than you'd save.
If you want to go out and lobby for legislation that requires all manufacturers to provide service documentation, that would be very productive... Posting on slashdot that people should keep using their old refridgerators is NOT useful in the slightest, and is quite environmentally unfriendly.
(yes, I realize the AC is not the OP, just making a point)
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As a PE Mech E specializing in power systems and a former electrical power trader, I continue to marvel at the propeller heads who think wind is the savior of US power. Wind is a nice little side supply where the winds are right and someone is willing to foot the bill. It does not make much economic sense in most areas because of the power it is replacing. Most baseline (efficient) plants, such as cogen, coal and nukes are slow to start and stop. The least efficient generators are used to meet the peak demand on a given day because they can be turned on and off. Wind is only able to replace the peak load because an operator cannot take a large plant off line on a whim. Even on the peak power side, you would still have to maintain reserve generation for days where the wind does not blow but it is still hot. So the competition is between the marginal cost of FF generation vs the capital recovery of the wind farm. The wind farm cannot trade into the forward markets well because he cannot choose when to come on line. If the wind operator does take a forward and the wind does not blow he will be forced into the daily market to cover his obligation when prices are the highest. Often he will be able to come into market when the wind is blowing, often cooler, when the temps are lower. More supply less demand, lower prices. The theory is great, it all looks good with the averages. In practice, the no one gets the average cost of generation, they get the market price when they can bring it to market. From personal experience, the wind traders were almost always on the bad side of a trade. If you need green power, go nuclear!!
The article quotes numbers for a 90%
hydro and 10% wind mix. It doesn't say
pure wind is cheaper.
If hydro weren't competitive, then humans
wouldn't have been building hydro-electric plants
for the past 100 years or so (and fossil fuels
used to be really cheap before the 1970s).
The only problem with hydro is that there's
not enough of it, or at least not enough of
it that isn't tied up by environmental
concerns (fish gotta live too), or indigenous
people claims such as in Quebec. If there
was enough of it, then don't you think all
power plants would hydro and not fuel burners?
Nothing new to see here.