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First Town In US To Become 100% Wind Powered
gundar99 writes "Rock Port Missouri, population 1,300, is the first 100% wind-powered city in the US. Loess Hill Wind Farm, with four 1.25-MW wind turbines, is estimated to generate 16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. 13 gigawatt hours of electricity have historically been consumed annually by the residents and businesses of this town."
I'm not sure what the metric is exactly, but it has to do with something like, megawatt-hours-produced-per-acre. This measurement is used when discussing power production by some engineering geeks somewhere...sorry, just trying to point the discussion down a path quickly here and not really set it up too much. :-)
In short, as cool as we all would like wind power generation to be, it just falls way too short in the aforemention critical statistic. If you've seen the wind farm outside of San Fran, you know how big they can get. The nuke plant between SD & LA (iirc) is but a postage stamp compared to that windfarm and it probably has about twice the power output.
Wind is not population density friendly. At some point, land costs wipe out any efficiencies.
Way, way overpriced. Four 1.25MW turbines for $90 million, or $18/watt? That's far too high. Compare the Cedar Ridge project, with 41 turbines of 1.65MW capacity each for $180 million, or $2.6/watt. That's a real not-to-exceed number. The American Wind Energy Association likes to talk about $1/watt, but that's seldom achieved.
$18/watt is either wrong or a rip-off.
So if we wanted to power say, California, which as of 2006 has 36,457,549 [census.gov] people we would need something around (36,457,549/4=28044 so 28044*4=) 112,177 wind turbines. That is stupid ridiculous!
Yea it's stupid to decentralize power generation when you can concentrate all that power into a few hands instead. Fact is is a farmer can have wind turbines on the farm while still growing food, and they will supplement farmers' income. Wind farms can also be located offshore. Then there's solar and geothermal. Tidal power can even be used.
Wind power 'feels good' but when you start running the numbers it gets dumb real quick.
In what way? If wind were given the same subsidies as nuclear power the math would change. As it is now nuclear power is a form of corporate welfare.
FalconShould there be a Law?
So, what, the you're saying the dungeon masters guidebook isn't historically accurate?
Pumped storage is not without problems--environmental, that is.
Many resevoirs are designed to operate at a constant level ("head" for us, the difference in height between the surface and the exit of the turbine). Of course a drought could push you out of wack if this is your regulation goal, but, in general, you're going to be sticking to pretty much the same level, and, as a consequence, coast.
With resevoirs which vary according to demand, there can be large head changes over the year and with different demand patterns (and rainfall)--which translate into DRAMATIC changes in the coastline of the resevoir. As you know, the vegetation and soil developement is most at the coast line. When all of this living matter is suddenly put under four meters of water, it dies and is replaced with anerobic systems. This decay produces hydrogen sulphide (generally nasty) and methane (a greenhouse gas IIRC 400x stronger than CO2). This is the origin of concerns about how much greenhouse gas production that hydropower offsets.
Then, when the water level dives down, you kill the anaerobic systems, leaving a barren coastline (both just above and just below the waterline at the coast) which is less hospitable to fish and terrestrial animals whose life is based around this environment.
Up in Sweden, where we have considerable such resevoir regulation, which results in lakes banked by bleached stone for many km in each direction. It has also completely changed the distribution of fishlife in these valleys.