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The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms
DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of 'superhighways' to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"
The grid can't handle wind power! Now I get it!
It's the gospel truth. I read it in Pravda.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This isn't like one person standing at the end of a line, and shoving SO HARD that the person at the other end feels it... it's about co-operation: everyone takes one step forwards. You don't have to move mass quantities of ANYTHING over ANY long distance. Local distributors move small amounts, where needed.
This is a job for... COMPUTOR!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
In the 1950s the government set about a huge project to link America's cities and states via high speed road links. The investment has paid off well, and a similar project on our power infrastructure (especially if they could build a fibre network alongside) would pay off just as handsomely.
Yes, the grid needs to be changed to handle large power inputs from a more distributed system.
This would require federal tax credits as an incentive, as well as an open design.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The next time you drive by a nuclear plant take a look at the transmission infrastructure. You might see three different sets of pylons leaving each with a couple of 500kV circuits.
It takes wires to move electricty from generation to load, I don't know why they are surprised that when they build a wind farm in the middle of nowhere there transmission capacity to handle all that extra energy.
Especially since everybody says they have hardly built anything new in the way of transmission...of course there is no spare capacity!
My parents both work for the local power company and this is a well known problem among those in the industry. I've been screaming about it forever. We can have all of the solar, wind, water and nuclear power in the world but it doesn't mean a thing if it can't be easily transferred from the places it can be generated to places where it's needed. Huge wind farms in the Midwest will only benefit the Midwest. A massive solar array in the Mojave dessert will only benefit states that are near it. Step #1 in the transition to alternative energy has to be to modernize and upgrade the power grid so energy generated in one region of the country can easily be transported to another and this is going to have to be a top down operation overseen by a single federal regulatory body. Leaving it in the hands of the states isn't going to cut it as the states have differing standards and regulatory environments.
I'm generally a libertarian but this is one area where the federal government is going to have to get involved to get everybody on the same page. It's akin to the interstate highway system. Without the direct involvement and oversight of the federal government that never would have happened and this won't either.
Probably use the existing oil / coal system, that so far the article has NOT mentioned trashing? It's the only feasible option right now, until lossless power transmission becomes a reality, and the nerds are working on that one.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
The summary is a crock and doesn't match the quoted article.
Transporting large and variable amounts of generated power is the dual of feeding large and varying loads. The power grid can handle it just fine.
The problem TFA alludes to is that, while cities and industrial plants already have fat lines to them from the rest of the grid, windfarms are new construction generally sited in rural areas that don't already have a "fat pipe" available. So (for a wind farm bigger than about twice the local load) you have to run some new lines.
Just like you would if you built a new auto plant or aluminum smelter in the same location.
It's a regular line, just like the ones feeding loads. It just happens to be running the power the other way.
Of course some people would love to get the government to pay for the line to their new wind farm, rather than bearing that expense as part of the project. And some people in government would love to have more authority and a bigger budget. So we get FUD like this.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Looks like the modernization is going to be real grid control mechanism (which is a Federal issue, since it's interstate) combined with something like HVDC to allow for reducing the transmission losses.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
You don't need to move it. California's not getting our wind powere here in Wisconsin! We'll keep it, thanks. If people generate electricity and use it locally, then it doesn't need to go anywhere far away. Why the hell would it? If someone lives in a place where the sun never shines and there's also no wind (and usually it's tipped one way or the other), they can either use nuclear or move. And what's this overloading crap? You know how many turbines it would take to equal a coal plant? When the power plant sees that less power is needed, the turbines spin slower, don't they? So you get 25% electricity from wind turbines, which btw would take thousands in most cities' cases, and it slows down to output 25% less power. What's the problem?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
If they aren't going to work together, build new systems that that will. It's that simple.
I realise there's the whole 'but shareholders will object' thing. Well fine, if the well off think they're in a position to survive global warming, then let them vote no.
Then the first company who gets its shareholders to understand that money doesn't provide immunity from extinction if the planet becomes hostile to our species through climate change will generate wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Why? Because any such company would be so far ahead of the competition as to be unreachable. At least for long enough to make everyone involved very rich indeed.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
One of the advantages of most ways to produce clean energy is exactly that it is easier to distribute the power generation over different locations. You can't put a nuclear plant next to each village, but you can put a combination of windmills, geo-thermal, solar panels, and waste incinerators (with their heat used for both electricity generation and heating industrial or other buildings, rather than just for heating rivers) in or in the neighbourhood of places where the electricity is actually needed.
This both lowers the stress imposed on large scale heavy duty power distribution nets, and reduces single points of failure and associated cascade effects. Of course, when you build massive wind/solar/... farms in certain places, you're going to need massive distribution capacity there just like in case you'd build any other large scale power plant.
Donate free food here
I just toured a nearby dam, and was presented some very insightful ideas.
Nuclear and coal power are great for handling base load because they provide consistent power.
But peak load is where the money is; turning on power systems when they're needed to match the load at that second. Solar, wind, and water are all peak-load power supplies because they are not always consistent, vary widely according to weather and time of year and regulations, and can be very unclean with spikes. This is why these power systems cannot replace base load systems yet.
The solution is to even out our peak load systems so that they are more consistent and more like base load systems. Whether that's tying many different types together and hoping they even out naturally, or storing the energy in some kind of battery in the middle.
Since battery technology is nowhere near ready, a viable option is to store water in reservoirs behind dams, using wind and solar energy to pump water up, then releasing it evenly through a generator. This is even being employed in some countries.
This has been the case for years and isn't an inherent problems with wind farms. Many areas (California, Connecticut) are full of NIMBY people and large amounts of power must be imported. Quebec and New Brunswick Canada, have been exporting to us for a long time. One of the biggest problems is that some generation companies are also in the transmission business.
If area A has a surplus but area B needs power, and the lines cannot handle the transmission, then the price for electricity in B goes up. This is a complex case of supply and demand. The grid is a lot more fragile than it appears. In many places there is a desperate need for more generation/transmission, but the anti-infrastructure people are driving up the cost of electricity by not allowing infrastructure improvements to be made.
I worked at one plant that had to erect a huge sound wall around the entire plant. It worked great, but cost around $2 million including all the sound studies etc. The people next door claimed they never knew when the plant was operating (clear exhaust). We CAN build large power plants in your backyard, and you won't even know they are there- aside from the plant staff spending it up in local businesses.
Why yes, I do work in the power industry.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Hamster wheels.
I wonder if the whole north-east grid will fall like it did 2003 each time a cold front move through the region... The big blackout even showed that the conditions to create a cascade of overloads shutting down the whole grid are possible. Could the power surge caused by all wind turbine getting into action simultaneously create similar power pulses through the grid, jumping the safeties like it did in 2003?
They already did. It's called "railroads". James Hill (Great Northern) even proved you could build a transcontinental railroad WITHOUT government help, without the huge corruption government funded projects on that scale inevitably create.
Where the hell did you learn HTML?
LOL. The bar is higher than that, buddy!
If we imagine the combination of say, superconducting continent-wide backbones and smart, distributed-control, adaptive, switching,
then as long as the wind is blowing, waves are rolling, or sun is shining somewhere in some parts of your continent, then you have a pretty stable power source (delivering some portion of the total combined rated capacity of all those widespread generators.)
The old saw that these alternative, renewables are whimsical, unreliable sources is purely a myth, predicated on a brain-dead dumb grid.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This really blows.
(Apologies to all who are sick to their stomachs right now.)
It is not a revelation that the grid has to be upgraded, I read long ago it was a required investment. The problem is that it seems to be in none of the major players realm of interest or responsibility. Even as the grid stands, conventional power is not distributed efficiently.
Several months ago there was a big article on the need for new grid infrastructure to carry power from solar facilities in the Southwest (some via dc transmission) to areas of high demand. Moreover, did it escape the informed scribes attention that Pickens was in D.C. to get the feds to fund new investment in the grid? He needs it for his investment in wind power in the Texas panhandle to pay off. With all the business reporting it has, how was that missed? Too obvious?
This article meets the current low standards of reporting that has become endemic at the NYT. As they advised the recently former governor of New York state, you have screwed up so badly you should be gone! Well by the same standards, they too should follow the same example. Both by its actions and inactions, the NYT should exit too. Or more kindly, at least those at the top encouraging this type of reporting should remove themselves so that the vaunted reputation of the NYT may be regained.
you do realize solar and wind power cannot really replace the base power loads of coal/nuclear plants (oil plants are rare now due to cost, and natural gas plants are generally run for supplemental power). Most plans so far have been looking into reducing the number of natural gas plants in use by using supplemental wind and solar plants. The real issue we will run into is the need to store power. Distributing it is great and helps allow us to rely on a larger percentage of "renewable" energy (as the odds that it's not sunny in places xyz, not windy in abc, etc starts to fall), but doesn't allow us to use the power 24/7. This is going to require an infrastructure capable of storing power for long time periods. The last thing we want is to have rolling blackouts on cloudy or windless days. It's not like you can just go "okay, for the next 3 hours this coal plant needs to produce more power", they just don't work that way (however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal).
Phil
Well... if it's between not having wind power, and having electrical lines explodify every time the wind blows, I'll take the no wind power. Federal regulation isn't always bad. We have to thank bureacratic red tape for keeping thalidomide out of the country before we realized it doesn't just cure morning sickness, it also makes your children not have arms and legs. The company selling the stuff was going nuts without testing.
This is a much more cut and dry situation that might not need regulation, but let's keep perspective.
This doesn't seem to be a problem with the massive offshore wind farms in Europe. The UK, Denmark, etc, all are using more and more wind power each month from wind farms in the North Sea. No-one's ever said that the power grid can't handle it.
The feds don't need authority. They already have it. Congress just hasn't assigned it to any agency yet. If you think an electrical grid that shares power generated by utilities in numerous states isn't covered by the commerce clause, you are not reading the same Constitution as the rest of us.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Federal power grid = feds have the power to give a non-compliant region "power failure."
Keep it to the states, folks. Read your tenth amendment and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Oh boy! I just had an images of another few volumes added to our already byzantine tax code; for which there will be some loopholes put in by lobbyists that will allow some big corp to get some easy money. And then when or if wind or solar or whatever becomes the dominant power source, the tax incentives will still be there to further distort the economics of said power source and god forbid if anyone suggests that the tax incentives should be removed.
But hey, Washington is all about compromise.
As oil an gas gets more and more expensive, there won't be any need for tax incentives - the markets will take care of it. Maybe not as fast or as efficient as some would like it, but it sure beats a legislative solution any day.
not true.
He needed land grants and money from JP Morgan.
He purchased much of the railroad from failing companies.
There was huge corruption and wall street issues from the trust. Something that required government intervention to break up.
The practically destroyed wall street.
He was able to stay in business by giving an unfair advantage to his other business using the rail road during hard times. Basically shifting money on paper.
He did build 1700 miles of track, but at nearly slave labor rates.
The US government has done many very large and complex projects without corruption.
Nobody in the US has enough money to fix the grid.
The grid must be fixed for us to move into a new distributed system.
It's a perfect job for the government. Not to private contractors. That is where you get corruption, and failed projects.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Offer cheap power to anyone who moves near the wind power farms.
If electric power can't come to the people, move people to the electric power.
"Right on! People to the Power, man!"
For 99% of situations, I absolutely agree with you. However, the feds regulate the Northwestern power grid and a large portion of the generation capacity (the dams).
The federally operated Bonneville Power Administration has done an excellent job for the past 80 years, using zero tax dollars. Their wholesale rates are dirt cheap (~$0.04 per KwH) and the grid reliability has always been top notch. We should extend their reach across the entire grid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_Power_Administration
It isn't about lossless transmission. It is about transmission capacity. The California energy crisis was caused not by a lack of generation around the country but due to bottlenecks that prevented transferring the power into California. It is tough to explain but I'll try. Think of it like transporting water. In California there are a lot of high capacity power plants (pumps) and most of the high capacity transmission lines (big pipes) are between the production and the use inside of California. There are also some smaller pipes that connect to Washington and Canada due to seasonal trading. When several of the high capacity power plants shut down, those big pipes had plenty of room for transmission but they were limited by the small pipes that were used for trading. Thus, there was plenty of capacity in the Western Grid to power California, but there was no way to transmit without operating the transmission grid beyond capacity.
The same applies to wind power. Line loss isn't the big issue. The issue is that it costs about $1 million per mile to build a 500 KV power line and those lines have limits. In order for wind power to become feasible, we are going to need to spend a lot of money building up the capacity to be able to transmit the power to customers.
Because the battery fairy doesn't drop off batteries for free.
There is one form of large-scale energy storage in wide use; pumped-storage hydroelectricity. Essentially, this involves pumping water from low to high places when there's surplus power, and running it back through a hydro turbine when there's a shortage. To make this work, you need the right geography, and there's only so many places with the right geography.
Conventional batteries cost a fortune to store energy. Get the price on some deep-cycle lead-acid batteries off the internet and do the sums yourself.
There is a lot of research going on at the moment into better ways to store energy. Aside from better battery chemistries, and the long-standing dream of the "hydrogen economy", the more realistic proposals involve storing energy as heat or mechanical energy. For instance, using wind power to compress air, which can be stored in a network of pipes connecting the wind farm, or, if you're lucky, a salt mine or some other sealed underground spot. The compressed air can then be used to run a gas turbine (much of the energy released in a gas turbine is used to compress the air for combustion anyway). Alternatively, for solar thermal power, you can just run the hot pipes through something convenient (molten salt is a popular one), and then when the sun goes down you connect the pipes to the steam turbine through the heat storage rather than through the solar field.
Your idea is sound in principle. Making it work is hard.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What do you do in places that don't have sufficient wind for wind power?
Those who do pump water uphill; those who don't, take what they need from said body of water.
Hydroelectric isn't the flavour de jour, but is notable for having the opposite qualities from those of windpower, in that it is able to manage variable demand extremely well, and absorb surpluses on the grid.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Like that's ever stopped them before? We have a welfare system, federal highway system, healthcare for underemployed people, and federal guidelines for public schools, none of which is constitutional. Do you honestly think they won't nose into state business again?
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
This is crucial to the wind energy advocates (and all other electrical energy source advocates) as a consequence of the following facts:
1) The main goal of public policy reform of wind energy advocates is to put into place transmission lines to carry electricity from the high wind potential areas (such as the Midwest) to the high utilization areas (such as the coasts).
2) The main obstacle to constructing said transmission lines is the delays suffered by projects subjected to environmental impact litigation following from attempts to obtain rights of way.
3) The main motive for said environmental impact litigation is a misguided environmental movement's tendency to see any increase of capacity in the nation's energy capacity as harmful to the environment. This cannot be addressed directly in legislation (as has already been attempted, btw) due to the fact that the environmentalist tactic is to use legal tricks to get the courts to delay implementation of systems until the time value of those systems has run out.
4) The electrification of railroads is a proven technology -- indeed the largest railroad line in the world, the Trans-Siberian, is electrified.
5) The "conservation only" environmentalists will not oppose going to electrified railroads since they already see decreasing the energy use of railways and increase of railroad utilization -- which would result from railroad electrification -- as a way of reducing the nation's energy utilization.
6) The railroads already have rights of way that approximate the topology and coverage of transmission lines required to distribute wind electricity from sources to destinations.
7) The use of cryogenic transmission lines buried under the tracks would render the transmission capacity of virtually all existing railroad rights of way enormously greater than the possible use by the railways.
Seastead this.
Another thing that occurred to me is that this entire article and all it represents are merely a ploy on the part of Big Oil to put the idea of wind power in a bad light. [emph. added]
Only 1.1% of US electricity is from oil, and that is as a stopgap when a coal train is delayed etc., and the rare use of petroleum coke.
Why do people think we burn oil for electricity? The research is very easy to do:
eia.doe.gov
I've got it memorized just for these occasions. EIA dot DOE dot GOV
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
Electricity comes from coal, nuclear, and natural gas in that order.
I guess it's just easier to make up a conspiracy theory that fits political prejudice than do any actual research or thought.
As of 2000, stored power to the tune of about 2.5% of the US load (19.5 gigawatts) was online in the form of Pumped Storage. The EU had 32 gigawatts.
There's plenty of room to do more of that out in the desert; it can be subsurface, so as to have little or no long-term impact on the environment (obviously construction would temporarily beat up the habitat, though.) All pumped storage requires are wires, pumps, generators, a couple of big storage systems (one uphill, one down), and water. Doesn't have to be fresh water, either. The larger the height difference, the more energy can be stored. It's lossy; but still, it is both clean and effective.
Companies like EEStor that are working to create ultracapacitors with storage capacities exceeding those of batteries may be key to storage; storage can be local, on a per-unit basis which insulates users from the myriad types of grid failures that occur. It also allows them to store power locally if they generate any themselves (solar, etc.) Ultracaps are good for moderate term storage without much loss, and they can be fused in such a way as to prevent huge power discharges in case of accidents, so they're pretty safe.
There are some other contenders - flywheels, for instance -- but do *you* want an aging flywheel, high mass, high speed, coming apart in your basement? Me either. I saw a 4-inch grinder wheel come apart once and chunks of it outright severed a 2x4 in the wall next to the workbench. So those are probably best left in large scale storage farms.
Aside from storage, the thing that has always amazed me is that solar never seems to become really affordable. No matter how many ways they make it, or what tech they use, somehow, I can't buy inexpensive panels that will cope with hot summers, cold winters, and rain. New printing process? Ultra cheap cells? Mass production? Sure, I hear about those. But for SOME reason, all their output is bought up, and I can't buy the stuff. Not to get out the tinfoil, but if nothing else, it is very annoying.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The real issue we will run into is the need to store power.
Storage is obviously an issue, but transmission is just as pressing. This is not a new problem, it's one if the primary drawbacks of nuke plants. Everyone has the NIMB syndrome when it comes to nukes, but the same problem arises when it comes to high tension transmission lines. No one wants to live under those things, and it's more expensive to bury them.
br>
It's not like you can just go "okay, for the next 3 hours this coal plant needs to produce more power", they just don't work that way (however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal).
Really? I thought most modern coal plants crushed the coal into a powder and used it to fire a turbine, much the same as you would with Natural Gas. Why aren't they able to vary the power production the same way the could with a Natural Gas plant?
Find coupons in Greeley
I really believe that microgrids - peer-to-peer electricity grids wherein many small-scale power sources are used where optimal - are the answer to this. The big conventional grids lose a lot of electricity to resistance, and have to overproduce to get any redundancy at all. We need to revamp our infrastructure anyway, so why not?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4245584.stm
http://certs.lbl.gov/certs-der-micro.html
http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/articles.aspx?Index=329
http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/fuel_cell_markets/news_and_information/3,1,1,1,14428.html
As an example, I know a bright, competent woman who has started putting a lot of time an thought into Boone Pickens's plan for a big move into green energy. I asked her what the plan was for storage and she said (referring specifically to home-based solar production of electricity), "That's no problem, excess electricity gets sold to the power company, who stores it for you." I tried to explain that Georgia Power has no facilities for storing your power and that in fact your minuscule amount of unreliable, intermittent electrical energy was more of a nuisance for them than anything else--until everybody tries to do it, when it turns into a big problem. This wasn't something she wanted to hear.
I would love to hear some good solutions to the engineering (and economic) problems posed by adding wind and solar to the grid, but so far there seems to be a lot of magic involved. For the uninitiated, a quick overview of the difficulties we face can be found here.
I propose that FishWithAHammer pays it all.
- Raynet --> .
Given the fact that the NIMBY factor for power lines,power plants, nuke power, roads, dams, whatever is so high, the odds of at least one person objecting is virtually 100%.
Therefore, if you would like to have nuke power, power lines, roads, high speed rail, whatever, you will *need* to force somebody to fucking move for the greater good. Otherwise, you will never get the right-of-way to make your project happen. We have granted our government the ability to force people to fucking move out of the way.
We call this Eminent Domain.
Why anyone wants Federal control of anything is beyond me
Given that large scale projects are impossible without forcing somebody to move, do you feel comfortable granting eminent domain to private industry?
If you say "make it all states rights" given that many of these large scale projects affect multiple states, you'll wind up with heavy federal oversight anyway. Let states do it all, and they'll sue eachother when the other guy builds a huge damn. They'll sue when their state law conflicts with the other state law. You either get federal agencies for interstate projects, or you get a metric assload of federal judicial "weight".
Taxes?
2^5
Storage? Springs. Lots of them. A massive booby trap farm that releases at night.
To do list for Windows
They could start storing energy thermally:
Give houses a large tank of water. In the winter heat the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the hot water to heat the house. In the summer cool the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the cold water to cool the house.
That would be a very environmentally friendly and almost 100% efficient way to store the energy. It would be much cheeper than batteries or any other storage method. And when you consider that 80% to 90% of domestic electricity is used for cooling or heating it would go a long way towards dealing with the problems of storing renewable energy.
Second!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I propose that FishWithAHammer pays it all.
The motion is seconded. Please address all invoices to Mr. F. WithAHammer.
The popular conception of wind power is fast-paced windmills cutting birds in half as they twirl through the air whenever the wind happens to blow. I was just in Germany and saw many windmills turning so slowly through the air that if a bird hit one, it was either not paying attention or drunk. I've seen the same thing on the hills of Crete overlooking Heraklion. One point is that you needn't have hurricane force winds to make wind power effective. All you need is an area of 'prevailing winds' that are more or less predictable--just like the trade winds that predictably blew sailing ships across the oceans for centuries. There are many areas like this all across the USA. For example, the Dalles area on the Columbia River, well known for its prevailing winds. Here's a wind map for Oregon, for example: http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/windpoweringamerica/maps_template.asp?stateab=or
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
"The California energy crisis was caused not by a lack of generation around the country but due to bottlenecks that prevented transferring the power into California" No. The CA energy crisis was caused by power market manipulation. See: Enron. CA has done little to its infrastructure since then, yet they haven't had those problems on the same scale since...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Really? I thought most modern coal plants crushed the coal into a powder and used it to fire a turbine, much the same as you would with Natural Gas.
No. Coal plants do powder the coal to form a fluid fuel/air mixture, but they use it to fire a furnace which heats a boiler: the steam is used to turn a turbine. It takes time to start one up because you have to bring the water to a boil.
Natural gas turbines burn the fuel directly in a turbine. I'm not sure, but I suspect the reason you can't do this with coal is that the fuel powder particles will raise hell with the moving parts of the turbine.
Well,
It'd be cheaper than 5-years in Iraq, Yankee. And do a lot more towards keeping you secure.
But as a product of what America calls "education", you might find some dispute with that bright light of reason.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The UK paper is the only one that is "The Times", since it is the original.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Store the power in Energon Cubes. Then let me know where you put those >;-)
Thanks,
Megatron
One idea I had for places that had slow wind, but constant wind
was a "Wind Focus".
Basically something like sail cloth that acts like a Venturi
nozzle and takes wind from a large area and focus it onto
a smaller area.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venturi_effect
If you did not want to engineer the sail cloth for high
storm winds then you would need to add in some release
method to let it just blow past once the wind exceeded
a certain threshold.
So it would do its job in low winds, and just get out of the
way in high winds.
Counter weights might do the trick ;)
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You are already paying for it. It just shifts who gets the cash and who gets to own the means of production. If you are more than happy to have a perpetual open ended contract where you have no idea what you will be charged in the future for the product delivered...well...doesn't that just sound dumb? In essence, signing up for grid supplied power as your only source is just that. You're going to be paying that bill the rest of your life anyway (assuming like most people you will probably want electricity forever), so the question then changes to something more directly to the point now that this money issue is resolved, do you want to buy something you can eventually pay off and own and enjoy (solar PV does this in most cases, it can be as little as 7 years on up to 20 years at today's prices, but it does get paid off at some time), or just perpetually rent forever with no fixed price to look at? Do you want to build your own equity, or just keep building your electric landlord's equity? That money is leaving your wallet no matter what.
As to the issue of windpower and the grid, again, a much larger shift to smaller and more decentralized means of production means we won't have to rebuild the entire grid infrastructure so much. A *lot* of folks who have already gone full alternative energy run both types of systems now, because in the winter months the winds usually pickup as solar gain drops, vice versa in summer. Not everywhere, but it is exceedingly common now in those circles.
I look at this energy issue the same way as I do my big garden and this "eating" thing that seems to be as popular as using electricity. Ya, I could work more, make more money, then drive to the store and buy expensive organic stuff...or..just produce it onsite, eliminate several expensive middleman steps and use a lot less energy into the bargain, and not contribute so much to excess carbon emissions and so on.
When I look how much I get out of that garden (and my other stuff, dinner tonight home produced burgers with my own tomatoes and other stuff in a salad, topped off with my own watermelon for dessert) compared to hours worked and production costs involved, it is a rather well paying "job" to just do it myself. Tradeoffs, everyone gets to pick what they want to pay for and everyone gets a choice to pick if you want to own "it", "it" meaning any number of life's necessities or things you *really* want like back to the electricity, or help someone else own it and they might turn some over to you for a price to be constantly adjusted probably not much in your favor forever.
And that's it, along with economies of scale. Computers never got cheap until it went from thousands of home PCs to millions, then the market exploded and now look at it. Same deal will happen with alternative energy, and even though the earlier adopters pay more, they still get the benefits immediately, and it just keeps getting better from that point on.
choices-it's nice to have them
no choice and vendor lockin-not so nice
This is the crap that G.W. Bush has been pushing... to "share" our electricity rates equally. Well, I have this to say about that: "NO!!!"
My electricity rates are probably lower than most. But that's because "cheap hydroelectric power" has dammed OUR local rivers, ruining some of OUR recreational opportunities, covering up OUR land, and killing off OUR local salmon and sturgeon and trout and waterfowl...
You east-coasters... go damage your own environment further if you want electricity at the same rates. The fact is, we pay for our power in other ways. "Sharing" equally is not equal. Nor is it equitable.
There is plenty of windpower here, too. But windpower is not cost-free either. There are environmental and other costs, including opportunity costs, that must be paid.
We do not want to pay your rates AND with our environment too. Look elsewhere for a free ride.
Yeah Solar sucks, look at how little power hits the Earth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun
I mean if you were to build a CSP Solar reflector system in the
3.5 million square miles of the Sahara Desert it would barely
power a few Earths, how lame is that.
SEGs gets about 350 Mega Watts out of 2.5 Sq. Miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems
Boooooo Solar..... .......
Or not.....
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
You're both right. Corruption is common in government AND private projects. The problem isn't the people corrupting, that's inevitable. The problem is that we don't have a good system of accountability set up to put all this corruption in the public eye.
Some areas get too much rain/overcast, its best to build
solar power where the land will not grow food, and little
to nothing lives there animal wise.
In other words, the harsher deserts.
Great basin is 200,000 sq. miles, not all of it usable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin_Desert
Mojave Desert is 22,000 sq. miles, not all of it usable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_desert
Sonora Desert is 120,000 sq. miles, not all of it usable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora_desert
Total for just those 3 = 340,000 sq. miles roughly.
Use 20% for about 68,000 sq. miles, use SEGs array as a guideline
and you get 140 Megawatts per sq. mile.
In other words about 9.5 Tera Watts.
The entire Earth uses about 15 Tera Watts constant on average
of all forms of power including oil, gas, wind, solar,
nuclear etc etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
So just with that section we could make 2/3rds the world's
needs. With another 10% we could do it all minus the
obvious insane transmission lines and loses.
The point is thou, it would be more than enough for the US
for Electricity alone, could likely get by on 10% of those
regions just for Electricity.
As I posted in the other post on Solar, the Sahara is
3.5 million square miles of Solar Power.
North Africa & Middle East are sitting on a Solar "gold mine".
Just the Sahara is 10 times the size of the 3 US Deserts.
SEGs does not require pricey photovoltaic cells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
>Why anyone wants Federal control of anything is beyond me.
Yeah, the interstate highway system blows goats. So does the US military. We also need to get rid of all those national parks sucking up prime real estate. And the way the FDA wastes everyones time with all that "inspecting" of the "food supply" for "botulism". And who needs a stable monetary system anyway?
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
First of all, Google uses a lot more power than the average building, so you cannot really use Google to represent how a home will use power.
Aside from that point, it is not about only using solar. Wind, solar, geothermal, and yes, even nuclear power, as well as future types of power that we haven't even dreamed about yet, would all be used in conjunction to power the world.
Add into this the fact that soon, older appliances will be breaking down, and people will be buying newer, more power efficient appliances for their homes, making their power needs even less.
Then take into account the fact that as more and more people realize the little things they can do to limit their power consumption, their power needs drop even more.
So while a building with hundreds of computers running 24/7 such as Google may not be able to keep up with what solar panels generate, the average household will be able to come much closer, if not surpass, at which point their unused power is able to be used by others. And while Google may not be able to be totally self contained with solar, they can get their other power needs from wind, geothermal, and a little bit of nuclear/other technology.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Yeah the projected cost for the Iraq War is 3+ trillion.
I can't even imagine how far you could expand the SEGs
system on 3 trillion dollars.
It would generate enough profit at that point to pay for
massive expansions every year.
Oh well...The Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big GMO Food ppl got
other plans for you and I.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I have come to be much more skeptical of wind. Owing to the chance of weeks of becalmed weather over a continental landmass, every kilowatt of wind generation needs to be backed up somehow with fossil generation. In other words, wind power does not replace any fossil fuel generation capacity, it merely supplements it to reduce the total amount of fuel burned. And given the variability of wind, wind needs to be sized for peak rating some multiple -- 5 times? more according to European experience? -- of the average amount of power and fossil fuel replacement you can expect. So what degree of CO2 reduction can you expect with a wind-power supplement to your fossil power plants -- maybe 20 percent? Both from a global warming perspective and a fuel-substitution perspective to move stationary users of oil to electricity, you need much more than 20 percent.
It seems that wind is popular and getting various kinds of support, monetary and otherwise on account of its "zero carbon" nature, but I no longer see it as zero carbon, merely as carbon reducing for the fossil power plants, and there must be other ways than filling the landscape with wind turbines to get similar levels of carbon reduction.
I see the "green marketing" of wind power where your power company offers to charge you more "to get your power from wind" as a kind of carbon-offset scam. You pay more for power with the assurance that your power is "carbon neutral." If wind received the widespread application to make a real difference in carbon emission, and the people who sign up for wind power regard themselves as early adopters of what is believed to become a much larger scale operation, you are perhaps at best "reducing your carbon footprint" from electricity by 20 percent, which is much more cost effective to achieve through household energy efficiency than through wind power.
[sigh]
Yes, it is true that no alternative power source can quickly and immediately replace an infrastructure that took about a century to put in place.
It is also true that the amount of solar energy that falls on the US exceeds our total power consumption by many times, even accounting for the low efficiency of PV and solar thermal collectors. Here's a snippet from wikipedia (where it references a page from Stanford -- you can chase the links yourselves): "The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined."
It is also true that the available wind power amounts to many times the total amount of energy consumed by the US (you can look it up yourself -- it's also a ginormous number).
Finally, Google's recent investment into Enhanced Geothermal Systems highlights the potential to pull energy from the latent heat within drilling range, using more economical technologies than have previously been utilized. There is a 2006 MIT pdf on Enhanced Geothermal Systems which shows that there also, we find available reclaimable energy capable of satisfying our total energy needs many times over.
If wind power is inconstant, over-build, and generate far more power than we need on average, and use the excess to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen to drive fuel cells during the calm periods. The odds of having a lengthy calm period that extends over much of the US is practically nil. Same thing for solar power -- build out more than you need, and use the surplus to split water (which covers 3/4 of the planet) into hydrogen and oxygen. If a nation the size of Germany with limited resources (compared to the US) can commit to 100% alternative energy, there's no reason why the US cannot do so as well, with our much larger supplies of available energy and much larger economic resources.
But with such a variety of available and abundant energy sources, we don't need to overbuild, the point is to utilize each of them where they can provide the most impact (e.g., solar for peak utilization, which occurs during the day), and build an enhanced distribution grid (again, we're going to need to anyhow) to move electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed, just like we do today.
Wind power generates voltage spikes? So use flywheel technologies (e.g., Beacon Power (BCON)) to spin flywheels, and generate clean, regulated power from the flywheels. This is technology that exists today. It will even serve as a store of energy, to level out brief lulls in the output. New technologies require (and always receive) improvements as we learn how to best utilize them. Our experience with them improves them.
The point is, we CAN replace ALL our existing fossil fuel power generation infrastructure -- we have to anyway, due to obsolescence and planned upgrades -- we just can't do it quickly. It took us about a century to build what we have, we won't be replacing it in only a decade.
But we can gain a decade or so by making it an active conversion, by purposefully moving to alternative power, instead of waiting until it is enough cheaper than coal to make it the selection of choice. According to some sources, wind is already price-competitive with coal, and there is a lot of improvement left in the technologies to extract energy from wind. Not so much from coal.
When the supply of wind power collapses send a message through a network to appliances which can be switched off for a few minutes without causing too many problems.
Heaters could work this way. They could pay a lower charge for energy in return for participating in load balancing.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Things that the Federal government does well.
1 The National Weather Service.
2. The US Coast Guard.
3. The FAA. Yes for all it's faults the FAA does really well. I am not talking just about the Air Traffic control system which works a lot better than most people think but things like nav aids and regulation.
4 The CDC.
And I am sure a lot more that I can not think off the top of my head.
Should they take over managing the Grid? I don't know but blanket statements like the one you made are just not helpful.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Electric Thermal Storage exists: http://www.adamsec.coop/Default.aspx?tabid=107
however, to do it requires about a 10k initial investment or so. large tanks of water have other problems, you'd need one big tank (or one big temperature differential) to heat or cool most homes, never mind the need for a hydronic heating and cooling system, which suits me just fine as a hydronic heating designer, but realistically only a small fraction of homes in our country have hydronic heating or cooling systems, which are also more expensive than the far, far more common forced air systems here in the US.
so for your 'typical' home, you'd be looking at more like a 15-20k initial investment. more if you need a condenser for cooling as well or if you want a really GOOD heating system.
not a bad idea, just not simple to implement for most people.
Here's a useful briefing paper on dealing with intermittency in wind power. It's a UK document, and has some hard numbers about wind plants in Europe.
When wind power is covering less than 10% of the load, the UK study says no special arrangements are necessary to provide extra capacity to cover periods of low wind. I've seen 15% mentioned in US discussions. There's enough excess dispatchable generating capacity ("dispatchable" means you get output when you ask for it) to provide backup power for 10-15% wind. Above that, it becomes more of a problem.
I've seen some US studies which indicate that even if wind power is averaged across a 1000 mile area (most of the Midwest and Southwest US), about 5% of the time, the whole collection of wind farms is generating very little output. So just running transmission lines around won't solve the problem. You need extra dispatchable capacity.
That dispatchable capacity is usually natural gas, hydro, or pumped storage. Dispatchable capacity of this type is typically a source where the installed equipment is relatively cheap but the fuel is expensive. In practice, this means gas turbines. If you have dams around that collect water but don't have enough continuous flow to be full-time hydropower sources, they can be effective intermittent sources. The California Water Project uses some of its reservoirs that way; they generate power during peak periods, but not all the time, because that would drain the reservoir. Some California Water Project sites pump water uphill at night, when electricity is cheap, and profitably run it back down during peak periods in the daytime. Pure pumped storage plants are rare; the US has two.
Solar, of course, is not dispatchable. Nuclear plants are normally run full time, since they're mostly capital cost; the fuel cost is small.
Actually some of the large cooling systems in skyscrapers and Vegas casinos do that. They make big ice blocks that are made in the early morning when the power is cheap and then use it the rest of the day.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/07/24/ice.cooling.ap/
You're assuming that we can harvest all that energy - solar panels and windmills all over everything. What will happen with the widescale use of geothermal heating? How much will the earth's temperature decrease? Let's slow down all the wind and cool the earth. That sounds like a great way to save the environment!
I don't understand why nuclear is automatically relegated to the back burner. It is the only source of power that doesn't ultimately rely on the sun, and if you're allowed to recycle the spent fuel rods it produces very little waste. France, which recycles, stores all of their waste in a single room. 80% of France's electricity is nuclear.
Also, the amount of radiation produced from a modern nuclear power plant is very, very small. You'll receive less radiation standing in the shadow of the plant than standing out in the sun. For comparison, living within 50 miles of a coal-fired plant will give you about 0.03 millirems of exposure a year, whereas being within 50 miles of a nuclear plant gives you 0.009. A smoke detector gives 0.008, and an airline flight gives about 1 per 1,000 miles flown.
Other than the risk of deliberate damage to a plant (e.g. terrorists), I don't understand why nuclear is so terrible.
Source: http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/content/resource_library/IPEC_EP/ComparisonRadiation.pdf
The government can't save you.
"Solar panels on every building in America? How do you propose to pay for it?"
That's for the Americans to work out. Meanwhile Germany is pumping ~1GW of EXCESS power from rooftop solar panels back on to their grid. They estimate they have cut their CO2 emmissions by ~100 million tons. This change has increased the average German power bill by about one euro/month.
Continental scale infrastructure is a long term thing for humans, you can't notice it changing until you have lived the several decades it takes to see the change. Nobody is talking about covering every US roof with solar panels before next xmas, even with huge subsidies it would still take decades.
So what is wrong with upgrading/extending the grid as the need from rooftop PV arises? - I'm sure the current grid has seen quite a bit of upgrading since 1958 and I would be surprised if any power plants from the 50's are still operating today, IIRC most plants have a planned lifetime of 30-40yrs.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So you are saying, they run water through the turbines to generate electricity to pump that water back up behind the dam?
A hydro system is not an island.
They use cheap power from other base load power stations to pump the water back up the hill overnight, then let it rip during peak hours.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
"That is why power in the Pacific Northwest is much cheaper than in many other places. If there was a way to get more of that power to California, then the present rates would skyrocket."
You couldn't be more wrong on that.
http://www.koze950.com/2007/07/23/states-seek-rehearing-on-power-subsidy/
For nearly 30 years, the BPA (being a gov agency isn't allowed to keep their wholesale profit) has been charging out of region, private buyers of the Northwest's dam power a slight amount more (~$.05), and using those profits to subsidize the local buyer's rates. There's been a long debate over that practice, but, everyone is still getting a much cheaper rate compared to what private, profit based competition charges consumers.
Haven't we learned enough already? The Feds keep getting jurisdiction and the red tape gets worse. The Feds are FORBIDDEN by the Constitution from dealing in this, and most other matters. A short list of Federal agencies that are in violation of the Constitution:
Department of Education
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (would make a great convenience store)
DEA (except for drugs crossing state lines)
Department of Family and Children
Department of Labor
Actually, almost all of them that begin with "Department of" are a violation of the Constitution.
To clarify what I'm say. Here's what the Constitution says:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
That means that unless the Feds are specifically given a power in the Constitution, it doesn't have that power. Our trillions of dollars of dept are the result of the Feds sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong. Our erosion of Rights is a result of them poking around where they aren't wanted. How is this happening? You let it happen. You think that laws you like should apply equally in California and Kansas. Why? Pass your local laws and be happy. If they want to teach creationism in Kansas, so fucking what. Let them live in ignorance because it isn't any of your damn business!
Now when local governments are violating the Constitution (e.g. civil rights and voting), I want the Feds to come down hard on the local yokals. The Feds do have a legitimate purpose. Let's keep them focused on that.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Cut back on the military budget 5 - 10 percent, use the annual savings on putting solar-cells, wind-turbines, etc where appropriate.
The people who loose their jobs due to the military cutback can apply for jobs producing and installing solar-cells, wind-plants and in the logistics needed to handle them.
To start with, put the new plants as far away from the big power-plants as possible to achieve maximum power savings from lessening energy loss in the power grid.
After a few decades, you'll have most of your power produced locally, with a few big plants producing backup power and power for heavy industry like steel-plants and such, who'll probably not go off nuclear or coal until we have fusion power.
Problem is, something like that is close to impossible in a non-dictatorship.
There's a certain category of people who will scream and bitch about how they don't want a wind-plant where they can see it, or how it is unfair that city X got solar power when city Y didn't, or how they don't want their tax to pay for a power plant that someone else use, or a thousand other random complaints. =P
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Check again on both words :)
Ignore the fuel source for the moment and just consider the basics of thermal power generation - it is still steam (or close enough to it). The more steam the easier it is to get energy out of it - for instance low pressure, intermediate pressure and high pressure turbines instead of a single turbine aimed at the midpoint.
This is typically why you see two sizes of nuclear plant - as big as you can get for civilian power generation purposes and tiny little things barely in the megawatt size for research and military purposes.
In a way, lots of houses in the Netherlands are already heated in this way. Except the water tank isn't really as big as you think.
The amount of water stored is usually enough to fill up a bathtub, while the heater takes its time to (efficiently) heat up the next batch of water for you.
Keep in mind that this system needs about 20 minutes to start to be effective to heat up a house (longer than air-based heating).
1. The water heats the pipes and the radiators.
2. When warmed up, the radiators heat the air.
3. When the air heats up, it starts to (slowly) circulate its way around the house (hot air rises, travels and comes down when it cools)
4. When enough hot air has circulated, the room will be 'warm'.
This means programmable heating controllers in every house and, if you get home unexpected, sitting in the freezing cold for half an hour.
(no, you don't get used to it).
Also, this system cannot be used to cool houses.
First, the cold air will simply sit there at the bottom of the radiator and slowly grow, providing you with cold feet.
Second, actually cooling the air around the radiator means it has to be VERY COLD. Think sub-zero. (heating requires water at around 200F)
To make matters worse, the water still needs to be heated, preferably by gas mains. Take a look at the economics section of the link above to see the cost of running this.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
Have you considered the amount of energy required to move the hydrogen?
Electrolysis creates hydrogen GAS, which may have to be liquified (expensive), then moved (truck/pipeline).
Then consider the efficiency.
First off, you have the efficiency of the device generating electricity.
Then, loss before/during transport
Then, efficiency loss when running the fuel cell.
When you combine all those factors, is it still worth the investment?
(People forget that their pluggable electric car still charges off the grid, have you seem your local power plant?)
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
That's not true.
Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) are used. Very little heat is wasted. There is steam, it's in the name, wikipedia it.
Gas plants are huge. One CCGT being build in the UK at the moment is 1600MW. Try 5 years to build from project start to generation.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
....but, everyone is still getting a much cheaper rate compared...
to California electricity users. My sister pays almost double what we pay in Oregon. If there were a way to ship more power to CA, then we would also have to pay more. Yes, our rates did go up and it is not clear to me who is now getting that extra money. The two main power lines between the Northwest and California are loaded to capacity most of the time. In the summer, power flows south and in the winter it comes north. We have no air-conditioning but use electric for heat in addition to a wood stove. In CA lots of power is used to keep cool and not much to keep warm.
All theory is gray
US grid has extremely low capacity in high-voltage lines. Any decently run power company would never allow that. But that is long term investment (lines and transformers last 40+ years) and no-one wants to put money there, esp. for some exotic feature called "redundancy". Last black-out in NYC (2003) was due to lack of redundancy in high-voltage lines.
No sig today.
The total cost of the Iraq war is about $600 billion dollars. We spend more than that on oil alone each year.
Where did I say dump the grid? I said add in a lot more solar so we won't have to massively upgrade the grid so much, because we can add to local production, directly for homes and businesses onsite, no grid required. And solar is more than just electricity, we have solar thermal as well, which could be used for a lot more hot water heating and space heating. The article is about the wind farms and not being able to use the power, my counter is a slightly larger emphasis on local production means we won't have to bump up the grid so much. Personally I would prefer an "all of the above" approach with energy, that and a much greater emphasis on dropping demand via better insulation in buildings and better and more efficient appliances and so on. All of the above, we are going to need all of it.
Solar as a stand alone source is very practical and thousands of people just in the US already use it, with battery banks. This isn't exotic or very rare anymore, man, this is 2008, the tech is solid and is out there working. When solar PV was first invented and used it cost thousands of dollars a watt, it is now down to full retail at some outlets under 4 bucks a watt, and getting better all the time.
Properly sized home battery banks can last for years, mine are ten years old this year and still work fine, despite any number of internet experts assuring me they might only last 2-3 years and need to be replaced. I heard the same thing when Priuses first came out, all sorts of internet experts claimed the batteries wouldn't last, but so far, very few people who own those cars have replaced them, many are well over one hundred thousand miles and still working.
As for leeching off the neighbors, well personally my panels weren't subsidized, regular plain full price retail. Hell, for the longest time home owners just in general terms were "leeching" off their usually poorer renting neighbors because they got a mortgage deduction and the renters didn't.
Governments offering incentives for this or that are common, it's beyond common, it is normal, it is exactly how this system works right now, the tax code is slap full of deductions or other ways to lower your taxes for this or that, so really, where's the beef? Local property taxes going to public schools, even single people and elderly with kids long gone out of the schools still pay that, because we the people folks decided it was a good idea for the commons. Corporate deductions for big business dudes to sit in a fancy and expensive restaurants and eat, and to travel around and show each other power points??? To own and operate private jets?? What the hell... Solar PV credits right now are such small potatoes compared to other forms of what could be called "tax payer leeching" it ain't funny.
And most other forms of energy delivery have been subsidized. The grid, just in general terms,centralized delivery, that whole idea, all those transmission lines are just put there, they cross private property all over, no one gets a rental check for that, the government mandates access. That's a huge subsidy that's an artificial subsidy worth who knows how many billions going to benefit private companies, but they deemed it a good enough way to benefit the "commons". Same with natural gas delivery and so on, or how about municipal water supply? The public roads? How far do you want to go with this?
Development of most forms of energy people get delivered have all benefited from tax monies or special grants like granted access, look at nuclear, untold huge big number billions in tax money went into developing it, and even today not a single plant out there has their own full private insurance, they all make use of the government-tax money-as the ultimate last insurer. If they had to pay full private rates, that would sure bump up that price to the end user.
We have a DOE, they do continual research work on all forms of energy, you name it, coal to hydro to e
...but germany COULD have invested in wind power just the same way, and could currently be generating 3+GW of excess power instead of 1, and doing it centrally in a fashion that's easier to account for in the grid and cheaper to compensate for in off-peak (sun set) hours. This would have offest the average power bill by about 4 euros per month, which would have led to MORE wind power at a faster rate...
Also, current solar technology on single family homes can account for typically 70% or less than their energy use. Some homes are lickier than others, but most homes can not self produce 100% power. Further, most people live in multi-family homes, not singles, and shared roof space is insufficient. Covering every roof in the entire country would not produce enough power to offset the use, and the cost of doing so woul dbe close to 5X the cost of a similar producing wind farm.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
That's why we need to make a massive investment in infrastructure in this country. Only thing is that I don't hold out much hope for that ever happening.
In answer to your question, it's because I've seen what power utility monopolies do. Where I live National Grid is the monopoly in both power and natural gas.
We just got hit with a 21% price increase for electricity and numerous nickle and dime increases for natural gas.
What irritates me about the natural gas side is that they already charge us for distribution, and it's a significant sum. So why do they have to hike our rates on that side so they can pay to upgrade the lines. Shouldn't they have been doing that all along?
The most recent one has them wanting to pass advertising costs to it's customer base in order to attract more people to use natural gas to heat their homes.
So there you see the reason.
De-regulation is good, with caveats. If you (Directors/CEO/MGT) act like greedy morons we will lock you up for 20 years and strip you of ALL assets!
The airline example is really bad because they have never changed their business model and it is more broke dick than the recording industry in today's world.
The last thing we need is more power in Washington. Actually it's time to take some back. That is what the Second Amendment is really about.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.