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US Becomes Top Wind Producer; Solar Next
SpuriousLogic sends along a SciAm piece that begins, "The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday. Even before an expected 'Obama bounce' from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, US wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts — enough to power more than five million homes."
and always will be.
Oh, you mean that kind of wind?
Kinda makes you wonder if government intervention is really necessary.
So that comes down to 300W of solar power per capita in Germany, 83.3W of solar power in the US and 20.2W of solar power per capita worldwide. Just about enough to drive a netbook. ;)
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US wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts
Is it the theoretical maximum you could get from the installed generators (i.e. when the wind blows optimally, you get 25 GW)? Or is it the average power? The minimum power continuously produced under normal conditions (i.e. under non-exceptional circumstances, you won't expect the power generation fall beyond that value)? Or what?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Unfortunately, the US is infamous for using vast quantities of energy and using pretty inefficient devices (as a whole, not saying it applies to everyone). So some pretty serious energy efficiency measures are also called for.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
He's totally wrong. the 'energy pay-back time' or EPBT of big windmills ranges from 6 months to a year.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Wow, a country with over 300 million people, 9,629,091 square kilometers and sea on the east and west side
managed to produce more wind power
than a country with 80 million people, 57,022 square kilometers and sea on the (mostly useless) north side.
Call me when they reach 90 GW...
"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."
The original article can be found here. It has more figures, including some on China, and an interesting remark that Europe in total generates 66GW, which is another way to the per capita computation to moderate this first rank of US...
For example, there was a bunch of excited speculation about when China's GDP would surpass the U.S.'s, despite the fact that that would still leave China nowhere near the U.S. on a per-capita GDP basis.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
To be fair, I think it's more like 45% "America are teh ghay!" and 50% "Hur hur, farts are funny!"
Your friend is an idiot. Do you really think people who have used windmills for hundred of years did so purely for the fun of it?
"Lets spend months building a windmill", they thought, "to saw lumber or grind corn. Who cares if it costs more energy to build it then it ever delivers and we could easily saw all that wood ourselves with the same energy".
Your friends argument is similar to those who claim we don't have global warming because it is freezing cold outside. It seems superficially true but comes from such a poor understanding of the issue you can't even begin to correct.
However, presuming you ain't as big a moron as your friend, here is the reason this myth has come into being.
It costs X amount of energy to build a generator. This is far higher then you probably think because if it uses for instance aluminum. Simply put, if all energy was equal, a generator that costs X energy from the grid to produce should pump X+ energy into the grid over its lifetime.
Now comes the killer. What is its lifetime? Economic lifetime? Period it is written off in? Or shortened lifetime because it was demolished before it was obsolete/rundown?
It is very easy to claim a generator should produce its energy in say 1 year claiming that is its lifespan for whatever reason. In that case, the cost of producing it must be recovered in a year. Thanks to the way goverments work there have been projects where windmills were put up and torn down in a matter of months. Of course these never recouped their energy. The headline went into the newspaper, idiots didn't read the full article and myth is born.
This however also applies to nuclear reactors that are dismantled before they are ever brought online and countless other big projects.
A normal windmill produces far more power over its operational life then it has cost to produce. If it didn't it wouldn't make economic sense and countless windmills have come up for no other reason than that the owner wants to make money from them.
They have been doing this ever since the first windmill was invented hundreds of years ago.
The U.S. is coming closer to pulling its weight on new capacity: in 2008, it installed 8.3 GW, while Germany installed 1.7 GW, or about a 5x factor. Not quite the 30x factor of land area, but hey, 1.7 million of those sq km are in Alaska, which is kind of inconvenient for electric transmission (same reason Canada's wind power is fairly low, despite massive land area).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well it's good to see your valuable, thought-provoking, high quality comment complaining about worthless comments enhancing the signal-to-noise-ratio...
Clearly, Slashdot is a US-centric website where many articles and discussions are in the format of comparing the situation on a scientific or technological topic in the US versus the rest of the world. Nothing wrong with that, since there are many positive outcomes from that if one can raise oneself above petty nationalism.
In this particular discussion it is valuable to compare the statistics which are a bit skewed by the vast differences in size, population and population density. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that being able to power 5 million US homes by wind power is an astonishing number in itself, and brings hope for a brighter future!
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
Of you are lager by sqare kilometers, population and power consumtion then is is just easy to have the larger wind farms as well. Comparing absolute figures between countries is just plain unfair.
Divide by any of the three and the US won't be the winner any longer. But then Germany probably won't win either any more...
A friend of mine who is a mathematician told me he rad an article that showed that the total amount of energy required to create a windmill would never be recovered by the device.
Oh, and he "read an article"? I can write lots of articles that show all kinds of things. Did the article pass any plausibility checks?
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/EnergyBalanceofWindTurbines.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'd argue that wind power per inhabitant is also wrong, since it doesn't take into account that the average American uses 1,460W while the average German uses only 753W. As a fraction of consumption, Germany has about eight times more wind power. Link
Then why is it being subsidized?
***Bring on the nukes!***
I've always been mildly pro-nuclear. It's non-polluting compared to coal, and has much higher availability than a wind-farm or solar array with a similar sticker output in MW or GW.
But there are only a limited number of sites with cooling water, satisfactory geology, and where evacuation of the neighborhood in the event of trouble is realistically possible.
The US could, I am quite sure, treble our current nuclear output. We might even be able to increase it by an order of magnitude to 1000 plants although we'd have to scrounge up some fuel that probably exists, but isn't currently in proven reserves. But every time I work the numbers, I get the same answer. US energy needs are so great that we need more like 5000 nuclear power plants just to replace oil.
And we need to remember that there are 5.7billion folks on the planet who are not Americans and they are going to want to use energy on much the same scale that we do.
So -- unless we believe that the world has unlimited hydrocarbons and there is no limit to the amount of CO2 the human race can vent into the atmosphere without consequence, it isn't wind OR solar OR nuclear. It's wind AND solar AND nuclear AND conservation AND any other non-carbon emitting technology we can come up with.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I know that wind-powered energy generation is growing in the U.S. because I see it every day (in season; see below). I don't know if they're manufactured near here or just shipping in via our port, but those gi-normous wind turbine blades are a common sight on the freeways of Houston, traveling up I-45 headed for who knows where. There's a small cottage industry in escort vehicles. I've seen every manner of tiny, broken-down car, truck, and minivan festooned with flags and feeler poles, in packs, leading and following each individual blade as it makes its way through town. You don't realize it until you're driving right next to one, but those blades are *HUGE*; I'd estimate as long as 4 or 5 tractor-trailer rigs. I'm sure someone will pop up with an accurate number. Whatever the correct size, it's just amazing to watch something that long and odd-looking moving through midday traffic, dwarfing everything around it. Up until a few months ago (I assume winter brings a slowdown to construction), I'd see at least one every day. Sometimes I'd see three at a time. I expect for the freeways to be lousy with 'em again as soon as the weather gets warm.
Britain in the 50s and 60s was poor because the US delayed intervention in WW2, hoping that this would result in the collapse of the British Empire, to the gain of the US
That's funny, I always thought it had to do with domestic political considerations. It is true that FDR hoped to end colonialism but I've never heard that used as an explanation for why we didn't intervene.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nuclear power accounts for 19% of our electricity right now.
Trebling our capacity will push it to ~60% of our electrical requirements. 1000 plants should make it 200% of our electrical capacity.
Somehow, I doubt seriously we'd need 1000% of our current electrical generation capacity to replace oil alone....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Then why is it being subsidized?
Short answer: politics.
Here's a hint. You are being leeched to pay for "renewable energy" built by your good ole "energy companies" of yore.
They aren't stupid. They know that the public doesn't want to fund to build coal, oil, or nuclear power. They know that the public has a thing for anything termed "renewable" even if it is more expensive than other sources. So they get us to pay as much of their costs as possible. Even when "renewable energy" becomes price competitive to build on its own, they'll still try to use subsidies as far as possible on general principles.
I can't blame the "energy companies." I'm iffy on blaming the politicians in this case. They've actually been doing what voters want. The problem is when to stop subsidies. That's one of those trick questions in politics.
At this time in wind's growth curve, the most interesting question is: who is producing the turbines? They are likely to hold market share into the future. My impression is that Europe and the US are doing pretty well with China beginning to ramp up production. This means that the money invested in wind will often stay within a country. This makes some sense because the equipment is bulky and may pose difficulties with long supply chains.
The situation is different with solar panels. China is becoming the largest producer this year while the US is becoming the largest consumer. Solar panels can be shipped at a weight advantage of 200 times over coal or oil and fit well in containers. The US is leading in production in the small market segment of thin film solar however.
The eventual size of the solar market may be five times that of wind given cost projections so the bulk of the money to be made in renewable energy will be in solar. The present market shares for solar production look to disadvantage the US.
When are we to stop comparing the US with EU states? If we were going to compare EU states to the US, then we should do it to individual US states.
I actually don't care if we are "behind" EU in general or "ahead" since no one apparently considers the EU a practical entity for comparison purposes.
Do you realize the fastest growing energy sector in the US? It's pretty much wind. Why? Because it's a pain in for the big boys to get oil, coal, gas, or nuclear approved and funded. Getting funding for wind power now is easy. The other thing is that wind power can be bought in very small slices. So if I as a big boy energy company had only a few million to spend on new production this quarter, well I can build a few wind power plants somewhere.
Heck the Perkins Plan was basically that the big energy boys have long since woken up and realized that the time is ripe to really leech the US to fund our grand energy change over. I haven't seen any real details of the Perkins Plan, but that it's been introduced by "the right players." Means that it'll reappear in certain lobby groups and the given states involved could in theory fund it themselves. (They'd want federal money, but sure 5-10 states could do it themselves.) Wind has issues just like everything else, but they are just as solvable as anything else.
I'm actually not that surprised to hear how much wind power we are building. Every few day or so it seems like I'm behind either a house on a semi or giant parts of a wind mill on a trailer. Wind will happen despite the government not because of it.
That's because dakrats and other carrion eaters drag them away ;)
I've heard is that some efficiency improvements dramatically decreased the bird kills - the older, smaller, faster, and louder turbines killed far more birds than the bigger slower(quieter) turbines of today - though those edges still end up moving pretty quick, birds evolved to at least try to dodge falcons and such are plenty fast enough to avoid them. A lot easier than they avoid our nice clear windows, at least...
The latest though, is that they kill more Bats than birds - Personally, while I don't want bats too close to me due to the whole rabies problem, I do love the little mosquitoe eaters a little further away.
Still, put the turbines up high enough and you should avoid the bats - I don't imagine that skeeters fly that high, after all, there's no prey at that altitude, and why would bats be up there if their food isn't?
I don't read AC A human right
Or one of Al Gore's.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Somehow, I doubt seriously we'd need 1000% of our current electrical generation capacity to replace oil alone....
We use oil for some stuff like lubrication that, assuming we insist on using nuclear power to provide it, wouldn't be too efficient. ;)
I haven't seen an estimate either on how many kwh a year it'd take if we went to 100% EVs. Don't feel like building one at the moment either - though .3kwh a mile is one figure I've seen. You'd have to get trucks and trains as well.
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2004/html/table_01_32.html
3 Trillion highway miles a year - 900 Billion kwh required - a Gigawatt plant can be expected to produce ~7.8 Billion kwh a year.
We have just over a hundred reactors now, to supply 20% of our power. Call it 500 to supply all of our electricity, and another 100-200 to provide the power for vehicles. 700 reactors in total, for relatively carbon-free transportation and electricity. Utilize cogeneration and we'd be able to eliminate a lot of heating bills as well. Reactors by the ocean could use the ocean for cooling and desalinate water while they're at it.
We'd burn through our uranium reserves pretty quickly doing it that way with traditional reactors, but using breeders and such we'd be good for thousands of years before we'd need to start filtering the stuff from ocean water or switching to Thorium. Still, I'd definitely use wind/solar where it makes sense.
It's also suspected that with increased use of nuclear fuel and the depletion of fuel coming from weapons stockpiles that a price spike would result in more exploration ala oil and find lots more of the stuff.
I don't read AC A human right
Thing is, they aren't even being hit. They're being sucked into the low pressure zone behind the blade and having the blood vessels in their lungs burst.
Still, same principal; evolution will favor bats that either avoid the turbines or can survive the passage...
I don't read AC A human right