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Expanding the Electricity Grid May Be a Mistake
Perhaps T. Boone Pickens was onto something. Al writes "An article in Technology Review argues that plans to string new high-voltage lines across the US to bring wind power from the midsection of the country to the coasts, could be an expensive mistake. What's needed instead are improved local and regional electricity transmission, the development of an efficient and adaptable smart grid, and the demonstration of technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, which could prove a cheaper way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than transmitting power from North Dakota to New York City."
Yes, because we all know that every locale has magic electricity faeries just waiting to produce low-carbon-footprint electricity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All this talk about solar and wind energy being "free" and building these giant wind farms and turbines has had me wondering about something that I never see addressed. Has anyone considered the meteorological effects of removing all that energy from the atmosphere? I mean wind and solar energy serve a FUNCTION, they move our weather systems around, melt our snow, power our rivers, etc. You start taking a significant chunk of that energy out of the atmosphere, couldn't you end up with climate changes that could be even more devestating than the global warming you're trying to avoid?
No energy is truly "free," after all. But environmentalists keep talking about wind and solar as if there's NO downside whatsoever. It seems to me that there might be a pretty big one.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Every time someone suggests that we should continue burning carbon and just store the CO2, I can't help but think of Mars Attacks .
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
just how the fuck do you propose to do that? This is article is nothing more then trying to grab money and move it to the northeast v.s. the midwest. This has nothing to do with the environment. By the way, how many fucking wind turbines you think we need to put in NYC? I'll give you a hint, it won't work.
It makes perfect fucking sense to put wind farms where the *gasp* wind is.
There's an old story about the Communists in China digging a dam, and an observer asks why they're using shovels instead of excavators. "To create more jobs", they say. "Oh, I thought you were building a dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them spoons."
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Nuclear Power.
It's complicated, but you're trying to balance the location of the generation with the location of the use with the needs of the electrical grid with the ability to put hardware there to do the previous steps.
You're trying to balance it so that you've maximized the output and efficiency while minimizing the cost and environmental impact. It's not easy to do by any stretch of the imagination. That's why you're wanting to decentralize it, but you're having to also bear in mind that transmission lines and extra workers do add to inefficiencies inherent in the system.
On top of that, you've got to be aware of regions like the west coast, south and new England which are all subject to their own geographic oddities and risks. So that you can minimize the consequences of a hurricane, earthquake or eruption.
Just about anything but nuclear is a mistake.
We keep going after the same model over and over again. Search Finster's Law: A closed mouth gathers no feet. Big conglomerates produce and consumers buy. They get to set the rates and raise prices when they can come up with an excuse (weather, maintenance, etc) and commodities traders can bet on the spot prices. It's an old and broken model that benefits corporations while sapping money from consumers. With all the billions they keep mentioning wouldn't it be nice if someone had a clue and said: "if we give people a big enough incentive to use renewable sources at their business, home, government offices, etc we would not need more expensive transmission lines" Instead of wasting OUR tax dollars on supporting a broken model let's support a self sufficient model. We give tax incentives to homeowners, landlords, apartment owners, builders, etc to incorporate solar, wind, geothermal, etc into the actual buildings. Schools and local governments can get grants to become producers of energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc) and sell excess to the business next door or the house down the street. With schools being closed during peek hours of daylight, there is a lot of potential. Government buildings can be retrofitted to be energy neutral or even produce excess (considering they work 9-5 there is a lot of potential to produce excess energy after hours in the southern sunny states) for the local community. In high demand hours a local message to clean energy buildings can ask them to reduce their own usage to increase output to the grid. The smart grid that is needed is updating local utilities to buy excess from anyone who provides clean energy. not what some utilities do, offset your own usage but anything extra they get for free. Germany started a solar revolution by allowing anyone that wanted to install solar to get a set price for 20 years. after the 20 year period imagine what their energy costs will be, from the highest in the region to possibly the lowest. Farmers are installing solar arrays and getting additional income, banks are financing the installations, over a million jobs created from the solar industry. Other countries are starting to see the long term potential of getting off this energy roller coaster. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/solar-incentives-could-ontario-be-the-next-germany It's OUR tax dollars they are using so let's put it to use in the right location, our local towns, schools, grocery stores, government buildings, libraries etc and not to support antiquated models fo they produce and we consume.
Conservation is the easiest and cheaper way to implement technically, but it seems, at least in the USA, very difficult for the people to accept.
There will _always_ be more people.
There will _always_ be greater demand for resources.
This seems very difficult for conservationists to understand.
You were right with the nuclear argument if we can just deprogram^H^H^H^Heducate the populace about how safe it really is; at least enough to placate the NIMBY crowd.
There are many existing HVDC lines all over the world. Utilities have been using them for over 25 years.
They are used in long high power lines to avoid the inductive impedance losses inherent in AC power
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Why is this an either or proposition? The beauty of conservation is that it is completely technology independent.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Both high voltage AC and high voltage DC lines would work in terms of reinforcing the network. This is not where the criticism presented in the article is aimed at. It's borrowing off an idea poorly expressed in Hot Flat and Stupid in a book by Thomas Friedman that there should be smart "green" electrons. This totally fails to address a key point about electricity and network security which is the point at which the network passes from 100.000% load to 100.001% load ... something you all experienced a few years ago when the US power system went DARK. An overloaded electricity system does clog up and gently reduce capacity like - say - you local water supply. IT JUST TURNS OFF and the cascade effect takes down the rest of the network.
The very real benefit of a strong network is that once you have it in place, then you can put your green energy into it. And parking photovoltaics on your house, calling the power green and ignoring the mining and energy costs associated with building them is not *really* green, just *feel good* green.
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Different thing to the link and slightly bigger, but yes if you have a military budget and staff it actually does work. The disadvantages in efficiency and safety are due to using technology from when Carter was a boy (as well as the lack of economy of scale) but you can expect nothing else from Westinghouse. The 23 year life must just about be up on some of those.