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Gas Wants To Kill the Wind
RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."
When the general attitude of the phone companies was "It's scary, make it go away"
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Gas Seeking to Break Wind
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
they'd embrace the new tech and get in on it, rather than trying to fight it
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Gas wants to break Wind.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
I'd only call it mildly successful when it can run at least 50% without government subsidies. and fully successful when it is >99%
I don't belive we'll ever be able to get back a US where there isn't government subsidies in everything.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
according to my wife I have the same problem sometimes.
The only real problem with wind power is a land use vs generated power issue. The largest wind farm in the us produces less than 800 MW of energy (and remember this is potential generation, wind generation is still inefficient compared to other sources), and takes up 47000 acres of land. You can't just drop one of those everywhere the wind is good.
Just wait until LED light bulbs start hitting the fan. Watch the coal lobbiests and their pet politicians scramble then. I was recently allowed to try some 100W LED floodlights that were indistinguishable from the incandescent version, except no heat and a lot less power.
region's wind power too cheap for its members to compete with, unless developers there are made to pay the costs of moving wind power eastward.
To whatever extent the generation companies pay to move the power, I fail to see why wind shouldn't pay its fair share.
demanding that the state's wind developers share the costs of backup natural gas generators
That's stupid. The correct solution is: raise the price of natural gas generation to compensate for the efficiency of scale difference.
proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.
Hey, if you want money from Uncle Sam, you gotta play the game the way it's played. You're always welcome to secure private financing and build it any way you please.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Buying out a small startup player and giving them your established name and relationships with other power companies seems like a big win
Bottles.
Ted Kennedy and anyone with a backyard.
Summary:
Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities
Article:
And last week, four senators representing New York, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.
"It is a no-brainer that stimulus funds should only go to projects that create jobs in the United States rather than overseas," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, pointing at a proposed Texas wind farm whose backers include a Chinese power company.
They had one paragraph about the natural gas generators complaining about being used as a backup for the unreliable wind farms and wanting to charge more money to act as a backup service.
The majority of the article is focused on international and stimulus politics: Should stimulus funds be spent on foreign technologies, or should they only be used on local (US) companies. How much of the company must be in the US before it is considered a local technology?
Another misleading summary intended to promote controversy.
Of course, gas and electric companies would like to kill off wind power because it makes their own products uneconomic...WAIT NO IT DOESN'T. Wind power is expensive, unreliable and to provide electric power for when the wind drops, standby fossil fuel generation has to be provided. The only reason wind power is out there at all is due to massive subsidies from the taxpayer and "green" taxes on gas and electric companies.
In other words, all taxpayers get it in the shorts to pay for these shibboleths. Wind turbines, even under favorable circumstances, don't produce even enough power to manufacture wind turbines.
Only the economically illiterate would want wind power to grow significantly while we still have (but not for much longer methinks) an absurd apocalyptic panic about carbon dioxide and fossil fuels. Eventually, the laws of economics trump sentimental rubbish about wind power, because when the winter comes and the winds die down, people will demand fossil fuel generation in preference to freezing to death.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
How quaint!
It doesn't take up 47000 acres. It takes up half an acre out of 47000 acre extent. The land is either not worth doing ANYTHING else on, or is being farmed, with less than a 0.1% reduction in yeilds.
There was an article here or on Yahoo about a gas company that is setting up a solar plant. Seems like it could also set up a wind plant.
When the wind is blowing, use less gas.
Seems like they were starting with about 90mw solar + 3800 mwatt gas plant. Add a 90mw wind plant to that and there will be times when you are using 5% less natural gas.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually I know someone that works in the Wind Power part of a major utility company.
He spelled out the problem with wind for me very clearly.
"Companies don't care about carbon offsets because they don't believe that there will be a carbon tax".
"Followed by "Natural gas is dirt cheap right now."
Natural Gas is cheaper and more reliable than wind right now.
Trust me this utility has spent a bundle on wind and my friend is on the road many days a month trying to set up wind power and make deals for people to buy the power. In this case I wouldn't blame the utilities.
What it comes down to is dollars and cents. Gas is cheaper and works better than wind.
Of course I love this comment.
" Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past.""
Notice how in the summary the poster says that they have some valid concerns and then says that there are fixes for them.
Yea sure... But at what price? Read some of the "fixes" and then ask who is going to pay for them? Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
Don't bother saying that they can just take the money from the Military since we know that will not happen. Are you willing to pay more in taxes and pay more for goods produced in the US by US companies? China and India will not pass a dime of the costs on manufacturing so if you increase the cost to make goods in the US you will be pushing more manufacturing to China and India so in effect you will be shifting the carbon production from US plants burning natural gas to Chinese power plants burning Coal.
Oh and Window power in China? Unless forced to that is just for export. They will produce a few token sites and then sell Windmills to western countries until it becomes economical to replace coal with wind.
So the west will subsidize even more manufacturing jobs going overseas.
I fear this isn't as simple as the summary or what most people on slashdot think it is.
What it all comes down to is that Natural gas is cheap, efficient, and thankfully pretty clean.
While not carbon free it has the lowest carbon foot print of all the fossil fuels. It is MUCH lower in carbon output than coal so it isn't terrible that it is displacing wind. It could be worse, they could be building coal plants instead of wind.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
If enough wind farms are set up to actually contribute significant energy volume, I wonder what would be its impact on the climate.
I mean, it is sucking the kinetic energy directly out of the movement of air.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
...seems to be storing and transporting energy. Its too bad all the good places for wind power happen to be out in the middle of nowhere. By the time you get the lines built and the extra power needed to send it hundreds of miles your project is even less profitable. Too bad Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower didn't catch on.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Quit blaming evil US capitalism for the failure of a pie in the sky hippy idea which simply does not work, has not worked, and is unlikely to work in the near future.
Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved
I work in the industry on these two specific problems, and I can say that they are NOT easy to overcome. Wind power integration is not nearly as simple as one would think it is, and it is much more problematic than traditional power production. There is a lot of active research going on right now, but it is really coming out that mitigating the power quality and transmission issues are adding substantially to the cost of wind farms; often to the point where they are not viable, even with subsidies. There is certainly some protectionism from traditional energy companies, however this is not the major roadblock to wind adoption. The technical issues are still very much an impediment to large wind farms, not some massive anti-wind-power conspiracy.
This just sounds hokey. The wind is free. How much cheaper is gas, according to your friend?
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
1) Cover our eyes and let companies do whatever they want.
2) Suffer from energy spikes, speculative bubbles, piss poor infrastructure and a ruined environment.
3) Shovel billions into corporate coffers so they can sock the money away in offshore accounts while simultaneously failing to develop energy alternatives
4) Failure!
You have to subsidize new technologies because corporations cannot justify R&D to their shareholders. BP and Exxon cannot manufacture solar panels unless they can demonstrate higher profits, which one can't do until the technology is sufficiently developed, which one can't do without huge investments.
Technology has thrown the entire paradigm of free market economics for a loop. The amount of technology and science that go into an average product make information asymmetry astronomical. This requires more government regulation, not less.
The answer is easy: the gas and wind groups should join forces. When they have enough wind, switch the gas systems to standby. When there is not enough wind, then crank up the gas systems. In addition, they should look into energy storage such as flywheel and/or compressed air. These will help fill in the gap between when the wind dies down and the gas turbines spin up.
Heck, wanna really have fun? Have surplus wind energy electrolize water into hydrogen and and oxygen, and store the hydrogen to feed the gas turbines. Or, use plasma incinerators to convert garbage into syngas and burn that instead of natural gas. If you did that you would not even need the natural gas people. Heck you could sell the excess back to the natural gas people!
Natural gas is free as well. It's just stuck in the ground ready for you to go tap into it. Plug your USB socket into a likely hole in the ground and go for it.
Did you forget your sarcasm tag or are you just horribly confused?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If they can strike a compromise with coastal wind power, far enough out so they can't bee seen and they get constant wind, you'll really see the fossil fuel crowd scream. Drop rows of windmills 30 miles or so off Los Angeles and New York so they are close to the users and you get the best of both worlds. I know the rich with ocean front land will squeal if you put them halfway to Europe but I'd give them a choice of a coal plant in the backyard or windmills just out of sight. Alternative sources were fine while they were a novelty but as they get more competitive the CO2 crowd are going to try to kill them. What they are facing are higher fossil fuel costs while alternative sources tend to get cheaper over time. I noticed a few screaming about subsidies. Well here's one for you nuclear, coal and oil are all heavily subsidized. It's been one of the reasons alternatives have had trouble competing unless they are also subsidized. In a sense the middle east provides the biggest subsidies through dirt cheap oil, it costs them a few dollars a barrel to pump it. If we have to get all our oil from offshore and arctic sources it'd be 2X or 3X what is now.Offshore oil actually sets the price for oil but if we had to depend on it the prices would go through the roof. Take away all subsidies and see what happens? Also make all sources have to run clean and clean up their waste and you'd see a lot more windmills going up. Don't believe me? Drive past a coal burning plant. It's a crime they are allowed to use the air we breath as a landfill for dumping their waste and I don't just mean CO2. The sulphur and mercury and other toxins released are frightening.
They don't embrace new technology early for business reasons. They let those small startups burn through development cash, let them do the innovating while "fighting" the new technology. The fighting serves to motivate the innovators. Then once the startups have innovated enough to where it's actually profitable technology, that's when they buy out. They're not fighting new technology, they're motivating it.
He who forgets will be destined to remember. - EV
First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
So we're at Stage 3 now I guess.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The WSJ ran an article about this within the last week or two. The only gripe that traditional power companies had that seemed valid in my opinion is that wind producers get an exemption if they don't meet their production quotas. In a nutshell, this is how it works in Texas (and presumably other states): At the beginning of the day the department responsible for buying power for the state purchases power from utilities. The utilities bid based on how much power they are going to provide, and what the cost will be. Wind power comes in cheaper than gas or goal and gets purchased first. Gas and coal get penalized for not producing as much power as they promise to produce. So if they say they will deliver XXX megawatts, but due to facilities problems or whatever only deliver xxx-y megawatts, they have to pay a fine. If wind fails to deliver their promised megawatts, they are exempted from the fine.
On one hand wind is variable and not easy to predict (although wind based power companies claim that their models are become more accurate and reliable). On the other, wind is easy to come in inexpensively in part because there are incentives in place to make it cost competitive and they also don't have to pay fines for failing to deliver.
I'm of the opinion that the system is fine. Everyone agrees that wind can't provide baseline power. I think the government should reach some sort of compromise between the two. Wind can continue to be cheap and by all means we should be using it when it's available. When it isn't, wind based utilities should have to offset the cost of falling back to gas or coal. It takes hours to bring a plant online and doing so incurs operating costs. If the plant sits idle because the wind stays constant then that's great. The plant operator still needs to be compensated for spooling up the turbines, even if they aren't selling the output. The trick is pricing things in such a way that there is still an incentive to use wind when it's available. Maybe they can trend it, and say over the last five years, wind under-delivered by xx%. Therefore wind needs to adjust their rates upward by xx-y% to offset the irregularity. Y would be an agreed upon value to acknowledge the fact that man can't control the weather, but that when conditions are good, it is in everyone's best interests to tap the wind as a resource.
The thing is Wind is Flaky, Personally I like to have power all the time, even when there is no wind.
There are two solutions to this problems:
1. Giant Batteries/ Flywheels/ Water storage hills
2. Gas Supplement.
The Reason you use gas is it's easier to turn on and off the Coal/Nuclear.
IMHO Nuclear>Gas+wind>coal
Granted this is a simplistic approach, But Gas is coming either way. There is going to be a ton of it on the market soon.
Standard Disclaimer: the company i work for would benefit by me making these statements.
This just sounds hokey. The wind is free. How much cheaper is gas, according to your friend?
Wind is free. If what you want is to have your hair ruffled, you pay nothing.
If, on the other hand, you want to build an energy grid based on wind power, it costs far more than you might imagine. The post you're responding to has some salient points in this respect.
The problem of replacing or upgrading the single most important piece of our national infrastructure has always loomed as the greatest problem with converting to energy alternatives. Wind and solar power have radically different properties with respect to the national grid, and you can't just plunk them in and go on. Doing that leads to unpleasant things like brown-outs that kill the elderly during the height of summer or depths of winter.
These aren't unsolvable problems, but they cost a LOT of money to solve, and no one is yet willing to step up and pay for it, as the advantages are not easily recognized.
Unless you have an effective way of storing the energy generated by wind turbines, wind power does nothing to reduce your peak demand for traditional power plants. However, it does reduce the average demand, making traditional plants less economically rewarding. Pretty much the same argument applies to solar. This might be the rationale behind desire for a hydrogen economy; use any excess wind and solar power to separate H20 into hydrogen and oxygen, then use fuel cells for power when it is dark and still (turning the H and O back into good ol' H20).
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
When you can make wind blow when you need electricity, then it will be able to compete. Do a little work on google and you will find the problems associated with wind blowing when you don't need electricity and not blowing when you do. Storage is in its infancy at this scale. If you want more technical terms, search for the correlation of wind generation with utility demand. You will find it is poor. Any time a large wind farm is planned, a huge engineering study must be done to find out what additional dispatchable (usually gas) generation must be installed to cover for when the wind is not blowing at the right time.
I don't practice IT, you don't practice power engineering.
Socialism is not new or different. If anything Glenn Beck shows that the more things change the more they stay the same.
The problem is the high voltage transmission infrastructure that no one wants to build. FTFA:
Reaching a goal of 20 percent wind generation in 2024 would require construction of 10 inter-regional high-voltage lines spanning a total of nearly 22,700 miles, at a cost of $93 billion. Such an ambitious goal won't be achieved under a business-as-usual approach, the study concluded.
Not only will it cost an enormous amount of money, but it will have to cross State lines, meaning it will take multiple
regulators, multiple special interests, and multiples of everything else you can think of in order to become reality.
Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.
Not only do we require trillions in new infrastructure,
there are still trillions in repairs we've been putting off.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Drive past a coal burning plant. It's a crime they are allowed to use the air we breath as a landfill for dumping their waste and I don't just mean CO2. The sulphur[sic] and mercury and other toxins released are frightening."
I thought that a decade or two ago, the EPA implemented rules requiring most U.S. coal plants to install smoke stack scrubbers that captured all that stuff before it exited into the environment? I was under the impression that mostly what came out of the stacks now is CO2 and water? (I realize this doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of the world; but since you seem to be talking mostly about the U.S., that is the context I'm discussing this in).
But, I agree with your main point about off-shore Wind. As long as we can do it in a way that doesn't too adversely affect marine life, or maritime navigation, then I'm all for it. You probably can generate a lot of very cheap power that way. Doesn't help us folks in Ohio too much, but we can probably turn some corn or pig farms into wind farms, or maybe put some out in Lake Erie (but I'm not sure there's any place in Ohio as consistently windy as those coastal areas).
The incumbent suppliers, gas/coal/oil-fueled generating utilities, have NO, repeat NO incentive to encourage a competitor. And every incentive to prevent the entry to market of viable competitors such as wind, solar, etc.
I'm not trolling, nor am I just trying to be contrary. This is a business fact. Show me a business that has a good case for encouraging their competition. I have one, too, the exception that proves the rule; retail. Clustering retail outlets together, such as clothing or even convenience stores, can increase business by concentrating traffic. But even this is intended to deny their remote competitors opportunity.
Just be honest about this. Their businesses are under incredible pressure - costs rising, alternatives becoming viable and either cheaper or not significantly more expensive, social pressure to change their processes at great expense and diminishment of profits, government regulation that is threatening to become puntitive and eventually literally drive them out of the business. They will want to hold on as long as possible. And use every means available, that they can survive, to stop or slow down their competitors.
It is naive to state, for instance, that "they'd embrace the new tech and get in on it, rather than trying to fight it". The reality is that they also know that their competitors would have every reason to denigrate any such attempts as failed and futile attempts for these incumbent industries to plot their survival and continued monopoly, soley for the purpose of denying entry to new competitors. These new competitors would petition our government to tax or regulate the existing players to 'level the playing field', as well as ask for breaks and grants to 'encourage alternatives'. The petroleum industry is locked in this no-win situation, and is being stufffed into the pre-defined role of evil lords of power and control. And they deserve that position, largely if not entirely due to their own past acts.
I have NO sympathy for them. They have massive capital available, and if they would bear down and exercise their immense leverage, they could do the research, snap up smart minds to solve problems, and bring to market their future products that are now being developed by the nimbler competitors. They have their chance still, but are squandering the opportunity, or perhaps see that this is a fight they just don't have the stomach for and will milk the world for all it's worth. The Third World may be their growth market for the next 40 years. Then again, Africa for example might decide to choose wisely in advance. That leaves China and India, who might just do their own thing. A gamble, and the hand has not yet been called.
To repeat, while the current powers should indeed be making the investment, they are not idiots to not do so. They could adopt that strategy, but they have other options, which are not, from a business viewpoint, entirely without merit. Just risky, and perhaps not serving us the citizens of the world as well as it might, but these are profit-centered organizations. They do not exist to protect the environment. If you think this is 'wrong', then you need to work to change the nature and regulation of corporations worldwide. And I'm with you. We need to do that. Soon. Now.
And we do have a right, indeed a duty, to compel them to be less evil. This is not limited to the petroleum industry, and may be even more important in other sectors.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Yep. The play of buying up smaller companies which take the risk is done by oil and gas companies all the time.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Give it a try anyway. You never know you can't do something until you try.
I'll be rooting for you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
R&D can and is a justified business expense. The problem is that most of the "green" energy is currently more expensive to produce than through conventional methods, and is likely to remain that way no matter how much money you throw at it, at least until the conventional methods become more expensive. Of course, when that happens, there will be a sudden surge in the development and deployment of green technologies, until the lack of demand results in cheaper fuel sources again, which means we'll be back to using it.
What this ultimately means that the best we can hope for is that as our energy needs grow, green technologies can pick up most of the extra need, but we will still have a large base load that's produced by conventional carbon based fuel sources.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's
It couldn't be that everyone had over leveraged themselves... if that were the case, something like the Glass-Steagall Act would have keep the markets free from similar crashes. Oh, that's right... it did for nearly 70 years until it was repealed in 1999.
Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well, because even if it works in one's theory, in practice governments never save during good times, and when spending happens it is inefficient, slow, and corrupt.
Then why are all states at the top of GDP per capita Keynesian or sitting on top of valuable natural resources?
Now keeping the banking system intact is a separate issue - although I think it will be many years before we know if saving "too big to fail" banks was better or worse than letting them fail.
The sound Canadian banking system holds the real answer: do not led greedy investors lurk in the shadows. Never take cops off the beat. Government oversight and transparency are the only realistic methods to preventing speculative bubbles, among other things.
From the WSJ article, it seems that the beef that the natural gas electric generators have is that they're cleaner than coal, especially CO2 wise, and thus gas wants to displace coal-powered units and is seen as a very good mid-term solution until the pure green technologies come about, but in the near term, any gains that wind makes comes out of the share that the gas producers make and coal is not seeing its portion diminshed.
e to the i pi equals negative one
Sounds like a reasonable expenditure for the federal government, to me. And a proven effect economic stimulus.
But we'll have to wait until half the country grows up or at least until they're not so scared of there being a black man in the White House.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You bet your ass I am.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No it isn't, there are costs associated with it. You can't place the wind farms wherever you like, and there needs to be massive investment in distribution. On top of which you still need something for base power production or some method of storing excesses.
Natural gas isn't perfect, but you can get it in carbon neutral ways. Such as by capturing the natural gas that escapes from landfills. It's not likely to be a large source, but you may as well capture and burn it since it's a viable fuel source. But admittedly you'd still want to be cutting way back. Figuring out a way of capturing the stuff that's likely to be released from the sea bed is an excellent way of reducing the effect of global warming.
Insightful.
I already shot my mouth off, but I wish I could mod you up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Natural gas is breaking wind"
There. Fixed it for you.
Have gnu, will travel.
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
- Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
You're right. I had forgotten about that aspect of the article. Natural gas is getting screwed and coal, the dirtiest technology of the three is chugging right along. Do you remember why that is? Something about coal being cheaper than gas but not as cheap as wind?
Sorry to burst your bubble of gas, but German scientists have already proved that you can supply a power grid with _only_ renewable energy - wind, solar and biogas.
(O.k. - so I just swapped your bubble with a biogas bubble.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4
I'd take this article with a grain of salt. At least one big name in Natural Gas (T Boone Pickens) is very much interested in promoting Wind Power. (See the Picken's Plan.)
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Wind is free but wind turbines cost money. ,construction, running power lines or the land required.
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200334247_200334247
In this case 9500 for 3 KW.
But that 3 KW is in a 24 MPH wind. How often does the wind blow that fast?
Your average nuclear power plant produces 2200 megawatts.
So in theory using these off the shelf wind turbines it would take $6,966,666,666 to replace one nuclear power plant.
Yes $7 billion dollars. Oh and if you only get half the rated power because the wind doesn't blow then the cost is almost 14 billion dollars.
And that doesn't include the cost of the towers,
Of course power plants use bigger turbines but they are also custom made so the price for watt may not be much better. In this case I just found a well known off the shelf wind turbine and scaled.
Then add in the requirement for a back up power system to make up for when the wind isn't blowing!
Oh and wind turbines are big moving machines. They wear out and must be replaced over time or at least fixed.
So as you can see wind power is far from free.
It sounds like hokey if you are dealing with it at the fourth grade level. Once you get past that level you will see that it is not cheap or easy.
Hey if a power company could get cheaper power and sell it at the same price as gas or coal produced power don't you think they would?
More profit and more good PR for being green.
It would be a no brainier.
As I said this utility has spent A LOT of money on wind and solar and are now facing the fact that they will probably have to eat a lot of it.
They have every reason to want wind to competitive with GAS since all they really care about is selling power for a profit.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's through deflation.
They did no such thing. As a matter of fact, they thought the market would just run its course. Unfortunately, we were on the gold standard and since there's only so much gold in the world and our economy was growing like gang busters, it had a deflationary effect.
See here Lords of Finance. The best frickin book I've ever read about the lead up to the Depression, the Depression, and the aftermath.
The Fed did make some mistakes but that was because they were new at it and we were beholden to the Gold Standard. If we, and the rest of the industrialized World weren't beholden to the Gold standard, the depression would not have happened. There would have been a steep recession but not the world wide chaos that ensued.
Don't forget how many trillions in debt you are.
I'd be more worried about the Bloom Box. The guy behind it says he hopes to have smaller home versions made available for consumers for around $3000 within the next several years. When every middle class family buys their own fuel cell, the power company won't even be able to market to rich people, only poor people who can't afford the $3000 investment. If Google, Wal-Mart, and Coke think this thing will succeed, it's a safe bet that it will.
Once upon a time, big successful companies had no trouble justifying R&D to shareholders. Then MBAs started being given out like candy, with teaching that the only thing that matters is the next quarter stock price. Cutting R&D frees up a bunch of money in the next few quarters. That makes short term investors and managers happy. But it comes at the cost of mountains of FUTURE revenue from the fruits of R&D. So you have companies like DEC and HP that went from research and development powers, to a company that makes commodities - cookie-cutter cheapest-parts-they-can-find PCs and shitty printers.
The thing is Wind is Flaky, Personally I like to have power all the time, even when there is no wind.
There are two solutions to this problems:
1. Giant Batteries/ Flywheels/ Water storage hills 2. Gas Supplement.
3. Interconnecting Wind Farms http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf but I agree: in the years to come we still need "conventional", reliable, energy, the cleaner being the nuclear one
The main issue here is that if your entire civilization is dependent on a finite resource, and that finite resource suddenly runs dry or is suddenly 1000% more expensive, there's no way for you to invest in alternatives. The abundant energy source is gone, and now you're trying to figure out how to put food on the table instead of tweaking the efficiency of new energy technologies.
In this way the accidental benefit of the rise of capitalism may be it's tendency away from efficiency. There's still a lot of low hanging fruit around.
Okay then stop buying clothes and tools not made in the US as well as cars. It is easy to say that you will but it will take a HUGE amount of the US to go along with you to make a difference.
Even then Wind isn't as good of a solution as Nuclear. It is just has better PR.
PS I have already stopped buying tools made in China.
Real Craftsman tools from Sears are made in the US and last a lot long than the Chinese tools I have bought other places.
Well worth the money IMHO.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The power industry is about to get a huge economic shock and eventual shut down. But instead of going down with grace they will resist and fight tooth and nail. Frankly that is the worst position they could take. The new Bloom Box fuel cell will shut down the power generating industry. It will also kill off the coal and oil industries over the next thirty years.And that furl cell is not the only power company killer by a long shot.
The power companies could have invested and done real research into alternative power supplies but they chose to use lies and deceptions to fool the public and the government as well. Now people outside the industry are delivering products that do a better and better job of producing cheap power. All of this new income could have been created by the power companies. But I can tell you that their so called research involved some old wood sheds with someone's idiot brother in law hired to supposedly break new ground which they used as a tax shelter at best.
I can foresee large ponds with solar cells above them and catfish, talapia or shrimp farmed underneath while a tall wind mill towers above. I can also see our huge city garbage dump as a source of methane and plasma derived energy making our trash our most valuable asset. Today's garbage mountain is the gold mine of the very near future.
you can supply a power grid with _only_ renewable energy
You can also supply the power grid by rigging hamster wheels. The question isn't what we CAN do, but what is the most economically viable.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
CFLs aren't quite as efficient as you state. From a google search: "12, 23, 29 Watts, 120 Volts (50, 100, 150 watt 3-Way incandescent equivalent)"
They also still have the unlimited lifetime replacement guarantee.
When you strip a socket from a set, or break a wrench, or bend the end of your screwdriver, you can even today just bring in the biggest piece you've got left and they'll give you a brand new one right there.
As a service it is, to say the least, very very cool.
The only downside is that there seems to be fewer Sears stores than there used to be. Too many "real Americans" would prefer to buy the cheap knockoffs of everything for a few cents less at Wal-Mart.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Gee, if only there were a bunch of people who needed jobs who could do this for us.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Your shift key seems a bit flaky too. I've bolded all the things it capitalized for you.
"Show me a business that has a good case for encouraging their competition."
Las Vegas is built upon casinos encouraging their competitors to build next to them. Until the recession hit, it was a foolproof way for over fifteen years to get more crowds to come to Vegas. The latest spectacle of a casino would draw in larger crowds from around the world to come see it, and stay in the available rooms, and eat, and gamble. Case in point: Steve Wynn and the story of how he sold the Mirage to MGM/Kirk Kerkorian, and then went on to build the Bellagio, and the Wynn, etc.
there are other examples of how businesses in certain instances actually do want competitors coming in to help broaden and strengthen an industry. Energy companies would be one of those markets. A prior poster explained it best: mature companies "fight" innovators - forcing innovators to improve their product. Once those innovators have a healthy durable product/service, then the mature companies can come in, purchase them, and incorporate the product/service into their own portfolio. It's how capitalism has worked for hundreds of years
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Parent makes a good point. We need infrastructure upgrades either way -- wind or nuclear. The thing is, conventional nuclear is here today, and mini nuclear is just about ready to go. Either has substantially better near-term carbon-reduction potential than anything else. Beyond the initial carbon savings that come directly from power manufacturing, given some grid investment and a surge in nuclear output, fully electric cars would actually be practical much sooner than is the case now.
If catastrophic, carbon-fueled global warming is seriously an imminent reality, I don't get why "...Environmentalists are not happy with the President's new trend" on mini-nuclear reactors (as this article asserts, anyway). If environmentalists were clamoring for nuclear power, I would probably believe that they believed catastrophic, carbon-fueled man-made global warming was real. As it stands, I can only think that those who actively oppose nuclear power don't really think so.
Pi Ran Out
What's a redneck's idea of foreplay? "Hey, sis. You awake?"
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I am sure though that Bill Clinton will have sex with you. Whether you like it or not.
...oil, gas and coal don't do anybody any good just sitting there in the ground. Use it up! Its like not using a 50 cent coin only because you only have one. You might as well throw it away if that's the attitude.
Yes, let's develop wind, nuclear and solar. The sun is a HUMONGOUS battery who's energy we are letting burn out unused. But it is also stupid to not use oil/gas/coal just *because*. Energy is energy, no matter what the form.
Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.
Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast? Let the East coast electricity get more expensive, and the Midwest electricity get cheaper. People and business will naturally migrate from expensive areas to less expensive areas, not requiring any expenditure at all. Remove the subsidies and tax credits on building anything but pilot projects and research. Provide loans for valid business plans that show a reasonable chance of success to help give a leg up to an industry.
Letting economics drive power sources is a lot more natural than having the government do it and creating tons of regulatory systems that only provide jobs in the legal and political arenas.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Yet another reason that corporate lobbying (legalised bribery) should not be allowed in a supposed democratic government. *sigh*
Apple and oranges. They don't use rinky-dink off-the-shelf turbines so it wouldn't cost $7B to replace a nuclear plant.
Trolling is a art,
I am sure though that Bill Clinton will have sex with you.
But he will not have sexual relations with you. Well, depending upon your definition of the word "is."
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Sorry, I did mean 100W equivalent. I only was loaned the LED bulb for one night so I didn't get to measure the power. However, I did compare it to both a CFL and an incandescent floodlight. The color was dead on with the incandescent, and better than the CFL. It was brighter than both the CFL and the incandescent. All the bulbs claimed a warm room color temperature (3800C ?). The LED lamp was unmarked and no information was volunteered as to the source or the price. The LED lamp apparently had one yellow looking emitter inside the glass envelope. After leaving the LED on for more than an hour I could feel no temp rise on the bulb itself and very little around the base. I suspect there will be a huge power savings not just from the LED bulb, but also from the AC not having to remove heat generated by incandescent bulbs in the summer time. This wasn't your typical Home Depot LED lamp.
Your math is misleading. You give the cost of a wind turbine in quantities of one and then multiply it without taking into consideration volume discount and economy of scale, so your bottom line is probably twice what it would cost. Even so, it's still competitive with building a new nuclear power plant.
Cost of a new nuclear power plant
But then when the wind farm is built, the fuel costs nothing, there is no cost associated with storing and disposing of spent fuel rods, and there's no possibility of a nuclear meltdown and the inadvertent release of radioactive material into the environment.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
innovation in da house! who says the CAN or CANNOT doesn't matter?
i don't get the problem at all, because gas is a perfect match for renewables because it can do stop and go. nuclear takes days to start up, AFAIK.
if you take bold steps now, you can very well deal with climate change economically. if you let it run out of control, you have to spend gigantic amounts of money for homeland security.
in the long run (even today if you count for diseases caused by coal) renewables will be cheaper. To get that into the minds and equations of financial quants, of course, you'd have to have a carbon cap or subsidies or whatever.
Not only will it cost an enormous amount of money, but it will have to cross State lines, meaning it will take multiple
regulators, multiple special interests, and multiples of everything else you can think of in order to become reality.
Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.
Not only do we require trillions in new infrastructure,
there are still trillions in repairs we've been putting off.
This is exactly where we need to invest money right now. We do not need to build more golf courses but repair the bridges we already. And we shouldn' t require union work when so many are in need of jobs. No earmarks instead let the non-elected officials in charge of the federal highway system make the choices based on statistics. We need a strong federal government to force local communities to take the infrastructure the rest of us need, while allowing them to profit fairly from it. We do not need a strong federal government running our health care, our local school, social programs, let local state governments figure it out, however enforcing standards across state lines in these fields is also important.
My Kingdom for a Mod Point. I live in St. Louis, and know people who live on either coast. They don't believe me when we compare living expenses. I keep hoping for some big (coughGooglecough) IT company that's nice to work for to decide to rural-source a data center and need a good sysadmin. I'm sure their base salary is double what I'm making today, just because of the lower cost of doing business.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
The real deal is to stop buying power from these companies, coal, NG, nuclear, or wind and make it yourself. That is the only way special interests will ever die out, once they no longer have a revenue stream in which to bribe politicians.
The whole debate is a bunch of bullshit. I'm putting up a solar water heater this summer, that will cut my electric bill by 30%. After that I'm putting up a single solar panel with mini-inverter which will cut it another 5%. I will be adding to that each year until my electric bill becomes a trivial thing that won't command my attention.
After that I could care less if the major generators make their electricity from sunshine, the wind, or burn pupies to do it because I won't be buying from them anymore.
The problem is the high voltage transmission infrastructure that no one wants to build.
So let the price of power where the wind is (and when it's blowing) be low. Wire 'em up within the state under state law.
If a power company wants to run lines to sell this cheap power elsewhere, it can spring the bucks to do so - and tack on the cost pf the new lines when it sells the power. And maybe get some more bucks by running more expensive power back across the same lines to the consumers inside the state when the wind isn't blowing.
Then the east coast companies can take their choice:
- Run the wires and sell the wind power on the east coast - with a premium to cover the wires, but still cheaper than power generated locally using fuel.
- Don't run the wires, sell the fuel-generated power, and risk being out-competed by a company that DOES string cables (if the cost differential is enough that wiring up some big industrial consumers will pay for the infrastructure).
The market handles this JUST FINE - if you don't try to "fix" it with regulation (or let the existing large players use regulations to cheat and support their now-broken business model).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't want to limit the growth of any of the electricity generating technologies, but once they have proven themselves and gotten a small foothold the government should stop subsidizing them. I don't care if it is wind, solar, nuclear, coal, or hamsters in a wheel.
Gee, if only there were a bunch of people who needed jobs who could do this for us.
Don't worry, we'll just get some labor from offshore.
The gas companies have nothing to worry about. Turns out wind energy is a wash. To efficiently produce wind energy, they have to have very accurate wind forecasts which involves running highly parallel computer models on lots of CPUs. Turns out that the energy consumed by all those computers exactly offsets the energy produced by the wind farms they're forecasting for, so wind should have no net effect on the energy markets.
Because transmission losses over that distance are negligible and the $Trillion needed to build the transmission lines pales in comparison to the cost of moving all the East Coast plants/activity/employees to the Midwest. Most of the East Coasters probably are quite happy being there (where for starters they don't have to worry about fighting with rednecks over homophobia, prayer in school, teaching evolution and/or sex education in schools). Otherwise people would have moved everything to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela decades ago. You're going to pay for it sooner or later, either in taxes for the infrastructure or in the increased cost of goods to pay for the move costs, but one of those has substantially less impact on everyone.
You can also supply the power grid by rigging hamster wheels
Why don't we just breed bigger hamsters?
Why don't we just breed bigger hamsters?
Properly engineered, nuclear could give clean raw energy on its own, plus giant mutant hamsters. Win win!
Pi Ran Out
Wind and solar power have radically different properties with respect to the national grid, and you can't just plunk them in and go on.
Actually their properties are a good enough match for certain loads that, within appropriate fraction-of-total-grid-capacity limits, you CAN just plunk them in and go on. (Part of the concern is over the push to exceed those fractions.)
Solar and wind both vary wildly at a single-mill or roof-full-of-panels level. But spread them out over a few square miles (do individual clouds, gusts, and storm cells aren't the issue) and multiple sites separated by tens and hundreds of miles (so local weather timing also gets many distinct samples) and the rapid variations average out. They become at least as predictable as the weather - which is very predictable at a 3-day level.
Solar matches the air conditioning load pretty closely - though it leads it a tad. Wind does the same with a slight lag. complimenting solar. It also peaks in the afternoon (due to "lake effect" and tracks the general load peak very well.
Wind also has a component that tracks HVAC load well: Temperature differences drive both wind speeds and need to heat/cool to keep things comfy, while wind speeds drive heat loss-gain through insulation by air infiltration and conduction between surfaces and the air. So higher winds drive both higher geneeation and higher heating/cooling loads to consume the generated power.
So up to a point adding solar and especially wind to the grid - if it's spread out a bit - IMPROVES the grid's ability to handle the cyclic nature of the load and REDUCES the variability that you need to cover with "peaking plants". You still need to keep some other capacity on line to cover the variations. But you needed that anyhow: The load is almost totally UNcontrolled and can vary even more rapidly than the output of a wind farm as a storm cell passes through it. The name of the game is to match the two sides of this equation.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I seem to remember in the 1980s one of the buzzwords of the Coming Microcomputer Revolution was going to be 'telecommuting'. Live in Missouri, telnet into the New York office mainframe, work in your shirtsleeves.
Seems like it's starting to happen, but it's slow and you miss out on the water cooler conversations and therefore promotions. Is telecommuting ever going to happen for real?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Wind can supply base load by sourcing energy from diverse geographic sites. The research has already been done, but it pre-supposes the existence of power transmission infrastructure ...
Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
While I agree with gas as a "bridge" fuel, that makes me laugh. Why don't we stop subsidizing nukes, oil, gas and coal? We can start by forcing them to pay market prices for the mineral leases on Gov't. lands.
Let's just end all subsidies, let market forces come into play, and then see what the real winner would be.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
Quite obviously, yes.
That wasn't the answer you were expecting?
Whatever is a national government for except to coordinate decisions about investment at the national level, of which infrastructure is the prime example?
It's rational and foreseeable that gas will run out, as will oil, and that value of any investment capital poured into it will plummet to zero, while wind won't. It is irrational to make any long-term plans on the long-term existence of a finite resource.
But evidently, the marketplace is NOT choosing the rational, foreseeable outcome; it is acting irrationally. That's fine, we know this happens in game theory. Sometimes lots of independent rational actors acting separately produce irrational outcomes; that's basic Prisoner's Dilemma 101.
That's exactly why we have such an entity as 'government': to solve the coordination problem.
Next question?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Do people actually think that if the evil fossil fuel companies would just step out of the way then we'd be instantly blessed with unlimited renewable energy?
I work for an evil utility company that has a lot invested in the future of natural gas and even (eeek) coal. I personally spent a good chunk of time developing systems for gracefully integrating wind farm output into the grid. My evil corporate overlords have a visible slice of their annual revenue pie chart labeled "Wind Generation." Wind power isn't a threat to traditional generation in any way. And some folks throwing around the conspiracy theories haven't fully considered one fact: Those with both knowledge of the energy industry and plenty of extra capital to throw around have invested (and continue to invest) in wind when it makes sense. It's just that wind power can't come close to serving all the load reliably.
As someone whose livelihood depends on the status quo of the US grid, I worry a lot more about Bloom Boxes and their surrounding hype. If what I understand about that tech is true then it's a much bigger threat to my paycheck than wind farms. But if it ends up providing cheap reliable power then I'll be one of the first in line to buy one for my home.
If an employee can work from home, often enough he can also work from Bangalore. That's a serious limit to the growth of telecommuting.
Wind is free. If what you want is to have your hair ruffled, you pay nothing.
If, on the other hand, you want to build an energy grid based on wind power, it costs far more than you might imagine.
[han-solo] I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit [/han-solo]
Obviously switching to a wind-based infrastructure from the current dead-end fossil-based infraastructure is expensive, yes. But that's a one-time expense, like a fiber buildout, and yields functioning hardware (capital) at the end of it; so it's an investment.
Once the wind system is built, then you're talking marginal gains, rising as the price of oil and gas rises due to their increasing rarity. So there's an initial steep cost for wind, followed by a gradually increasing upside with no upper limit (or rather, a flat operating expense curve while oil/gas soars sky-high.
This is why we have national-level and global-level coordinating groups, whether you call them 'standards bodies', 'industry consortia', central banks', 'governments', or the likes. So that someone has the ability and foresight to say 'look, we need to do this very expensive thing now which will save our butts hugely later'.
You simply can't do everything on the margin with only the next quarter's profits in sight. Sooner or later, someone with some long-term vision needs to front up with a plan. Ideally, this would be a democratic government which, after reasoned debate and input from all the people, achieves consensus and does the rational thing and everyone's happy.
I don't understand what part of of 'one day oil/gas will run out and we'll all die horribly, while wind'll still be there and we get to live' is so terribly difficult for world-class business executives to grasp. Aren't they paid millions of dollars a year and go to forums like Davos to think strategically just like this? If an ordinary guy like me can see this, why can't our unelected lords and masters?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Because infrastructure provides a public good. Everyone benefits.
What you are proposing is that we allow the economy in one region of our nation fail and then wait for the economy to grow in another region. Given enough time that will probably work, but the cost to society will be greater than if we had just improved the infrastructure.
Haven't you heard? The stimulus is socialism.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I didn't say CFL, I said a 100W equivalentLED floodlight uses 10W to 15W. Hmm... yes I was incorrect, the cited page says LED 100W equivalent uses 17W and LED 50W equivalent uses 10W.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yes $7 billion dollars.
So... only the cost of about 3 stealth bombers, then?
And you guys bought how many of those? How are they doing in Afghanistan, by the way?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Your shift key seems a bit flaky too. I've bolded all the things it capitalized for you.
Just be glad i have a spell checker.
This requires more government regulation, not less.
If you knew how the sausage is made in government, perhaps you wouldn't be quite as enthusiastic. There are government regulators who could easily screw up a cup of coffee, never mind complex regulatory schemes. Giving them real power to regulate the marketplace very often causes more problems than it solves.
I suppose you need evaluate the evidence and decide how big of an impact (economic, political, social, etc..) you think that global warming will have.
That can radically alter your definition of "economically viable" depending on what conclusions you come to about AGW.
And what's just plain coolest. Me, I'll be investing in Hamster Conversion Kit manufacturers.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Your link is a little laughable. Try this one These are the ones used in commercial applications and I guarantee they are more than $10k
As someone who works for a company that boasts one of the largest wind footprints in the world I know a little about the subject. Ironically I work in the natural gas group but I know it is still EXTREMELY expensive to build and maintain the wind turbines. As others have already pointed out wind is sporadic and doesn't always blow when it's needed while at other times it produces so much electricity the existing transmission lines cannot handle the load. Texas has already started a project to build new transmission lines from west Texas to Dallas/Ft. Worth and battery technologies are being researched as possible storage stations.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Your average nuclear power plant produces 2200 megawatts. ,construction, running power lines or the land required.
So in theory using these off the shelf wind turbines it would take $6,966,666,666 to replace one nuclear power plant.
Yes $7 billion dollars. Oh and if you only get half the rated power because the wind doesn't blow then the cost is almost 14 billion dollars.
And that doesn't include the cost of the towers,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants
$7 Billion - you're not dissuading anyone except the people who haven't looked up how much a single nuke plant will cost. Hint - A single (decent) nuclear plant will be much more than $7 billion, likely more like $10-20 billion, and that's not including decommissioning and waste costs. Not to mention, wind might not be reliable, but nuclear isn't good for dynamic power requirements.
The powers lines and land are needed for either technology. No savings there.
Wind pros over nuclear - lots of redundancy. Dispersion over large areas (hard to take out), no waste, no radiation, safer. No one source. I really like having eggs in many baskets! A single nuke plant is billions of dollars, has major health/safety/terrorist risks associated, and currently no reprocessing or good waste disposal. And I suspect using land for nuclear plant is a one-way deal.
I'm not against nuclear plants (nuclear is a great base-load tech, and shows some great potential with new designs), but your cost argument sucks.
My opinion: Stop arguing about stupid stuff. Why not do both? They cover different needs. Neither is ideal.
-- Life is good. Tastes like chicken.
Because wind power is variable. You can get good reliability by amalgamating regions, but if you only have one state and it's a calm day you have a power shortage.
I do hope that people have enough sense to understand that if Wind can compete without Subsidy it should be permitted to do with encouragement. But if it requires handouts and subsidy then all you are doing is promoting an industry that should be for the simple reason that it can't support itself.
Maybe for the same reason East coast tax dollars go toward funding Midwest interstate highways, military bases, and airports?
Not really. In the case of the US, it's more of a national security issue than economics. Having less dependency on oil and gas imports makes life a lot easier for the government. I'm pretty sure dealing with angry oil and power execs is preferable to fighting drawn out wars.
It's a fact that oil will run out eventually, so it makes sense for the government to invest money now in order to be more prepared to weather the inevitable crisis. It will create jobs, infrastructure, possibly even lower consumer prices and reduce external dependencies. Just like building the highway system made doing business easier, so building a power system will do the same. Perhaps they could do it through PPP and split the risk/cost with business.
Leaving it solely up to business, will mean that nothing will happen until the economics are right (read : until prices are so high that they can make a shedload of money). By that time, it'll be too late.
I don't think that the OP you responded to necessarily meant the public when he/she said "America's ...problem". It might very well be American businesses problem, and the free(ish) market might very well drive the change.
But they are going to need incentive to change, and some guidance during the process. The cheapest solution to power generation right now is the status quo. And it most likely will stay that way for 50 years with oil, and hundreds of years with coal. There has to be an economic motive to change, and that can most easily be created by taxing what we don't like (coal/oil) and giving subs to what we do like (nuclear, wind, sun, etc..).
And as the OP pointed out, this is going to take multiple states, multi power companies, and significant investment in new infrastructure, that is much larger than any one company can handle. It will almost certainly require a 'smarter' grid, and a heck of a lot more power sharing between companies.
How do you think that the Federal Highway system would have turned out without central planning on a National level? We don't need a ton of new regulators or new federal jobs created. We need the existing regulatory agencies to step up and start mandating change, helping to plan it and negotiate the overall system between companies and states, and financial incentives to get the ball rolling.
Cap and Trade, by slowly ratcheting down the allowed carbon in the country, will squeeze companies into action, but I have a feeling that is only going to be passed directly on to customers for as long as humanely possible, until customers are screaming and electric companies are literally forced to start changing.
I'd rather not let pure profit motives drive the change. Lets get some laws in place with timelines and start getting the infrastructure built.
Nuclear.
End of debate.
Now start building the damned power plants before we run out of time!
Aren't they paid millions of dollars a year and go to forums like Davos to think strategically just like this? If an ordinary guy like me can see this, why can't our unelected lords and masters?
I've been trying to figure that one out myself. I've never gone for conspiracy theories myself, but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the lizard people had secretly taken over the world.
The best explanation I've found is that sociopathy is a necessary trait to "rise" to their level. They really just don't give a fuck, the status quo works for them.
Our civilization is pretty well locked into its trajectory.
If this were the case and wind was not profitable, then big gas would not be worried.
Happy Universal Service Fund / Terrorism Insurance Program / Payments to Copyright Owners Day! That's what your life was devoted to today, working for the Federal Government. And, tomorrow will be Happy Other HUD Mortgage Credit, and Payments to the Post Office (on and off budget) day!
Enjoy!
But we'll have to wait until half the country grows up or at least until they're not so scared of there being a black man in the White House.
See, maybe the other half should realize that you actually have to work to produce those billions of dollars. So, now, here's a question: How many hours do you think you should be required to devote of your life, each year, to the Federal Government. Go have a look. I set the site up. I've got the whole federal budget, every program, even the military broken out, entitlements, social security payouts by demographic (for old age), and by disease, for disability.
http://www.mightyware.com/federalbudget.bhs
Balance the budget, chop away, and if you feel like working more for the government, come right around here and throw that out there!
As an added bonus, I've got the whole budget distributed across a calendar, so we can all share, every day, in the special knowledge that every working stiff in the United States devoted his or her entire productive capacity for today, to Happy Universal Service Fund / Terrorism Insurance Program / Payments to Copyright Owners Day!
Oh, by the way, just to -balance- the budget, you have to work an additional 127 hours above and beyond what you are working now.
This is my sig.
Bulb efficiency chart is here The range for LED looks a little low to me; I think in theory they should eventually be able to get up to around 100 lumens per watt, which means they still will never beat a high pressure sodium lamp for efficiency. (White LED bulbs themselves can get up to 150 lumens/watt, but apparently there are some losses in converting the 120VAC to 5VDC to drive the LED.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
> the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities
I am a carbon-based entity and I resent the implied slur.
And that's why so many people "need jobs." There is "stuff that needs to get done" so that's not the problem, the problem is that "stuff that needs to get done" is being held up for reasons other than, "not enough benefit for the effort of the stuff that needs doing."
One of those things is financing, to be sure, but one of those things is the regulatory quagmire you have to wade through before you can even break ground on any new project of substantial size. Hell, it'll take you a year to get through all the hurdles (disclaimer:not all of which are regulatory) to renovate an unoccupied building into a restaurant where the former use of said building was also a restaurant.
I don't know what the answer is. One possible answer in this case to go full-federal and dissolve the states as independent bodies, so at least you'd only have to deal with a single monolithic federal morass instead of that plus forty-eight smaller but in aggregate hugely complex systems, but that comes with its own attendant issues.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wind power efficiency greatly scales up with size.
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Wind/FAQ_Wind.shtml
"What is the average output for one of the large turbines used on a wind farm?
About 4 million kWh per year for a machine with a 1.5 MW capacity at a good wind site, or enough energy for about 330 typical households in Oregon.
How much does one of those large turbines cost?
About $2 million installed (less when installed in larger wind farms)"
This is a strangely appealing idea to me. If you could engineer animals which ate our waste and enjoyed running in a wheel all day...
With a title like that, I expected some kind of
gastro / fart joke...
SIGLOST && SIGUNUSED && SIGQUIT
There, fixed that for you.
Wind is economical only with heavy tax subsidies. Anything is economical if you get some other poor sorry bastard to pay for it.
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
Gas is only marginally easier than coal - it's the preheat time for the water in the loop that's the real killer AIUI. Nuclear could be fast reacting as well, naval nuclear reactors certainly are, and I don't know why civilian ones aren't.
Disclaimer: I have served onboard a nuclear powered submarine, though as a strategic weapons tech not as a nuke. I have a working familiarity with nuclear power plants however.
Economic viability is perhaps one of the greatest oppressors of progress. It is a poor metric for determining what is best.
Be that as it may, the most economically viable option is conservation. But good luck convincing the "Drill Baby Drill" people of that.
~X~
~X~
This site shows that a hamster has an estimated power output of 200 milliamps at 2.4 volts which equals 480 mW or just 200 mW if the text is unclear.
Now some quick numbers
USA power useage: 3.34 TW
Required hamsters to power USA: 7-17 trillion
each hamster needs 2 sq ft for their cage
Resulting required space for a hamster power grid one hamster deep(they gotta breathe right?): 14 to 34 trillion sq ft
Total size of the USA: 82.7 trillion sq ft
So our hamster powered grid requires 17-41 percent of all the land area of the continental USA.
Answering the question you were scared, perhaps not man enough, to ask: no we CANNOT power the USA with hamsters.
Extra credit for estimating the effect on the climate from the heat output of 17 trillion hamsters.
Good day Sir!
> Once the wind system is built, then you're talking marginal gains, rising as the price of oil and gas rises due to their increasing rarity. So there's an initial steep cost for wind,....
From the evidence to date there are also pretty huge ongoing upkeep expenses for wind turbines. There is no free lunch.
> I don't understand what part of of 'one day oil/gas will run out and we'll all die horribly,
Because people who actually have money are smarter than you. They understand economics and know that we won't suddenly wake up one otherwise normal sunny day and find ourselves out of dead dinosaurs to burn. It will happen slowly and the price will rise accordingly as supply declines, which will make alternatives become cost effective.
Democrat delenda est
Some "gas" companies may still have "gas" in their name, but many are moving to be "engery" companies... they don't really care where it comes from, as long as it is the cheapest. If they have the wires to deliver it, so they don't care where the power comes from, as long as they can put it on their wires and sell it to their customers.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Wind power is unsuited for peak load (can't reliably turn it on when you need it). It is unsuited for base load (varies too much). It is really only ideal for something that can be ramped up and down with availability of power.
To me the answer is obvious - wind power must be used to power some high volume, continuously variable production process, where one doesn't care about the moment-to-moment production rate, just the long term average. The process must be highly automated, to avoid the need for having human labor idled when the wind dies down.
If hydrogen production via electrolysis were efficient enough, and if hydrogen were easy enough to transport without huge losses, that would be a reasonable example. The latter could probably be solved by converting hydrogen to propane or another convenient fuel, but the former so far appears to be unsolved.
Another continuous production process suitable for wind power consumption might be compression and cooling for gas liquefaction. While the equipment is complex and expensive, I believe this might be efficient enough to be practical. But then the question becomes, for what purpose would one use such large volumes of liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, etc?
One possibility would be "Clean Coal". "Clean coal" would best operate by burning coal with pure oxygen, so that the majority of it's exhaust gas consists of hot CO2, making it substantially easier to sequester the CO2. But producing pure oxygen from air is difficult - too much nitrogen. Liquefaction of air to extract liquid oxygen (LOX) is one approach - but if that means one needs to burn more coal to power the process, requiring more LOX and producing more CO2 to be sequestered, it may not be a good deal. But if one had a clean, carbon-free method to produce LOX, no additional coal would be required, minimizing the total amount of LOX consumed and CO2 produced. Further, the LOX needs to be warmed before being injected - which can be done by chilling the hot CO2 exhaust, reducing the power required to compress CO2 to a liquid for shipment and sequestration.
In this way, Wind and Coal could be natural allies - in both a technical and political sense. Note that I am not saying coal has no other disadvantages. But perhaps in combination with Wind and CO2 sequestration, the scale of advantage versus disadvantage tips in favor of coal. And while closer than most "alternative" energy sources, Wind unfortunately does not appear to quite make it into "economically viable" on its own.
And where will they string these wires? Through your backyard? You don't mind do you? Unfortunately, a lot of people are going to go ape-shit complaining about non-existent dangers ignoring all basis in reality and scientific understanding. Yeah, right, no regulation required! Keep dreaming!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
They've 'proven' it on a 1:10000 scale model - which is roughly akin to 'proving' that a Pentium can work by performing basic math operations on a hand calculator.
But they're going to run into significant challenges scaling it up - they're going to need biogas plants in hot standby to provide peaking loads as wind power availability waxes and wanes over the course of the day and year due to changing weather. They'll need biogas plants for the same reasons plus changing insolation with the changing seasons for solar, and more still to take the baseload as solar production does to zero overnight. (Either that, or the wind and solar legs will have to be grossly over provisioned.)
Not to mention the significant problem of assuring a stable year round supply of large quantities of biogas and the maintenance of sufficient reserves to cover 'droughts' in the other sources and periods of abnormally high demand.
So, while this type of grid will almost certainly work well at a limited scale, I find it hard to believe that it will work on a national scale for other than the smallest of countries.
you might ask your friend something related to this:
I saw just once saw a random guy look at world electricity consumption vs energy stored in the wind. He figured if we got all our electricity from the wind, there would not be any wind left. I suspect this argument is so simple. it cannot be spun,
If you're a natural gas tycoon(which I am long in, although I'm a peon compared to the big guys), your business is selling energy. You have to pay people to extract the gas from the field. If you could buy wind farms instead of gas fields and make money, why wouldn't you. Wind energy is FREE(minus some overhead which you have with gas too), and you could sell it for ALL profit.
You mean "if only there were a bunch of UNION people who needed jobs who could do this for us."
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
I thought I read that pebble bed reactors could ramp their power levels up and down in a matter of minutes...
Poppycock to the Regulations. In the phone, power, gas companies, the are all use to and know the various regulators. When I worked at US West, I saw exactly how much of an impact that had on us. BUT, we knew how to work within the framework. Now, with that said, regulations DO cost money. The company response is not free.
But the power companies are holding off doing more power lines in hope that the feds will do it for them, while they take the profits to the bank. And you know what? I am thinking that the feds SHOULD do it. And then charge the power companies for use of it, and the power company would then be allowed to ONLY pass it through (no profits from it). I am not normally a fan of gov. intervention, but in this case, the fed is the right group to get large projects like this done. It used to be that the companies had responsible leaders, but now they have abdicated their role. It is time for the US to do what companies us to do.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Gee, if only there were a bunch of people who needed jobs who could do this for us.
Unfortunately the gov't can't afford to pay them, and big biz doesn't care about who needs jobs
But that 3 KW is in a 24 MPH wind. How often does the wind blow that fast?
More often than you think because that's at the height of the turbine, which in this case
looks to be about 100 feet.
Were that I say, pancakes?
What's all this about cheap natural gas? I read the Hirsch report. Gas was cheap in the 90s, then a bunch of gas-fired power plants were built, then -- surprise -- the supply turned out to be not so abundant after all, and gas is now 2-3 times more expensive than it was in the 90s. Did it get cheap again without me noticing? (I use LPG for heat.)
Unless we're talking about importing LNG -- in which case someone is going to get their ass kicked. Importing 2/3rd of the oil we use is bad for the US in so many ways, and we do NOT need to do the same with natural gas.
The one the USA passed recently isn't socialism, it's mostly pork. Socialism would imply that there was an attempt to actually help the population. That said, working on power and broadband infrastructure would be great uses for the money, but very little was actually directed there.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Yup - I'd much rather see stimulus spending going into roads, bridges, and power lines than being paid to megacorporations that made poor investments/etc.
That megacorporation probably outsources all kinds of stuff overseas and looks to dodge taxes any time it can.
On the other hand, infrastructure lowers the cost of doing business for everybody in the US, which makes the value of local labor higher. Small businesses benefit as well, and they don't even have to fill out a single form to try to claim these benefits. The immediate jobs benefit those who tend to have trouble obtaining high-skill employment, and not everybody is suited to be a computer programmer. Why not pay a living wage to the construction industry and then there will be somebody out there to buy the IT products that are created by half of the /. crew.
Plus, this is all stuff the government is supposed to be doing anyway. Ok, some of the most hardened ultra-libertarians might squirm at that suggestion, but if you're among them at least admit that this is a better idea than just writing checks to banks.
This is the legacy of the Reagan, and later the Bush tax cuts. We deferred maintenance of our infrastructure, never mind modernization. Now it is caught up to us.
Why repair whats outdated? just put in new, better, cleaner systems and say goodbye to the old ways of doing things. Oh right... the people who control the money don't wanna do that. Hurray for Capitalism.. .such a great force for progress.
note to self: if I ever get a hamster, make hamster wheel powered battery charger.
404: sig not found.
Wind based machinery have huge maintenance costs. Way beyond any other types of power generators that run at a nearly constant speed and are much lighter. Wind power requires huge, heavy, variable speed machinery which ends up being incredibly more expensive (which in turn means it's actually using more resources).
Even if the Fed does do it, you still have to deal with the vast array of possibly conflicting regulations and the differences between them across state lines.
Further, I can cite two high-profile projects in New England alone that would be privately funded and whose construction and subsequent operation would provide jobs in the depressed region: Cape Wind and Weaver's Cove LNG. Both of which are being stymied by myopic local leaders and demagogues.
Frankly, I'm amazed at the Cape Wind company's tenacity: it's been like a decade since they started trying to get permission to build. That must be some valuable wind they're trying to tap.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wind power actually messes up the power system, so the power companies do have to worry about it and not merely as a competitor. The gas turbines and coal plants have to be kept spinning in case the wind stalls and they have to suddenly supply full power. So the electric companies have to waste a lot of fuel not making the electricity which they are paid for.
Now, if the wind power companies would also build their own transmission lines and backup power systems rather than leeching the current infrastructure, that would be fine.
I think wind would be perfect in conjunction with hydro. Hydro is the ultimate load matching source, just open or close the sluice gates. if the wind is blowing hard, you can close it, and maybe even pump some back up. when the wind dies down, let'er rip. In some cases, you might be able to build wind turbines right on the dam.
404: sig not found.
It's more reasonable for the Federal government to build out the infrastructure, then charge them a portion of the money they make using said infrastructure.
Because transmission losses over that distance are negligible.
You know nothing.
Multiple sources of power makes sense.
Wind is low cost though with a relatively high fixed cost per MW. Additionally, only certain areas make sense that can provide sustained adequate wind for the turbines. On the plus side, these areas are generally rural and can be run around farms best locations are generally in the upper central west. (wind - America's new agricultural resource). Significant additions to the grid will be required if transporting over long distances. Generation capacity for utilities is about 1-3 MW per Wind Turbine if located in an appropriate location. If in a bad location (most of the country), production will be cut in half as the capacity can't be reached. Power density is about .25-.75 MW/acre.
Solar - Extremely high fixed cost and problems with disposal of solar panels. The lower cost newer solar panels use large amounts of Cadmium Telluride which is highly toxic especially if damaged or improperly disposed. Best locations are where you would expect. Power density per acre is low at about .15MW/acre of solar panels. Cost is very high.
Hydro - Where usable it is very inexpensive. Some natural side effects. Limited locations are the problem. Generally the least expensive when placed at good locations. Environment must be carefully worked around. 40 MW or so is a typical plant size (Hoover dam is not typical)
Pumped Storage Hydro - Basically pumps water to the top of a hill during low cost power periods and released back down the hill to produce power at high cost periods. Basically a form of power arbitrage. Some risks if the dam is not built right (See Missouri Dam Failure) Generally a good approach if excess capacity is available. Really a financial trade to play margins.
Nuclear - Well studied so I will not go into details here. Production cost is the lowest but supporting cost but huge capital costs and is a lot higher to manage the extensive safety requirements. We need to figure 1 billion per nuclear plant in construction costs for long term storage of spent fuel rods. This is based on the expected costs of Yucca Mountain which Obama cancelled. Instead we are storing on site with significant risks. See the VT tritium issue. 1000-3500 MW is a typical plant size.
Natural Gas - Can be built today, Can be fueled entirely with North American resources if we allow it to be done. Lower emissions than coal. If we permit domestic gas production to continue to grow, about half the emissions of coal and capable of delivering large amounts of power relatively quickly. 500-2000 MW is a typical plant size.
Coal -Generally the lowest ongoing source of large power plants possibly excluding nuclear. Whether nuclear is cheaper all has to do with how costs are calculated. Emissions are high but constantly improving. Low fuel cost. Personal opinion is that the green impact is high but not near as high as generally perceived. All depends on how good the emissions control technology used is. 300-2000 MW is a typical plant size.
Strategy should be to build nuclear, natural gas, and coal to provide base load. Your choice but a mix is good as market conditions constantly change. Nuclear has risks, natural gas is extremely low priced but may not stay that way. Coal is efficient and will be a mainstay of supply in most of the country for at least another 30 years even if no new coal plants are built.
Develop clean energy sources where the business makes sense and place in the optimal locations. Don't force fit or the costs become way too high. Use as a an intermittent base load power source supplementing the much larger base load power plants.
Use natural gas as the peaking fuel. Other than pumped hydro, no source of energy storage makes sense at the levels the power grid uses. And natural gas combustion turbines are extremely quick to start up and shut down unlike combined cycle natural gas or coal. Remember that only about 70% of capacity is used on average as the capacity for pea
Hey! How dare you say that about my mother!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
The averaged wind speed in a good area is closer to 12 mph. This means that available power is closer to 1/8th, not half. The GP was actually being a bit generous.
Gas fired installations would require a similar infrastructure to get the electicity out, so that argument above is rubbish.
There is no "one true energy", everyone that says otherwise is selling something or has been tricked by someone that has.
If you are sitting on a windy coast wind makes a lot of sense, next to a volcano and geothermal, massive tide range, have a nuclear weapons program and a lot of spare material that could be useful etc etc. A mix of options gives a good outcome.
Resulting required space for a hamster power grid one hamster deep(they gotta breathe right?): 14 to 34 trillion sq ft Total size of the USA: 82.7 trillion sq ft
Have you ever been to a pet store. You can stack hamster cages, about four tall in an 8 foot space. So you'd only need 3-9 trillion square feet. That brings us down to 4-10 percent of the land. There's all sorts of unused space on commercial rooftops, attics, basements, etc.
My motorcycle requires a lot of special "factory" tools to totally disassemble it. I have a CNC mill, so I make my own tools instead of paying hundreds for the official tools. I try to make tools out of sockets whenever possible because they snap right on a torque wrench. After trying several brands, I now always buy Craftsmen socket to mill into tools because the Husky, Blackhawk, and Snapon ones I've tried before dull my end mills very quickly. Craftsmen sockets cut like butter.
BTW, a typical custom tool would be a 27mm socket with the end 5mm milled down to four studs, each 3mm square. This tool fits on the interesting nut that is used to tighten the steering head bearings.
Carbon is not the entire problem. everyone is worried about carbon, because carbon supposedly adds heat to the earth. Carbon keeps heat here. that's all it does. the problem is the waste heat generated by the first world nations. stop and think about the amount of waste heat our society produces on a day to day basis. on average a set of brakes on a single car will heat up and then dissipate off up to 200C of heat several times a day. a Coal plant will discard 20% of it's output AT LEAST in waste heat all day. and in this nation we have several 300MW and larger coal plants. I live and work in a city with two of them. when the heat exchange tower for the newer, more modern, ahem, clean coal plant activates (it's a steam bed, basically, four basins 20m in diameter that discharge waste heat as steam into the atmosphere. Saskpower Shand Generation station, if you're interested) the greenhouse, more than a km away, routinely has the temperature outside raise by up to 5C on a -40C day.
Accumulation of waste heat in the biosphere is the root cause of global warming. carbon dioxide only makes it worse by lessening the extent to which the earth is capable of radiating her heat load off into space. Wind helps with this, because Capturing the wind robs the biosphere of energy, which in this case is generated by heat. convection drives the wind, heat drives convection. Wind is not the solution, but it's a far better one than nuclear which again just adds more energy and therefore waste heat to the environment. the end result of every joule of electricity generated on earth today is waste heat. every last joule. we need to start taking some of that energy back out of the environment, whether by capturing it with solar cells (well, not capturing our heat, but removing some measure of the new heat the sun adds), harvesting it's result with wind generators, and perhaps invest more in some thermovaltic solutions to harvest heat from the ocean as electricity.
$93 billion is chicken feed compare to the savings that these transmission lines would make happen. Just the ability to move power from one side of the country to the other so we can better utilized our base power plants would save billions in two ways. The base plants are more efficient and we wouldn't have to build as many power plant since we would get better use out of the existing plants. As far as wind power, we not only have access to our own wind resource but I would bet that Canada wouldn't mind selling us some wind power also.
they tried this in California, i believe they got 30 cent per kwh electricity and rolling blackouts. History has clearly shown that economics is a very poor guide for large scale essential services. Things like highways, the police, and utilities just work better when controlled by the people (government).
The cost of fuel for wind power to a utility is actually zero, nil, nothing. The cost of the plant is also zero since that is depreciated over a period of time. The only cost is tax and maintenance. Wind Power will get cheaper and cheaper. And most of all it will keep the price of gas and coal low.
"Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast?"
Because Utilities are a textbook market failure. Left to the market, water, power, waste and communication services thrive in the cities, but don't exist in rural areas. If you want power and telecom capabilities in the sticks, you need a government program like the TVA to get it done.
Why should the government pay to get Midwest power to the Big Cities on the East Coast? Because the government paid to get East Coast power to the Midwest in the first place.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Cheap midwest power might make factories in Detroit a bit more viable.
The main reason to send the power to the coasts is thats where the people, factories, and ports are.
+ I agree, people will follow the jobs.
- Its real expensive to move entire factories
- Ports are not moving but we could invest in some transportation infrastucture
are you angry because you're black? ... and ... did you say something about someone's mama because you're black?
No, socialism isn't about helping the population - that's just the buzzwords they use to convince people to join their cause or vote for them (all parties have them, none follow through once they're in power - elections are about power, not ideology). If it were really socialism, the focus would be on taking from those who have, and giving to those who don't. Whereas what you guys just went through was taking from those who don't have (taxpayers) and giving to the rich (financial executives). Not socialism at all.
Nor is it on the extreme right wing: fascism. That'd be the case only if the government nationalised, say, a car company or something, just to keep the jobs going to prop up the government. It can't be that because the Democrats are left-wing. Right?
I still say that Capitalism deserves a constitutional amendment in the US prohibiting bailouts for corporations (without prohibiting bailouts for individuals - sorry, if a disaster hits and kills your business, you should have had insurance ... and if it was your fault, well, then that company really should go under to make room for companies that don't do stupid things - but if a bank does go under, FDIC still is valid for your savings). If the security blanket was taken away, I don't think regulation would necessarily be required to keep banks afloat. They'd stop doing stupid things. And they'd probably spend more time lobbying against stupid government involvement, such as any encouragement to give out mortgages to those who can't afford it, just to keep themselves afloat.
"The problem is the high voltage transmission infrastructure that no one wants to build. FTFA:
...
:P
>Reaching a goal of 20 percent wind generation in 2024 would require construction of 10
>inter-regional high-voltage lines spanning a total of nearly 22,700 miles, at a cost of $93 billion.
Not only do we require trillions in new infrastructure..."
So you consider 0.093 trillion to be "trillions"?
The national highway system has cost taxpayers far, far more than that. It too has had to cross state lines. There's nothing new or excruciatingly painful with running transmission lines, this is mostly a political play.
Cap and Trade, by slowly ratcheting down the allowed carbon in the country, will squeeze companies into action, but I have a feeling that is only going to be passed directly on to customers for as long as humanely possible, until customers are screaming and electric companies are literally forced to start changing.
No, this is how it works. I mean, do you really expect the electric company to not pass the cost on, and to lose money with every transaction? That's just dumb.
Once the cost of coal electricity is high enough, other methods of generating electricity become relatively competitive. It becomes enticing to VCs to invest in alternative energy, because there are more chances to return a profit on the new technology. That's where the innovation comes from.
Incidentally, nuclear is competitive right now, the barriers to building nuclear plants are legal. All we need to do is get our government to knock those barriers down and nuclear plants will start being built.
Qxe4
developers! developers! developers!...
21 according to wikipedia. There have been about 750 B-52's and those bombers that would actually be useful there to a degree. The stealth aircraft mission is/was to take out air defense to clear the way for conventional aircraft or for strategic nuclear weapons.
too big to fail should also mean to big to be legal..if a company is too bid to fail it should be split up.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
We're not afraid of a black man in the whitehouse.
We're afraid of a socialist douchebag in the whitehouse. Unfortunately both Bush and Obama fit that description.
Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
While I agree with gas as a "bridge" fuel, that makes me laugh. Why don't we stop subsidizing nukes, oil, gas and coal? We can start by forcing them to pay market prices for the mineral leases on Gov't. lands.
Let's just end all subsidies, let market forces come into play, and then see what the real winner would be.
China?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
(wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable)
And easily solved with the use of Vanadium batteries. I'll continue to signal boost this as long as there are people who think there is no solution to variable renewable energy generation.
The fact that you need hundreds of billions of new infrastructure to give wind even a simple fighting chance to replace a little bit of the grid baseload capacity.
Wind drops from 100% to 0% in 2 minutes with less than 30 seconds warning, and this happens every 2 hours or so on bad days. It certainly happens daily. That's a fact.
That means that unless you wish to have a grid with constant catastrophic failures, every 2 hours on bad days, daily on good days, you need to have standby capacity for wind running. That means that in order to use wind you have to have the same amount of power from a coal, oil, gas or nuclear station actively generating (and using fuel) in order to deliver wind power reliably.
And needless to say, not even the most devoted totally-bought-into-every-craze-since-elvis person will buy wind power that's not reliable.
What they're trying to do to solve this is to have a massive grid across vast distances, so wind doesn't fail on all generators simultaneously. But grids have power loss (10% per 100 km power loss is not that bad a number), and wind fails almost simultaneously over distances sometimes as large as 500 km (though generally we're talking 200km). Every kilometer extra poses extra problems for redirecting power in time, as there's so very little warning. And this is ignoring the massive cost this infrastructure would have. We're talking 2 months of Obama pocket change (500 billion dollars) for a basic grid that would interconnect 3 states on every coast. For a full deployment we're talking a year of Obama pocket change. No serious politician is even suggesting we can pay such amounts.
Also, that power grid must be able, due to the transmission losses, to deliver more power than the failing generator. It must deliver, at 500 km (a reasonable distance), 70% more power than any number of generator it needs to potentially replace.
That means that, even if we somehow get this grid operational, using wind power means we must waste, in the power plant, about 70% of the power used (at least), more (> 200%) if you wish for coast-to-coast redundancy.
In case you're wondering, the comparable number for "conventional" (or nuclear) power is 2% overcapacity.
Why aren't power companies investing in wind power ? Because it doesn't work*. We don't have the technology to reasonably implement this power source. Sorry Al Gore.
Unless, of course, you're willing to settle for constant blackouts in trade for using wind power. Given how much Al Gore's mansion is using, I somehow doubt he'd be a taker.
* there's also this reason : liberals are mad about renewable power. They don't take reality into account. So they're biding their time, knowing full well liberals will give them the trillions of dollars they need to give wind or solar a fighting chance. Obviously then they will be able to take a tiny percentage of profit from it. And, obviously, even 0.1% of 1 trillion dollars is more money than most of us will ever see in our lives.
That post also said "some economists" claim interventions is wrong, and then goes to state in the next sentence that "Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well", which is an unsupported claim; there is no logical inference from the previous statement. In other words, this is not logic but unsupported assertions, or bullshit.
If you read the Wikipedia article it shows that many economists refute the efficient market hypothesis.
Another economic critic is Minsky http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/09/13/why_capitalism_fails/
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis#Minsky.27s_theory
Minsky saw that stable markets lead to risk taking, which is rewarded, which leads to greater risk taking. Eventually the risk taking makes the markets unstable, and there is a general meltdown. He exactly described what has happened in the latest crash.
In the real world the Efficient Market Hypothesis is about as realistic as the Flat Earth Hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_Society, and leads to similar results if you use it. Of course. it is a core belief of Republicans/Neo-Cons, which is one reason that everything is so screw up right now.
Why is Snark Required?
>> 1. Giant Batteries/ Flywheels/ Water storage hills
If you have a few million hybrid and electric cars on the road, there are your batteries.
Only about 25% would be driven at any point in time. The rest can sit there storing energy when the wind is blowing, and returning energy to the grid at peak times, earning money for their owners.
I'm pretty sure the fast reacting is a matter of scale. A subs reactor is tiny compared to civilian reactors. A Virginia class submarine has a 30MW reactor, an Ohio class sub has a 45MW reactor, the biggest reactors the navy has are the pair of 200MW reactors Nimitz class supercarriers have. On the civilian side, the South Texas Nuclear Generating Station has a pair of 1.25GW reactors. The Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario has 8 reactors and can put out 6.2GW, and the world's largest, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, has 7 reactors and outputs 8.2GW.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Gas is only marginally easier than coal - it's the preheat time for the water in the loop that's the real killer AIUI.
Gas turbines (no water) are fast to start and stop, and they're very good when you need power *now*. They're used in France a lot for peaks. Civilian nuclear takes 2-3 days to change power levels significantly. I suspect that, compared to submarines, size matters.
OG.
What you say is lovely... and for the most part, I totally agree. Sadly, in this "The best Government Money Can Buy" American reality, do you actually believe there is any way to actually pass anything resembling intelligent, progressive, meaningful legislation, when any bill that hurts someone with deep enough pockets can simply be killed by investing in the right representatives?
Our nation has just gone through a fiscal melt-down, a financial disaster of epic magnitude. If you look, and have to look, because not a single news source is talking about it, but if you look, you will find that Wall street, the Nations Banks, and all those greedy buggers who almost sunk the country, are now back at it, business as usual, in fact, they're pushing bad paper and derivatives harder and faster than ever before. Making insane bonuses. Taking the hundreds of billions of dollars we gave them to prop up the banks, and spending it on an army of folks in DC, fixing the laws, and ensuring that they won't have to stop playing the games they've become addicted to. Nothing has changed, other than nobody is talking about the new escalation, of the rate at which bankers are now digging the hole we will all eventually have to lay down in.
If our government can't stop the simplest and most obvious case of fiscal rape from happening, knowing full well, that when the dust settles, and the looting and pillaging is done, there will be nothing left of this country. What makes you think for even a moment, that the men and women who populate our centers of government, have either the will or the moral fortitude required to make a sane energy policy?
It is time for us to separate Church and State once and for all, and that must include the Church of the All Mighty Dollar. We need to remove the bankers from our system of government. We will support business. We will empower an environment in which business can flourish, but to do so, we must take the power for business to determine the future of being human away once and for all. Just as a child must be managed or it will eat candy until it is sick, business' only purpose is to make profit, and if it has to do that over the bleached bones of the society in which it exists, it will ultimately do just that (and in far too many cases has), it is up to us, to guide and control business, make it perform our bidding and not the other way. We need to eliminate the entity called Corporation. It was an interesting experiment, but if nothing else, it has proven that human beings have neither the requisite intelligence nor dignity as a species to manage such an entities without doing serious harm to the world and the life in it (including ourselves.)
I'm all for wind power, above and beyond gas and coal. I'm for technology which converts wind into forms of energy that can be stored and used later (perhaps hydrogen.) We need to come up with new ways to power the future without at the same time destroying it. At the same time, we need to overhaul this government, and we need to start by taking back our communication, and keeping the corporations out of our government, or it will not go well for any of us.
Considering how much we spend on building and maintenance of roads, not to mention military intervention to protect cheap oil, can we consider automobiles viable yet? What a boondoggle that's been!
There are new technologies in the offing that will change the equation dramatically. Winds above 10,000 ft are profoundly stronger than winds found on the ground where the existing windmills live. By building wind kites or lighter than air wind generators, it would be possible to produce several times the nations current energy requirements. We need to overhaul the grid anyway... this isn't just a good idea, the existing system is antiquated and prone to greater and greater failure. If we need to perform critical maintenance anyway, we should be planning for the next century, and implementing infrastructure that supports environmentally benign technology, as well as the best and most effective use of our environment. Wind is a good match to that future. Carbon/Paper super batteries are a good match for that future. Dozens of bright new technologies which are only now just coming out of the lab, will be a brilliant match for that future. We need to pull that future to us now and we need to invest in ourselves while there is something worth investing in.
HBO did a documentary about the Schmata Business... Rags to Riches to Rags. In it, they talked about the how little by little, the clothing industry has been gutted. Americans now wear less than 3% of their clothing made from American manufacturers. The same can be said of almost every major industry in this country. The American rust belt speaks for itself. The slow demise of the family farm. The growing prison labor population. We are becoming the new Brazil. Our middle class hangs in taters. Our currency is becoming less valuable than the metal and paper it's stamped on. We've been used, abused, and bled dry by cynical people who have lost sight of any future but their own.
Buy American because your investing in ourselves. Buy local, because your tax dollars serve your own community. Eat local, because food grown where you live can be managed, watched, and the cost on society and the environment to transport it are astronomically less. We should invite the world to participate in our economy, but we need to get the balance of trade managed. Our quality of life in America is falling so fast it scares anyone with an IQ larger than a day of the month more than a hunting trip with Dick Cheney. It's time to put our people first, our future first, our society first. To hell with Lottery Thinking, and getting yours at the expense of the rest, it's time we stopped business as usual and started making some hard choices, about what kind of future would be worth living in.
Left to the market, water, power, waste and communication services thrive in the cities, but don't exist in rural areas.
Home water purification, solar, wind turbines, micro CHP, biomass, dry toilets, satellite, wireless. All exist and most are even more "green" than the conventional system, though they may not meet your standards.
What subsidies do is destroy the market for these products. This is the primary use of subsidy; to make your competitors uneconomic.
Deleted
maybe you should read this :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_energy_source#European_super_grid
(10% per 100 km power loss is not that bad a number),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC
"losses are quoted as about 3% per 1,000 km"
nd wind fails almost simultaneously over distances sometimes as large as 500 k
SOURCE????
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
There are two solutions to this problems:
1. Giant Batteries/ Flywheels/ Water storage hills
2. Gas Supplement.
2. Use supplementary energy production that can more easily turned on/off. (Gas being one example)
3. Have some energy intensive industry that can more easily be turned on/off.
4. Spread production over a larger area to reduce variations in energy production.
5. Add in stable nuclear production to reduce the effect of the more variable energy production methods.
And the truth is probably a mix of all of the above.
Why not use real numbers? Another post pointed to the a Wikipedia article on the economics for new nuclear power plants.. This includes a section that includes capital cost estimates of $3,000-5,000/kW. These projects new projects are all in the $10B ballpark. These numbers are sourced from a January 2010 report by the World Nuclear Association, a nuclear power trade group, so this is probably as optimistic as you'll get.
For wind power, we can turn to the US government reports a quick search turned up the DoE's NREL annual report on wind power (May, 2008) show an installed cost of "$1,240/kW to $2,600/kW, with an average cost of $1,710/kW." Even accounting for the capacity factor difference, Wind is looking pretty competitive vs nuclear. (Also, from the NREL report, you can see the average turbine size is 1.65MW - using a 3KW turbine to calculate costs is just mind-boggingly silly.)
The other salient point is that while thousands of megawatts of new wind generation is being added annually (according to NREL, 35% of new generation capacity was wind), 0% is nuclear (the last plant that went online in the US was in 1996. The $8.3B loan backed by the Obama administration for the $14B A.W. Votgle plants aren't scheduled to come online until 2016 and 2017).
All this is a long way of saying that I'm quite surprised that your comment could possibly be rated informative. It's a rant based on a hare-brained back of the envelope calculation (although I do admit there's some humor in the fact that the $14B price tag that you're aghast about is the actual cost of a new 2200MW nuclear plant) that seems to have managed to make many claims and conclusions without having done some pretty basic research.
By putting up all those wind turbines we are affecting the natural wind flow of the planet, stop hurting mother Earth!
Won't you think of the children?!
Gas companies whine to keep wind from passing them.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
A friend of mine who works for HP Enterprise Services, GM Hosting Engineering has to telecommute 2 or 3 days a week to save money.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
you say "there are fixes for all of the concerns raised"
Is there really a fix to wind varying???
Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast?
You say that like they aren't now, you don't think that ConnEd can keep the lights on in NYC without DET in Michigan do you? We've got power plants here that were specifically built to wholesale power to the grid. Think about it a tree shorts out a line or two in Ohio and a quarter of the country goes dark.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"The question isn't what we CAN do, but what is the most economically viable."
What is the most economically viable depends on what is factored into the calculations.
Traditional energy is cheaper because the industry cheats by externalizing the costs to the environment and the climate.
Posting anon because... well...
What do you think runs nuclear power plants?
Well whatever! The important thing is that sooner or later one side or the other will triumph and it's essential that we have the future headlines ready. Will it be...
Wind Passes Gas!
or
Gas Breaks Wind!
You be the judge.
Now that wind power is actually taking off much more then anticipated, it reminds me of the oil and car companies buying up all the patents on steam , water and other type of engines and then shelfing them forever, just to ensure the oil companies profits year after year. Until a major critical event such as the president of the united states stepping in and saying we have to find alternate power sources for our cars and homes, then these new inventions or technologies will never see the light of day .... just the way capitalism works.
Socialist!!! Burn the SOCIALIST!!!
They would very likely adjust your salary based on the local cost of living.
Microsoft has a large campus in Fargo, ND, and that's how it works here. Still good jobs, but part of what attracts them to a rural area is the 'cheap workforce'.
Sweet informative mod.
Dude, you forgot the links. This is actually a very interesting idea: put the wind generators where the wind is much faster and consistent (though not completely).
Magenn makes a rotating blimp thing.
Sky WindPower uses the turbine to fly as well as generate power. Here's an article at Stanford
Is this a good idea? I don't know how the economics really works out, but certainly there is a much higher energy density at altitude.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Yes $7 billion dollars.
So... only the cost of about 3 stealth bombers, then?
And you guys bought how many of those? How are they doing in Afghanistan, by the way?
Wow, Misleading. That's the cost of ~17 Stealth Bombers, or 3 Stealth Bombers and ~15% of the research program that designed them. They're so expensive on a per-unit basis BECAUSE we purchased only 20. We ALREADY payed for the research program, the incremental cost afterwords was far cheaper.
More people need to understand the concepts of baseline power generation versus peaking. Wind does not readily fit into either category without some large-scale energy storage to regulate its output into the grid, which is both expensive and less efficient than connecting things more or less directly, which is how most wind farms are connected now. As it is, the electrical grid becomes more and more unstable as you add more wind to it, meaning the general consensus amongst utilities that the maximum amount of wind allowable on the grid at any given moment is between 10 and 20 percent, probably closer to the lower end of that range.
Too true, like Beck himself. He's no different than Limbaugh at his peak in the 90s. There will always be some irrationality-spouting, fear mongering chode on the air trying to incite panic from the lesser morons of the world. Personally I find it difficult to believe anyone actually listens to the guy for anything beyond simple laughs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Not worried. Capitalism will take care of all of that.
I mean if Ayn Rand taught me anything it was if there is a need and a market for something, then some young enterprising USA industrialist will pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and build a market driven company that will solve all the economy's problems.
I mean it really works that way right? Everything else is pinko commie BS right? DOWN WITH DEATH PANELS! Baaaaaa! :)
Here is your cud sheeple, now chew.
Well... not everyone. How does running Electric lines from Kentucky to New York benefit Minnesota? I realize I'm reaching here, but running nationwide utility lines really only helps the big cities and the other big city from which the power is coming from (in jobs.) Other than that you lose farmland and in some cases you lose a strip of woodland where the lines are run.
Massive projects like this, the Hoover Dam, and everything the government has done (besides the national highways) have only been a benefit to a local community or a few select towns. Granted, the "community" around Hoover Dam is pretty huge.
Another failed proposition are all these high speed rail lines that further strive to mass people into a few select ("lucky") towns that have rail depots while clearing out yet more farmland and wooded areas not to mention creating an artificial barrier to wildlife.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
21
it is kind of funny.
I mean when you generate electricity with a gas turbine, you basically burn the gas, to heat the air, to make it flow, to turn the prop, to turn the dynamo, to make the electricity.
With wind power it is basically the same thing except skipping the burning of gas and heating of air.
There is just flow. Because of that it is less predictable and dependable, but then again you don't have to buy the gas either. Of course on a macro scale one might argue that continued exploration for gas is also unpredictable and not dependable.
Having said all that, until we all learn to conserve and stop wasting pretty much everything, we will need a mix of energy sources for a very long time. That includes things like gas, wind, nuke, solar, hydro, etc... You need base power, and only nuke, gas, coal, oil, does that for you really (hydro can also if managed). The rest are great, but unless you have the ability to store the energy (usually at a significant loss of energy due to mechanics), buy say using Wind Power/Solar to run water pumps, on an hydro dam, increasing the potential energy, which isn't always the case.... then they will always be "secondary" sources of energy, and a potential point of failure in the system. Don't get me wrong, I heart wind power, however it has to know its place, and people should be aware of that.
I think someday way down into our future, historians will look back in astonishment and wonder at our "centralized" power systems. The key into the future I believe is conservation and distributive systems. One is bound by culture, and the other technology, and both are a ways off.
Sorry, didn't notice you were talking LED. Though the page you link says 75watt equivalent and 17watt usage in two different places -- which is still a poorer ratio than what you are describing. I also like how the bulb costs some $204.99 each! Really, I also have some doubts as to the claimed equivalencies. It reminds me of the AMD Athlon's Pentium-rating mess only with less standardization and a lot more rounding. from your link: [quote]The 17 Watt Hi-Power LED light bulbs is an economical way to replace PAR38 based light bulbs used for indoor recessed lighting or outdoor spot/flood lighting. 75W equivalent and lasts up to 50,000 hours[/quote]
1. I was just using a nuclear plant for the size of a an average power plant.
2. Yes I was using the cost of one and multiplying but I was also using an average wind speed of 24 MPH. As one post said the average at most wind farms is closer to 12 MPH which will give you 1/4 the power. "If you double the wind speed the power is four times greater." I also left out the cost of towers, land, maintenance which for wind turbines is pretty high. Oh and the inverters to sync the power to line.
As well as the backup power plants you need for when the wind isn't blowing. You must have enough standby generating capability to make up for when the wind isn't blowing. For every watt of wind right now you must have a watt of gas fired peak plant standing by. Those must also be maintained and waiting to make up for a calm day or a stormy day.
Yes I said a stormy day. You see when the wind blows too hard they wind turbines must feather or stall the blades and make NO power because if they don't they will shred. But I was not comparing the cost of wind to nuclear but to natural gas. And natural gas doesn't have the problems you like to state about nuclear. I do feel as do many educated people including one of the founder of Greenpeace that you are over stating the risks of nuclear power.
But the point was to answer the dumb question that "wind is free so how can it cost more than natural gas".
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It is funny because I was just trying to answer the augment as to how could wind cost more than natural gas since wind was free.
I used a nuclear power plant for the simple reason that my local power plant is nuclear and I know it's name. It is a lot easer to find the power output of a power plant when you know it's name.
The entire point that I was making was I have a friend in the wind industry. He works for a major power company and they are having a hard time with their wind program because Natural gas is cheaper and no one wants to pay for "carbon offsets" to use wind power right now. So they are loosing money on their wind program.
There are just too many conspiracy nuts that are blaming the power companies when the problem is simple economics.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And everything you are talking about is right from the pages of Popular Science. So me a full scale kit prototype?
I can show you pictures from the 1970 of giant turbines that use the gulf stream and floating island OTECs. Until they are built they are just fantasy. We are talking what is available today.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Why not use real numbers? Another post pointed to the a Wikipedia article on the economics for new nuclear power plants. [wikipedia.org]. "
Well maybe because I didn't use any number for the cost of a nuclear plant. I just used my local power plant which happens to be nuclear for size.
The question I was answering was how can wind cost more than natural gas. I just used a nuclear plant for the size because I have on in my town and it is a lot easier to find the power output of a plant when you know it's name.
It was probably a mistake to say that it was a nuclear power plant since everyone is latching onto the N word.
The point was wind may be free but wind power is still expensive.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Both links should get a simple reply :
vaporware
Btw, it must be painful for you but that grid is being used to transport nuclear power. From states that have nothing against nuclear plants to states that have outlawed them (e.g. Netherlands).
The Reason you use gas is it's easier to turn on and off [than] Coal/Nuclear.
There were a couple of posts talking about this w.r.t. nuclear. I'd like to give a better understanding of this:
While it may be true that the design considerations of our existing nuclear generating facilities cause it to be difficult to ramp up/down easily, it is possible to have nuclear power plants that could do so. What most people are missing is more important than capability of doing so is the cost considerations of continuing running.
Take a look at this chart.
Once you have a nuclear power plant running safely, the cost of fissioning the fuel (or burning coal) is minuscule compared to the cost of burning natural gas. Nuclear power's high costs come from heavy construction cost for high quality components, maintaining the plant in safe condition, and paying the staff - not fuel.
For the time being, the fuel cost of coal power plants are also quite low. This may change once we start taxing waste gasses from fossil fuels. I'm of the opinion that greenhouse ones aren't even the worst.
On the other hand, natural gas prices are highly volatile, and they make up a substantial portion of their operating costs. This is why they are used as make-up, and coal+nuke are our baseload.
Before someone says "Yea, what about the cost of storing that used radioactive fuel," - It's already covered. Nuclear power plants put money into a pool for disposing of the stuff. Aside from the financial aspect, you have to keep in mind that the huge difference in fuel/energy ratio of fission to fossil fuels means that while we burn thousands of pounds of coal per day per plant, all of our existing spent nuclear fuel could be stored in a facility that is as big as a football field. That's without reprocessing.
only nuclear has lower maintenance than wind, and that is controversial.
The thing is people used to take pride in having nice things. Now we take pride in how little we pay for everything. The thing is that I have concluded we are cheating ourselves.
Tools are a great example. I was cleaning my garage and putting my tools in order. I found a set or wrenches and they where all still good but in the same drawer was one that was badly rusted and was junk.
The good wrenches where a set of craftsman while the bad one one was a cheap made in china wrench.
I then noticed that I had four sets of sockets what where incomplete because the ratchet had broken or the sockets broke or stripped. I figured out that one set of good craftsman sockets would cost a lot less than all those junk sets.
Then I noticed that the jeans I get at Walmart last maybe six months but the good Wranglers I get at a different store last for years.
It has nothing to do with any political agenda. Pay twice the price for something that lasts ten times as long and you will be ahead.
In a way it is all about putting me first. I don't want junk and I am don't want to pay for flash.
I want good stuff that lasts and is worth the money.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Because people who actually have money are smarter than you. They understand economics and know that we won't suddenly wake up one otherwise normal sunny day and find ourselves out of dead dinosaurs to burn. It will happen slowly and the price will rise accordingly as supply declines, which will make alternatives become cost effective.
[Citation Needed]
These being the same people that said real estate values could continue to grow forever? The same guys that realize that buying laws and advertising is cheaper than product development and customer service? The point is this group has its eyes firmly set on next quarter with a long range forecast of 2011. For 10-40 year vision you need a group of people that cares what the world looks like in 40 years. That's not the people gambling everything to make their millions this year.
There will always be some irrationality-spouting, fear mongering chode on the air trying to incite panic from the lesser morons of the world.
Yeah, man!...and all that hatred & vitriol, the personal attacks & name-calling...Oh, wait...you mean we *weren't* talking about Air America/DailyKOS/Huffington Post/CNN/MSNBC??
It's apparent to anyone who has listened to/watched Becks' radio & TV shows for any length of time that, judging by your comments, you obviously have not and are simply saying and thinking what you've been told to like a good unquestioning and obedient little Progressive cog in the total-government machine.
Makes me nostalgic for the good old days when the radicals were trying to take power *away* from "the Man" ("Power to the people!") rather than being on "the Man"'s side and trying to take power *from* the people to give to "the Man".
I suppose that the view that an all-encompassing, all-powerful government is necessary is inevitable, however, when one considers anyone who disagrees with them "the lesser morons of the world". It displays the contempt the elitists in the Progressive movement have for people's ability to manage their own lives and make their own decisions without having every decision made or approved by government.
Just something for you to think about; maybe it isn't *they* who are the morons here? Sort of like how parents are morons until their children reach a certain maturity, whereupon they realize that their parents were actually pretty smart.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There has to be an economic motive to change, and that can most easily be created by taxing what we don't like (coal/oil) and giving subs to what we do like (nuclear, wind, sun, etc..).
A dumb tax wouldn't even be nessecary. Just make every power-generator pay for the true cost of what they are doing, including cleaning up after themselves. That means cleaning all the crap out of the air and water that they put into it (inculding CO2). That means properly dispsosing of their heavy metal and radioative by-products, that means restoring their extraction and refining sites to a livable condition when they are done with them. Right now the old power and resource extraction industries just leave it to us taxpayers to clean up their messes (if we can clean them up at all), while they keep the profits for themselves. Privitize the profits, Socialize the costs.
If every method of power generation had to play on a truly level playing-field, we wouldn't need any further artificial incentives.
I doubt he would know for sure. But if you take all the wind on the earth my guess is that it has a lot more potential energy than we use for electricity on earth.
A valid question is what if any effect taking many gigawatts of power out of the wind system have on weather patterns.
Most people say none but I honestly do not know if that effect has been studied. Since we have found that cities and airliners have effects on weather patterns I wouldn't bet that massive wind harvesting wouldn't.
At the scale we are at now I am not worried.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Quite obviously, yes.
That wasn't the answer you were expecting?"
It was a question. I actually tend to agree but I am not a big fan of wind. I think Solar, Nuclear, Geothermal, and OTEC have more long term potential. OTEC, Solar, Geothermal, and even wind tend to be location limited.
However I fear that you are over simplifying the problem. It isn't just us paying for it but it is the US not shipping it's manufacturing to counties that are not cutting their production.
It will do no net good to replace electricity produced in the US with natural gas with electricity produced with coal in China when it comes to production.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
And sadly, I agree with you. I don't have very high hopes for a sound decision on energy, for two reasons:
1. Our media is already filled with misinformation, and the recent scotus decision on citizens united, is only going to make things worse. Without an informed electorate, we won't get the politicians and policies we need. And the process to reversing misinformation in media is going to be a long fight. See http://www.movetoamend.org/
2. Energy policy change is going to require a long term effort. Way longer than the 8 years of a Presidency. If the government switches its stance on energy from "drill baby drill" to "clean energy now" every 8 years, not much is going to happen.
In the end, I just try to read as much as possible, convince friends and family, and hope for the best.
I generally think you're correct.
Personally, I think that we need to stop any and all federal subsidies and/or tax breaks that are given for coal, oil, and natural gas and, instead, channel that money into making Wind, Solar, Wave power sources more competitive. If that means financing research or building power transmission infrastructure, so be it. The legacy utilities have had decades to get established and should be forced to compete on their own. Renewables are the direction we need to go and, since cost is what's standing in the way.
By "environmentalists" it's usually "Greenpeace", who don't benefit directly from building nuke plants, thus they protest.
You could tell them that you'll be using a design that will give them eons of organic produce until you're blue in the face, and it still won't convince them to stop thinking that nuclear power isn't a means of increasing proliferation and radioactive waste.
Of course, the greatest bang for the buck right now isn't building new nuke plants, but by reducing our consumption via efficiency improvements.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
> It could be worse, they could be building coal plants instead of wind.
They are. Google: coal plant 2010
I'm sure you can refine the search a little to get better results.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
>As it stands, I can only think that those who actively oppose nuclear power don't really think so.
Some of us are simply opposed to leaving a big fat nuclear waste mess for our kids to deal with. The problem is already much bigger than a lot of people realize.
What happens when the power company goes bankrupt and shuts down the nuclear reactor for good? The waste sits in rotting containers on the power plant property. Before we create more of it, someone needs to find a solution to the problems that nuclear power creates.
We know that carbon production *might* be a problem and causing the global warming we are seeing.
We know that nuclear waste disposal *is* a real problem, here and now.
Building more plants right now, is stupid and short sighted.
The question I have is if we can build all these nuclear plants and feed the grid, why can't we use alternative energy and feed the grid just as easily? We need to build 93 bln worth of power distribution infrastructure for wind but not for nuclear? What the fuck kind of sense does that make?
(Hint: it doesn't make sense)
It doesn't add up. Obama is snowing us again. The "ya ya nuclear" people are either letting Obama snow job them or are paid lobbyists.
So much for "no lobbyist" promises that Obama made. He's full of shit like the rest of them.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
not really. 40%+ of new electric power is wind, I predict that number will rise by 5% each year. the only new nuke in europe is PAINFULLY over budget.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
OK, let's get them to stop manipulating their currency to keep their prices down. Then we'll see exactly how expensive they are, and let market forces sort things out.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Actually natural gas has a very low carbon footprint compared to the other fossil fuels.
Shifting away from coal to natural gas would make a huge impact in CO2 production.
So going to natural gas isn't terrible from a carbon production point of view. It also opens up a bit of market for biogas since it is also methane.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Read some of the "fixes" and then ask who is going to pay for them? Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
How about we just quit subsidizing the coal and gas industries instead? If they had to pay to clean up their own drilling and mining sites, to properly dispose of their own hazardous wastes, and to remove all the hazardous chemicals and CO2 they are pumping into our air then power generation that didn't need all that would be competitive on its own.
They will never clean up their act while the taxpayer is footing the cleanup bill for their dirty practices for them (or just letting them do it for free without any cleanuup).
Live in England with your Japanese wife and Chinese food. Telnet into NYC and work in your shirtsleeves.
From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.
--
What if they built a water cooler, and nobody came?
Because people who actually have money are smarter than you. They understand economics and know that we won't suddenly wake up one otherwise normal sunny day and find ourselves out of dead dinosaurs to burn.[...]
These being the same people that said real estate values could continue to grow forever?
You're engaging in a straw-man (these guys over here are wrong, so you are too), and yet you're using a terrible example because the people who understand the real estate market were years ahead of the drop. I can't count the number of very well written essays, articles and books I read about how the housing market works that included the prediction that the current bubble would burst within 5-10 years of 2005. Lo, they were right.
I bought a house at the height of the market, and what seemed like dozens of my friends asked why I would do so when it was so obvious that the market was at its peek. My answer and the answer of the real estate community as a whole was that three factors increased the real estate market from where it was in 1900 to where it was in 2005: 1) single-income families have very broadly become multi-income families 2) far fewer extended families live under the same roof and 3) the average family is far more mobile than it was in 1900.
These three factors increased both the demand and the available cash for purchases. At the same time, we became capable of managing long-term debt in ways that were not nearly as ad hoc.
So, has the bubble burst? Yep, just as it did in the late 80s.
Does that matter? Not really. The price will eventually return to where it was, though at a slower pace. What the doom sayers are suggesting is that the fains of the 20th century will also erode, and we'll return to $50,000 homes. That, simply can't happen unless the market changes pretty radically. Real market forces forced those increases, and unless we return to the model of single-wage, extended families, there's just no reason that people would want to sell their homes for so little, nor why people would stop paying the current rates.
The same guys that realize that buying laws and advertising is cheaper than product development and customer service?
Eh?
The point is this group has its eyes firmly set on next quarter with a long range forecast of 2011.
Heh. You don't now Big Oil very well, do you? This is an industry whose wealth is entirely based on expanding resources that they won't be able to take advantage of for 5-10 years. They spend more on exploration and R&D for long-term returns than any other industry.
For 10-40 year vision you need a group of people that cares what the world looks like in 40 years.
You've contradicted your own point. The person you're responding to said that change in pricing would be gradual as supply waned and market pressures would facilitate a rational response. You're setting a timeline of 10-40 years, essentially backing up his thesis.
I don't know what the answer is. One possible answer in this case to go full-federal and dissolve the states as independent bodies, so at least you'd only have to deal with a single monolithic federal morass instead of that plus forty-eight smaller but in aggregate hugely complex systems, but that comes with its own attendant issues.
May I suggest an alternative solution: faster processing of information with COMPUTERS. Develop an expert system that informs people what data they need to obtain (including different types of data to inhibit cheating), and then spit out the Yes/No answer in less than a day. Prove the system out over a variety of projects, and the problem gets a lot better.
Gather all the past applications and decisions to use as training data.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
> Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast?
IMO, no one *sane* is proposing that. Those proposals come from people who want to directly profit from it. Like the super rich oilman who wants to own the resulting power grid (and water rights under the lines).
In reality: find a wind map, and you'll see steady winds all along the ocean coasts. Find a population density map, and you'll see high densities all around the ocean coasts and not so much in the middle. In other words, if we build the wind farms on the coasts or just offshore, we need very little additional infrastructure to get deliver the power.
Not really. Coal is used for base load and wind is used for peaking power. It is not reliable enough for base-load.
If you want to replace Coal right now the only alternatives are.
1. Hydro if you have a good location.
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal if you have a good location.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"Barn-raising" or "Co-op."
Your problem is you're talking to a hillbilly who was the first one in his family to go to college.
Farmers ain't never been fans of the "free market." We've always been socialists, it's just most of us don't understand the term. Up here in the hills, we had things called "barn-raisings" where the whole town would come together to help build someone's barn. A common gift for young married kids was we'd all get together and build them a house to start 'em off right. If someone got hurt, the doc would come and we'd pay him as best we could, but still, no doc worth the name would leave someone to suffer.
"Free-market?" Son, you're talking like the town banker, or one of them noisy fool jackasses from the city who come out here to hunt -- well, more like drink and annoy the animals, really -- looking like orange-covered billboards for REI.
Up here in the hills, we look out for each other and we work together. It's the only way we get by. We don't like outsiders much 'cause most of them are just coming to take away something we need.
Home water purification? You mean like a pump, a barrel of charcoal and a still? Kinda hard to take showers that way.
Solar? Great for drying clothes.
Wind turbines? You do understand most windmills were "socialist" town projects, right? It's the only way to get enough money together to build one.
Micro CHP? Huh?
Biomass? We've had compost heaps forever.
Dry toilets? You mean outhouses?
Satellite/wireless? No one but the town banker can afford that stuff.
Tongue-in-cheek aside, all of the technologies you just listed only got their start BECAUSE of government subsidies.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The federal highway system is an example of what the US government SHOULDN'T get involved in. Sure .. it made a great highway system so that goods could easily move from one area to the other. It also wiped out HUNDREDS of small towns and made it simpler to mass people in large cities instead of small towns. It virtually eliminated the need for a railroad system since no one really had to travel much anymore. Then it allowed the federal government to jack up all of our income taxes to support it, and turn around and blackmail states into speed limit, seat belt, and drinking age laws in order to help keep those federal highway dollars coming in. THAT is the success of the federal highway system, more pollution, more congestion, and more control over our lives by federal politicians instead of our local and state governments.
The United STATES of America is one big experiment. States that do poorly look at states that do well and try to model them. Instead of one big education system, we have 50 small ones all run a little differently simultaneously that can be looked at, examined, and modeled by the other states. Health care is another example of being able to look at what hasn't worked to model new methods.
It is better to have several, independent power systems that compete with one another than one large one with only one way of doing things and a central control that could fail and take down everything. I think it's great that Texas and California and other states have this abundance of electricity. Let the companies that wish to tap it find ways to market it. Because once the feds control it, they can use that control to exert even more influence over our lives.
The United States has a constitution. But so does each state. The Bill of Rights came to be because our Federal politicians saw what each state had put into their constitution, and picked what they considered to be the best for the Bill of Rights. In other words, they were threatened by the power the states were exerting. While running 50 experiments may be inefficient, it is also the best way to find the best solutions in the end.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
You mean "if only there were a bunch of UNION people who needed jobs who could do this for us."
Despite your dig, there are a bunch of union workers that wouldn't mind the extra work. I take it you've never heard of the IBEW? Looks like you'll have to find another scapegoat for this situation...
You are right on target. The government seems to think that laws and taxes solve all problems. When often the best the to do is to just let nature take its course. Another energy example is solar energy. There is no need for government rebate programs, tax credits, etc. to drive solar prices down and to encourage the industry. Geez the waste (time and money) and the fraud that go into that are huge. If they want to move solar forward, just start being a customer – start putting solar panel on top of the buildings the government owns. The increased demand will drive competition, innovation, price drops, and so on.It really is not as complicated and the government wants it to be so that they remain relevant.
So, with wind power, no need to build out new transmission line to cover the entire country. Build the farms and announce the really low cost energy for those that live in the area that the farm supports (if it really is less expensive than other types of power). Let nature take its course.
Incidentally, nuclear is competitive right now, the barriers to building nuclear plants are legal. All we need to do is get our government to knock those barriers down and nuclear plants will start being built.
No the real barriers are mostly political, in the grass-roots "not in my backyard" sense. Sure there are considerable regulations governing the building and operation of nuclear plants, but they are manageable. The real problem is most people in the USA have very incorrect understandings of both the actual risks of living next to a well designed nuclear power plant (there are still some real risks but for both technical and organizational reasons Chernobyl-like consequences would never happen to modern facility), as well as radiation and nuclear energy in general.
I love how assholes like you try to make "progressive" and "elitist" into dirty words. If being intelligent makes me "elitist" and giving a shit about the whole world instead of just the tiny meaningless corner I inhabit makes me "progressive" so be it. If that's how I am distinguished from shit-flinging troglodytes like yourself, I couldn't be more thrilled.
My personal dream is that humanity would will itself to a higher consciousness that doesn't NEED any kind of government oversight. That people stop being greedy, self-important, self-righteous, imbeciles and CAN make logical, rational decisions about their own lives that don't fuck over at least one other person. Yes, I have contempt for people as they are now, and you, sir, have just demonstrated why.
And for the record, I don't listen to Air America or read DailyKOS, CNN might as well be staffed by monkeys, MSNBC are just as fucking moronic as Fox News, Arianna Huffington is a cunt, and I never thought my parents were morons.
But it must be nice to have that super-human insight of yours, that enables you to pierce down into someone's core based on an off-hand comment made on an internet forum. I'm sure it will serve you well.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Apologies for calling you a "shit-flinging troglodyte," I'm sure I don't know you well enough to make that assertion. I'll roll it back to "poo-tossing monkey-man." Have a nice day.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Big frozen industrial warehouses are batteries too. There was a /. article about some country that drops their temperatures at night and gives the grid a break during the day.
Solar and wind both vary wildly at a single-mill or roof-full-of-panels level. But spread them out over a few square miles (do individual clouds, gusts, and storm cells aren't the issue) and multiple sites separated by tens and hundreds of miles (so local weather timing also gets many distinct samples) and the rapid variations average out. They become at least as predictable as the weather - which is very predictable at a 3-day level.
Except it's not true. There are 2-3 day periods when the entirety of Ireland or Denmark, both wind-heavy countries, gets next to no power from wind (1% of capacity). I see this "dispersal argument" parroted all the time but it's simply not true. Also consider how much you need to overbuild to have the baseload covered at all time, and how much land it would take.
So up to a point adding solar and especially wind to the grid - if it's spread out a bit - IMPROVES the grid's ability to handle the cyclic nature of the load and REDUCES the variability that you need to cover with "peaking plants".
This argument is true only on the statistical level (see above). On a practical level, the output of renewable sources, particularly wind, is not that predictable.
There is no way to smooth out the variations using renewable sources - you need to burn natural gas.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Fuel might cost nothing, but the wind farm is definitely not free to operate. To compare the all-inclusive costs, look for an analysis that compares levelized costs. Price per watt of capacity is particularly misleading, because for wind farms you have to multiply it by at least 3 (33% capacity factor is a very high one).
Levelized cost of new nuclear electricity is still much lower than that of wind electricity.
The cheapest source of electricity is existing power plants that have been fully depreciated (around 2 cents per kWh, less than half the cost of coal). That's why not extending the life of old reactors would be an economical crime.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Capacity factor for wind farms is actually around 35% for offshore wind and closer to 25% for onshore wind. So under your assumptions the required investment is $21 billion. To have a similar level of reliability as a nuclear plant, you also have to consider the cost of natural gas backup.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
I love how assholes like you try to make "progressive" and "elitist" into dirty words.
You seem to be doing an excellent job without any help, considering this and your following post's tone.
My personal dream is that humanity would will itself to a higher consciousness that doesn't NEED any kind of government oversight. That people stop being greedy, self-important, self-righteous, imbeciles and CAN make logical, rational decisions about their own lives that don't fuck over at least one other person. Yes, I have contempt for people as they are now, and you, sir, have just demonstrated why.
This is where you have a fundamental misunderstanding. Government is only people given power over others. This gives people with all the attributes you list power over your life. People have always been this way and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. This is why the Constitution was specifically designed to put extreme limits on governments' power. Because the people in it will *always* seek to use it for their own purposes and not those of the people it governs.
The only logical solution is to put extreme limits on the power, size, and scope of the national government and leave the majority of domestic governance close to those it governs so that the people have more direct control over their government and their lives.
The moves away from the Constitution that the government has been pursuing under the Progressives in both parties for the last 100 years while growing in size, scope, and power, is a major cause or contributing factor behind why the current government (either R or D controlled) sucks and why the country is declining.
See how I did that?
I answered your post and effectively refuted everything in it and didn't need to use ad-hominem attacks, strawman arguments, or generally nasty and disrespectful tones even once. One only uses those tactics when history, logic, human nature, and facts don't support their point of view.
Maybe you should have a bit of a re-think on your points of view? I hate seeing someone under that kind of stress from pushing a non-viable world-view.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I've forgotten what we're arguing about...
So you're basically saying that government sucks because people suck, which I totally agree with, and my utopian fantasy is exactly that, which I've acknowledged and accepted, that's why it's a utopian fantasy. I understand history, better than most I think, and I've grown weary of the repeating patterns not only through the centuries but even in my own lifetime. Humanity's memory seems to have shrunk to the order of months and is continually decreasing. The decline of the country mirrors the fall of pretty much every empire that has existed in the last 2000+ years. Nothing changes because it's all the same. It really makes me wonder how we got this far and how we're still here at all.
Our Constitution and government were designed to be limited but flexible, which worked well for the first century or so. However, I feel the framers gave people too much credit for altruism. Too much of that flexibility has been misused to pervert and corrupt the original intentions of the Founders. Or maybe that's just another myth, maybe they were right bastards and this is how they wanted it.
It just drives me fucking nuts to look around and see things as they are, knowing it could be better. Individuals are capable of so much more than the masses would lead one to believe. Yes, I'm railing against human nature. Futility exemplified.
I'm not trying to backpedal, I've just come down off the bad mood I had been in at the time. I was looking to do some flamebaiting, you turned it back on me; well played. I enjoy doing that myself. Also, I apologize for the name calling, but I usually only resort to ad hominem when I feel I've been pigeonholed. And my subsequent comment was intended as a joke.
I think we agree more than we disagree, fundamentally anyway. It's refreshing to spar with someone who does know what they're talking about, happens so seldom on the internets.
If I seem self-contradictory, just chalk it up to being human. I try to rise above, but it's impossible.
What the hell was this thread about? Oh yeah, wind power.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Our Constitution and government were designed to be limited but flexible, which worked well for the first century or so.
That's precisely and completely backwards on both points. The Constitution was designed to be anything *but* flexible, as the tortuous procedure for amending the Constitution highlights, and what many Progressives use as an excuse to "work around" the Constitution have complained of.
The Constitution was intentionally made difficult to change, needing overwhelming support by the States and the people to amend. Once you start down the path of looking at the Constitution as a "living document" with alternate, non-intuitive & non-literal interpretations of clauses and articles, or just plain ignoring certain parts for conveniences' sake, then it becomes subject to the interpretive whims of whomever is in power, which is precisely what has taken this country off-path since the time of Wilson, T. Roosevelt, and the other Progressive leaders from the '20s-'30s to present.
It was the fact that for the first roughly 100 years we *didn't* treat the Constitution as a "living document" open to wide interpretation and "work-arounds" as we treat it today that made this country the greatest, most free country on the planet. It's just like Animal Farm where the rules began to slowly morph in small incremental steps while nobody said anything about it until the pigs in charge were indistinguishable from the humans they'd replaced and "some animals are more equal than others". Animal Farm was written by Orwell as a warning against communism & socialism in Europe and the Progressive movement in the US.
Changing the Constitution by either flat-out ignoring certain parts or using "creative interpretation" rather than going through the procedures specifically put in place as safeguards is like Homer Simpson ignoring/reinterpreting reactor safety procedures & rules so he can be the first to get to the donuts in the break-room. It's just *not* going to end well.
I'm not trying to backpedal, I've just come down off the bad mood I had been in at the time. I was looking to do some flamebaiting, you turned it back on me; well played. I enjoy doing that myself. Also, I apologize for the name calling, but I usually only resort to ad hominem when I feel I've been pigeonholed. And my subsequent comment was intended as a joke.
I think we agree more than we disagree, fundamentally anyway. It's refreshing to spar with someone who does know what they're talking about, happens so seldom on the internets.
Thanks. I appreciate your forthrightness. No apologies really needed however as I understand this is "teh intra-webz" and on that bell-curve of troll-ish/flamebait-ish behavior you're not anywhere close to either end of the curve. Trust me, in this "age of Obama and Progressive-ism" I find myself in, my true-conservative and Constitutional-originalist/literalist, anti-Progressive views get far shorter shrift and far more flaming by those who fail to understand their history than you've done here.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The Constitution was designed to be anything *but* flexible, as the tortuous procedure for amending the Constitution highlights,
That is not correct. If it was intended to be rigid, why have an amendment process at all? It would simply have been carved in stone and prefaced with "This is the immutable law of the land." They knew they couldn't foresee all possible futures, yet they had to account for it somehow. Ergo, the Constitution was made malleable.
The Constitution was intentionally made difficult to change, needing overwhelming support by the States and the people to amend.
True. It was made this way to ensure that any change would have at least a substantial majority in favor of it, hopefully preventing changes that would harm the greater good. If amending had been made a simple process, the entire document would be rendered meaningless in short order (which, I take, you assert is what has already happened, not that I entirely disagree).
Once you start down the path of looking at the Constitution as a "living document" with alternate, non-intuitive & non-literal interpretations of clauses and articles, or just plain ignoring certain parts for conveniences' sake, then it becomes subject to the interpretive whims of whomever is in power,
Yes. That is by design. Not ignoring parts, that isn't right. But making interpretations is part of that flexibility in the face of unforeseen circumstances. Sure, interpretations will change, because the world will change, because attitudes change, because things happen.
... which is precisely what has taken this country off-path since the time of Wilson, T. Roosevelt, and the other Progressive leaders from the '20s-'30s to present.
Path? What path? The path of industrialists carving up the country amongst themselves?
It was the fact that for the first roughly 100 years we *didn't* treat the Constitution as a "living document" open to wide interpretation and "work-arounds" as we treat it today that made this country the greatest, most free country on the planet.
Which is why over half of the amendments that have ever been made were done within that first century, with the first ten or so done concurrently? And when you say "most free country on the planet" are you only counting the ones that allowed slavery?
It's just like Animal Farm where the rules began to slowly morph in small incremental steps while nobody said anything about it until the pigs in charge were indistinguishable from the humans they'd replaced and "some animals are more equal than others". Animal Farm was written by Orwell as a warning against communism & socialism in Europe and the Progressive movement in the US.
And 1984 was a heart-warming tale of what happens to a society that gives up precious liberty for illusory security, written as warning against fascism and authoritarianism. I think Orwell was more concerned with the fact that power corrupts.
Changing the Constitution by either flat-out ignoring certain parts or using "creative interpretation" rather than going through the procedures specifically put in place as safeguards is like Homer Simpson ignoring/reinterpreting reactor safety procedures & rules so he can be the first to get to the donuts in the break-room. It's just *not* going to end well.
"Creative interpretation" of the Constitution, as you put it, is part and parcel the job description of a Supreme Court Justice, and to a lesser extent, all federal judges, who are all part of those procedural safeguards you mention, provided by the very same Constitution. Granted, they might not be doing their job as effectively as they might, since we still have abominations like the PATRIOT Act in effect, which ignores several parts of the Constitution.
...my true-conservative and Cons
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Learn to economics and understand the gains from trade, or shut the fuck up.
Thank you.
Once you start down the path of looking at the Constitution as a "living document" with alternate, non-intuitive & non-literal interpretations of clauses and articles, or just plain ignoring certain parts for conveniences' sake, then it becomes subject to the interpretive whims of whomever is in power,
Yes. That is by design. Not ignoring parts, that isn't right. But making interpretations is part of that flexibility in the face of unforeseen circumstances.
The "flexibility" was the Constitutional Amendment process. Not a judge, not even nine judges in black robes has that Constitutional power. That is one of the things that has changed in how the Constitution is treated.
The Supreme Court's only function is to compare the case in front of them to what the Constitution says. Not to create new meanings or completely new rights or government powers. That is what the amendment process is for. If you want it to work differently, that's perfectly fine...as long as you amend the Constitution to say so. ... which is precisely what has taken this country off-path since the time of Wilson, T. Roosevelt, and the other Progressive leaders from the '20s-'30s to present.
Path? What path? The path of industrialists carving up the country amongst themselves?
The path of the Federal government's power remaining within the bounds set forth in the Constitution as amended. How do you think the "industrialists carving up the country" got the power to do that? By using the power of the Federal government outside of Constitutional bounds through corrupt politicians which is another reason why a strong central government is a bad idea...only a small subset of Federal politicians need to be corrupted to exercise power over the whole nation.
It was the fact that for the first roughly 100 years we *didn't* treat the Constitution as a "living document" open to wide interpretation and "work-arounds" as we treat it today that made this country the greatest, most free country on the planet.
Which is why over half of the amendments that have ever been made were done within that first century, with the first ten or so done concurrently?
Notice you yourself mention that the changes were done through *amendments*, not just creative interpretation by the Judicial branch or flat-out ignoring the parts that politicians in the Executive & Legislative branches found inconvenient to their re-elections and/or their accruing of ever-more power & wealth.
"Creative interpretation" of the Constitution, as you put it, is part and parcel the job description of a Supreme Court Justice, and to a lesser extent, all federal judges, who are all part of those procedural safeguards you mention, provided by the very same Constitution.
See my response above concerning the SCOTUS/Judicial branch and it's role re: the Constitution. It's purely to judge the cases before them as they relate to a plain reading of the Constitution. The Judicial does not have the power to change the Constitution, and has been engaged over the last ~100 years in doing end-runs around the Constitution through creative interpretation/judicial activism.
As you yourself point out, if any branch of government can unilaterally change the Constitution and/or it's effective meaning whenever it's convenient then the Constitution might as well be toilet paper for all the good it will do in restricting the government when it chafes against it's Constitutional bounds.
But wait, I see you've capitalized "Progressive" as if to indicate a proper noun, maybe a label with which to blanket a group? One used disparagingly and separate from its actual definition? Something to consider.
No offense meant here, but you seem to be either un- or misinformed about the Progressive movement. You should do some Googling on the Progressive movement as it's fascinating. They even hijacked the Liberal movement as cover when they found themselves a failed ideology and
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
not really. 40%+ of new electric power is wind
And how much baseload power does it replace ? 0.1% ? 0.01% ?
Do tell.
here we go again with the base-load fallacy again. There is always wind. if not here, then a few hundred K's from here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_super_grid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_energy_source#European_super_grid
"indicates that the entire European power usage could come from renewables, with 70% total energy from wind at the same sort of costs or lower than at present."
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Been a long weekend of computer failures, miss me?
The Supreme Court's only function is to compare the case in front of them to what the Constitution says. Not to create new meanings or completely new rights or government powers.
Agreed, and if you can site specific examples where this has been the case, I'd like to know what they are.
The Supreme Court's only function is to compare the case in front of them to what the Constitution says. Not to create new meanings or completely new rights or government powers. ... See my response above concerning the SCOTUS/Judicial branch and it's role re: the Constitution. It's purely to judge the cases before them as they relate to a plain reading of the Constitution. The Judicial does not have the power to change the Constitution, and has been engaged over the last ~100 years in doing end-runs around the Constitution through creative interpretation/judicial activism.
Ok, so you're making a distinction between regular interpretation and "creative" interpretation. Again, I'd like some specific examples of what you think amounts to SCOTUS overstepping their bounds.
No offense meant here, but you seem to be either un- or misinformed about the Progressive movement. You should do some Googling on the Progressive movement as it's fascinating. They even hijacked the Liberal movement as cover when they found themselves a failed ideology and were discredited in the first half of the 20th century.
You're right, there were aspects to which I was not aware, but you seem to hold a rather slanted view of the whole thing yourself.
Progressives as in the widely-recognized political ideology believe that the country needs to "progress" *past* the Constitution, as they view it as an obstacle to implementing national change away from capitalism, free markets, limited government, and individual freedoms in order to create a society based on prioritizing the needs of the collective as opposed to the individual.
That seems to me less "progressive" and more straight "communist." Most of the progressive movement that I've read up on, at your suggestion, seems a response to industry becoming the dominant force of everyday life; the social progressives came about to counter the industrial progressives.
Progressivism (capital "P"), from the left or right, isn't necessarily bad (or good). Harm comes from the extremist elements. They make the most noise, get the most attention, and have the worst ideas.
That's about all I've got right now, need to recharge the fuel cells. Catch you on the flip.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Yeah, hard to believe that at the dawn of the 21st Century, there are still idiots like this out there. Human ignorance and/or willful stupidity is in infinite supply, it seems.