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Government Approves First US Offshore Wind Farm
RobotRunAmok writes "In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean energy, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today he was approving the nation's first offshore wind farm, the controversial Cape Wind project off of Cape Cod. The project has undergone years of environmental review and political maneuvering, including opposition from the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose home overlooks Nantucket Sound, and from Wampanoag Indian tribes who complained that the 130 turbines, which would stand more than 400 feet above the ocean surface, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. But George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, hailed the decision, saying it was 'a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.'"
It's working great in the Gulf of Mexico!
'a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.'" I thought that was why the Department of Energy was created.
As a resident of SE Mass, I'm thrilled. Just think: Massachusetts has enough windy coastline to power most of the state with turbine farms. All we need to do is go through this process another 30-40 times! We should be done by the year 2500 or so!
Hook up a generator. More clean energy.
While I'm all for renewable energy, We can't live off it in it's present form, you can't ensure a minimum output like coal/nuclear power plants so it would lead to brown/blackouts in the long run if it was taken up more. What we really need is a renewable energy that can provide a base load, then we start shutting down all the coal/nuclear power plants that create so much pollution.
So while this is good news, we really need to start working more on forms of renewable power creation where we can get a minimum load of them on demand or renewable energy will stay on the fringes.
The Wampanoag Indian tribes, I totally respect their position about the burial ground.
Ted Kennedy was just a hypocrite. He was all for green energy EXCEPT when it was in his back yard.
It’s about time this was passed. Now maybe they can put these wind farms on the Great Lakes also.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
All the other objections were just bullcrap political cover for the real reason the project never got off the ground until now; Senator Kennedy didn't want to see the turbines in HIS view. Now that he has went to Hell progress will be rapid.
Democrat delenda est
or Windbreaking :-)
Bean town gets the first windmill farm.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Government approves offshore wind farm, with the caveat that they are responsible for the cleanup of wind spills.
I know people in the area. They told me the biggest objections came from people living in NYC and Conn. who had summer and weekend homes in the area. The thing is some 15 miles off of the coast. The people most bothered will be on their yachts miles out to sea.
Basically we have some choices;
1) Invest in newer, cleaner forms of energy
or
2) continue to destroy the environment, kill oil rig workers and coal miners, and rely on oppressive regimes in oil producing nations, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela.
AFAIAC, this is a sudden outbreak of common sense.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Who gives a shit about your view? Certainly not all the people living next to coal fired powerplants, cooling towers, or for that matter solar or wind farms...
I might be the typical slashdotter that is progressive and welcomes change, but then again I'm not old money that has a profit margin to maintain - or a nostalgic "view" to protect.
Additionally, who gives a shit about the indians artifacts buried on the bottom of the sound? Is anybody *out there looking*?
The grass is always greener on the other side indeed.
Imagine all the money! Awesome that future technologies like wind energy only cost gobs more than all those technologies of the past. Even the article suggests that cost/kwh will go up for consumers. These are being built on subsidized contracts, of course, because the only thing that would make THIS project (not all wind projects) doable is massive cash injections from the feds. Still, with the low cost of "fossil" fuel and the billions of other products (you can't make plastics out of air power) that rely on oil, there is no way that wind and oil even exist in the same product category. Salazar's claim that this will contribute to "America's energy independence" is an empty claim since the energy that is generated by these windfarms will replace exactly zero percent of imported energy! Also, the article lauds this as a green jobs boon which, of course, has been repeatedly disproven a-la Spain's booming "Green/d" economy.
"The Borba"
I would be more excited if current technology produced wind turbines that lasted more than 25 years. This means that in 25 years there will either be a lot of useless junk in that harbor or the infastructure will be reused for the next generation of wind farm. To be honest, I would rather invest the $1bn in floating wind farms which, when decomissioned can just be brought back to shore, and even more importantly:
- generate more power since they can be deployed farther off the coast where wind speeds are higher
- more versatile for the same reason
- don't block the sunset as much for the same reason
If Christians had said that it messed up sunrise services for Easter would you have been respecting their position too?
Mass transit authorities put trains under cemeteries all the time, why should these guys be any different?
Oh and they have really good leadership too
http://boston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/campaignviolations021109.htm
"In February 2009 Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe chairman Glenn A. Marshall pleaded guilty to federal charges of violations of campaign finance law, tax fraud, wire fraud, and Social Security fraud – all in connection with the effort to secure federal recognition for the tribe."
Stupid hippie.
I was sortof following your argument until there...
On the long run, any coal you don't dig up and burn for energy is an ace up your sleeve on the international energy market: "Sure, we are interested in your coal, but better make a new offer else we'll have a closer look at our cubic kilometers of coal still buried under waiting-to-be-blown up mountains. And it would be a shame if something happened to the coal price, right?"
Nuclear power does not create all the much waste. Unlike coal, we know where the waste goes.
Nuclear Waste: Amounts and On-Site Storage
"Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced about 62,500 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about seven yards deep. "
Electricity can be used to power electric cars.
To support a large number of electric cars you need a decent generating capacity and a good network.
If people have electric cars they don't need cars that run on petrol.
Petrol comes from oil.
More electric cars means less oil needed since there are fewer petrol cars.
Less oil needed means less dependence on foreign oil.
Stupid narrow-minded thinker!
Getting up to 10-15% of the total power supply from wind power works fine by using the rest of the grid as a load balancer. Above that special energy storage facilities is required. There are several ways to do this efficiently. One of them is pumping air into huge underground caves building up preassure during excess power generation, and when power is needed, running the turbines backwards. You could also do the same by pumping water up in dams.
You're right, if you take a short-sighted view.
But energy is fungible, and it gets more and more fungible as technology advances and energy gets more expensive.
Every bit of coal we save now is a bit of synthetic gasoline we can make 300 years in the future.
I actually thought that was the least reasonable argument. Saying "somebody was buried there once" is not a good argument for, well, much of anything. Spiritual beliefs aside, the one thing we're sure about today is that you aren't using your body any more when you're dead. That pretty much precludes your having any rights regarding it. How many people have been buried at sea? How dare you lay an undersea cable, or eat a fish? The whole thing is ridiculous. Everyone else has to buy land if they want their corpse to stay there, why should they be any different? I think it's been conclusively shown that being somewhere first is not enough, unfortunate or no.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you use the power to electrolyze water, store it under pressure, then burn it in a combined cycle plant you can get about 50% of your energy back. Is there any reason not to do that?
"Why won't electric cars significantly reduce our carbon output?" -- "Because they're still recharged by coal power plants."
"Why won't replacing coal power plants significantly reduce our carbon output?" -- "Because cars are still powered by oil."
Focus on any one solution and of course you'll find that it's not the entirety of the problem. That's why you don't focus on only one solution.
Not a typewriter
So now they're offshoring wind production, too? What, good ol'-fashioned landlocked American wind isn't good enough for your Cape Cod liberal sissies?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
It's kind of funny that this happened around the time when MIT researchers talk about the posible impact of massively deployed wind turbines
Pardon the bad source, but I don't have time to really look into it.
America's first? Really? Are we that far behind the times?
Sad.
There's no relationship between electric cars and windmills. The production of one does not spur the production of the other. Wind power is a (inefficient) way to produce the thing that makes the electric cars go, yes, but you still have to solve the problem (if you think of it that way, I don't) of increasing electric car adoption. Furthermore, the my argument wasn't against the claim that windmills produce less CO2, it was against the claim that windmills have a tradeoff with oil. They don't.
Energy is not fungible. I can't turn a KFC Double Down into electricity to power my car (at least, not in any way that doesn't involve treadmills, copper wire, magnets, and a shitload of inefficiency), but I can turn it into power for my body. Plus, in 300 years, you think we'll be running anything off synthetic gas? That's a pretty low estimation of mankind's ability to innovate.
Haha.
We don't have 300 years before we need it.
At current usage growth rates, using current estimates of known and undiscovered reserves, all of the oil will be gone in 30 - 60 years.
300 years from now generating energy from petroleum will be as antique an idea as killing whales to light our houses.
Why would you totally respect their position? They don't know if there are burial grounds there. From the Article: "would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. The ocean floor was once exposed land before the sea level rose thousands of years ago." So, thousands of years ago, some people may or may not have lived on some land that is now under sea. We'll probably never know, and the Wampanoag people don't either. Now everyone come back at me with claims about how accurate non-literate cultures' tribal histories are. Anyway, what the fuck is a "spiritual sun greeting", and why is this any less dumb than ancient carpenter worship?
If done right, I disagree. Wind turbines DO have a big up front cost, but the operating costs are quite low. If the wind turbine is well designed and manufactured, it can get a good lifespan. While, wind turbines are expected to have a ~20 year lifespan. Some older designs have been working since the 80s. I'll bet some of the designs will end up lasting 50+ years (Enercon). Granted, the comparatively cheap wind turbine blades have to be replaced every 15 years, but wind requires NO fuel.
With regard to power storage, MIT seems to be having luck with efforts to make giant, high temperature batteries.
Except electric cars, even if 100% powered by electricity from gasoline plants, would still be a massive improvement. Internal combustion engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 30%, but large stationary plants can afford to be much more efficient. Collecting the energy from a gasoline plant, piping it through wires to a person's home, putting it into a battery, taking it out of the battery, and operating an electric motor adds up (or, rather, multiplies down) to a total efficiency of... 48%. That's right, 60% more bang for your buck, even if nothing else changes.
Lake Michigan ones next?
You don't really refute the GP's argument. Instead, you switch to an electric-car-as-savior argument. But wind turbines do nothing to address the deficiencies of electric cars (it's not like they're being held back by a shortage of electricity).
Electric cars would be great, if they didn't suck at doing important things that petrol-powered cars do. So until some dream of yours which you can't really articulate comes true, your electric-car-as-savior theory remains no more than an optimist's dream.
And, so, your cute exercise in word logic doesn't [in reality, today] solve our problem, and certainly has nothing to do with wind power.
(And, no, throwing money at a problem is not a sure way to solve it.)
Use nuclear waste as ... wait for it ...
radiation shielding.
One of the issues with nuclear energy is absorbing the high energy neutrons to generate heat. We can line the reactors with nuclear waste and the neutron bombardment would transmutate it from 100s of years to safe in decades.
Take a look around you. I will wait. How many thing around you are polyester? Plastic? Acrylic? Glue? Pharmaceuticals? We live in a plasticy oily world. Gas is but 1 thing you get out of a barrel of oil.
Lets say tomorrow we didnt need gas for cars. What do you think they would do with it? As they are still going to distill it for all the other oil things we use (as we still need those things). BTW they would burn it. It would also push up the price of all those other things as they would not be getting it for 'free' to get gas. Our need for oil would be less. But not as dramatically as you think.
http://www.txoga.org/articles/308/1/WHAT-A-BARREL-OF-CRUDE-OIL-MAKES
Setting aside the fallacy that we can ever be "Energy dependent" or stop consuming "foreign oil" if we want to remain a first world country,
The fallacy is that we can remain a "first world" country without reducing our oil consumption past the point where we can satisfy our needs domestically. The question isn't do we stop consuming foreign oil. The question is, do we do it deliberately before we are forced by the depletion of all sources including domestic, or do we neglect the problem until it's too late.
inefficient electricity production
Haha, no.
There's a lot of problems with wind power (mostly in the broad category of logistics), but efficiency isn't one of them. Modern windmills are very efficient.
The enemies of Democracy are
My chain of reasoning is a possible chain.
You stated that he was "silly" for positing that increased generating capacity would reduce need for foreign oil.
1.Of course it's not merely generating capacity that is limiting the availability of electric cars, but that's a straw man - the barriers to electric cars (cost, battery issues, practicality etc) continue to be eroded as time passes, making them more and more viable as options for new vehicles.
2. small steps. No one is suggesting that one small wind farm is going to solve the US' energy needs, but this is the first offshore windfarm. A good place to cut your teeth on potential issues, learn how to do it effectively, make it easier to roll out other sites. There is a *lot* of coastline along the US with many sites suitable for use as generating sites.
3. Less oil is still less. The smaller the hit on your economy as a whole from external oil, the better. The less of it you need to buy, the less sweeping econonic-impact changes have on your country (for example, price fluctuations and availability).
4. Now you're just going for the ad hominem because you're refusing to think outside the box a little.
Let's also consider the possibility of replacing plastics (made from oil) with more aluminium in consumer goods. Things like kitchenware or window frames, or anywhere ABS and UPVC is widespread. It's expensive to extract aluminium, and the bulk of it used in new products is recycled stuff. Access to cheaper electricity lowers the cost of aluminium, since the major cost of extracting it is the energy requirement, so it becomes more viable to use aluminium, especially if your oil source is very expensive.
Again, it's merely a possibility that illustrates knock on effects, and that complex systems are frequently interconnected.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1: That's high price OR low capacity. And the grid isn't that weak. 20% of us could start charging our cars at home right now without causing significant problems. 2: As someone said earlier, how many worthwhile places have you gotten to in one step? This is a great step along the way. 3: domestic or foreign isn't the point as much as domestic CAPACITY, which decreases dependence on, not use of, foreign oil 4: ad hominem attacks are a waste of time for everyone involved.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
disturb spiritual sun greetings
Sounds like a perfect way to help thwart global warming!
As a bonus, if it turns out global cooling becomes a problem, we can build coal powered plant on shore, hook it up to the power cables, turn the fans north and run the fans backwards to blow all the cold air back to the north pole!
Win win win
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
400 feet max into water..
That's assuming you miss the steel or concrete base of the structure
(a lot safer than 400 feet to ground)
Name one person who has fallen (or dove) 400 feet into water and lived (without the aid of a parachute).
From that height, you'll hit the water at over 100mph; which would make the water just about as soft as concrete.
sqrt( 2 * 32.2 * 400) = 160.499221 feet/second
or 109.431287 mph
Here is a list of offshore wind farms
There aren't that many and all but a hand full were just opened in years that start with "20" (e.g. there are only 5 that opened in "19xx" and they are all "199x"...)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
My point wasn't that electric cars will solve everything, I was questioning the GP's assertion that being able to generate lots of power cheaply (assuming a balanced network that this build would be a part of) can lead to results that don't always appear to be immediately linked.
He dismissed the "reduce dependence on oil" argument by saying that only a small percentage of power is generated by burning oil.
My point is that access to cheap energy can help remove one of the barriers to electric cars, which would reduce dependence on oil. Not all the barriers - you still need to make them cheaper, improve batteries, practicalities etc, but that's the second issue - these things will all improve anyway as time goes on. You can't state "why provide cheap energy, that's not what's holding back electric cars" and call it done. It's one of the factors to be overcome, but once it's solved doesn't mean the other factors weren't also being addressed.
Creating a solid, reliable power grid with effective generating systems will help to provide cheaper, cleaner electricity. This will have a knock on effect along the line - electric cars, cheaper manufacturing etc.
It was all about options and possibilities. If electricity comes down enough in price, perhaps a commercial building heated in the winter by kerosene could be heated electrically.
Cheaper electricity can bring down the price of aluminium and make it cheaper to make double glazed window frames, making them closer to the cost of UPVC ones, reducing the need for oil.
Energy is a huge part of everything. Anything that makes generating easier, more efficient or cheaper has a huge impact.
For the record, I'm a chemist, I am well aware of what oil is used for. :)
You'd think that people with ocean-side real estate would want something like this. Either that or we can just burn some more coal or oil and their houses can underwater instead. Would they still be land owners?
You're using the most pessimistic forecasts. I'm using the most optimistic (a century or two) and then adding a century to make sure.
300 years from now, liquid fuels will still be very useful for powering vehicles, but I think we both agree that liquid won't come from crude oil.
If you immediately try to go renewable 100%, you'll run into the problem that wind is intermittent, the sun doesn't shine at night and solar cells provide less power in bad weather, etc. But in the summertime, solar provides the most power just when you need the most A/C to power air conditioning. If you have to burn fossil fuel to cover the gaps, that's OK; you're covered and you don't need to import nearly so much from unstable or hostile regimes. In the long term, there are a number of possible mechanisms for energy storage to handle uneven availability of wind or solar. In addtion to batteries, you can pump water uphill to store both water and energy, use flywheels, reward people for using energy when it's highly available, etc. We'll end up using a mix of technologies, and that's a good thing, just like it's a good idea to diversify your investments.
For those of us who are not intimate with American politics -- why is this moderated insightful, flamebait and troll? And which Kennedy would that be?
Because it is true and simultaneously embarrassing to parts of the electorate. Ted Kennedy is who we are talking about here though the Kennedy family in general matters for this story - Ted until his death was merely the most prominent member of the family in recent years. He ostensibly supported green energy but when it was proposed to put a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts (his home state) he opposed it or at least opposed this particular wind farm. The opposition is more complicated than many here represent but there appears to be some credibility to the claim that significant opposition came from rich people (including the Kennedy family) opposed the wind farm on the grounds it would "ruin" ocean views from their properties.
There's no relationship between electric cars and windmills. The production of one does not spur the production of the other.
They can, but you have to add a third part--the smart grid. Then you can specifically charge electric cars during peak wind or solar production.
Not a typewriter
Except there are very, very few oil-powered plants. It's coal. While it is technically more efficient by being centralized, coal is extremely dirty. It ain't just CO2 you have to worried about.
If you have to choose between the two, ditch the coal plants and keep the gas cars. But we shouldn't have to choose, either.
Not a typewriter
How does a smart grid prompt people to produce and purchase more electric cars?
I don't think its right for any burial place to not be respected, your example of mass transit.
I don't care what religion, nationality, heritage. That is just something that I find important to respect.
And just because their leadership are idiots has nothing to do with the families that are not happy with their families burial grounds being desecrated.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Mass transit authorities put trains under cemeteries all the time, why should these guys be any different?
The problem with your argument is that [Christian] Church cemetaries != Native American cemetaries.
It's like saying "mass transit authorities put trains under Canada, so why should the Native Americans be any different?"
Hint: We don't put trains under Canada.
Native American tribes are sovereign nations and their relations with the USA are defined by treaties signed generations ago.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I actually thought that was the least reasonable argument. Saying "somebody was buried there once" is not a good argument for, well, much of anything.
It kind of depends on what the US Government committed itself to in the various treaties signed with the Indian Nations.
They are not cheap; they take forever to build with tons of government money. They require heavy regulation at multiple levels which again government pays for; including at the fuel and processing stages. Waste processing that is now "perfected" so we don't need a huge mountain to store it; yet other nations are still planning to do that... Like to see the costs for that part of it.
The money is better spent on grid storage plants and a modern power grid which could be done by the time the 1st nuclear plant is completed; not to mention those are cheaper to operate and do not get the level of government aid the nuclear "industry" has.
Aside from all that; it is still centralized power with all the problems that comes with; especially the monopolies that help corrupt / push around local governments.
Government does just fine with all the roads; how about they take over the darn grid and have us pay a connection fee? The guy up the street can sell me his excess power with the marketplace that could be created with an actually smart grid; I could build a bunch of flywheels and sell him back his power at night... It is possible.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The fishermen will still work (their biggest threat is chronic overfishing). The tourists will still visit the beaches. Fewer oil tankers will ply the waters, reducing the chance of a spill. The locals will turn the wind farm into a tourist attraction in its own right (first in the nation!!! our energy future!!! boat tours on the hour!!!). And ocean front estates will still be worth a fortune. This is an ideal location for a wind farm: strong steady winds, shallow water and close to an energy market. Obama deserves credit for stiffing his friends on this one.
Because Ted Kennedy wasn't one pushing for the health care bill before he died... right. Get your facts straight.
Curious as to how much this project will cost in total? Putting massive units up while out in the ocean will be no small feat.
Just wonder if anyone can say how many years will go by before there is any benifit?
If you use the power to... umm, use the power, you get 100% of your energy back!
Why would you want to use a basically inefficient and wasteful cycle to generate more planetary heat?
H2O electrolysis is fine for elementary school science class- "Whoosh! there goes the rocket, kids!" but it did cost a lot of money and energy for that demo.
.
- aqk
F U
That is of course an incredibly stupid idea that comes out of years of being fed the PR that nuclear power comes from fluffy easter bunny toys and the waste is no more dangerous than chocolate.
There are proper ways to deal with the stuff such as synrock but they have been mostly ignored due to the idiotic view that the stuff is clean and green. If it's going to be used it has to be used with respect because reality hasn't heard the PR.
We have to treat it like oil - use the stuff but don't pretend that it will never catch fire in an accident.
There seem to be a large amount of /. posters who don't understand one of the biggest immediate benefits to wind+solar energy. Currently, if you don't want brown outs you have to build an eletric grid that can supply as much power as everyone could every try and use at one time. This causes us to spend way more in for large capacity power plants, and also lose a lot of energy in the distribution of energy itself.
So, when are the peak energy demands for the USA? In the middle of the day, and In the summer. Hmm, when are the peak production times for Wind and Solar (its the same!).
To fully move off things like coal, we would need to have better ways of storing energy, people are already working on this (gyroscopes, batteries, pumping water uphill), but that is the second step, not the first.
Once they get the rights to build casinos alongside the wind farms they'll come on board.
From the French experience it is possible to an extent but incredibly difficult and expensive so it is very rarely done. It only takes a few moments to think about why it doesn't work very well - we're talking about working metal that is emitting very high levels of radioactivity so everything has to be done remotely and everything that touches it gets contaminated.
You'll notice that only journalists and others outside this field are pushing reprocessing - it's a view that is well and truly stuck in the 1970s and I wish those loud nuclear advocates would actually learn something about nuclear power.
However the existing depleted fuel rods could still be used by more recent designs that are a lot less fussy about their fuel - that's a much better idea than reprocessing. For instance Uranium fuel rods or even expired weapons material could be included with the Thorium fuel in an accelerated Thorium breeder reactor such as the one under construction in India at the moment.
Cheaper electricity? If you say the smart grid won't do that alone, then you've obviously missed my point.
Not a typewriter
One thing that should be really obvious to anyone that has grown up is that doing anything has some sort of consequence.
Of course we cannot just imagine these windmills into existence, somebody has to dig up the copper etc. This study could have been done on anything - even nuclear has a non-zero carbon footprint because the rock has to be dug up and turned into fuel.
California has only a few good sites for land wind farms - Altamont Pass, Pacheco Pass, Mojave, and Solano County are the big ones. All four now have big wind farms. Other than Altamont Pass, which is a big migratory bird corridor and has row after row of windmills, there have been few complaints. There aren't many remaining on-shore sites in California; we're about done with onshore wind. The Cape Cod people have been whining about their wind farm for a decade. Tough.
Offshore of Calfornia looks promising. Take a look at that high-wind area close to shore, west of Humbolt County. There's also a huge high wind zone south of Santa Barbara, and most of it is still on the continental shelf, so the water isn't too deep. I doubt there will be objections; Santa Barbara has already had off-shore oil wells.
I have always supported Cape Wind. But I need to take some wind out of the sails of some advocates. The truth of the matter is, most wind power is not economically viable. Far from being a negative factor to Cape Wind, this is actually a positive attribute. In most places in the US, the wind simply does not blow consistently enough to make harnessing it competitive with gas fired turbines and nuclear power. Mostly, this is because wind is not available 'on demand', but rather an 'opportunistic' power source. The current model of electric consumption is one of 'on demand' and therefore a surplus of electricity is not easy to harness, and has little value. This may change over time, as industries which consume vast amounts of electricity are reconfigured to be opportunistic consumers. They will enjoy low, bulk rates when that power is available, and otherwise either curtail their use or shut down entirely. It is conceivable that businesses will develop which store electricity when it is available cheaply and sell when it is dear. Though this business model is a difficult one to finance now, with our inefficient storage technologies, in the future it may be viable.
What we need from government and 'big business' is a reconfiguration of the electric grid to intelligently switch electricity to where it is needed (i.e. has the highest commodity cost at the moment), while at the same time being reliable and efficient (i.e. ultra-high voltage. That means bigger towers, folks!).
Net-metering is the start of what I have explained above, but it is a stop-gap measure. This is because alternative energy producers are paid for the energy that they MAY HAVE produced and contributed to the grid, even if the grid is not able to consume it at the time. This cannot continue indefinitely. There needs to be a rectification of the rules, as technology and the installed base of energy production becomes more flexible. Until this is accomplished, expect that projects like Cape Wind, and many others, will be subsidized by those power plants which are efficient in the short term (gas-fired turbines) yet have long-term disadvantages.
Bravo Cape Wind! But supporters need to be informed and honest.
p.s., even though I am logged in as 'drwho', I appear as anonymous when posting. This has been going on for some time. Slashdot mechanix, please fix.
This should mess up there magnetic mapping abilities with any luck they will just follow the power lines straight to the Wind farms and into my belly. http://www.unc.edu/depts/oceanweb/lobsters/
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
For people who are complaining that wind tech/solar tech isn't there yet, I think you have to think of the politics behind this. If we get the ball moving now and get lawmakers and the public to overall have a good impression of these energy generation systems, when the technologies do improve it will be vastly easier to implement them. The biggest issue I see extends not only to clean tech, but all tech. America's energy infrastructure is incredibly aged and inefficient. Power consumption will continue to increase which will continue to strain the system. So even if our energy source is clean, there is still a large energy issue that needs to be addressed.
Right. Because his death wasn't a rallying cry for the Dems to push for health care. Gotcha. (Remember the Alamo? Turns out those guys that died weren't against Texas.)
400 feet above the ocean surface, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed.. ... OOPS! Must respect "their kultur"!
... "Ancestral" ...
LOL!
Umm.... Is this an April fool joke? Sorry, you're about a month late. And Sen. Teddy is in the spirit world - medium now. (he always was)
My ancestors were druids, and (probably) cannibals.
And so were yours, believe it or not.
"Spiritual"
Alas,you have not employed the word "holistic" yet. Shame!
But you ARE a woman, are you not? Hey, babe- wanna dance naked with me next solstice ( that would be June 20 or so) around Stonehenge?
I'm ready! LOL!
.
- aqk
F U
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Electricity can be used to power electric cars.
But those extension cords must have to be VERY long!
An afterthought- why can't we use gasoline - or hydrogen - or coal - or steam - to power those electric cars?
I mean, there's lots of it around, isn't there?
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- aqk
F U
Now they're offshoring windfarms!
What's next, outsourcing water pipes?
Note to mods, this is tongue in cheek.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
There's also something many people don't understand. Oil is a synthesizable resource, and a virtually unlimited quantity exists on the earth. To make oil, all you need is the following:
-air (to get CO2 out of)
-water (1 gallon per gallon of oil approx, could be dirty)
-electricity (to split the water)
-heat (to force the hydrogen and the CO2 to react)
First, you use electricity to make hydrogen from the water. Then you heat up baking soda to release CO2 and mix it with the hydrogen. This makes gasoline, diesel, wax, or plastic precursors depending on the catalysts present. You then leave the baking soda outside and it sucks up more CO2. What you have basically done is reversed the process of combustion. Now, this process is not 100% efficient. If you design it well, it will be 70-80 percent energy efficient, electricity to oil. Oil to electricity/mechanical is not very efficient, 60 percent if you're lucky (you're never getting that in a car). It's not the best thing in the world, but it works. Oil is the best method to store hydrogen, in terms of energy efficiency, cost, volumetric hydrogen density, and maybe even gravimetric hydrogen density.
Interestingly, the whole process has not been demonstrated, but every component has. Electrolysis is used to produce %3 of hydrogen used worldwide. Baking soda CO2 processing is used in the Solavy process to make baking soda and road salt. The CO2 + hydrogen = gasoline process was demonstrated in New Zealand in the 1980's, and actually produced millions of gallons of gasoline used in cars. The problem is that the electricity must be dirt cheap and clean - not a very common combo. But stranded wind could be used.
One of my goals is to find a process to make hydrogen from water that consumes only heat. This would consist of a set of chemical reactions, one that releases hydrogen, and one that sucks up heat and produces oxygen. The process would repeat over and over again using solar heat. Fe2O3 + heat = FeO + O2. FeO + H2O = Fe2O3 + H2. heat + H2O = H2 + O2.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
The problem is that cheaper electricity won't make a difference in EV price. Almost no batteries made or discussed today are cheaper than the electricity they will ever store before they die. The cheapest cost 1.5-2 times the electricity price they store. We don't need a super 300 mile fast charge nano battery. We need one that we can make out of scrap iron and duct tape in our backyards, that provides similar performance to NiMH batteries. Most battery research is missing the point.
The only batteries today that store more energy than their worth are nickel-iron batteries. They are completely indestructible, but extremely expensive (think $50000 worth of batteries to go 200 miles), and heavy. Some are almost 100 years old and still producing their full capacity today.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
History shows us that many new forms of "clean power" have later turned out to have side effects as bad or worse than their predecessors - take Nuclear for example. I have a nagging doubt wind, solar, and wave power may have a nasty sting in the tale too - not on the small scale they are used now. But scale them up to producing large amounts of power, and how much change will you accidentally cause to tides and weather? Physics 101 - Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Take too much energy out of a system and you will change it.
This might actually affect the ecology too, as the towers provide space for coral reefs to grow. In addition remains can clutter around the pillars, which could attract more wildlife to the area.
But err... what about the wave and wind-breaking effects of the towers? What's the ecological impact of that?
And from what materials will the towers be built? How does the government intend to make sure that all the wiring needed to transport all the power is secured properly (wouldn't want to electrify the water)? Is the covering of the wiring of adequate quality?
And how about the bird population (if there's anything left)?
I don't know what everyone else's problem is, I think windfarms look really fucking cool. I was driving an interstate road I hadn't been on for a few years and they've put up some wind turbines, and they're damn impressive! I wanted to stop and take photos but I was in a hurry.
They don't have to suck at the things petrol cars do. Someone just needs to be the first state to electrify the highways: electric cars can charge on-the-go, why would you want carry 300 miles worth of stored chemical energy if you didn't need to?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I am maybe stating the obvious but those wind farm are really small viewed from that distance. add to that summer haze and you would not probably be able to distinguish more than a few blob. Personally I would not care a bit.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Steam is not a fuel, but you can use it to power things after you heat water to make it - which you can use coal, gasoline etc to do.
There's plenty of hydrogen around, but getting at the most abundant source requires splitting off the pesky oxygen atom. If you can do that, you have a near infinite source of hydrogen for powering cars.
To break apart water you need... survey says, electricity. And lots of it.
The problem is that they would need to ask for an exorbitant prime for insuring the power plant, the damage in case of an bad incidental contamination will be beyond the capability of *any* insured to absorb unless such gigantic prime would be available. It won't matter if the risk is 1 to 1 million or 1 to 1 billion, if the damage to pay goes way over the capital of the insuring company. The enormous prime required would make the cost of nuclear electricity go through the roof.The government simply decided to keep the energy cheap by absolving them and avoiding the use of insurance. The airline industry has a similar problem, which went through the roof after 9/11. So basically the reaction of the insurer has nothing to do with however safe or unsafe the insurer think the nuke plants are, as you seem to imply. Nuclear plant are much, much safer than any other kind of industry. heck the US coal plant kill more people per gigawatt per years than theUS nuclear industry, due to the mining alone :
.06 per 200,000 hours.
.04 per 200,000 hours. .04. .04. .04. .04. .04. .03. .03. .03. .03. .04. .040. .028. .031. .027. .021. .040. .030. .030. .020.
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2006/01/us_coal_mining_.html
U.S. coal mining deaths: 1990-2009
1980: 133 deaths,
1990: 66 deaths,
1991: 61 deaths,
1992: 55 deaths,
1993: 47 deaths,
1994: 45 deaths,
1995: 47 deaths,
1996: 39 deaths,
1997: 30 deaths,
1998: 29 deaths,
1999: 35 deaths,
2000: 38 deaths,
2001: 42 deaths,
2002: 27 deaths,
2003: 30 deaths,
2004: 28 deaths,
2005: 23 deaths,
2006: 47 deaths,
2007: 28 deaths,
2008: 30 deaths,
2009: 18 deaths.
Even if you count medical incident in nuclear death incident, there isn't as much per decade as mining per year.
And as far as I can tell coal is more dangerous radioactively wise than nuclear plant:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
An exerpt for the lazy :
The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.
1)Coal kill more directly in mining operation than nuclear plant total 2) coal release much more radioactivity in the surrounding environment than nuke plant
3) with 1+2 I would rather have a nuke plant in my backyard than a coal plant.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Available as a limited edition lithograph, suitable for framing.
Ted DIED!? *does jiggy dance on imaginary grave*
Well damn, that ruins my old joke about 2 out of 3 still being bad.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I like the way the Interior Secretary is wearing a US Cavalry hat in the article.
(minus the badge...)
No sig today...
Salt for one simple reason. He's an anti-vax loon. Worse, he's a conspiracy believing anti-vax loon.(I know, this is basically ad-hom but give me a break. When you start spouting conspiracies I just stop taking anything you say seriously)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Basically last I checked profit from oil companies is around 10% which isn't anything spectacular. The reason oil companies make so much money is volume, we really do use alot of oil. (Over 100 billion gallons per year for the US alone. To put that in perspective the entire US beer industry produces under 10 billion gallons of beer.) Yeah I know, I expected to be mod-ed down for this. (You know for not joining in the "Fuck the oil companies" point of view which is heresy on slashdot.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I actually thought that was the least reasonable argument. Saying "somebody was buried there once" is not a good argument for, well, much of anything. Spiritual beliefs aside, the one thing we're sure about today is that you aren't using your body any more when you're dead. That pretty much precludes your having any rights regarding it. How many people have been buried at sea? How dare you lay an undersea cable, or eat a fish? The whole thing is ridiculous. Everyone else has to buy land if they want their corpse to stay there, why should they be any different? I think it's been conclusively shown that being somewhere first is not enough, unfortunate or no.
I have to agree with drinky, here, especially as a spiritual/religious (in that order, I might add) person. The whole CONCEPT of a spiritual body surviving a physical one (prevalent in many religions and I'm assuming theirs as well) relies on the dead person not needing the body anymore. Thus if you bury my body somewhere and a hundred years later it turns out that'd be a kick-ass place to build something to help quite a few people *I'm* not going to care. By all means, please uproot what's left of my corpse, I think you've done me enough courtesy already.
And think about it this way. Suppose it's true for a minute that the spirit survives the body and you've now buried the dead person's corpse. While it's nice to leave it alone for a few weeks/months in reverence do these people seriously think the dead have nothing better to do than hang around their own decomposing corpses? Really? That's what they think? For fuck's sake I think the dead even in the WORST case have better things to do.
Grrr Assuming I'm not missing something about their argument people like this using religion as a shield to piss on other people's parade, in this case PROGRESS, really piss nice, reasonable folks like myself off.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
The Wampanoag Indian tribes, I totally respect their position about the burial ground.
Ted Kennedy was just a hypocrite. He was all for green energy EXCEPT when it was in his back yard.
It’s about time this was passed. Now maybe they can put these wind farms on the Great Lakes also.
They were paid to throw a monkey wrench into this project. Burial ground my ass. And as far as the blocking the sun for their sunrise ceremonies the last real ceremony was held in the 1700's.
If the gambling casinos they are trying to build in MA was erected on a burial ground blocking the sunrise I doubt it would be a problem
GTFO.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
The issue is that those particular waters are already a heavily used commons. There's a lot of low impact commercial fishing, and tourism that already generate value off the currently common waters. Scattered turbines, and more important, a large network of underwater cabling, would muck up existing interests in the waters.
I honestly don't see any of those things being affected. How would windmills affect fishing? At the California wind farms, the mills are something of a tourist attraction, and people are always buying postcards with pictures of them. And what do undersea cables have to do with anything? They would prevent people from dragging nets along the bottom, but that's about the worst thing you can do to an area. And are average wind speeds going to be affected that much? It's not like 400 foot walls are being built around people's homes.
My point is that access to cheap energy can help remove one of the barriers to electric cars, which would reduce dependence on oil.
How is the cost of electricity a barrier? Current prices are already far cheaper than gas on a cost per mile basis.
As an example, from the Tesla Roadster faq page, it costs about $5 to fill up the car, which gets you about 244 miles of real world driving.
If electricity comes down enough in price, perhaps a commercial building heated in the winter by kerosene could be heated electrically.
There's a much better argument here. All the new houses being built around where I live come with natural gas for air and water heating and often cooking. I doubt that wind power is so much cheaper than coal and nuclear that the situation will change. But anyway, we get our natural gas domestically and from Canada, so that doesn't count as much as foreign dependence.
Ah, the petty little shotgun insult applied because it is bound to hit someone sometime.
Oddly enough I work for a geophysical exploration company (and they investigate things such as deep artesian basins), plus had the problems associated with leaching of radioactive waste explained to me by one of the original people in the synrock team back in 1990, let alone reading other things later. Even very deep water moves around and leaching is a long term problem even in encapsulated waste - hence incorporated waste such as synrock.
Try your petty bullying insult elsewhere because this time you are the person that is so far out of their depth that even casual knowledge would indicate that you are wrong. Googling for geothermal power will give you some information about very deep wells into porous structures full of water. The stuff is in equilibrium but it is not the immobile solid you somehow think the liquid is.
Of course other people know far more about this than I do, but I really cannot stand the "you should educate yourself" crap from someone that knows far less about this than I knew even twenty years ago.
Try actually reading about the subject - the "bury it and hope" idea is market driven and not by any sort of reality that you are accusing me of being unaware of.
There are huge wind farms in the Midwest; I used to live in Champaign, Illinois (UIUC) and there was a huge farm just north of the highway if you went out towards Bloomington.
Horizon Wind has a webpage (http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatwevedone/) which shows just that company's projects in the U.S. - it's pretty impressive. I'm sure they have competitors with other farms elsewhere as well.
I remembered reading a few years ago about splitting water just using heat rather than electricity. Doing a quick search, it looks like the research has changed direction a bit and is focused on liberating magnesium from seawater, with hydrogen being a useful byproduct when the magnesium reacts with water later.
http://www.economist.com/science-technology/technology-monitor/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15939644
In most cases it is entirely useless for those purposes which is why it is waste. Medical and industrial radiation sources rely on a range of properties that you just don't get with any random bit of radioactive stuff. If it's not radioactive enough to be useful in short bursts (necessary for radiography) and too radioactive to easily store then it is radioactive waste. Finding more uses and new reactor designs can make more of it useful but for now we have a lot of radioactive stuff we can't reuse - hence we call it radioactive waste.
Do you see now that your personal definition of radioactive waste is different to what the rest of us are talking about?
Except that if domestic suddenly became less used, that capacity would start to vanish. The companies and workers wouldn't just build new wells and refineries and hang out around them waiting patiently for someone to start buying again. Sure, the oil itself would still be there under the ground, but then if some world event (war, natural disaster, etc) disrupted our source of foreign oil, it would take decades to get new domestic drilling and refining capacity approved and built.
None of this makes wind (or nuclear, or solar, etc) power a bad idea, but trying to sell it with nationalist rhetoric about how it'll make us all strong and independent from those nasty foreigners is silly.
Meanwhile, the problem with the summary is that it's not really a choice between oil and wind (and certainly not between foreign oil vs wind). There's two large scale choices here - oil vs electric for cars, and coal vs wind (or nuclear or solar, etc) for generation. They operate independently. You can keep driving your oil-based car while we reduce our usage of coal, or you can plug your electric car right into our existing coal-based infrastructure.
What a load of bunk. I was born on Nantucket, and grew up on Cape cod, worked in the marine industry for ten years on Nantucket sound and know the waterways and bays and keep hearing these ridiculous arguments.
"In his words, "it's just a bad project." Well, there's a well thought out argument against it. Thanks for all those facts!
"The issue is that those particular waters are already a heavily used commons." So what? The area of Nantucket sound that they will take up is tiny compared to the whole area of 'recreational entertainment'
"Scattered turbines, and more important, a large network of underwater cabling, would muck up existing interests in the waters." What interests? Any by the way, there is already underwater cabling in sound, that go to these little unpopular places called "Nantucket" and "Martha's Vineyard" How have those 'mucked up' the existing interests? Also, "Scattered turbines" You make it sound like they will just throw them in various places around the sound, when that is totally untrue.
The remaining part of your post is just not worth replying to, as there is nothing useful so far as information that is true or accurate, such as "Negative Economic Consequences"
There have been no reall substantive arguments against this plant since day 1. "Birds may get hurt" "OMG, it will zap all the wind in the area!" "Why won't someone please think of the Fish that will be displaced!!" ad nasuem.
Or my favorite, "The developer is going to make ton's of money off this!!!!! We can't let that happen!!!"
[quote]Bird strikes are for the most part gross exaggerations, long since debunked.[/quote]
Wait, wait - someone took that bird strike stuff seriously?
It was a joke playing off all the similar bullshit used by environmentalists against DDT, Alar, power lines, peanut oil popcorn, nuclear energy, cars, fertilizers, shopping bags, ranchers, dams, housecats, pesticides, bridges, vaccines, carbon, microwave ovens, lumber, municipal water supplies, fast food, petroleum, and disposable diapers.
Every time somebody repeated the bird strike theory they were joking.
I know I was!
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sure, but you can only use the power when it's generated. That's why everyone says "Wind can't solve our world's energy problems," because the wind is not always blowing.
Did you believe George W. Bush when he told you that invading Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction too? I'm just asking that because I'm curious as to whether you only buy bullshit from liberals or whether you just fall for politicians' bullshit in general.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I should have elaborated that it's not just the cost of the electricity, but the nature of the grid - you need one that can quickly respond to peaks and troughs. If everyone swapped to electric cars right now, the grid as it stands would have trouble coping with the changes in demand. Projects like this are part of that. The more quick response capacity you can get "for free", even if it is slightly variable, the better your system is. With these turbines freewheeling in the wind (well, perhaps not freewheeling, but loaded to prevent them going too quickly), responding to a peak would be a case of engaging the clutch and closing a relay or two, compared to having a backup powerplant that needs to warm up, or be kept hot but at low capacity.
That is an excellent method, especially with the hydrogen byproduct. It still faces the problem of high energy cost (and typically, any process you undertake to create something that you want to store and use later for energy production is hard to do, merely due to "going the wrong way on the escalator" - you want energy out, you need to put it in first).
3700 degrees is certainly a lot of energy, even with the innovative solar pumped laser - it's a different method to the same result though - trying to reduce the energy cost of extracting useful substances from other things. The more of these pathways we can come up with, the better.
There are all sorts of exotic elements in seawater - getting them out is the hard part!
Oh and I forgot to add - a portion of the price of gasoline is tax (78% of the cost in the UK is tax in fact, less in the US it's clearly different), and that removing that tax revenue source will necessitate plugging that hole, presumably by taxing the electricity used to charge the car, or via other means).
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Consider how cheap it would be for another country/organization to "take out" these soon-to-be-critical off-shore energy sources. Energy security? I don't think so.
While you're thinking about that, 1000 people are thinking how disruptive taking out a drilling platform can be. A copycat incident is definitely possible.
wooosh!
Yeah, but I still say real electricity is best for an electric motor!
We just need a long extension cord, that's all.
Hey, there's LOTS of free hydrogen in the universe, my teacher told me!
Maybe we could send a rocket ship up to Alfa Centouri or Zeta Oopsilon to gather some of it up, and bring it back down here!
Wheee! Free hydrogen!
.
- aqk
F U
I had a chance to speak with Bobby Kennedy Jr. about the issue.
Show us, on this doll, where he touched you.
Energy is not fungible. I can't turn a KFC Double Down into electricity to power my car
Yes you can.
If your car is electric: there are plenty of factories that burn old car tires to generate electricity. Figure out how to load all those KFC Double Downs into the furnace, and it will happy run burn then instead.
If your car is diesel: render all the fat out (or don't convert the perfectly good fat into food [aka American Cheese, aka partially hydrogenated soybean oil]). Convert fat to bio-diesel.
If your car is gasoline: sorry, you can't. But people that do want to use a KFC Double Down to drive their vehicles have two other options.
I still wonder that the technology-oriented /. crowd doesn't understand a major problem with almost all energy sources. The source of wind power (wind energy) is NOT "safe" energy. Removing energy from the wind affects climate, migration, pollination, seeding, and probably other factors I haven't considered.
Pulling out small amounts of wind energy may be harmless; pulling out gigawatts will affect the environment. Why would anybody think that it would have no impact?
Only solar energy has a chance at being "safe". All solar energy is eventually returned to heat energy, so capture it or use it, we still get heat. There are issues with building the cells and boilers, but considering only the power itself shows that the safest energy source is solar.
Wind may be a nice complement, but our efforts should be directed at solar energy for the major source of our power.
My neighbor set up a windmill. He had to get a petition signed by his neighbors before he could do it. It makes a bit of noise sometimes and is a minor eyesore.....however during certain parts of the year its shadow falls on my windows of my house and the flickering almost makes me motion sick. It's annoying and something to consider in rural areas.
But it really sucks when they do. A non-trivial but undisclosed amount of radioactivity was released from three mile island. It must be significant, as many families have won lawsuits against them.
Modern reactor designs are getting safer but they're certainly not fail-safe. I agree that it's better than coal, but the "eco-mafia" has some legit concerns. Engineers still don't fully understand everything that happens in a pressurized water reactor. Trust me on this, I've heard it first hand from engineers working for one of the two major US reactor companies. Waste is also a huge concern. You can put it into a breeder reactor at extraordinary profit sucking cost to reuse the fuel and create byproducts that can be used for fusion bombs by rogue states if they're misplaced, or you need to bury it somewhere where there is no risk of it leaking for several hundred thousand years.
As much as coal sucks, nuclear is far from safe. While we're pretty much screwed if we stick to coal, the risk of another meltdown is small but non-zero and every new nuke plant increases those odds. Solar and wind offer nice alternatives.
You wouldn't put a wind farm in the grand canyon, so why Nantucket sound?
Also, a lot of analysis compares the efficiency of a gallon of gasoline in your tank moving your car with the efficiency of the fossil fuel from the power station recharging a battery to move your car. But the production, refining, and distribution of gasoline before it gets in the tank is itself very polluting and energy-intensive. Oil companies are very opaque about what their energy usage is.
=S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillgrund_Wind_Farm
Why don't we ship the nuclear waste to the sun? I don't think it would mind, the sun being a giant nuclear bomb and all....