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How Viable Is Large Scale Wind Energy?
New submitter notscientific writes "Renewable sources of energy are obviously a hit but they have as yet failed to live up to the hype. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows however that there is more than enough power to be harnessed from the wind to sustain Earth's entire population... x200! To generate energy from the wind, we may however need to set up wind farms at altitudes of 200-20,000 metres. To be fair, the study is purely theoretical and does not look at the feasibility of such potential wind farms. Regardless, the paper does provide a major boost to backers of wind-generated energy. Science has confirmed that the sky's the limit."
True. But luckily we neither need, nor want, one single answer that solves everything. We're better off in a multitude of ways from havign a healthy mix of different energy-sources, rather than being subject to the whims of a single one.
It's better to have some hydropower, some wind, some sun, some nuclear, some hydrocarbons, some tides, some biomass instead of putting all our eggs in one basket. As such, "can we cover our entire energy-needs *only* with wind?" is the wrong questions. The right question is if wind can be one part of the overall solution, it seems pretty clear to me that the answer to that is "yes".
As for NIMBY, there's solutions to that. Fewer people are bothered by wind-farms being installed a few miles offshore, such as those in the UK and Denmark currently, for example.
I know people who work with both the turbines and the energy grid.
Wind power is ready for prime time. Gas is cheaper, but if you factor in a reasonable cost for it's carbon footprint Wind is right there.
Storage, on the other hand, is not ready for prime time. Without storage it's going to be hard to break 20%. I understand that some parts of the country have maxed out how much wind they can have. They have to turn on / off the gas turbines to make up for sudden power surges / drops that it's not worth it anymore. There are a lot of interesting ideas but they have yet to prove themselves.
Give it a few years and then we can see if wind can break the 20% mark.
Let's build turbine with solar cells on them, then we can exploit the solar wind...
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