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Energy Dept. Wants Big Wind Energy Technology In All 50 US States
coondoggie writes: Bigger wind turbines and towers are just part of what the U.S. needs in order to more effectively use wind energy in all 50 states.That was the thrust of a wind energy call-to-arms report called "Enabling Wind Power nationwide" issued this week by the Department of Energy. They detail new technology that can reach higher into the sky to capture more energy and more powerful turbines to generate more gigawatts. These new turbines are 110-140 meters tall, with blades 60 meters long. The Energy Department forecasts strong, steady growth of wind power across the country, both on land and off shore.
As someone who spent some years in county government where various wind projects have taken place, one thing is true... Without a shell game of tax dollars shuttling in and out with many transfers of project ownership, there would be NO turbines standing. You do realize that even when those monsters are turning in the wind, they usually are just lubricating internals and not generating?
.. should alert the alert reader to the DOE's approach on things. Unfortunately the US public hasn't yet been hammered with sticker shock yet unlike the UK and German ratepayers. (Well, Maine rates jumped 19.6 percent last year due to "upgrades" "required" to ease a transmission choke near a wind facility whose power gets shipped to Massachusetts- Maine doesn't need the excess power by they pay for it nonetheless.) The US public as a whole doesn't yet understand that wind turbines GUARANTEE simple-cycle gas plant proliferation and lots more fracking to supply the natural gas to the gas plants needed to ramp when the big boys don't spin (and they don't spin, a lot, averaging 19-28 percent capacity factor, some as low as 6 percent). So the DOE and its "friends" at GE and the White House can proceed unfettered, the public oblivious, the corporate-owned press scamming well-meaning environmentalists into thinking these things are going to save the planet. HmmHmm and be sure to factor in replacing them every 15 years and uprating the transmission system on your monthly bill. Oh yes let's not think about the polluted lakes in China killing villages from metals poisoning a result of mining rare metals used in the wind turbine generators. Best of luck to all! Maybe in 400 years, humanity will be using a sensible stable power design based on engineering rather than ideology and lining the pockets of one's "friends".
Can someone help me understand EROEI ("Energy Return on Energy Input").
All the research on future sources of energy (that I can find) say that we're doomed as a civilization because the EROEI for renewables isn't as large as that of fossil fuels.
Okay, EROEI is the energy you get out minus (or divided by) the energy you put in, I get that. Fossil fuels take relatively little energy to gather, and generate lots of energy so their EROEI is rather large.
Wind and solar require a larger energy input per energy out, so it's EROEI is smaller but still greater than 1, even after accounting for mining the raw materials.
I'm not clear how the economic conclusion is reached that solar and wind cannot power our civilization. If we have enough rooftop solar and wind farms to generate all the energy we need as a civilization, and if there's enough left over to make *more* solar and wind installations over time (to replace the warn out bits), then why does EROEI matter?
Assuming that EROEI is a net energy positive (with a reasonable margin of error), why does it even matter at all?
(Also note: world population growth is slowing, and is steady or decreasing in all industrialized nations (including the US if you deduct immigration). The standard economic model assumes infinite consumption, but is that assumption correct? Is there be an upper limit to personal comfort in terms of energy use? Or at least diminishing returns? Would finite population and finite consumption invalidate the standard economic model?)
That energy has to come from somewhere and blocking the surface wind reduces the air velocity and increases the amount of heat at ground level.
Trees also block the wind. So a simple solution is to require anyone erecting a windmill to cut down a tree to compensate.
A more complicated solution would be to improve math and physics education, so even dimwitted people can figure out that the amount of energy windmills extract from the atmosphere is utterly inconsequential.
Wind is already generating a significant amount of power in windy locations. For whatever reason, this report goes on about what it would take to build more towers in parts of the country where there just isn't much wind. Seems like a lot of wishful thinking.
Plus it kills a lot of birds.
Incorrect.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Are you really going to get up at 3AM to do laundry? I doubt it.
People on Kauai, HI do this all the time - by setting a timer on a washing machine (electricity prices 8x the national average are a good motivator) . You can also pre-heat water during the nighttime or use solar water heaters during the day.
harness it at 30,000 ft and run a giant power cable
Here are some of the issues;
1. How heavy is a 30,000 ft cable that can carry the electricity? Probably tons
2. How strong must the cable be to be able to support itself? As the cable get stronger it also gets heavier and the baloon gets bigger which requires a heaver cable to hold it. It is an infinite circle.
3. How much tension will the supporting balloon place on the cable and turbines? As the balloon gets bigger there is more surface area and therefore more tension on the cable.
I doubt very much that one can build a 30,000 ft cable that can support itself, carry electricity and hold back a balloon large enough to support the cable and turbines. It is the same issue that is holding back the space elevator but on a smaller scale.
There's still a lot that can be done. My grandparents had their pool on a system that allowed the power company to turn it off for periods of time. They got a discount for this. My parents had a timer on their water heater - it was big enough that they could still have a hot shower even with it off, again, only for limited periods, but they got a cut in their bill. Same with AC systems and many other big power suckers that aren't precisely 'on demand'.
Increase the discount by a touch and more people will take the power companies up on those offers.
I don't read AC A human right
Sorry, already been done. Although not at 30,000 feet.
There are 10 companies listed in this article from a few years ago
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energ...
be happy they buy any of it back, they dont have to
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Since 1978, utilities have been obligated to purchase electricity from qualified facilities (QFs) under a law called PURPA. Net Metering isn't a federal requirement, but PURPA sure as heck is.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
BULLSHIT
My parents live about a kilometre from a wind turbine, and you can NEVER hear it.
I'll tell you what does travel far though: lies about infrasonic noise supposedly generated by wind turbines in significant quantities.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Too right, we should also make sure there are no lamp posts, telegraph poles or trees because someday they may be thrown about by a tornado.
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I don't see how it's any more dangerous than ripping off roofs or picking up cars or other random structures and debris and throwing them around. Tornadoes tend to have a relatively small footprint as well. The damage they do is severe, but limited in scale in most cases. It makes news only when a very large one happens to plow through a densely populated area, but keep in mind that there are hundreds of tornadoes each year, and most don't do widespread damage.
Wind farms also tend to be located in low-population areas. So, the odds of a blade flying off and hitting anything also seems low. If an F5 tornado rips through a wind farm, it's not like it's going to suddenly become significantly *more* deadly than it already is.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Oh don't give me your logic and facts, everyone knows wind turbines have a huge impact on the atmosphere but billions of tons of carbon dioxide doesn't affect the atmosphere at all
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Also no one has ever made a cable anywhere near that long. An electrical conductor can weigh upwards of 3/4 of a ton per 1000 feet. The conductor alone could be 20,000 tons. Stronger yes, strong enough to support the weight of 30,000 feet plus the weight of the conductor plus the pull of the huge balloon? Doubtful.
You are using a very bad model to think of the electrical grid. It is not a huge pool where electricity injected anywhere on the grid is instantly available anywhere else on the grid. I call that the lake analogy. It is much more like a canal system with specific capacities between specific points and each canal has to be keeps full but not overflowing. Even though the grid may theoretically be balancing input and output there will be local shortages/oversupply because electricity takes time to move.
Here is a graph of California renewables output. The Wind line is not very smooth even though it is an average and there are no major storms going through which cause more fluctuation.
A wind turbine with 100m blades has fundamental frequency of about 6Hz. You don't hear that.
For the up to 8 hours you wet cloths sit in the washer what happens? How many people do you know get up early enough to hang cloths to dry? What if it is raining? What if one lives in an apartment building?
By the evening your clothes are dry.
Or covered in bird crap.
http://www.ukpower.co.uk/home_...
Note the chart you linked is 5 years out of date, 2010 vs 2015, it looks like prices have fallen back.
If you look at the prices on the page I linked you'll see that you can purchase electricity for about 10p per kwh now - very similar to ten years ago.
Onshore wind costs about 3-4p per kwh - the same as coal if you ignore the massive external costs of coal. Nuclear is being offered 9.25p per kwh and they are still not sure if they want to build. Offshore wind is now closer to nuclear, the latest wind farm in the north sea was commissioned by the Danes, price of 7.5p per kwh. Off-shore wind has barely begun to be implemented, the price will likely fall as more off-shore wind farms are placed and firms find efficiency gains.
There have been some subsidies for solar - but since it's subsidised that doesn't affect peoples electricity bills because the subsidies are completely seperate and come from general taxation.
$500 Billion A Year In Fossil Fuel Imports Could Be Saved In US, EU, & China In 100% Switch To Renewables | CleanTechnica
Also, with renewables the costs are constantly dropping, so past prices are not very relevant:
Price history of silicon PV cells since 1977 - Cost of electricity by source
Wind turbine prices are also falling but at a slower rate - wind turbines are a fairly mature tech, but they are still improving - taller turbines access winds that are higher and more consistent and energy is to the cube of wind speed so every little bit helps.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Google "demand response". Too lazy? Ok, google in particular the FERC's "Assessment of Demand Response & Advanced Metering staff report", it's a yearly report on demand response and how it affects consumer demand. Too lazy to do that? Ok, here's the 2006 report: http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staf... Too lazy to read the table of contents? Ok, the stuff you're looking for is in pages 114-117.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
For a couple of hours after being washed with a detergent? No, it doesn't.
I know science is hard and all, so you might be surprised that detergent doesnt kill any molds.
Detergent is not a disinfectant.
Now explain to us why you are acting like an expert when both we and you know that you arent one? You don't get to claim that you mistakenly thought you were an expert... you knew you weren't...
"His name was James Damore."
We throw you in first, to stop the whining.
Nah, for maximum power you pay Henry Winkler to move to the politicans and harvest energy from the delta caused by his coolness and the hot air from the politicians. We could power the world!
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
What you mean with "substation" is beyond me, perhaps a transformer?
I am tired of talking to you is you don't even understand the basics of the grid. You can't eve do a Google search.
Bottom line you can not put more power into the grid than you consume
LMGTFY
An intelligent AC would already have cooled the house. As a house needs to be well insulated and ventilated with a heat exchanger anyway the heat will not take over too soon.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
It is weird, you know, if this was about specifying some IT gadget, people would be all over the hard numbers and data and adding stuff up.
But as soon as it gets onto energy and climate, it becomes this, oh, we can just consume less, and keep building green energy, and it'll all work out.
It'll be fun when you're getting up in the middle of the night to bathe and shower the family, because that's when the hot water is affordable.
People who talk like this have never, I would guess, lived in a 3rd world country.
> Otherwise most of it is lost.
PFFT. The entire US electrical grid loses 7% of the energy fed into it. Most of those losses are in the last mile.
HVDC lines lose about 2.5% per 800 km and 0.6% in the end-point stations.
Read something before posting next time. Here:
http://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet-hvdc-e.pdf
If it's 30,000 ft at 3/4 ton per 1000 ft, don't you mean 22.5 tons? Not 20,000 tons?
the thump/thump/thump of the blades (like a whirleybird *old ref* overhead for days) during the prevalent low wind conditions doomed this project even though it lasted long enough to depress property values within 15 miles. low frequencies travels far.
I have family that lives about 700m from a 105m high wind turbine (height at the axle) and you cannot hear it. What you can clearly hear however is the wind in the trees and the cows of the nearby farm when they are here.
Small songbirds, yes. Bald eagles, not really.