I remember reading an article in a ‘scientific’ journal where they ‘proved’ that nuclear power stations utilised more electricity in their construction than they ever produced.
I might have been suckered into believing this (I was young and there was no Internet to do immediate further research) except that they pushed their luck by showing that even conventional power stations were precious little better than break even.
I’ve seen statements like this made about solar power and biofuels as well - in some cases, the second law of thermodynamics (basically: you can’t get out more than you put in) is hinted at (or baldly stated) as being the reason why alternative energy schemes can’t ever work.
If you ever see this, it’s always a false statement - because the energy harvested by these schemes is not a product of the energy consumed in their manufacture - they’re not closed systems, so although the 2LOT always applies, it does not prevent renewable energy schemes from outputting more energy than they cost to make (because there is a net energy input, ultimately from the sun in most cases)
What’s the upkeep/maintenance like on wind turbines? Grease a few bearings, tighten up the bolts and nuts…do the blades of the fan need cleaned every so often? What other maintenance do they require on a regular basis?
There’s also repair to the gears, which wear out, on the older turbines.
Modern turbines are gearless (they use electromagnets instead) and are therefore lower maintenance, more efficient and a lot quieter (virtually silent from what I’ve seen/not heard).
Wind works best in combination with other technologies, especially hydro since they can store the electricity at peak output and release it when required.
I think with a good combination of wind, wave, tidal, solar, geothermal and hydro, it should be quite possible to produce all the energy required in any country. Nuclear, despite their recent publicity efforts, is not required at all.
While all of those can contribute (except for solar; the technology’s just not good enough yet, though it probably will be eventually), I’ve never seen any hard numbers showing that they’d be sufficient. Got any?
I too, am skeptical about those energies meeting our requirements. Still, they’re worth pursuing. When I lived in the desert there was almost always plenty of wind and sun. I imagine a cleverly-designed house might come close to meeting its energy needs using those two. (NB: We had a swamp cooler, which isn’t as good as central air – but it used a LOT less electricity and was usually good enough.)
I like hydro because it’s clean. But I’m concerned about the fishes. I love salmon, and don’t care for dams that adversely affect them. Geothermal is not available in many places. (I wonder about Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier, since they’re active. But I don’t think an industrial complex would be welcome there.) Wave/tidal, I don’t know much about. Being fairly recent entries into the discussion, they seem a bit science-fictional to me.
The answer is using as many alternative forms of energy as you possibly can. Wind has been very effective in some countries. It can be helpful here. Solar can do a lot. Refitting homes and offices can help. Wave energy shows promise.
We could also clean up our coal plants and make them more efficient. There are lots of things that would help.
You have never heard of passive houses? You isolate them well enough (better than the 3 l houses), add a heat -exchanger and solar thermic cells on the roof, and you don’t need external energy for heating/ cooling the house. Add some PV cells on the roof, and you can at least partly cover your electricity, too.
Modern water plants (though not many are built) have fish stariways, and older plants are often retro-fitted. The salmon is also affected by water quality, so stopping the pollution led into the river is an important step.
But you can use earth heating without hot springs. You just need a normal-sized garden to bury the coils for heating your house.
What is science-fiction about them? The principle is rather easy and established. Yes, they are still developing them to get better efficiency, and to make sure that fishies aren’t hindered in migration or chopped up. But it’s basically the same as a river water plant, a turbine.
A fusion engine, that’s currently science-fiction, But nobody has proposed it.
So, in other words, you are for the technology, but against it when it’s done incorrectly (putting them in the path of migration routes)? Isn’t that rather obvious, that turbines put into bird’s path are wrong?
The problem awaiting a solution for the variability of many forms of alternative energy is the effect on the power grid. The obvious solution is large scale energy storage (batteries) than can be embedded into the system to act as a Capacitor to even out the flow.
The unfortunate part is that most of the methods used to do this (water storage, etc) are extremely inefficient or very limited, and batteries, while improving, are far too expensive and of short-lifespan to be used on a large scale.
So you need the big plants (Coal, Nuclear) to provide the steady backbone around which all the other, smaller (and more variable) bones can be deployed.