That is “capacity”. Meaning if the windmill farm had just the right wind it would hit that amount.
How often does this happen? How often does an entire windmill farm sit motionless?
I’ve driven thru western Kansas several times and seen all the windmills not moving.
I’ve driven through the Columbia Gorge two dozen times and I’ve never seen those wind turbines still, except an odd one or two. So, there are better places to build the things than others is all. Solar panels are no help on Antarctica in winter.
C’mon RickJay, since Ontario invested in solar and wind energy they haven’t lost a single whale over the falls at Niagara.
One of the obvious stop-gaps is nuclear energy. Something better will come along in 50 years and we can wave goodby to them but in the mean time we need dependable energy.
We’ve certainly learned from past meltdowns on what not to do. What is needed is a focus on current designs that fix those design flaws. Instead of pissing around with competing designs we should buy into one of them and and make it open source. Instead of re-inventing the wheel every time a power plant is proposed we go to a single design that’s already been vetted.
In the UK the governments knee jerk reaction to the greens is to build wind farms that in the main do not work, they shut down because there is either to little wind or to much. Wind power for the UK is not the answer. Solar panels that produce hot water and electricity do work and with modern battery technology power could be stored for use in hours of darkness, the question to be asked here is why does the government not demand the inclusion of solar panels for planning permission on all new builds?
One of the answers for the UK could be tidal produced energy.
Governments need to stop rolling over to have a tummy rub from the Greens and start doing some serious unbiased research
Look, you have, broadly speaking, four choices:
We can mix these approaches, but this is what there is.
Me, I vote for the Green New Deal, with some nuke plants here and there. If we (implausibly) can’t power the world’s human population on green energy and nukes, then we will have to embrace negative population growth, because I am not signing on for a program that guarantees we will have* less* habitable land. And you’re going to have to blow up the paradigm I’ve outlined above to convince me otherwise.
Fukushima was a known clusterfuck of an antique that should have had some common sense upgrades made such as relocation of the emergency generators and an externally connected backup fire suppression system to keep the !@#$ core stable.
There is ZERO reason not to fast-track the current generation nuclear plants. We need to stop treating them like each one just fell out of a black hole with no instructions.
Well on the one hand all reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. Also NUREG-1150, the 1991 risk assessment by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, estimated that the probability of some nuclear power plant having core damage is about 30% over 20 years, while the odds of containment failure are 8%. Those are not small probabilities. Furthermore, it’s my understanding that existing examples of nuclear accidents haven’t been covered that well by past risk assessments, but I’m willing to be corrected.
On the other hand, you did capitalize zero. So there’s that.
(ETA: snark aside, I have some sympathy for post 43.)