Wiki says 1.5 percent of the words energy supplies are wind generated. It also says as of 2008 Denmark was getting 19 percent of its energy through wind. Spain 13, Portugal ,Germany and Ireland 7 percent. It also says the wind energy doubled the last 3 years.There are several newer forms on drawing boards and some being built. There are 2 wave generation plants going up in the Detroit River. The energy generation of the future will not be the tired, obsolete , expensive and dangerous nuclear plants of old technology.
Why would you conclude the rate will remian the same fo 50 years?
You got something better to go on?
But seriously, yes production can ramp up more from here. But on the flip side, as has been mentioned before the low hanging fruit is the first to go/gone which makes production levels harder to achieve as time goes on, which increases costs and/or decreases power levels for the same amount of infrastruture built.
Barring some actual data (feel free to bring some yourself), assuming the two competing factors cancel out is a reasonable assumption IMO.
Yeah, you can talk about improved technology and scales of economy…and the same arguement can be made about constructing new nuke plants.
And I like I said about solar, it dont matter if its free when it won’t meet peak demands. You STILL, for the umptemth time, need nuclear or coal/fossil to cover those times.
That’s a good point. It might drop, as the more optimal spots for wind power are taken and it becomes a game of diminishing returns. Or it might increase if they are able to build more efficient wind turbines that can work at more variable wind rates, or lower wind velocities. Still, as a ball park and to demonstrate the scales that are being discussed, it’s a useful yardstick to show how far we’d have to go to get even where nuclear is today in terms of decades, at least. Certainly it will help if, 20 or 30 years down the pike we have wind generated clean energy equivalent to what nuclear is today…but that won’t even cut our CO2 foot print in half (even leaving aside the fact that manufacturing and deployment on those scales would be a strain and would probably cut into the amount of CO2 savings we’d be getting), even assuming we could keep on at the same rate. I’m, frankly, skeptical that wind will EVER be able to account for 20% of our energy production…I just don’t think it’s feasible, no matter how far we improve the technology, or how good the turbines get.
I’d love to see the numbers on how expensive it was to build that level of wind power as well. I’ve seen some individual wind farms with numbers in the hundreds. Even if the turbines were only $1 million each (which I think is a low number and doesn’t take into account all the other infrastructure needed), that’s several hundred million dollars. How many such plants are included in Una’s figures? 2? 5? 10? No idea, but at some point it starts to add up, both in terms of dollars, and in terms of resources and ecological impact.
-XT
If we can have big pylons all across the landscape carrying our electricity, why can’t we swop them for something that actually generates energy?
Several reasons would be my WAG. One is density. If you’ve ever seen a wind farm there are hundreds of the things, whereas infrastructure towers are widely spaced. Also, infrastructure towers are and were not placed to optimize their access to the wind, but for logistics reasons (where there were rights of way, where it was easy to build in line with the objective, etc.). Cost could (and probably would) also be a factor…it just wouldn’t be cost effective to put a turbine on a power pylon as the return on investment wouldn’t mitigate the upfront cost. Also, there would be maintenance issues…you’d have a much more dispersed power system, and wind turbines require a lot of maintenance. It’s easier to maintain them in central locations than to send engineers and techs all over the country to fix the things when they break down or need scheduled maintenance.
That’s my WAG anyway, FWIW. I doubt it would be feasible.
-XT
According to the DoE EIA, total wind capacity was 23,847MW in 2008 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alterna...mp/table4.html), and the total net generation in 2008 was 52,025,898 MWh (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alterna...mp/table3.html). Doing the math, we get:
Is that as of 2008 or added in 2008?
While I am intrigued by people like Stewart Brand getting behind nuclear, I’m not sure we need to go all in. I think that a few dozen 4th gen breeder reactors to burn up the waste from LWRs, but proliferation issues are still huge.
Oh, and the energy and climate bill being debated has nuclear in the mix, but not the IFR breeder types that y’all are advocating. You guys need to organize, and quick, if you want to see it happen.
Generates energy how? You could have solar in sunny areas, wind in windy areas, and what in places that are not particularly sunny or windy?
Maintenance would be much less efficient for solar or wind generators if they were spread out. Somebody has to clean solar panels pretty often. If he has to drive from solar generator to solar generator, less of his total work day is going to be spent cleaning solar panels than if all the solar panels were in a centralized location. Same for maintenance on windmills. You’re losing some of the benefit of clean energy generation if you have someone driving around in a car or truck to do maintenance.
I do not have easy access to the cost data; my apologies.
Total, not just for that added in 2008. I used that to estimate the overall net capacity factor of wind versus nuclear.
Hydroelectric.
ETA: I just realized you’re talking about electric grid pylons. NVM.
Well, presumably he’d be driving an all-electric vehicle that is charged on-site.
No worries. Had just hoped you had it to hand.
Why would you presume that? Even if it were the case (which I doubt), it still would entail a waste of labor since the current power infrastructure is so dispersed. I don’t see how you could make such a thing economical, regardless of the contortions you go through with all electric vehicles and such.
Which, as has been pointed out, is pretty much maxed out in the US at this time, so isn’t going to scale up any more. It is what it is, and I seriously doubt we’ll be building any new large scale hydro-plants in the future, since they have a significant ecological impact.
-XT
Find a way to tap all that energy beneath Yellowstone Park and your power troubles are over. Just be careful not to set it off prematurely. Couldn’t we practice on a smaller volcano, in the meantime?
Are you serious or is this tongue in cheek?
-XT
Volcanic geothermal projects have some basis in reality. At an energy conference once I saw a very detailed presentation done by some folks in California where they went into the pros/cons of tapping into things like the Hawaiian volcanoes, the Pacific Coast of the US, etc. I do not have the paper name handy, but in general there were some serious concerns about safety, movement of the ground (relatively small, steady creeps can play hell with cables and piping), and concerns from H2S and CO outgassing. O&M was hell in some cases due to sulfur-based corrosion of the piping. There was also, yes, an environmental movement against tampering with the volcanoes as it was reputedly destroying the natural natural habitat which exists on the caldera slopes and the talus below. Whether or not the volcano is held responsible for destroying its own slope with ash and pyroclastic lava when it erupts is likely a subject of moral concern to some…yeah.
In any event, the prediction was as much as 1-2% of power in the US could be produced from geothermal resources if we went all out on it. I was somewhat underwhelmed.
That’s not to say it’s not impossible; IIRC Iceland manages to get some usable heat and power from rocks in proximity to magma.
As previously cited, the DOE disagrees with you. And there are numerous types of hydroelectric on the horizon to be further developed. The ecological impact can be mitigated, doesn’t last thousands to millions of years, and the resource is renewable. Hydroelectric dams create reservoirs for drinking water and are used to control water flow for irrigation of crop lands.
There is no energy source that is entirely without environmental impact. Coal seems to have the most egregious impact, we can all agree on that. Many people feel that the environmental impact of nuclear, the waste generated and the risk of catastrophic failure, isn’t worth it. Inasmuch as I’d like to see an end to mining and burning coal for energy, I don’t want to see nuclear waste generation continue to expand exponentially without a realistic solution for eliminating it from the environment. Burying it is a stop-gap measure that just places the burden on future generations. I would also like to see an end to open pit uranium mining or at the very least measures to correct the environmental impact of that.
Regardless, there needs to be planning involved in which method is the appropriate one for the environment. While we should be focused intently on reducing GHG, we also need to be aggressive in developing renewable sources of energy.
I actually meant the Yellowstone part. Leaving aside the fact that it’s a potentially dangerous area (to understate things by several orders of magnitude), it’s also a protected wilderness area and nation park. Plus it would be a stone cold bitch to try and run the power infrastructure out of there and into the grid in any large scale (not to mention the power losses), even if you could get the environmentalists (or, hell, the rest of us) to allow a large scale industrial presence in such an area.
Plus, as you pointed out, it would hardly be worth what we’d be giving up in what is, IMHO, a national treasure. All these contortions to try and avoid nuclear…it’s kind of sad that people are willing to give up so much just to avoid using it.
-XT
Does it really matter?
No, actually, they don’t. Going from memory, the cite in question was discussing the POTENTIAL, not doing a cost assessment and reality check on actually getting new hydro-electric plants built. There is a vast difference between potential and what can be practically built. From every thing I’ve ever read the most we could get out of new hydro-electric initiatives would be a few percentage points, tops…and that would be a struggle, as environmentalists would fight nearly as hard as they do against nuclear.
And destroy habitats. But ok…show me the list of proposed new hydro-electric plants potentially going on stream in the next, oh, say 2 decades. If it’s significant enough to seriously reduce our carbon foot print then I’ll concede the point.
As long as you are willing to wait for a few decades or a half century or so then fine…we can wait for the technology to mature and develop to the point where it is both practical from a monetary and resource perspective AND is dense enough to make a significant difference. In the mean time, regardless of how whole hog we go towards the current renewable energy technologies, the reality is that we can’t take a significant bite out of CO2 emissions with the current technology, and won’t be able to do so for a LONG time. If that’s cool, if that trumps the fears about nuclear, then ok…I disagree, but it’s a reasonable position, if your assumption is that all this Global Warming due to CO2 is a bunch of bunk, or even that it’s simply being over played. As long as you and the other anti-nukes pony up and accept that as fact then I’d say the debate is over.
-XT