Renewable Power Fail – As Usual – June 2010

PA Pundits International ^ | 27 September 2010 | TonyfromOz

[TonyfromOz]

With the ramping up of rhetoric regarding the move to a Renewable Electricity Standard, just how effectively can Wind Power and Solar Power deliver a constant and regular supply of electrical power? This post uses the most current Government statistics to show conclusively that both these forms of Renewable Power fail, and that they fail comprehensively to deliver power, not only for when it is needed the most, but for all the time.

[Paladin2]

What we need is a giant battery. Like, say, the chemical energy of petroleum or nuke power.

[chimera]

A generation source that has a 25% capacity factor is an exceedingly poor investment for baseload supply. Without some kind of storage as a buffer for supply variability, there is no way you can run a modern industrial-technological society on renewables. And we're not talking about storage batteries here. It has to be something big to tie into that grid, and that means pumped storage of some kind. The enviros killed that (Google Storm King Mountain NY for the story on that).

[ctdonath2]

A co-worker used the “if the sun ain’t shining and the wind ain’t blowin’ we
take the day off” line off last week. Late Saturday I emailed him “it’s a bad day for solar and wind, so turn off the house main breaker for 24 hours and tell me Monday how it went.” Let me go ask him about it...

...oh, of course, the electrolyzed hydrogen saved the day.

Funny how easy it is to rely on elitist hypotheticals when you don’t have to deal with elitist realities. Which reminds me, his GF is a trucker; gotta ask him what she thinks of relying on Big Oil.

[fanfan]

Bump.

Thanks for the post.

[fanfan]

Bump.

Thanks for the post.

[fanfan]

Twice.

*blush*