Posted on 08/26/2008 11:16:46 PM PDT by neverdem
The Energy Challenge
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Why not build the best clean energy plants, nukes, and build them near the people who will use the energy? Wind farms and solar farms take up far too much real estate to be really practical for replacing large parts of our energy. Nukes are the way to go. Build them for electricity and for desalinization. We need both, there is no reason for us to ever suffer drought in this country again, simply build enough offshore nukes for desalinization, JMO.
Nuclear energy is the way to go.
It’s what fuels the Universe.. why not use it to fuel our planet?
for the renewable energy ping list
Wind energy is a f$*king joke, and a piss-poor one at that.
If they could build the Interstate Highway System, with all the interests, business, regional and political, they ought to be able to do this. Aside from major transmission lines, small scale wind and solar could make a serious dent in the fuel problem. The availability in a few years of plug in electric vehicles will engender support by the auto industry for more energy production in and around cities and large towns.
A bill was recently introduced in Congress to require that power companies pay some reasonable compensation to small scale producers of electricity for excess power they put into the local grid. I have large south facing roofs on two houses which would be ideal for solar power production. Right now the two barriers to installing it are the high cost of solar installations, which will improve as thin film technology is developed, and the fact that I use far less electricity than I would be able to produce, and don’t feel like subsidizing the electric companies.
Waiting for the first turbine to fall over from failure and topple a whole slew of other windmills.
Go NUCLEAR! YES! They have much better plant designs, much safer than what is in operation even now.
The future of wind is "withheld".
I think Teslas idea of transmitting energy without wires should get some more modern day exploration.
Yup, Westinghouse is building something like 100 of their new AP1000 nuclear power plants in China in the future. If they follow through on their plans they will have double the nuclear generation capacity of the United States in 2025. Something like 200,000 Megawatts of electricity, simply astonishing.
Wind-farms are a T.Boone Pickens yer bones dry - the best that wind can ever do is about 4% of the electrical needs of the USA.
He's sellin' natural gas - not a bad idea, but it's a bad idea to lie about it!
Whenever some body holds his cards behind his back, you can be sure he's got the dealer given him the cards he wants ............. FRegards
o yeah...have you seen what the wind farms in Sweetwater Texas has done in providing alot of jobs and alot of very cheap electricity? T Boone is no dummy, he’s not getting behind a technology that is not feasible.
Tesla-type wireless power transmission would knock out all wireless/radio communication within a certain radius of the transmission tower. It may also knock out computers in the same radius. Not good.
If we can have all of our subs and aircraft carriers, and what, Icebreakers with nuclear power, why not ever city? But aside from that, I’m all for a coal boom. Coal burning trains, power plants, house heaters, etc..Global warmers stick it.
Take a look at your electricity bill and see what you're paying. Its o.k., Euro's are happy paying $10/gal gas, so they're not bothered by that. I'm fairly certain they had an excellent NoBamessiah at the helm who worked out the rate increase sufficiently slowly enough (unlike the domestic issue with gasoline prices that spiked instead of going up slowly. See that's the key, if it goes up slowly enough it doesn't really matter how high it goes up, its still good.
Anyways, now people all over the country with land available are going to the bank and getting loans of $5 - 20 million dollars so they can install solar panel farms. A large number of egg, milk, butter, wool, farmers, Muesli, potato-chip & french fry, hot dog and steak farmers are now farming sunlight. Even the industrial sector, such as tomato, lettuce, onion, etc. manufacturers are converting non-profitable land into solar farms. Where they previously couldn't get loans to save their lives, the banks are falling all over themselves to loan them money by the ton.
The only people who can't reap the windfall are apartment dwellers, and condo dwellers, and housing project dwellers, and commercial office building establishmnts, etc. But its o.k., because the price probably went up slowly enough to not make a big difference to them.
All up and down the interstates, solar panels are going up right an left and in the medians. My Dad said that he's noticed lately that windmills are popping up all OVER the place. He says they're everywhere now (like a bad dandylion infestation).
Major shot in the arm for the unemployed too. All the equpipment is being doemestically produced. So a lot of people have gotten jobs now. And those figures are only expected to increase over the next few years as the whole solar farming industry ramps up.
Nevertheless, Germany outlawed nuclear power plants some time ago. They have a 20% power supply deficit. No worry, the French have the Germans convinced that 80% of their power comes from atom-splitting plants, which is are significantly and substantially different from nuclear power plants. The Germans are quite happy paying a premium to the French for their safe, enviro-friendly atom-split electrity.
Now this. . .so far, prior phenomena ignored i.e. the ‘birds’; and as well our ‘Federally protected’ bats; who apparently explode from air vibrations created by wind turbines. . .
“Right now the two barriers to installing it are the high cost of solar installations, which will improve as thin film technology is developed, and the fact that I use far less electricity than I would be able to produce, and don’t feel like subsidizing the electric companies.”
If the numbers don’t work yet, don’t do it. Sounds like you want others to pick up the tab for you.
Of course they need transmission lines, because wind energy is variable and needs to be constantly followed by natural gas turbines to dampen such oscillations.
It’s the oil industry which is behind windenergy. In fact the last AWEA, the wind lobby, meeting took place in Houston.
Such green energies as solar or wind are the opposite any grid is designed. Grids are a backbone powered by big, reliable, regulable units, which maintain power and frequency. Wide use of such energies makes this grid unstable, requiring further investment in power lines and in gas turbine “rapid reaction” plants.
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