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To: DungeonMaster

“HOLD IT! You’ve made an error by a factor of 1000 against Wind power.”
I stand corrected. Sorry, my head is smoking. kilowatt is 1,000 watts. Megawatt is million watts. Gigawatt is billion watts. Iowa’s wind turbines now roughly equal 1 nuke power plant or 2 conventional plants. BTW- those plants still have to be built, and up and running, if we want reliable power because wind is so unreliable... You can’t just fire up that kind of capacity like it’s a Honda generator.


49 posted on 12/08/2009 11:35:32 AM PST by PilotDave (America; nice while it lasted... I miss it already.)
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To: PilotDave
I stand corrected. Sorry, my head is smoking. kilowatt is 1,000 watts. Megawatt is million watts. Gigawatt is billion watts. Iowa’s wind turbines now roughly equal 1 nuke power plant or 2 conventional plants. BTW- those plants still have to be built, and up and running, if we want reliable power because wind is so unreliable... You can’t just fire up that kind of capacity like it’s a Honda generator.

No problem, I'm glad that's ironed out. Wind plant output is actually becoming more and more predictable. I notice the wind is often very calm at night when demand is low and it picks up during the day when demand is great. Weather models for wind speed are surprisingly accurate 24 and 48 hours out. Kind of like the blizzard that we are about to get hit by, the models show what it's going to be doing hour by hour.

50 posted on 12/08/2009 12:01:26 PM PST by DungeonMaster (camel, eye of a needle; rich man, heaven)
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