Posted on 03/12/2024 11:55:31 AM PDT by DallasBiff
Sorry, double tap!
No such thing as “net zero”!
Sustainable? As long as the wind blows. Practical and profitable? When the technology is created that harvests wind power without mass birdslaughter and low-level noise that annoys man and beast, and pays out much more than its cost.
Yeah, but there are a whole bunch of gonefs getting filthy rich along the way with the global warming hoax.
The certain Second Law of Thermodynamics
Wind turbines take energy out of the ecosystem, altering it
-fJRoberts-
Hmmm...
There is no doubt that generating electricity with wind generators reduces the wind.
That disturbs the weather, at least locally.
And what happens when we use up all the wind?
We used to kill Whales for Oil.
Now, we kill Whales for Wind.
It is as sustainable as the combination of the wind blowing constantly, the bearings holding out, the wiring remaining proper and the blades being serviceable.
This is from Deutsche Welle the German equivalent of PBS. And about as objective. Most of the numbers in the article are wishes only. German economy is plummeting due to the screwed up Energiewende policies of which wind power is a big part.
“Wind]d power was not suitable nor sustainable for a recent Texas winter.”
You would be wrong I am in the power industry and had real time access to ERCOTs grid management data streams. I watched in horror as the grid went down to 59.2hz and gas plant after gas plant dropped off line. The natural gas grid came within a few hours of total collapse. The power grid was less than three minutes from a total black start event and MONTHS of darkness to black start a grid.
Texas Feb blackout was caused not by wind power failure. Wind actually helped put more megawatts into the grid as the natural gas grid froze up and failed. We told the power industry providers to winterize the oil/gas wellheads and also the power plants back in 2011 and again in 2014. The natural gas grid is still not winterized it will freeze up at the well heads again in a similar subzero freeze. The polymer gathering lines still run on the surface never having been buried below the frost line. The gas oil water separators still lack the insulation to not freeze solid in subzero temps. The plant operators were told by the legislature to winterize but there is no penalty in the mandate so they also just shrugged their shoulders and didn’t invest the billions needed to winterize gas turbines and nuclear plants outdoor critical equipment. We lost a whole nuke reactor and the 1200 megawatts it was making for the grid due to its cooling pumps outdoors temp sensors freezing a few thousand dollars worth of insulation on those sensors and resistance heaters would have saved 1200 megawatts of capacity.
During the freeze it was the gas grid going down that dropped out 60% of ERCOT capacity. The gas grid operators had also not listed their electric pumps as critical grid needs so as the grid was shedding load natural gas pumps were cut off from power cascading the effects. This pumps has previously run on the gas in the pipelines but the EPA mandated NOx limits so rather than install hundreds of SCR cats scattered around at the individual pump sites the operators just switched to electric drives and then didn’t class them as critical infrastructure.
For anyone willing to look there is a detailed report on how the electric grid went down it shows clearly the mistakes in gas supply,winterization,and power management. When the real numbers came it it was a clear case of lack of winterizing both grids as they were told in 2011 and 2014 ,the power plants and not having critical grid infrastructure on power lines that cannot be load shed.
“Can wind power even produce enough energy to build new windmills? It seems to me no power source can be self-sustaining if it can’t produce enough energy to support its replication.”
Not a huge fan of wind turbines but the fact is they will make 40 times the energy needed to make them all in over their lifespan in a class 4 or higher wind field. Higher the wind field the bigger the EROI becomes. You can make steel,concrete and glass fibers with nothing but electricity, steel needs a carbon source but biocharcoal can be used with hydrogen as the reducing agent, same for calcification of lime to CaO2 for cement plus aggregate to concrete. Glass is already made with electric furnaces in a number of industries. The Swedes and Norwegians with large hydro power systems make steel with electricity, Iceland as well with aluminum being Ireland’s number one metal export why? Because Iceland has huge hydro and geothermal energy sources power is cheap and Alcoa has their largest plant in Iceland.
Offshore wind only makes sense in the Northern latitudes where you have class 6+ wind fields those allow 40%+ capacity factors use that to make hydrogen,ammonia,or ethanol via electrolytic cells. Bunker the product for times when it’s not windy which in a class 6 field is not often it’s more often it’s too windy and you have to feather the blades. The waters around Scotland and Ireland have some of the highest speed continuous winds on the planet. Down south there also exists the same roaring forties but there is no land masses nearby only Tasmania and southern New Zealand and Patagonia all are wind ripped year round day and night. It’s not a energy source issue at those places it’s how do you move the energy in useable form. Here is where modern tech of low capex electrolytic cells is coming into maturity.once capex is low enough to use 30 to 40% capacity factor resources you have access to massive amounts of energy. Same for solar in the deserts get H2 pem cells down to $300-200Kg/hr and you can use 12hours of daylight in the low.latitudes deserts and forget about the night time production hours.
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