Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

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  1

  verycold

  09/01/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

  Our farm looked locally into putting up a tower and pretty much our utility company nixed it. The reason being is lack of enough wind during the summer months.
  
  The wind farms now up and going are they working out as intended? What sort of back-up do they have and how often do they have to do to it?
  
  I worry that this push for wind power is jumping off before really knowing the savings first. Much like ethanol that now has hit a huge roadblock because the source is a poor one and not much savings, and no investors. So short-term there was a burst of jobs and big money spent, but where are we now?

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  2

  conlad

  09/01/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

  @verycold
  
  Wind power, much like Solar, cannot be deployed anywhere in the world. The areas must be carefully chosen in order to maximize the energy output. I really hope all these new farms have good geographical studies backing them up, or else they will be an enormous waste of money, to the harm of customers and the supporters of clean energies.
  
  Ethanol has only made good progress in Brazil because of how easy it is to produce. You don't have that kind of set-up in other areas, so other options have to be explored.
  
  In the end, a good study of the region and its natural resources must go before any investment is made in a particular choice of clean energy.

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  3

  exaviator

  09/01/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

  It is true that there has been quite a bit of leaping with insufficient looking in the wind arena. The incredible Pickens transmission line boondoggle is perhaps the most egregious, with lavish advertising, investors emptying their pockets, and the first ONE THOUSAND turbines ordered before the $12 BILLION transmission cost was sorted out. (How anyone ever thought a vast Panhandle wind farm made sense is still a mystery to me; drive through there and you'll understand). The map at this link (from DoE, who is VERY supportive of this technology) shows the challenge involved in putting turbines near population centers:
  http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/pdfs/wind_maps/us_windmap.pdf
  
  What it essentially shows is that unless you are willing to locate the turbines along the very near Continental Shelf in shallow water on the E. Coast, there are really no practical large-scale solutions. "Practical" means physically achievable -- it does not mean cost effective. From where I sit the W. Coast is a non-starter owing to the very rapid drop-off in the ocean floor in this region. Conversely, in those wind-rich land areas where locating turbines is, relatively speaking, "easy" (read: cheap, open land), transmission is beyond problematic.
  
  In any case, with a capacity utilization of 30% in land-based applications, storage is a must (see Mr. Morrison's earlier summary on this).
  
  As for solar, the installations we keep reading about in places like Germany are just silly. Don't get me wrong -- having been Geschaftsfuhrer in a wonderful Bavarian manufacturing facility, I have no doubt they are marvelously engineered by bright and capable people. But capacity factors in these locations are running as low as 12%. It just doesn't make sense in a municipal- or industrial-scale installation. As for the U.S., the maps show similar challenges for all but extreme desert locations (this from NREL):
  
  http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/map_pv_national_lo-res.jpg
  
  Please understand: I am a HUGE energy saving advocate. We do not have a single incandescent bulb in our home. I built an air-to-air HX for the clothes dryer to extract waste energy during the winter. I am already selecting a PV installation for a new home (this with battery storage and an inverter) as well as a potential "wind charging" device (the fact that I use this term reflects my age). But solar and wind do not make sense for any but the most localized applications, and even then they are frankly not yet an economically good trade (unless our geniuses in Congress tax the hell out of utilities). And they are a TERRIBLE net energy trade when the kw-hr to manufacture the devices is factored in. Right now, they are the modern equivalent of a Depression-era WPA program, trading poor investment payback for jobs programs that in my Father's day was "digging and filling" (paying thousands of workers for fictional "work" to avert idle hands and potential uprising).

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  4

  verycold

  09/02/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

  I agree with the above posts. My point was that wind is not possible in most locations. I must also throw in this bit of politics as well. My utility does not like wind. They want nuclear and so they don't even attempt to push wind. You can go to other state websites and can see that many do push wind.
  
  For me it is always the bottom line. Does it make financial sense to do this? Replacing oil at this point in our economic history will be daunting. However there are many, many simple changes Americans can make in their lives that would drastically reduce our consumption. There is waste everywhere.
  
  Just this past weekend I heard a SAT show tell listeners that just changing the wash cycle from hot/hot to warm/cold saves 90 percent of the energy use. How about public announcement explaining that difference. It is so simple. Just change the setting. How about our culture going back to hanging clothes out on the line to dry during the good months? Imagine that savings and the clothing smells much better. How about a push to buy front loaders that literally almost dry the clothing when finished. They barely need any drying. Sometimes I frankly can't tell I washed the clothing at all. So many easy solutions, but of course we want instead to spend gobs of money without knowing the real cost long-term.

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  florina_pascula

  10/21/09 | Report as spam

  RE: Wind Power Poised For a Possible Fast Recovery

  www.naturalsenergy.com is a website where you can find a lot of interesting articles about renewable energy and also hundreds of companies that act in this domain. See you there!