Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

[SixFoot]

Personally I think wasting our open spaces on solar farms is not only too expensive but it is unnecessary.

We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres in the form of south and southwest facing rooftops that we are leaving unused.

Why not exploit this unused space before we ugly up our landscapes with solar and wind farms?

In the OP, I was speaking more specifically about using our exposed water canals for solar use, but I agree that rooftops are another great option.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Pardon my "lack" of participation in this thread. I want to hear more opinions/facts first before I continue.

The biggest impediment to rational thought is the government picking winners and loosers. Lets just call it returning the bribe.. In The US, Obama and his cronie thugs in his back pocket have been funneled billions of dollars just to have them vanish into thin air.

THe only way to make renewables even remotly monitarily profitable is to make all other forms of energy so expsenisve that no one can afford them. The problem with this is it dooms economies (as the EU found out the hard way) to failure.

First and foremost the lies to gain populace control and the greed of wanting One World Government (all political power gains) must be dealt with first or anything you might try will end in ruin.

Yes we could use all of our resources and live well for 300-500 years easily. The political whores will not allow it as it strips them of power.

 

[flacaltenn]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

Most of us, meaning all of you, seriously, what do you know about Spain, I know Spain invested over 80$ billion on Alternative Energy, and as everyone knows that is the same amount of money that Spain needed to save their economy form collapsing.

As posted in threads here, stuff not disputed, straight from the Spaniards themselves, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job created in "alternative energy".

Spain is about the best example you could point out, as a total failure. About the highest unemployment in the European Union.

I will post the first 10 google results of, "spains wind failure"

About 61,100,000 results (0.40 seconds)
Search Results......

Yes you can google, I can google, we all can google, that's how we argue around here. That was the first thing I pointed out in my post;

"Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly."

I googled success of spains wind power and got;
About 1,750,000 results (0.29 seconds)
Showing results for success of spain's wind power

Google is a great tool but for a serious argument and not an ideologically driven one you have to have a hard look at the political sites with a political agenda. I didn't use those kind of sites in my post.

And I acknowledged Spain's budget problems;

"So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there."

Your first site on the top ten list, the WSJ was mainly concerned with solar and not that critical of wind power;

"Spain's early bet on wind power paid off: The country is one of the world leaders in generating such power, only recently eclipsed by the U.S. Spanish wind-power companies have become global players. In 2008, wind power accounted for 11% of Spanish electricity production, compared to less than 1% for solar power.
Reyad Fezzani, chief executive of BP Solar, a unit of oil giant BP BP -0.65% PLC, said that despite the current crisis, the Spanish model succeeded in creating a solar industry from scratch. "Once you pay for the infrastructure, you have a skilled work force and you can expand and contract very easily," he said."

Your focus on Spain's alternative energy model in your reply is somewhat unfair. My post's scope was considerably broader. And your 3rd site says;

"In Spain’s case, it is not the investment in wind turbines and solar power that represent the root of the problem: like many of its European partners, Spain encouraged private investment in wind and solar power partly to meet binding EU climate and energy targets, partly to improve its energy security, and partly to encourage the development of new economic sectors.
Moreover, numerous studies from major research institutes and think tanks around the world continue to find that FITs are the most cost-effective means of accelerating investment in renewable energy.
The problem is therefore not with wind and solar per se, nor with the policy that encouraged investment in them (though Spain’s FIT policy had a number of important design flaws): it is that the government, through regulations dating back decades, prevented utilities from recovering the true costs of the electricity system through rates."

I have no problem conceding that countries must try to be smarter in their pricing models and not spend more on subsidies than they can afford. But I will stick by my main point, the United States cannot afford to be left behind in this industry. And if you modern Luddites get your way that just could happen. Also, some of you seem to pick the side of an issue that is anti-Obama and not necessarily the one that is in the country's best interest.

Its not only the financing of wind that make

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

See Smedly -- THAT'S why you need me.. You've been punked by pesky PReleases. Happens all the time. Because Big Wind is now big bucks... The only RACE is to scour subsidies out of the pockets of unwitting, taxpayer dupes such as yourself..

That moment of record smashing in Spain was a ONE DAY record. These jerks do it all the time. Wait for a good day over the sum total of the country's land and then brag their asses off.

You need to look at a typical wind production chart. The one below is from MiddelGrunden in Denmark. These production charts USED to be all over the Internet where you could dial up the ACTUAL daily performance of the wind fields.. Today --- they've almost all been taken down..

In that chart, 400,000 is the RATED capacity of each of those 10
2MW turbines in KW-hrs.. They reached ONCE in 10 days for a matter of hours. Windfarms AVERAGE production about 30% of the placarded "capacity" over a year. ANYBODY -- even the most tech ackward ones cannot look at that chart and tell me that "wind is an alternative" to what we have now.. You can check in on MiddelGruden daily, and I have done that in discussions on USMB multiple times.. And NEVER have a found a chart that shows a reliable source of power..

You cannot PLAN for it, You cannot CONTRACT for it, and the only way it fits into the energy marketplace is when you FORCE IT by the power of government stubbornness...

 

[flacaltenn]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

Most of us, meaning all of you, seriously, what do you know about Spain, I know Spain invested over 80$ billion on Alternative Energy, and as everyone knows that is the same amount of money that Spain needed to save their economy form collapsing.

As posted in threads here, stuff not disputed, straight from the Spaniards themselves, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job created in "alternative energy".

Spain is about the best example you could point out, as a total failure. About the highest unemployment in the European Union.

I will post the first 10 google results of, "spains wind failure"

About 61,100,000 results (0.40 seconds)
Search Results......

Yes you can google, I can google, we all can google, that's how we argue around here. That was the first thing I pointed out in my post;

"Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly."

I googled success of spains wind power and got;
About 1,750,000 results (0.29 seconds)
Showing results for success of spain's wind power

Google is a great tool but for a serious argument and not an ideologically driven one you have to have a hard look at the political sites with a political agenda. I didn't use those kind of sites in my post.

And I acknowledged Spain's budget problems;

"So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there."

Your first site on the top ten list, the WSJ was mainly concerned with solar and not that critical of wind power;

"Spain's early bet on wind power paid off: The country is one of the world leaders in generating such power, only recently eclipsed by the U.S. Spanish wind-power companies have become global players. In 2008, wind power accounted for 11% of Spanish electricity production, compared to less than 1% for solar power.
Reyad Fezzani, chief executive of BP Solar, a unit of oil giant BP BP -0.65% PLC, said that despite the current crisis, the Spanish model succeeded in creating a solar industry from scratch. "Once you pay for the infrastructure, you have a skilled work force and you can expand and contract very easily," he said."

Your focus on Spain's alternative energy model in your reply is somewhat unfair. My post's scope was considerably broader. And your 3rd site says;

"In Spain’s case, it is not the investment in wind turbines and solar power that represent the root of the problem: like many of its European partners, Spain encouraged private investment in wind and solar power partly to meet binding EU climate and energy targets, partly to improve its energy security, and partly to encourage the development of new economic sectors.
Moreover, numerous studies from major research institutes and think tanks around the world continue to find that FITs are the most cost-effective means of accelerating investment in renewable energy.
The problem is therefore not with wind and solar per se, nor with the policy that encouraged investment in them (though Spain’s FIT policy had a number of important design flaws): it is that the government, through regulations dating back decades, prevented utilities from recovering the true costs of the electricity system through rates."

I have no problem conceding that countries must try to be smarter in their pricing models and not spend more on subsidies than they can afford. But I will stick by my main point, the United States cannot afford to be left behind in this industry. And if you modern Luddites get your way that just could happen. Also, some of you seem to pick the side of an issue that is anti-Obama and not necessarily the one that is in the country's best interest.

There is no space race for wind and solar. They are both technically mature technologies that compete solely on price and volume. We are LUCKY that our exposure to wind has been as limited as it is. Does THIS look like the performance chart of an "emerging" technology that you would like to invest in? It MIGHT be back up to $50 today..

In case you thought my last wind performance chart was just a fluke. Here's another from a country who is also slashing their wind subsidies..

It is DAYS in between hitting even MODEST levels of power generation. No storage system is gonna solve that. And a Grid cannot operate on Smashing Records or Averages like that. You can't even sell it to providers -- because you can't write a contract for delivery.. Take a deeper look behind the PR campaign to see why investments and subsidies are being CUT worldwide. today..

 

[Mr. H.]

Conventional and Alternative... That would be "all of the above", a phrase coined by President He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Yet, his policies decry "none of the below".

He is in the process of dismantling the coal industry and the tens of thousands of associated jobs, which will result in skyrocketing utility costs- as promised.

He sits idly by while States are attacked by like-minded Liberals in their efforts to halt hydraulic fracturing.

He will not approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

Millions of potentially productive acres lie idle thanks to his inactions.

He will not lift the archain ban on crude oil exports.

Obama... totally fucking-up... since 2008.

 

[flacaltenn]

A one month wind chart from a coop in Australia that USED to
proudly publish it's data before the public starting really looking at it.

Now all you can find is "archived" versions..

August is a PEAK WIND month. And even then -- production can drop below 20% for DAYS.... How much storage is gonna fix that?
At least with solar as a peaker technology, you know you'll get SOMETHING during the peak hours.. Usually...........

 

[SmedlyButler]

See Smedly -- THAT'S why you need me.. You've been punked by pesky PReleases. Happens all the time. Because Big Wind is now big bucks... The only RACE is to scour subsidies out of the pockets of unwitting, taxpayer dupes such as yourself..

That moment of record smashing in Spain was a ONE DAY record. "These jerks do it all the time. Wait for a good day over the sum total of the country's land and then brag their asses off."

No, the only record I referred to was a yearly one, wasn't it?

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source."

"You need to look at a typical wind production chart. The one below is from MiddelGrunden in Denmark. These production charts USED to be all over the Internet where you could dial up the ACTUAL daily performance of the wind fields.. Today --- they've almost all been taken down...."

I'm still studying up on storage, someday I might have time to study WPCs. I've also got an article set aside that deals with one iota of enabling tech minutia - new design/production software that is speeding up, reducing errors in, and increasing the efficiency of everything from gearboxes to blades. It looks very interesting, but like I say it's minutia, just one very small component of the design/manufacture/construction cycle that is helping to reduce the cost of new tech.

"..You cannot PLAN for it, You cannot CONTRACT for it, and the only way it fits into the energy marketplace is when you FORCE IT by the power of government stubbornness...

You might turn out to be right in the long term. Maybe I'm just too old and conservative to give up on that old "can-do" spirit...Maybe someday I'll have to accept the new "can't-do" paradigm. But I'm not there yet.

Windmills in Holland that were used to pump out the polders and reclaim land. In the good old days when for some reason wind power wasn't "useless".
(My smilies aren't working, that's supposed to be a "zinger".)

 

[elektra]

Spain's economy tanked on Wind Power, they lost jobs and just about defaulted on the loans, look that up.

Graphs of daily wind are pure garbage, show the graph that shows the hourly performance, the stops and pauses in one hour, the wind shifting direction, buffeting, etc..

how about an hourly graph.

 

[Old Rocks]

Preventing water evaporation from canals can be done a LOT cheaper than using $$Bills of solar panels. The question should be -- What real role do they play as "an alternative energy" source. For every MW of solar that you install, you need to specify whether it's primary purpose is to reduce the 20% daytime peak -- or whether it has to have a RELIABLE PRIMARY source to back it up on the grid when it's NOT available.

Solar PV is a PEAKER technology -- not a backbone grid generator. You can only use it to relieve (sometimes) daytime peak usage. And it's efficiency is GREATLY limited geographically.

Wind is even worse as a Grid Generator. Not even worth consideration as "an alternative". Best use for BOTH of these is as fuel generators or in the case of California -- to power desalinization plants OPPORTUNISTICALLY --- when the power IS available. Making Hydrogen fuel for fuel cells is another TREMENDOUS application for wind and solar. But they are NOT alternatives to existing reliable generation sources..

I think you ignore vanadium and quinone developments in the last year that promise the ability to store utility scale amounts of energy in inexpensive storage structures. Work like this CAN make wind and solar viable primary power sources. I am also very pleased to see you mention that such intermittent power technologies have value in fuel generation. There are numerous ways to store excess alternative energy for use in off hours. Norway is rife with hydroelectric facilities that make use of high altitude mountain lakes drained through turbine generators. During off peak hours, energy from solar and wind generators is used to pump water back up into the lakes. Overcoming the intermittency of such sources is not difficult and from which the users are certainly compensated by the zero fuel cost and zero carbon emission.

I'm ignoring nothing. I'm a life member of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. It's take a football field size building to "grid store" electricity for about 1000 homes for just 5 hours of storage (5MW-hrs) and about $60 million bucks.
The Japanese whose government respects engineering more than we do -- will not allow renewables on their grids at ALL without at least about 15 minutes of production storage for switching. And THAT is already taxing the installation of renewables in Japan..

The environmental consequences of land use and recycling materials would be ENORMOUS. And wind has a nasty habit of not coming to work for DAYS at a time. Germany has bulldozed ENTIRE PRISTINE sections of the Alps in attempts to push renewables into storage and with efficiencies of pumped storage being about 30% AT BEST -- you'd need 3X capacity just to break even. Neither solar or wind can be used to INCREASED basic grid capacity without 100% PRIME generation from nuclear, hydro or fossil to rely on. So the amount of energy WASTED by switching off these primary generators is immense and SHOULD BE CHARGED to the renewable that failed to deliver. No grid operator is gonna order a coal plant to shut down to take maybe 20 minutes of wind energy onto the grid. It takes MORE than that to come back up to power..

Solar is a peaker technology, wind is useless. UNLESS you dedicate them to an OFF-GRID process that can MAKE water or fuel when the power is available...

Really? An Electrical or Electronic Engineer? Then you should remember when a computer that does what this three year old Lenova sitting on my desk would have taken up two very large building. And don't tell me that that is differant. Materials science is materials science, and, as we post, there are people solving the storage problem.

I find it so damned strange that all the 'Conservatives' on this board are constantly repeating "we can't do that". Thank God they weren't around during WW2 when we built a world beating fighter plane, from concept to flying airplane, in 157 days.

Yes, we can do that. And we will do that. Grid scale storage for the renewables. Phasing out of the fossil fuels. Homes that are grid independent, and family vehicles independent of fossil fuels. Homes that are designed in that manner from the start. In two generations they will regard people like you with the same humor as we regard the people that yelled at the early autos, "Get a horse".

 

[Old Rocks]

Personally I think wasting our open spaces on solar farms is not only too expensive but it is unnecessary.

We have tens if not hundreds of thousands of acres in the form of south and southwest facing rooftops that we are leaving unused.

Why not exploit this unused space before we ugly up our landscapes with solar and wind farms?

Absolutely. And, since those rooftops are already in the urban areas where the power is needed, especially during the daylight hours, there will little loss due to transmission. Warehouses and most industrial building have flat or nearly flat roofs, and this generation of thin film solar weighs next to nothing. And the more that is produced, the cheaper the individual costs per watt.

 

[Old Rocks]

AUGUST 7, 2014
Price of Wind Energy Goes Down in Texas

You thought you might never hear it, but wind power is becoming a formidable price competitor with fossil fuels in Texas, and Austin’s public utility is revamping its programs to suit. In the year 2000, Austin Energy unrolled a program giving consumers the option to fund wind energy development and the city became a recognized [...]

AUGUST 1, 2014
As Renewable Energy Grows, Wind and Solar Pull Ahead of Hydropower[/paste:font]

Wind and solar energy now routinely surpasses hydroelectric generation as an energy source in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Hydropower is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S. (but, not surprisingly, not in Texas). The state’s online Window on State Government calls it “a tiny portion of the [...]

Texas Wind Power StateImpact Texas

Reality.

 

[Old Rocks]

• Percentage of Oregon's electricity provided by wind in 2013: 12.4 percent. State Rank: Oregona ranks 9th for percent of generation from wind.
• Equivalent number of homes Oregon wind farms now power: over 680,000 average American homes

Wind Generation Potential

• According to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oregon's onshore wind potential at 80 meters hub height is 27,100 MW. State Rank: Oregon has the 21 best wind resource in the U.S
• This means that wind power is capable of meeting more than 1.75 times the state's current electricity needs

State Wind Energy Statistics Oregon

More reality.

 

[Old Rocks]

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, August 2014 edition with June 2014 data. Note: Data include facilities with a net summer capacity of 1 MW and above only.
In the first six months of 2014, 4,350 megawatts (MW) of new utility-scale generating capacity came online, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Electric Power Monthly. Natural gas plants, almost all combined-cycle plants, made up more than half of the additions, while solar plants contributed more than a quarter and wind plants around one-sixth.

Utility-scale capacity additions in the first half of 2014 were 40% less than the capacity additions in the same period last year. Natural gas additions were down by about half, while solar additions were up by nearly 70%. Wind additions in the first half of 2014 were more than double the level in the first half of 2013.

Power Plant Capacity and Alternate Fuels The Energy Collective

And this is at present. The future looks increasingly good for alternative energy.

 

[flacaltenn]

SmedlyButler:

The press blurbs about Spains claims come from here.

http://www.ree.es/sites/default/files/downloadable/preliminary_report_2013.pdf

The tables in the report are totally wanked with the wrong units used. If you were to read them LITERALLY -- Spain produced twice as much GW-hrs as it used in that year.

I'm still trying to wade thru. But several things are clear..

1) In order to "equal" the nuclear component of produced power, they had to install THREE TIMES the capacity of wind than they built for nuclear. That's a HUGE bubble and confirms the 30% operational efficiency that I told you existed.

2) They are not able to shutter ANY of the existing PRIME utility generation because of wind's spotty performance. Means it is NOT an "alternative" and logically the cost of operating idled plants with the labor and maintenance NEEDS to be charged to wind when it decide to come to work..

3) No production charts -- but I will find some.. And they will show that the BULK of that power being bragged about came from very few months of the year. FORTUNATELY, they had a very good Hydro year and MASSIVE existing hydro reserves which work very well for fast switch-over to attempt to catch a breeze for an hour at a time.

I agree on those Danish windmills. Ideal for pumping water out of lowlands. Because you don't CARE about reliable rates, only rates that keep your feet dry. We're not pumping here. OR in Nebraska or Iowa flatlands which is the center of wind alley in America..

More when I understand the ACTUAL significance of that 21% claim..
BTW -- their massive invest in solar --- not even a minor brag or nod.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, August 2014 edition with June 2014 data. Note: Data include facilities with a net summer capacity of 1 MW and above only.
In the first six months of 2014, 4,350 megawatts (MW) of new utility-scale generating capacity came online, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Electric Power Monthly. Natural gas plants, almost all combined-cycle plants, made up more than half of the additions, while solar plants contributed more than a quarter and wind plants around one-sixth.

Utility-scale capacity additions in the first half of 2014 were 40% less than the capacity additions in the same period last year. Natural gas additions were down by about half, while solar additions were up by nearly 70%. Wind additions in the first half of 2014 were more than double the level in the first half of 2013.

Power Plant Capacity and Alternate Fuels The Energy Collective

And this is at present. The future looks increasingly good for alternative energy.

Can you guess which item is heavily subsidized by the obama administration? Take away the subsidy and it falls dead. Just as the EU wind farms are now falling silent without theft from the general populace so will US farms..

 

[Crick]

It is subsidized because it is needed; because it benefits us all. Why are we paying billions in subsidies to the petroleum industry and why do we hear no complaints from you about them

 

[elektra]

Can We As A Society Pursue Both Conventional And Alternative Energy?

Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly. People like FCT who say wind power is "useless". Why have they had such success in integrating it into the grid in Spain? Yes it's had a lot of subsidies but as I keep saying a large percentage of the new technology developed in the last 100 years has depended on government subsidy in it's baby steps. Find a list of all the tech that darpa alone has originated and stimulated.

As to wind power in Spain, these snippets are from a BBCNEWS article, APR. 2014

"For the first time in Spain's history, wind contributed the same proportion (21%) of electricity as nuclear last year, according to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), Spain's national grid. Both now contribute more than any other power source.

This record feat appeared to confound the energy sceptics, who have argued that low-carbon renewable energy production is too intermittent and expensive to be a reliable alternative to coal, gas and nuclear."

So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there. And the same article cites a UNEP study that says;

"Lower costs have enabled subsidies for new projects to be reduced, and brought wind and solar much closer to full competitiveness with fossil-fuel alternatives..."

AND;

".... in the absence of cheap indigenous coal or gas, and given plentiful sunshine and wind, solar and wind power can be cheaper than fossil fuel generation."

Another BBC article talks about how important energy storage is to the future. Remember storage skeptics, all the fossil fuel energy ever used and all the fossil fuel energy reserves are but stored Solar Energy from past eons. And that all the fossil fuel reserves in the World today represent only about 20 days worth of the energy we are bombarded with by the Sun daily.

"Not only does storage help overcome the problem of variable supply from renewable energy sources, but it allows electricity grids to operate more efficiently and cost effectively, says Mr Price. This is simply because storage allows "the system to be run at average load rather than peak load", he says. It would also end the absurdity of paying for wind turbines to be shut down when demand is being satisfied.

And the cost savings could be huge - Imperial College London's Energy Futures Lab has estimated that energy storage technologies could generate savings of £10bn a year by 2050 in the UK."

So don't tell us why it's useless, that it'll never fly, give us some ideas how to make it work. Ideas like these from the same article;

One pilot project is taking place in Painesville, Ohio, where Ashlawn Energy has installed its vanadium redox flow battery, which can discharge 1MW of power for up to eight hours.

"It's very clean, very safe, very long-lasting and can provide power for up to 1,000 homes," says Bill Hagstrand at energy enterprise firm Nortech.

Other installed battery storage projects hold up to 20 times the capacity of Painesville, while pumped-hydro projects can produce more than 1,500MW of power.

Smarter Grids

As Andrew Jones, at S&C, says: ".... change will come when there are enough smart meters to know when to turn things off."

For instance, the meter will be able to turn a fridge off automatically for short periods when electricity is needed elsewhere in the system, or decide when to switch on a washing machine in order to balance the grid as a whole. Such smart appliances are already widely available in Germany.

"And with two-way flows of power so essential, not just for energy storage but for small-scale power generation where households and businesses sell energy back into the grid, soon any appliance or device able to store power will be able to feed energy back into the grid."

"....For example, an electric car battery becomes a potential energy source for the grid rather than just an energy store for the individual. The technology is not there yet, but this integrated smart grid is where we are heading."

"And it could save us a fortune, says S&C. It estimates that rather than the £1,000 predicted to be added to UK bills by 2050 to pay for additional infrastructure to meet higher electricity demand, we'd be looking instead at a £100 increase if smart grids and energy storage were fully adopted."

America is still one of the World leaders in the development of alternative energy technologies. Imagine where the country would be right now if it hadn't met the challenge of Russia's sputnik in 1957 by putting all it's innovative brainpower and economic might behind answering that challenge. The danger is, if the nay-sayers have their way, in fifty years America might have lost not the Space Race but it's new equivalent, the race to dominate New Energy.

Most of us, meaning all of you, seriously, what do you know about Spain, I know Spain invested over 80$ billion on Alternative Energy, and as everyone knows that is the same amount of money that Spain needed to save their economy form collapsing.

As posted in threads here, stuff not disputed, straight from the Spaniards themselves, they lost 2 jobs for every 1 job created in "alternative energy".

Spain is about the best example you could point out, as a total failure. About the highest unemployment in the European Union.

I will post the first 10 google results of, "spains wind failure"

About 61,100,000 results (0.40 seconds)
Search Results......

Yes you can google, I can google, we all can google, that's how we argue around here. That was the first thing I pointed out in my post;

"Of course we can. Most of us don't know enough about the details of alternative energy to argue the pros and cons without a lot of googling. But we all know that it's the people who tell us how to make new technologies work that drive progress and not the people who tell us why they'll never work, never fly."

I googled success of spains wind power and got;
About 1,750,000 results (0.29 seconds)
Showing results for success of spain's wind power

Google is a great tool but for a serious argument and not an ideologically driven one you have to have a hard look at the political sites with a political agenda. I didn't use those kind of sites in my post.

And I acknowledged Spain's budget problems;

"So while the Spanish government's drastically reduced subsidies for new construction has impacted the industry severely the benefits to the environment and the reduction of dependence on foreign energy is still there."

Your first site on the top ten list, the WSJ was mainly concerned with solar and not that critical of wind power;

"Spain's early bet on wind power paid off: The country is one of the world leaders in generating such power, only recently eclipsed by the U.S. Spanish wind-power companies have become global players. In 2008, wind power accounted for 11% of Spanish electricity production, compared to less than 1% for solar power.
Reyad Fezzani, chief executive of BP Solar, a unit of oil giant BP BP -0.65% PLC, said that despite the current crisis, the Spanish model succeeded in creating a solar industry from scratch. "Once you pay for the infrastructure, you have a skilled work force and you can expand and contract very easily," he said."

Your focus on Spain's alternative energy model in your reply is somewhat unfair. My post's scope was considerably broader. And your 3rd site says;

"In Spain’s case, it is not the investment in wind turbines and solar power that represent the root of the problem: like many of its European partners, Spain encouraged private investment in wind and solar power partly to meet binding EU climate and energy targets, partly to improve its energy security, and partly to encourage the development of new economic sectors.
Moreover, numerous studies from major research institutes and think tanks around the world continue to find that FITs are the most cost-effective means of accelerating investment in renewable energy.
The problem is therefore not with wind and solar per se, nor with the policy that encouraged investment in them (though Spain’s FIT policy had a number of important design flaws): it is that the government, through regulations dating back decades, prevented utilities from recovering the true costs of the electricity system through rates."

I have no problem conceding that countries must try to be smarter in their pricing models and not spend more on subsidies than they can afford. But I will stick by my main point, the United States cannot afford to be left behind in this industry. And if you modern Luddites get your way that just could happen. Also, some of you seem to pick the side of an issue that is anti-Obama and not necessarily the one that is in the country's best interest.

Yes the great google, yes most of us do not know enough, but then again some of us do, partly do to google, but mostly because of our careers in the field of Energy.

Spain, what a great place, working for Tecnatom, one of my favorite places to work.

So in your opinion its just some bad regulations on the part of the Spanish Government and an adjustment here or there will fix the system? You should help them out then, before its too late, the Spanish Government is literally gutting, Wind and Solar.

To begin, how about all the jobs they lost in Spain directly related to Green/Renewable/Alternative energy.

Spain Halts Feed-In-Tariffs for Renewable Energy - IER

In 2009, the Institute for Energy Research sponsored a report on the Spanish renewable energy industry and its associated programs that identified a number of issues. Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University, who led the study, found that the “green jobs” agenda that the Spanish Government instituted resulted in job losses elsewhere in the country’s economy. For each “green” megawatt installed, 5.28 jobs on average were lost in the Spanish economy as an opportunity cost. For solar technologies, that number is 3 times more than for wind technologies. For each megawatt of wind energy installed, 4.27 jobs were lost, and for each megawatt of solar energy installed, 12.7 jobs were lost.[iii]

That is just a little tiny bit of the reporting and investigating into Spain's Green Energy Failure. It even came with this link to the study referenced. A bit more than following the first link on Google I would say.

http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf

But is that it, is this simply a study or is the government of Spain changing the policy. The Spanish Government is Changing the policy, as we speak in fact. Do you change government policy when said policy resulted in success, doubtful, and in this case there is ample reporting as well as statements by Spanish Government Officials that attest to the failure of Solar and Wind Power as the reason to change policy.

FIT, I see you picked up on that, you think Feed in Tariffs is something to discuss in regards to Spain, that is very old news.

When speaking of Spain, the un-reported truth is this; RD 413/2014, the impact of RD 413/2014 is such that the income from Renewables in Spain's will be broadly diminished.

file:///C:/Users/default%20computer/Downloads/client_briefing___rd_413_2014___the_spanish_government_prepares_to_finalize_the_renewable_energy_reform_6022754.pdf

file:///C:/Users/default%20computer/Downloads/2302344.pdf

Wow, finally a bit of common sense, in Spain.

Spain, Alternative/Renewable/Green Energy Failure.

 

[elektra]

It is subsidized because it is needed; because it benefits us all. Why are we paying billions in subsidies to the petroleum industry and why do we hear no complaints from you about them

Billions for oil is nothing compared to the over 500$ Billion for Solar and Wind, which resulted in an insignificant increase in power to the gird.

Oil at least gave us the Energy to build Solar and Wind. What does Solar and Wind build, nothing.

Oil gives us the energy to build your idiotic dream.

 

[Skull Pilot]

• Percentage of Oregon's electricity provided by wind in 2013: 12.4 percent. State Rank: Oregona ranks 9th for percent of generation from wind.
• Equivalent number of homes Oregon wind farms now power: over 680,000 average American homes

Wind Generation Potential

• According to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oregon's onshore wind potential at 80 meters hub height is 27,100 MW. State Rank: Oregon has the 21 best wind resource in the U.S
• This means that wind power is capable of meeting more than 1.75 times the state's current electricity needs

State Wind Energy Statistics Oregon

More reality.

Nominal output and actual output on wind mills are two entirely different animals.

Most wind turbines only produce 1/3 their rated value.
Coherent Application Threads CATS

 

[Crick]

The obvious answer to the OP's question is yes, we're doing it now and human culture has not collapsed. We'll have to slowly move from fossil fuels to renewables, but it's not as if we didn't all already know that. What's the big deal here?