Why does the left demonize affordable energy?

[Ray From Cleveland]

Except Global Warming isn't "unproven". You only have to look at the retreating glaciers, melting ice caps and buildings collapsing due permafrost disappearing to see that.

The problem is with you deniers is that you are evidence-impervious. There's no evidence they can present you with that would make you accept more government control. You people would rather condemn future generations to death than accept government control because you done hates the government, Cleetus.

Right Cleetus, it's what we have been telling you on the left for years: the earth, climate and temperature do change. That's the way God made this place. The climate has been changing since he put the earth here, and it will continue to change long after we are gone. How many factories and SUV"s did we have at the beginning of the ice age meltdown?

Energy is power, and the more power you give the government, the more they will abuse it as history shows. But you on the left believe that people are too stupid to know what's good for them. Government should make all your decisions for you.

 

[Wilbur Right]

Putting chemicals in the river was experimental as the theory was the water would dilute the chemicals so much that they wouldn't be traceable.

Now Ray why would those companies putting chemicals in the river want those chemicals to be "untraceable"?

Weren't those good chemicals Ray? Would you drink them chemicals ray?

Didn't the fish kills give you a hint of the toxicity? You needed the river to burn before you thought there might be a problem?

LMAO..Damn you are stupid Ray.

 

[washamericom]

how close are we to building solar collector panels into the bodies of cars that sit in the sun all day? florida the west etc. it seems like a partial solution to me.

 

[Wilbur Right]

That's the way God made this place. The climate has been changing since he put the earth here, and it will continue to change long after we are gone.

LMAO.

Didn't God make it so that all that carbon in the form of oil and coal, didn't God store that stuff underground?

Was there something in the Bible that said to dig all that carbon up and burn it?

We are conducting a science experiment with the earth. Initial results aren't looking good.

God has nothing to do with it.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

how close are we to building solar collector panels into the bodies of cars that sit in the sun all day? florida the west etc. it seems like a partial solution to me.

Those few panels wouldn't give you enough power to make it to the gas station.

It's the same way with electric cars. I can't picture myself calling work and telling them that I can't make it because my car was plugged in all night but we had a power outage.

Alternative energy is just too expensive and troublesome at this point. As I said earlier, if we allow it to develop on it's own time, that's how we will find a reasonable alternative to fossil fuels.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Solar-powered plane takes off on third leg of U.S. journey

Why are so many RWs stuck in the 19th century (even then most cars were electric)?

That plane is impractical for anything but a science project

 

[Skull Pilot]

You people do know that solar power isn't "free" don't you?

 

[davecmarino]

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivanpah is a failure. If you don't think so then please realize that this is one of the sunniest places in the United States and it can't meet its contractual obligations.

The answer is not these big public money funded projects but smaller solar and wind for residential service.

The footprint of individual solar is already occupied by the existing rooftops of the homes that will benefit for the additional electric generation. Small commercial wind can generate energy day and night in areas that are already developed for commercial or industrial use with requiring land grants of land or destroying the view from our coastlines.

Our politicians are pushing these large project because there is a lot of money being passed around to secure future energy monopolies.

If you belief that solar that doesn't work at night or in bad weather will ever replace oil, coal, natural gas then you don't understand the inherent limitations of the technology. If you believe that setting up multi-billion dollar facilities that require more public money and land while needing further subsidies in the form of higher energy costs for users is the best solution then you are wrong again.

Give people a tax credit and change the rules to make the current energy provider work with these systems. Let the user mount a system on their home or business. Then they can make the investment calculation that is right for them. The technology will come down in cost and become more viable over time.

Then you have the best of all worlds. Free market solutions really make the most sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of our customers was a big lib. He had a big windmill running his operations. I always found windmills decorative in a way. Talking with one of the workers one day, he told me that the owner finally broke even on his windmill investment after seven years, and the rest is free energy.

About two months went by and I went to the stop again, I was surprised that the top half of the windmill was gone. The owner was in back of the shop and I asked him about the windmill. He just pushed his two hands in the air as if he were pushing away something and said Aaaaaa.

Nobody is against better ways to create energy, but it has to be cost effective at the same time. I live in one of the windiest places in the country, so the city was considering putting up a giant windmill on Lake Erie. After doing the calculations, it would end up costing more to maintain and repair such a windmill than it would to just produce energy the way we are now.

Average life on a windmill is about 22 years. Many manufacturers base their calculations on 40 years but this is not reality based. 8 years is not the norm on a small commercial system. That is what one would expect out of something you buy off eBay.

I don't know where you are getting your figures from or how accurate they are. But windmills do break down before they are absolutely unrepairable. And from what I understand, the costs of repair and maintenance outweigh the savings.

Depends on the design. Windmills are inherently simple. The only part that is sophisticated is the electric generator that is spun by the blades. Electric generators is just a single axel with spun copper and magnets. The generator should last a very long time if it was a commercial quality unit as most are even sealed units that don't require the maintenance of any lubricating systems until you get into the largest units.

The blades are normally aluminum and the base is stainless steel.

Windpower is viable in areas with a high enough constant wind profile as an additional energy source. This is slightly over 1/2 of the United States.

 

[davecmarino]

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivanpah is a failure. If you don't think so then please realize that this is one of the sunniest places in the United States and it can't meet its contractual obligations.

The answer is not these big public money funded projects but smaller solar and wind for residential service.

The footprint of individual solar is already occupied by the existing rooftops of the homes that will benefit for the additional electric generation. Small commercial wind can generate energy day and night in areas that are already developed for commercial or industrial use with requiring land grants of land or destroying the view from our coastlines.

Our politicians are pushing these large project because there is a lot of money being passed around to secure future energy monopolies.

If you belief that solar that doesn't work at night or in bad weather will ever replace oil, coal, natural gas then you don't understand the inherent limitations of the technology. If you believe that setting up multi-billion dollar facilities that require more public money and land while needing further subsidies in the form of higher energy costs for users is the best solution then you are wrong again.

Give people a tax credit and change the rules to make the current energy provider work with these systems. Let the user mount a system on their home or business. Then they can make the investment calculation that is right for them. The technology will come down in cost and become more viable over time.

Then you have the best of all worlds. Free market solutions really make the most sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of our customers was a big lib. He had a big windmill running his operations. I always found windmills decorative in a way. Talking with one of the workers one day, he told me that the owner finally broke even on his windmill investment after seven years, and the rest is free energy.

About two months went by and I went to the stop again, I was surprised that the top half of the windmill was gone. The owner was in back of the shop and I asked him about the windmill. He just pushed his two hands in the air as if he were pushing away something and said Aaaaaa.

Nobody is against better ways to create energy, but it has to be cost effective at the same time. I live in one of the windiest places in the country, so the city was considering putting up a giant windmill on Lake Erie. After doing the calculations, it would end up costing more to maintain and repair such a windmill than it would to just produce energy the way we are now.

Average life on a windmill is about 22 years. Many manufacturers base their calculations on 40 years but this is not reality based. 8 years is not the norm on a small commercial system. That is what one would expect out of something you buy off eBay.

Exactly right. And in addition, they also seem to ignore the operational losses over time. In other words, they pretend that a wind mill will produce the same amount of power in 10 years, that they do when they are first built. They assume that, because that's how a nuclear power plant would work. Power plants built in the 1970s, are still producing almost as much power today, as they were when they first turned on.

Wind mills.... Not so much. In 10 years, they will be producing only about 85% of the power they were originally making. In 20, only about 70%.

This is why break even analysis for green energy almost never is accurate.

Correct. The copper windings slowly breakdown and their tolerances are not as tight resulting in a loss of efficiency. But the biggest breakdown is not at the windmill but at the batteries as these need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years. These battery replacements can be expensive depending of the size of the system and the total storage capacity it had built into its design.

 

[leftwinger]

how close are we to building solar collector panels into the bodies of cars that sit in the sun all day? florida the west etc. it seems like a partial solution to me.

Anyone can do it now. You could charge a battery in the car. File papers, pay fees, work with UL CSA EPA LRB, hiere lawyers accountants taxman, rent buildings, test it out, try to sell it in AZ NV.........see what you can come up with. Got deep pockets?

 

[washamericom]

how close are we to building solar collector panels into the bodies of cars that sit in the sun all day? florida the west etc. it seems like a partial solution to me.

Anyone can do it now. You could charge a battery in the car. File papers, pay fees, work with UL CSA EPA LRB, hiere lawyers accountants taxman, rent buildings, test it out, try to sell it in AZ NV.........see what you can come up with. Got deep pockets?

it's like that movie tucker. but one thing i am doing is turning my old 528 into an electric vehicle. everything related to combustion comes out, so the weight of the motor trans exhaust etc is replaced by 12 v deep cycle batteries. it's a big golf cart. the design objective is to get to town ten miles away and home. doesn't have to go over forty.

electric motors will provide propulsion, there is plenty of torque and will have polarity reverse.

i'm in vermont not the sunniest, so if it works here, it can make it anywhere, ideally in a sunny state.

i'm after negative entropy... lol but i'll start with this.

i think it will work, a trunk and engine compartment will house the golf cart batteries.

as described, this concept would never make it past the dot or the big three or five.

 

[Silhouette]

Putting chemicals in the river was experimental as the theory was the water would dilute the chemicals so much that they wouldn't be traceable.

Now Ray why would those companies putting chemicals in the river want those chemicals to be "untraceable"?

Weren't those good chemicals Ray? Would you drink them chemicals ray?

Didn't the fish kills give you a hint of the toxicity? You needed the river to burn before you thought there might be a problem?

LMAO..Damn you are stupid Ray.

Fracking and the toxic stew that can never be cleaned up, leaching slowly over time into the last freshwater aquifers, artesians, springs, streams and rivers will be seen by what few survivors there are in the future gathered around the very last sources of fresh water to drink, as one of of the most insidious, predictable and foul environmental disasters ever brought on by the greed of just a few. Second only to crumbilng/melting down nuclear plants whose only "trick" at producing power is to use radiation instead of focused sunlight, oil or coal to boil water to run turbines.

Japan sits on the 1/3 largest natural geothermal steam reservoir in the world, and GE managed to convince them that boiling water with deadly radiation was "far superior" to simply using the boiling water just under the ground everywhere there.

And now Tokyo has escalating radiation and cases of child illnesses that "can't be explained" (Unkotare would say)... Had they used the free boiling water just under the ground, it would've cost them next to nothing to produce the same power, and they wouldn't have a disaster that destroyed their entire nation. No matter how much they're trying to pretend like it hasn't. Fukushima had four reactors melt down. Chernobyl, just one. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is larger than the entire Japanese main island. So, there's the truth of what's really going on in Japan, thanks to bullshit water boiling.

People who opine on energy should first become acquainted with the simple, caveman like way in which we produce it. If you understand that most of our energy is produced either by running water through hydro dam turbines, or boiling it to spin steam turbines, you'd know that the key to energy is the motion of water, funneled or boiled where steam forces a pressure current. Once you understand that simple concept, you can look to any number of sources that aren't going to destroy the earth or humanity, just to boil water.

One source in the sunny Southwest, or even areas that are much further north that have moderate amounts of sun (you just change the angle of the parabolic mirrors to accommodate), is focused solar radiation to boil water. Rapidly these erector-set like simple systems boil a thermal oil in a tube placed not far away to 300 degrees celsius, off to heat exchangers, then boiling water and the turbine.

Why aren't we doing that? The politics of energy greed. Very simple. If a system creates power simply, efficiently and cleanly, and has a FREE energy source, it's very hard to corral and monopolize. Big, dangerous, dirty, hard to get at ways of boiling water take connections, difficult permits and the power coming from that, extraordinarily easy to monopolize....and therefore, profit insanely off of.

That's why I offered as a suggestion long ago, that Congress pass an Act that allows these greedy assholes the "right" to monopolize solar thermal as a hybrid to existing coal and oil water boilers. Nuclear is insane (the costs of mining, refining, production and waste management mean that no nuclear plant has ever turned a profit, and instead relies on taxpayer's subsidies to stay running) and every nuclear water boiler on earth must be decommissioned. Then, the greedy assholes can rake in EVEN MORE cash with their continuing monopolies but at least we customers can breathe a sigh of relief that our power isn't killing the earth forever. I thought it was the perfect compromise.

 

[Agit8r]

Only morons think that being put into an early grave is "affordable"

 

[there4eyeM]

What is truly surprising is the vehemence with which some people militate against progress in alternative energy fields and for the fatal status quo. Defending 'big oil' as if those companies were benefactors doing us a favor, for example, is wondrous strange.

 

[washamericom]

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivanpah is a failure. If you don't think so then please realize that this is one of the sunniest places in the United States and it can't meet its contractual obligations.

The answer is not these big public money funded projects but smaller solar and wind for residential service.

The footprint of individual solar is already occupied by the existing rooftops of the homes that will benefit for the additional electric generation. Small commercial wind can generate energy day and night in areas that are already developed for commercial or industrial use with requiring land grants of land or destroying the view from our coastlines.

Our politicians are pushing these large project because there is a lot of money being passed around to secure future energy monopolies.

If you belief that solar that doesn't work at night or in bad weather will ever replace oil, coal, natural gas then you don't understand the inherent limitations of the technology. If you believe that setting up multi-billion dollar facilities that require more public money and land while needing further subsidies in the form of higher energy costs for users is the best solution then you are wrong again.

Give people a tax credit and change the rules to make the current energy provider work with these systems. Let the user mount a system on their home or business. Then they can make the investment calculation that is right for them. The technology will come down in cost and become more viable over time.

Then you have the best of all worlds. Free market solutions really make the most sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of our customers was a big lib. He had a big windmill running his operations. I always found windmills decorative in a way. Talking with one of the workers one day, he told me that the owner finally broke even on his windmill investment after seven years, and the rest is free energy.

About two months went by and I went to the stop again, I was surprised that the top half of the windmill was gone. The owner was in back of the shop and I asked him about the windmill. He just pushed his two hands in the air as if he were pushing away something and said Aaaaaa.

Nobody is against better ways to create energy, but it has to be cost effective at the same time. I live in one of the windiest places in the country, so the city was considering putting up a giant windmill on Lake Erie. After doing the calculations, it would end up costing more to maintain and repair such a windmill than it would to just produce energy the way we are now.

Average life on a windmill is about 22 years. Many manufacturers base their calculations on 40 years but this is not reality based. 8 years is not the norm on a small commercial system. That is what one would expect out of something you buy off eBay.

Exactly right. And in addition, they also seem to ignore the operational losses over time. In other words, they pretend that a wind mill will produce the same amount of power in 10 years, that they do when they are first built. They assume that, because that's how a nuclear power plant would work. Power plants built in the 1970s, are still producing almost as much power today, as they were when they first turned on.

Wind mills.... Not so much. In 10 years, they will be producing only about 85% of the power they were originally making. In 20, only about 70%.

This is why break even analysis for green energy almost never is accurate.

Correct. The copper windings slowly breakdown and their tolerances are not as tight resulting in a loss of efficiency. But the biggest breakdown is not at the windmill but at the batteries as these need to be replaced every 5 to 10 years. These battery replacements can be expensive depending of the size of the system and the total storage capacity it had built into its design.

this is great to see folks discussing this so knowledgeably, thanks.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivanpah is a failure. If you don't think so then please realize that this is one of the sunniest places in the United States and it can't meet its contractual obligations.

The answer is not these big public money funded projects but smaller solar and wind for residential service.

The footprint of individual solar is already occupied by the existing rooftops of the homes that will benefit for the additional electric generation. Small commercial wind can generate energy day and night in areas that are already developed for commercial or industrial use with requiring land grants of land or destroying the view from our coastlines.

Our politicians are pushing these large project because there is a lot of money being passed around to secure future energy monopolies.

If you belief that solar that doesn't work at night or in bad weather will ever replace oil, coal, natural gas then you don't understand the inherent limitations of the technology. If you believe that setting up multi-billion dollar facilities that require more public money and land while needing further subsidies in the form of higher energy costs for users is the best solution then you are wrong again.

Give people a tax credit and change the rules to make the current energy provider work with these systems. Let the user mount a system on their home or business. Then they can make the investment calculation that is right for them. The technology will come down in cost and become more viable over time.

Then you have the best of all worlds. Free market solutions really make the most sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of our customers was a big lib. He had a big windmill running his operations. I always found windmills decorative in a way. Talking with one of the workers one day, he told me that the owner finally broke even on his windmill investment after seven years, and the rest is free energy.

About two months went by and I went to the stop again, I was surprised that the top half of the windmill was gone. The owner was in back of the shop and I asked him about the windmill. He just pushed his two hands in the air as if he were pushing away something and said Aaaaaa.

Nobody is against better ways to create energy, but it has to be cost effective at the same time. I live in one of the windiest places in the country, so the city was considering putting up a giant windmill on Lake Erie. After doing the calculations, it would end up costing more to maintain and repair such a windmill than it would to just produce energy the way we are now.

Average life on a windmill is about 22 years. Many manufacturers base their calculations on 40 years but this is not reality based. 8 years is not the norm on a small commercial system. That is what one would expect out of something you buy off eBay.

I don't know where you are getting your figures from or how accurate they are. But windmills do break down before they are absolutely unrepairable. And from what I understand, the costs of repair and maintenance outweigh the savings.

Depends on the design. Windmills are inherently simple. The only part that is sophisticated is the electric generator that is spun by the blades. Electric generators is just a single axel with spun copper and magnets. The generator should last a very long time if it was a commercial quality unit as most are even sealed units that don't require the maintenance of any lubricating systems until you get into the largest units.

The blades are normally aluminum and the base is stainless steel.

Windpower is viable in areas with a high enough constant wind profile as an additional energy source. This is slightly over 1/2 of the United States.

You're not going to find many places windier than Cleveland. Once I read where Cleveland was windier than the windy city of Chicago technically.

They really wanted to build that windmill on Lake Erie but backed off of the idea because of cost. Even looking at the most extreme, if there was some savings to be had, it would be so little that it wouldn't worth the trouble.

If it were a real investment, hell, I would put one in my backyard. I have enough room for it and if it really saved me money, I wouldn't mind trimming the grass around the thing.

 

[washamericom]

Putting chemicals in the river was experimental as the theory was the water would dilute the chemicals so much that they wouldn't be traceable.

Now Ray why would those companies putting chemicals in the river want those chemicals to be "untraceable"?

Weren't those good chemicals Ray? Would you drink them chemicals ray?

Didn't the fish kills give you a hint of the toxicity? You needed the river to burn before you thought there might be a problem?

LMAO..Damn you are stupid Ray.

Fracking and the toxic stew that can never be cleaned up, leaching slowly over time into the last freshwater aquifers, artesians, springs, streams and rivers will be seen by what few survivors there are in the future gathered around the very last sources of fresh water to drink, as one of of the most insidious, predictable and foul environmental disasters ever brought on by the greed of just a few. Second only to crumbilng/melting down nuclear plants whose only "trick" at producing power is to use radiation instead of focused sunlight, oil or coal to boil water to run turbines.

Japan sits on the 1/3 largest natural geothermal steam reservoir in the world, and GE managed to convince them that boiling water with deadly radiation was "far superior" to simply using the boiling water just under the ground everywhere there.

And now Tokyo has escalating radiation and cases of child illnesses that "can't be explained" (Unkotare would say)... Had they used the free boiling water just under the ground, it would've cost them next to nothing to produce the same power, and they wouldn't have a disaster that destroyed their entire nation. No matter how much they're trying to pretend like it hasn't. Fukushima had four reactors melt down. Chernobyl, just one. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is larger than the entire Japanese main island. So, there's the truth of what's really going on in Japan, thanks to bullshit water boiling.

People who opine on energy should first become acquainted with the simple, caveman like way in which we produce it. If you understand that most of our energy is produced either by running water through hydro dam turbines, or boiling it to spin steam turbines, you'd know that the key to energy is the motion of water, funneled or boiled where steam forces a pressure current. Once you understand that simple concept, you can look to any number of sources that aren't going to destroy the earth or humanity, just to boil water.

One source in the sunny Southwest, or even areas that are much further north that have moderate amounts of sun (you just change the angle of the parabolic mirrors to accommodate), is focused solar radiation to boil water. Rapidly these erector-set like simple systems boil a thermal oil in a tube placed not far away to 300 degrees celsius, off to heat exchangers, then boiling water and the turbine.

solar towers. and the quest for tesla's wireless power. we have now, drones that can recharge in flight. the obvious problem with that is if you're not careful, you could put someone's eye out.

 

[Votto]

Air travel today is 70% more energy efficient than it was in the 60s. Not that the left is impressed. Coal and oil allow people to heat their homes and drive to work. Solar power has a long way to go before it can catch up with efficiency and cost. Despite that, the left wants to put coal workers out of work. And they support rising gas prices. They don't seem to care that it will be unaffordable for people to heat their homes and drive to work. The poor will be hit hardest. Technology improves things each year, but we don't yet have a reliable source of renewable energy. Until we do, we can't start banning coal and other sources. Does the left prefer that people freeze while waiting for a substitute for coal and oil?



"The Solar Impulse 2 is an airplane powered by solar panels and uses batteries at night. In promotion of weaning the world off natural resources like oil (a dubious goal), the designers and pilots want to fly around the world using no conventional fuel.

While the journey itself is an impressive accomplishment, one can’t help but appreciate the abundance, affordability and reliability of oil. Brad Plumer of Vox compares the solar-powered technology with a traditional plane:

The Solar Impulse 2 features 17,000 solar cells crammed onto its jumbo jet–size wings, along with four lithium-polymer batteries to store electricity for nighttime. Yet that’s still only enough power to carry 2 tons of weight, including a single passenger, at a top speed of just 43 miles per hour.

By contrast, a Boeing 747-400 running on jet fuel can transport some 400 people at a time, at top speeds of 570 miles per hour. Unless we see some truly shocking advances in module efficiency, it’ll be impossible to cram enough solar panels onto a 747’s wings to lift that much weight—some 370 tons in all.

Nor is it enough to load up on batteries charged by solar on the ground, since that would add even more weight to the plane, vastly increasing the energy needed for takeoff. A gallon of jet fuel packs about 15 to 30 times as much energy as a lithium-ion battery of similar weight."

http://dailysignal.com/2016/05/10/why-the-left-is-wrong-to-demonize-affordable-energy/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=thf-fb

You fail to realize that the ultimate goal of the left is to destroy the economy. Here is why.

1. Destroying the economy can be blamed on the free market and the need for more government control over the so called "free markets".

2. Destroying the economy means that you will have less money to buy larger houses to heat and cool, large SUV's to burn carbon emissions, and less funds to have more children.

3. Destroying the economy means that there will be less people burning carbon emissions and buying plastic bottles that pollute the worlds oceans.

4. Destroying the economy means that you will have less access to health care or health care that is far inferior to what you have today which means less carbon footprints.

5. Destroying the economy ultimately means population control and the preservation of natural resources that the elitists lust after.

So as we see, the salvation for the world is destroying the economy. It is a kinder and gentler way to invoke mass genocide.

You can find this mentality all over the media.

 

[washamericom]

Ivanpah Solar Power Facility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivanpah is a failure. If you don't think so then please realize that this is one of the sunniest places in the United States and it can't meet its contractual obligations.

The answer is not these big public money funded projects but smaller solar and wind for residential service.

The footprint of individual solar is already occupied by the existing rooftops of the homes that will benefit for the additional electric generation. Small commercial wind can generate energy day and night in areas that are already developed for commercial or industrial use with requiring land grants of land or destroying the view from our coastlines.

Our politicians are pushing these large project because there is a lot of money being passed around to secure future energy monopolies.

If you belief that solar that doesn't work at night or in bad weather will ever replace oil, coal, natural gas then you don't understand the inherent limitations of the technology. If you believe that setting up multi-billion dollar facilities that require more public money and land while needing further subsidies in the form of higher energy costs for users is the best solution then you are wrong again.

Give people a tax credit and change the rules to make the current energy provider work with these systems. Let the user mount a system on their home or business. Then they can make the investment calculation that is right for them. The technology will come down in cost and become more viable over time.

Then you have the best of all worlds. Free market solutions really make the most sense.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of our customers was a big lib. He had a big windmill running his operations. I always found windmills decorative in a way. Talking with one of the workers one day, he told me that the owner finally broke even on his windmill investment after seven years, and the rest is free energy.

About two months went by and I went to the stop again, I was surprised that the top half of the windmill was gone. The owner was in back of the shop and I asked him about the windmill. He just pushed his two hands in the air as if he were pushing away something and said Aaaaaa.

Nobody is against better ways to create energy, but it has to be cost effective at the same time. I live in one of the windiest places in the country, so the city was considering putting up a giant windmill on Lake Erie. After doing the calculations, it would end up costing more to maintain and repair such a windmill than it would to just produce energy the way we are now.

Average life on a windmill is about 22 years. Many manufacturers base their calculations on 40 years but this is not reality based. 8 years is not the norm on a small commercial system. That is what one would expect out of something you buy off eBay.

I don't know where you are getting your figures from or how accurate they are. But windmills do break down before they are absolutely unrepairable. And from what I understand, the costs of repair and maintenance outweigh the savings.

Depends on the design. Windmills are inherently simple. The only part that is sophisticated is the electric generator that is spun by the blades. Electric generators is just a single axel with spun copper and magnets. The generator should last a very long time if it was a commercial quality unit as most are even sealed units that don't require the maintenance of any lubricating systems until you get into the largest units.

The blades are normally aluminum and the base is stainless steel.

Windpower is viable in areas with a high enough constant wind profile as an additional energy source. This is slightly over 1/2 of the United States.

You're not going to find many places windier than Cleveland. Once I read where Cleveland was windier than the windy city of Chicago technically.

They really wanted to build that windmill on Lake Erie but backed off of the idea because of cost. Even looking at the most extreme, if there was some savings to be had, it would be so little that it wouldn't worth the trouble.

If it were a real investment, hell, I would put one in my backyard. I have enough room for it and if it really saved me money, I wouldn't mind trimming the grass around the thing.

you're right, there's a diminishing return on cost efficiently. bernie's right about one thing, that solar panels have dropped 75 80 %, that's a huge step forward. we knew it was coming because we have so much sand.

 

[Silhouette]

We are not talking about solar panels.