From a programming/hardware hacker perspective, are there any opportunities in wind generation worth exploring? Perhaps mini-turbines, or a turbine array with wind positioning?
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The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
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Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#92According to the EIA [0], wind energy reached 5.6% of total electricity production. Having worked with raw EIA data I can say that the inputs are not very reliable: a) a lot of smaller farms are not included in EIA data b) reporting is voluntary and 30%+ of wind sites stopped reporting data in 2016, for example [1], and c) reporting is based on surveys which means errors, delays, etc. The US is really lagging behind…
As someone who is working with global powerplant data I can say that the US is the global leader. It is not perfect, but it is miles ahead of 170 other countries.
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Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#93Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#94I recall some years ago T Boone Pickens had a plan for a large scale wind project throughout the midwest, but it fell through for various reasons.
At what point will solar efficient enough to lay out massive solar grids in Texas, Arizona, and SE California?
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#95Vaclav Smil has written extensively on the embodied chemistry of Wind-turbines, I figure it's worth sharing here because it seems relevant to the conversation. Chemical, petroleum, and nuclear engineers are scarce in Silicon Valley..... "Wind turbines are the most visible symbols of the quest for renewable electricity generation. And yet, although they exploit the wind, which is as free and as green as energy can be,…
What a long row of impressive numbers. But what counts, is only one single number: how long does it take for the wind turbine to produce more power than it took to produce. And as far as I know, it is a rather small amount of its life time. After that it starts to improve our carbon balance. And all of this does not take into respect, that with the raising ratio of our energy being produced by wind or solar, the production of windmills and solar cells becomes more and more carbon free too.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#96This is NOT a good thing. Producing the same amount or less with more resources is generally considered a very very bad thing. It is the definition of being less efficient..
That's the beauty of capitalism. You can just let it run its course and not worry about it. If something is less efficient, it will not be able to compete in the market for very long.
Many energy sources require subsidies though.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the AP-1000 reactor he is citing about to cause the downfall of Westinghouse and Toshiba due to extreme cost overruns? Upfront cost, liability and waste disposable with nuclear cannot be overlooked. He also noted: > A reactor has a 60-year service life. Fukushima suggests otherwise. Holding on to old reactor designs has resulted in catastrophic failures.
From what I've heard, these cost overruns are due to political causes. Waste disposal is a non issue, and Fukashima was due to terrible planning. It wouldn't be solar's fault if someone put too many solar panels on a weak roof and they fell through.
Humans have shown time and time again we cannot be trusted to consistently do things right, so the likely outcomes of some realistic percentage of 'terrible planning', as you put it, should be part of any comparison of power generation techniques.
The analogy you make to solar ignores that the failure modes of nuclear are much worse than solar.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the AP-1000 reactor he is citing about to cause the downfall of Westinghouse and Toshiba due to extreme cost overruns? Upfront cost, liability and waste disposable with nuclear cannot be overlooked. He also noted: > A reactor has a 60-year service life. Fukushima suggests otherwise. Holding on to old reactor designs has resulted in catastrophic failures.
From what I've heard, these cost overruns are due to political causes. Waste disposal is a non issue, and Fukashima was due to terrible planning. It wouldn't be solar's fault if someone put too many solar panels on a weak roof and they fell through.
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Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://www.audubon.org/news/will-wind-turbines-ever-be-safe-... I didn't realize that was such a big issue. Over time, humanity will figure out ways of making wind turbines less of a danger to birds. In the mean time, I would assume that wind power still remains a net positive for the overall environment versus coal, etc.
>Over time, humanity will figure out ways of making wind turbines less of a danger to birds. Or the birds will evolve to dislike wind turbines.
I'd assume this is the case, as birds already use the earth's magnetic field for navigation and wind turbines generate a significant magnetic field.
Re: The U.S. wind industry now employs more than 100K people
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the beauty of capitalism. You can just let it run its course and not worry about it. If something is less efficient, it will not be able to compete in the market for very long.
Many energy sources require subsidies though.
Wind and solar are competitive with coal and natural gas without subsidies.