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How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

nytimes.com

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Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#91

Post by tomxor »

everyone wrote: post #72
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or for those with wealth to buy those reserves and put mechanisms in place to inhibit the extraction of those petroleum resources.

Judging from all of human history.. 'those with wealth' tend to not be the conscientious type. edit: Because, they are insulated from the bad repercussions of their harmful policies. Eg. Trafigura polluting the shit out of Ivory coast and poisoning people there. The CEO doesnt live there, he drinks bottled water and lives somewhere else in a gated compound. Making those destructive choices makes things better for the…

I agree, but I find it hard to beleive that isolation alone is enough to make them so unempathetic. I can only assume it has something to do with the human capacity to lie to one self, otherwise even acknowledging the truth would just be too uncomfortable.

Makes me imagine some weird distopian future where all people with power and wealth are forced to take some anti-self-deciet drug to prevent crimes against humanity :P

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#92

Post by IAmEveryone »

nabla9 wrote: post #70
Symmetry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If clean energy manages to get cheap enough eventually it will be easier to synthesize simple hydrocarbons out of atmospheric and water than to drill them out of the group and we can end up carbon neutral as a whole. We'll see how cheap midday solar ends up when the price finishes dropping.

The cost of solar stabilizes when the cost is determined by the cost of land, energy storage, electric grid and transfer cost and installation and maintenance. If you get the conversion efficiency to the same level as photosynthesis (30% nominally) the cost of energy could approach the cost of producing biofuels.

The efficiency of photosynthesis is nowhere near 30%. It’s 3% if so.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#93

Post by cesarb »

adventured wrote: post #30
cesarb wrote: post #13

> Lower costs, though, have also made wind power more appealing elsewhere. Once mostly concentrated in northern Europe, Mr. Nauen is optimistic that new markets will emerge in Asia and the United States. South America too. In just the last 12 months, installed capacity in Brazil went from 10.4 GW to 12.5 GW (source: Boletim Mensal de Geração Eólica - ONS).

What kind of cost per kwh is Brazil seeing? When the US finally got consistently below ~$0.10 in the late 1990s, it began to ramp. https://i.imgur.com/ehK8jQS.png

According to http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2017/12/1944853-energia... in the auctions at the end of 2017 (for new generators to be built) it was around R$ 145/MWh for solar and R$ 98/MWh for wind. I don't know where to find the cost for all currently operating generators.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#95

Post by swebs »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #39
ThomPete wrote: post #19

Problem is that these are political markets not market markets. Denmark spent a lot of money on getting their windmill industry up and running and windmills still aren't solving the base problem as they aren't reliable for all sorts of weather. Furthermore, windmilss don't really scale well, Nuclear on the other hand which is both safer and more scalable and greener would change that but right now only the Chinese se…

Not disagreeing with you, but how do you come to the conclusion that Nuclear is safer and also more scaleable?

I don't know about safety, but nuclear plants produce much more energy per square meter. Wind turbines must also be installed in such a configuration to not have their airflow blocked by obstacles, including other turbines. Nuclear plants also do not require external energy storage since they can run 24/7.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#98

Post by PietdeVries »

icebraining wrote: post #71
toomuchtodo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or for those with wealth to buy those reserves and put mechanisms in place to inhibit the extraction of those petroleum resources.

Equador tried an interesting approach: "pays us and we won't extract oil". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasun%C3%AD-ITT_Initiative

"tried" indeed - because according to the wikipedia lemma covering the topic: However, in July 2013, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa's commission on the Yasuni-ITT Initiative's progress, the commission concluded that economic results were insufficient, leading Correa to scrap the plan on August 15, 2013. As of early 2014, campaign groups are still attempting to save Yasuní-ITT from oil activities.

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#99

Post by bluGill »

graycat wrote: post #52
shaqbert wrote: post #2

As the production costs with windpower decrease due to the technological progress, the question of grid storage and grid interconnection becomes more pressing. E.g. in Germany, they frequently have days of negative energy prices, where producers need to pay to feed energy into the greed because of overproduction of energy on windy/sunny days [0](in German). Without storage and grid interconnection, there is only so m…

IMHO: (1) Cheap, large scale storage of electric energy might be a big game changer. (2) Without such storage, basically a country has to notice what their peak load is and assume that they have installed capacity that is reliable, e.g., independent of the weather, and meets this peak load. (3) So, net, intermittent sources such as wind and solar don't much lower the capital expense needed. That is, the country still…

Worse, the big power plants get much less fuel efficient at lower loads. In some cases you will actually burn more fuel at 50% than 80%!

Re: How Windmills as Wide as Jumbo Jets Are Making Clean Energy Mainstream

#100

Post by baud147258 »

ocschwar wrote: post #86
baud147258 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with wind farm is that they are often built in area with little or no human presence, which is whey I consider this a problem, especially since the grid would be further away.

You can check data from ERCOT, SPP or MISO, and see for yourself that at least as yet, wind power in the US is not overwhelming local distribution and transmission capacity.In a lot of the Midwest, just automating the operation of water towers is enough to slurp up excess juice from wind.

> wind power in the US is not overwhelming local distribution and transmission capacity.

I don't get what you're saying here.

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