wind power

[EddieWalker]

Read a story a few months ago about T. Boone Pickens building wind power farms... seems the real reason was for below ground rites and govt money!

mark

He also owns allot of natural gas wells. I mean ALLOT!!!!

He doesn't care about oil or any of that, he wants to get us to use more natural gas so that he can sell more of it.

Just another example of the energy crises that doesn't exist and instead of using what's plentiful, we keep it off limits and pretend there's a shortage.

There is no shortage of oil, never has been.

Eddie

 

[mjarrels]

Eddie, Best part is T. Boone Pickens is so old that his life on this earth is almost over! His heirs can that take over and I'm sure they will want to spend, spend, spend!

mark

 

[dmccarty]

And for another view:

http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/twits-and-***-at-the-daily-dreckdaily-dreck/

Chuck

Link did not work.

Later,
Dan

 

[rox]

just found information where they are going to try a large scale wind farm storage method in the Bakken fringes of ND
they are mining salt and I think some other mineral with if I remember right a drilling and fluid system
then fill the cavern voids with compressed air powered by the wind generated electricity and use the compresssed air to spin a turbine when there is a lack of wind
I guess this is going on now in parts of Germany and Norway
having lived in ND for 50 yrs the wind here does blow all but a few day of the year
problem being the days it does not blow are the coldest and the hottest also the days when we need the most electricity.
Having been inside a power station working I have seen how much power comes from a big commercial wind farm on a hot still summer day that day alone proves wind power does not work in one of the windyst parts of the world.
jury is out on weather or not its possible to store enough to make it worth while.
Till then coal is king here

My thought are that if the wind isn't blowing in North Dakota perhaps it is blowing in Massachutses and that is why you develop a grid system to move the electicity around.

 

[gordyy]

I am with you on the idea of a grid here we have utilities from minnesota building wind farms
and other people in minnesota fighting in our courts about allowing generation towers to get the energy to the grid so they can use it
but there is a finite limit to how far it is concievable to transfer the energy as there is a loss as it is flowing thru the lines its possible but all you have to do is stand under one of the large high voltage transmission lines around here to realize how much it does loose
not sure what it is but there is substancial loss

 

[Steve_Miller]

I am with you on the idea of a grid here we have utilities from minnesota building wind farms
and other people in minnesota fighting in our courts about allowing generation towers to get the energy to the grid so they can use it
but there is a finite limit to how far it is concievable to transfer the energy as there is a loss as it is flowing thru the lines its possible but all you have to do is stand under one of the large high voltage transmission lines around here to realize how much it does loose
not sure what it is but there is substancial loss

I too would love to know how much power is actually lost in transmission as well. It would probably be scary.

Steve

 

[Egon]

but there is a finite limit to how far it is concievable to transfer the energy as there is a loss as it is flowing thru the lines its possible but all you have to do is stand under one of the large high voltage transmission lines around here to realize how much it does loose
not sure what it is but there is substancial loss

Some of them power grids would encompass the entire Eastern Seaboard Or the Western States or the Midwest.

You may even find some of them starting in Labrador and Norther Quebec which is some distance from from the Eastern Sea board.

State Energy Program: Is Our Power Grid More Reliable One Year After the Blackout?

 

[turbo36]

I too would love to know how much power is actually lost in transmission as well. It would probably be scary.

Steve

According to Wiki - approximately 7% total loss over the whole US power grid. They also talk about the maximum distance to be economically feasible is 4,000 miles!!! So a wind mill in North Dakota could provide power economically to almost anywhere in the US, Canada and parts of Mexico.

This is another good source .
Electric power transmission: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article

 

[Chuck52]

Link did not work.

Later,
Dan

Sorry about that. I did the usual cut-and-paste, but I guess it went awry. I just looked again, and found a better site for this topic anyway, since it is from the same people cited in the original blog by Michael Asher. Try this:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf

Note the source.

Chuck

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I too would love to know how much power is actually lost in transmission as well. It would probably be scary.

Steve

The higher the voltage, the less the losses, because of lower current and Ohms law. With everything there are cost tradeoffs. A lot of the older transmission lines are 345KV to 500KV. These have more losses than the newer 750KV lines. I think there might even be some 1MV lines now. Upgrading isn't cost effective, it's an entire rebuild and it's next to impossible to take a transmission line out of service. Unfortunately the area's using the power don't want the generation in their back yards, so that means you need transmission from areas that have surplus generation. However, people also don't want transmission across their back yard, or within eyesight, so overall reliablility and availablility keeps decreasing every day. Couple all that with the deregulation of utilities, where companies just don't spend money on maintenance like they used to, and you have more frequent failures. Everybody points fingers at everyone else, but in the end the system will keep getting worse.

 

[IXLR8]

I have been looking into wind power for my home to reduce my electrical bill, be a little 'green' and I think the price of oil is going back to $150/barrel not long after this worldwide recession is over. There are 3 residential wind turbines in my town, so I thought it might be econmically feasable. I attended a seminar, Wind Turbine 101, at the local alternative energy store. Solar Panels, Wind Generators, Solar Home Systems, Energy Efficient Appliances and Residential Panels They said that realistically less than 30% of the country has enough wind to be feasable. They said that a minimum yearly average of 12mph of wind was required to even think about setting up a wind turbine and have it be economiclly feasable and not just an expensive lawn ornament. Monopole towers to get the turbine up above the turbulance and into clean air will cost more than the turbine. Guyed pole towers are 1/5 the cost of monopole, but their footprint is huge and won't work for me. Clean air is important for power output and turbine/blade life. Local sales person told me that my home was a perfect candidate for wind, with an average wind speed of 9.8mph. Typical sales clown, that average wind speed is based on charts at 30meters, or almost 100ft up, he wants to sell me a 33ft tower. It will produce power, but nowhere near the turbine's rated specs. Increasing wind speed from 10mph to 12.2mph doubles power output. That tower is going to cost 3 times the generator. His claim is that the system's ROI is 5-6 years, the system warrantee is 5 years. I crunched the numbers and the best I can figure is payback in 22 years.. by then the turbine is toast. I did figure it based on reduction of my electrical bill, not the 'rebate' from the electrical company for selling my 'excess' power to them. There have been some huge strides made in solar PV cell technology and the costs on them are dropping rapidly. But you also need a power inverter which is still very expensive at the power levels for an average home. The batteries for backup are also expensive, limited life and need maintenance. From my research, Solar Domestic Hot Water is affordable and gives the best value, bang for your buck, shortest payback. Then comes windpower, but to justify you need to have some serious 'green' in you, it is just not ecomically justifyable in my book at this time. Solar PV is more expensive and harder to justify than wind at this point, but coming down fast.

Now if your home is more than 1/2 mile from grid power and you have to pay to bring the power lines to your house... this totally changes the equation and now wind and/or solar can be easily justified.

 

[pappy19]

One of the best setups that I have seen was in Oregon. The homeowner had dug down under his foundation about 5 feet and put in piping and filled with water. The constant 50 degree temp was then run to a heat pump. He had a 5,000 sq ft home and his electric bill was around $40 per month. To me that system sounds head and shoulders above solar or wind.

 

[IXLR8]

One of the best setups that I have seen was in Oregon. The homeowner had dug down under his foundation about 5 feet and put in piping and filled with water. The constant 50 degree temp was then run to a heat pump. He had a 5,000 sq ft home and his electric bill was around $40 per month. To me that system sounds head and shoulders above solar or wind.

For a new install... that is an excellent way to go, a bit hard to do financially for a retrofit. Also depends on what part of the country you are in. You need to be 3-4 feet below the frost line, which for me I believe is about 3 feet so the tubing would have to be burried more than 6ft deep. The type of soil is also a factor, so this is a bit hard to do in NH with all the granite so close to the surface.

 

[dynasim]

Turbo36

The "maximum distance to be economically feasible is 4,000 miles" is bogus, and inconsistent with all known installations(and brown/black outs), given any reasonable valuation of the things that are necessary in install such a system. It is a single line from a single paper written in 1980, that clarifies the statement by saying that there are no installations of this length.

It is also internally inconsistent with many of the beneficial claims about wind power and solar cells, which extol that their great benefit is distributed power(that you don't need an integrated power transmission system).

If 4000 mile transmission was reasonable, utilities would have built huge centralized nuclear power plants, and distributed the energy across the country. The economies of scale on a nuclear power plant are huge. This is not intended to start a discussion of nuclear power.

The same could be said of coal fired power plants(why move the coal when you could just move the electrons).

Chris

 

[rox]

Turbo36

The "maximum distance to be economically feasible is 4,000 miles" is bogus, and inconsistent with all known installations(and brown/black outs), given any reasonable valuation of the things that are necessary in install such a system. It is a single line from a single paper written in 1980, that clarifies the statement by saying that there are no installations of this length.

It is also internally inconsistent with many of the beneficial claims about wind power and solar cells, which extol that their great benefit is distributed power(that you don't need an integrated power transmission system).

If 4000 mile transmission was reasonable, utilities would have built huge centralized nuclear power plants, and distributed the energy across the country. The economies of scale on a nuclear power plant are huge. This is not intended to start a discussion of nuclear power.

The same could be said of coal fired power plants(why move the coal when you could just move the electrons).

Chris

France I believe provides most, by far the majority of it's electric via nuclear. It does not centralize them as you say, but it does put them in the big cities. If oyu are going to need many nuclear power plants why not build them first of all where the power is needed and then move the power out from there. The nuclear power plants are all built on the same design to make training and operations easier. Pleople can be moved around from plant to plant as needed without requiring re-training. We do have massive electric lines all over the country.

As for the coal idea, our utilities are mainly privately owned. I am sure that in Pennsylvania and say West Virginia where there is coal, there are power plants built nearby. But in order for a privately owned (stockholders) utility to scale up to provide significant power nationally and sell it I imagine it needs those huge electic liines (really huge ones like we have in France) across many states and that doesn't exist. I think the current administration (and I am hoping this doens't get political) has something in that stimulus package to upgrade our electrical grid.

 

[dynasim]

Rox,

Thanks for the comments. I was trying to make that case that what you said was true, but didn't do a good job. 4000 miles is a ridiculous figure, as are most figures supplied by the philisophical movement that produced that figure.

I've enjoyed reading about your lives.
Thanks for sharing

Chris

 

[turbo36]

Turbo36

The "maximum distance to be economically feasible is 4,000 miles" is bogus, and inconsistent with all known installations(and brown/black outs), given any reasonable valuation of the things that are necessary in install such a system. It is a single line from a single paper written in 1980, that clarifies the statement by saying that there are no installations of this length.

It is also internally inconsistent with many of the beneficial claims about wind power and solar cells, which extol that their great benefit is distributed power(that you don't need an integrated power transmission system).

If 4000 mile transmission was reasonable, utilities would have built huge centralized nuclear power plants, and distributed the energy across the country. The economies of scale on a nuclear power plant are huge. This is not intended to start a discussion of nuclear power.

The same could be said of coal fired power plants(why move the coal when you could just move the electrons).

Chris

The 4,000 mile figure was put out there as a "maximum" value to show that is was possible and economical, it wasn't saying it was easy or the most economical way.

Go to this link to see what China is working on right now to use DC as opposed to AC to move power - the line losses at 1,000 miles are very low.

http://www.cepsi2008.org/CEPSI2008/files/oral/128/full_paper_gunnar_asplund.pdf