Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks!

[KingM34]

As we move toward electrifying our power generation and away from petroleum and other liquid fuels, the two most promising power sources are wind and nuclear. Nuclear has well known drawbacks, with issues about security, storage of materials, and nuclear proliferation. Wind suffers none of these side effects.

Indeed, wind has many advantages. It is distributed and not vulnerable to terrorist attack. It does not produce greenhouse gases. It is renewable. It provides local, high-tech jobs and gives additional income to farmers, ranchers, and other landowners in rural areas who earn royalties from allowing wind farms on their properties. As costs have fallen and efficiencies have risen, wind power is now competitive purely based on cost, let alone environmental considerations.

Read the rest:

http://theopinionator.com/energy/blowwind1.html

[phantom power]

1. Wind has one well-known drawback: it does not blow all the time.

I can't off the top of my head recall reading any serious cost-analysis (internal or external) of addressing that well-known problem. I assume somebody, somewhere has attempted such an analysis. But you never, ever see that talked about in the renewable energy puff-pieces printed by the MSM.

[skids]

2. Yeah, only in the energy storage tech puff peices.

:-)

[KingM34]

3. re: wind power

What you need is widely distributed wind generation (it's always blowing somewhere), coupled with nuclear power as a baseload source.

for example: http://theopinionator.com/energy/more_nuclear1.html

[jpak]

4. Europe is planning a "Super Grid" to link offshore wind farms

and take advantage of geographical variations in local power output to smooth power distribution to the EU.

They could do the same with tidal power turbines and wave generators too (tides are also far more predictable than the wind)...

[phantom power]

5. I hope somebody publishes a cost for this plan. It would be educational.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. To put it mildly.

A full spec with distribution losses would be interesting, also.

[jpak]

7. The cost of the proposed 10 GW North Sea wind farm is ~22 Billion Euros

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=44858

Ireland-based Airtricity this week unveiled plans to create a pan European undersea energy grid, or so-called Supergrid, that would link a series of wind farms from as far ranging locations as the Mediterranean, up to the Bay of Biscay in the Atlantic and all the way up to the North Sea and Baltic Sea.

"The scale of this undertaking means that when fully operational Europe will have access to wind energy at all times because the wind will always be blowing somewhere on the grid," said Airtricity's Chief Executive, Eddie O'Connor.

The company will formally introduce the ambitious plan at a Parliamentary reception for MPs in Westminster today. In conjunction, the wind energy developer will also outline a proposal to build a Euro 22 billion, 10 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind energy project that would cover a wind expanse in the North Sea between the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

The company's Supergrid concept will play an important complementary role for the project that would greatly eclipse by size any current wind project, offshore or terrestrial. As many as eight million European homes could be powered by a project this size.

<more>

and not much more info at the Airtricity site...

http://www.airtricity.com/america/media_center/press_releases/list_all/index.xml

[KingM34]

8. not bad

Twenty-two billion is not bad. Imagine if we could increase that ten fold and build a 100 GW system in the U.S. Enough to power 80 millions homes. ;)

Of course, we know that those figures of "x # of homes" really mean that if all the windmills were spinning at peak capacity...but still, that's a lot of power.

[phantom power]

9. It's the cost of these fancy grid upgrades that I'm most interested in.

[hunter]

12. Very R. Buckminster Fuller...

I did a huge amount of research on this in the early 'eighties.

Some people are stilll at it:

http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/buckminster_fuller/criticalpath.shtml

[XemaSab]

10. It blows enough that

farmers in California's Central Valley still use it to power pumps for livestock.

:shrug:

[phantom power]

11. Sure, but they pump H2O into big buffers, called "tanks"

So if the wind doesn't blow for a few days at a time, the cattle can drink from the tank with no interruption.

Who's going to build all the tanks to hold many terawatt-hours of electricity? What technology will they use? How much will they cost? What will be the environmental impact of manufacturing them, and deploying them?

[hunter]

13. Wind will be backed up by natural gas, or synthetic fuels

I really can't see any alternative.

Maybe if you could take excess electric capacity to make methane you could store that in old natural gas formations to use when the wind wasn't blowing. Or maybe you could have a high temperature nuclear process making methane continuously for storage.

The problem with the wind is that you may have to store energy on the scale of weeks or months, rather than hours or days. That's a lot of energy.

[phantom power]

14. That is the problem, as I see it.

I think synthetic fuel storage would be the most practical of the potential schemes. It would involve having extra wind turbines deployed, in order to be storing surplus fuel for the lean times.

Personally, this is what leads me to think that employing nuclear power makes more sense. But it could in principle be done with wind, given enough excess wind capacity. How much surplus capacity, and the various associated costs, is a question of interest.

[jpak]

15. No

It's going to be PV+solar electric and hydro and biomass and biogas and wind and tidal and wave and demand management and conservation complementing each other over time and space...

... and distributed flywheel storage and/or electrolytic hydrogen/fuel cells for storage and load management...

... and each part of the country will have its own unique portfolio of renewable energy resources and load demands...

... and ISO managers and public utility commissions will set the "rules" and rate structures to make sure the grid operates reliably and at the least cost to consumers...

... and it will create sustainable economy using local, domestic energy resources...

...my $0.02...

:)

[hunter]

16. After we run out of bullets we'll be clubbing one another with sticks...

... and wishing we lived in France.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how we might make a soft landing.

But the numbers are so damned BIG.

We splurged on the oil and coal, and now we're coming to regret it.

[jpak]

17. France imports all of its uranium

They will be wishing they were living in Germany, Sweden or Denmark in a few decades...

[hunter]

18. My crystal ball seems clear...

Denmark has a temporary abundance of oil and natural gas. After that's gone they will import whatever electricity they can't make themselves. Some of that electricity will be nuclear. Sweden and Germany will quietly abandon their anti-nuclear aspirations.

France will have no problems finding fuel for their nuclear plants. In the worst case scenario they will make it out of stuff they've got stashed away in their basement.

[jpak]

19. My crystal ball sees all the major uranium importers fighting for the

last few scraps of uranium over the next 20 years.

That includes: the US, UK, France, Spain, Japan, China, South Korea, (Germany + Sweden - until they go totally renewable), Finland, Lithuania and Mexico.

The World Nuclear Association sees a significant shortfall in uranium production relative to demand starting ~2011.

I see China and Japan locking in foreign uranium supplies and locking out the other U-importers (Japan recently purchased a stake in a US uranium mine - we will be exporting uranium to Japan even though the US imports >66% of the uranium it uses for nuclear power - go figure).

I see Russia curtailing uranium exports as it expands its nuclear program.

I see the potential for Canada and Australia to halt uranium exports for political reasons (post-nuclear-war in South Asia or after a US nuclear strike on Iran).

I see uranium production in Gabon and Niger decline to depletion thanks to France's neocolonial exploitation of their U resources.

My crystal see countries with strong renewable programs surviving, whereas those relying on nuclear will wither away...

:evilgrin:

[NickB79]

20. Of course, there's always thorium reserve alternatives

Many, many times larger than known uranium reserves, but you always conveniently ignore that when you talk about running out of uranium in 20 yrs.

[jpak]

21. They better start building those (nonexistent) thorium reactors PDQ

and (nonexistent) the Th cycle before everyone spends their $$$$ on silly little wind/PV/solar/wave/tidal/biomass/geothermal farms and waste all their $$$ on that greenie pixie fairy stuff...

[dcfirefighter]

22. Well said. nt