Wind energy

[DD977GM2]

[rondog]

Is wind energy a viable solution for home use though? Maybe coupled with solar? I'd LOVE to live in the country and be "off the grid". Not likely to happen though.

[SAnd]

To go back to Paintball Shooters original post-

I used to work at a coal fired electric plant. The dispatchers that control the electric grid tolds us the the wind power was only good for about eight percent of the time. When they were generating a spinning reserve had to be maintained to back it up if the wind died. Quite often it would die suddenly leaving a equally sudden need for generation to make up the loss. Sometimes the wind generation would come on then minutes latter drop off. That realy stresses the whole system.

Another aspect of wind is it is a large area effect. If the wind increases or drops off it will influence a bank of wind generators. You won't lose or gain one or two, you'll lose twenty or thirty if not all of them in that quarter of the state. The whole country would need to be covered with these things for it to be viable.
　
It's good to get new "green" manufacturing jobs in the state. But, to use a liberal mantra, who is going to pay for them? All the green jobs were attracted here by big tax breaks. Subsidies in lib' speak. How are we going to make up the lost tax revenue from them not paying taxes? As Paper Hunter said this also applies to the tax breaks the operational wind generators are getting too. Sorry- I'm being sarcastic in that last bit.

I too am a believer in nukes. We should have had fusion plants going by now. Cheap energy is one of the main factors in the high standard of living we enjoy today. The environmentalist's want to take it away from us.
Have A Good Day
Steve A

[SAnd]

Sorry about the font size- I don't know how I did that.
Steve A

[gnihcraes]

... but the new wind technology with the large 105 meter blades take such a small breeze to get them turning... it's not an all around solution, but neither is any of the other options...

small solar is available for home use, but not cheap - $15k for a home system, if you're in a "windy" area...

[paulmartin483]

I know that the processing done for Wind energy is too expensive and it needs hundreds of petroleum originated lube oil to operate each day, and the gearbox used for these things is immense and expensive.But the wind energy is non conventional one thats attract me lot to use wind energy for many of my works and projects.

[theGinsue]

Is wind energy a viable solution for home use though? Maybe coupled with solar? I'd LOVE to live in the country and be "off the grid". Not likely to happen though.

Oh good heavens, I'm a ventriliquist and rondog is my puppet....those are my exact words... I use them several times a week.

[Not_A_Llama]

I work in the utilities industy. I was on a service call near Julesburg today and the local sub-station operator was bullshitting with us and the subject of wind energy came up. He basically said it was a long way from being viable and economically sound. Said it takes $0.85 to produce 1 Kilowatt (KW) of power with the current wind turbine technology.

With a coal plant it takes just $0.03 to produce 1 KW of power. Then he said that there needs to be another power source such as a coal plant to help regulate the fluctuation of voltage and current for the entire time the turbines are producing power or when the wind is not blowing, to allow a supple to the power grid. CO has a plan or idea that would have the entire eastern planes filled with turbines. The idea is that somewhere will always be blowing. This gives the entire grid a 1-3 ratio. Meaning out of 100KW of power for a potential output, only 30-33 KW would actually be made.

Also the turbines will never pay for themselves. Their life expectancy is 10 years (i know some of you will say that the expectancy can be surpassed... I know this and so did the operator) and it takes 12-13 years of service to pay for itself. So basically it is like the VCR......when it can be used affordably, then people will actually buy into it and use it.

Just thought I would share this new tid bit of info that the gov doesnt want us to know about.

I'm guessing when you say "kilowatt", you're meaning "kilowatt-hour". I'll buy $30/MWh coal all day. There's no way on earth that a megawatt-hour of wind turbine energy runs $850. I even have trouble believing 8.5 cents/kWh ($85/MWH). IIRC, there's a ~2 cent/kWh tax credit available from the federal government that goes a long way towards making it tenable.

While wind is unreliable (this can be financially and operationally mitigated) the bigger issue is that it doesn't correspond well with load throughout the day. Load peaks around noontime, which is a characteristic that could be much better exploited with solar technology. The sun, after all, is largely responsible for the shape of the demand curve.

I think our best bet in the future would be to go solar as far as we can (tech needs improving), then nuclear with pebble bed, thorium, or alternate isotope fuels for baseload. Maybe peaker units could run natural gas like they currently do. Wind has a place somewhere in the equation, but I can't see it being significant. Too much NIMBYism and bird-chopping go on even before you bother talking about fundamental economics.

For those unfamiliar with the power industry, a quick primer: You basically can't store electric energy. Power demand throughout the day looks vaguely like a normal distribution, with a peak around noon or so. Power costs more during this peak time, and less on off-peak periods. Generally, coal/nuclear/hydro are your cheapest sources of power, and are used for base generation, but generally take a while to respond to changes in power demand. So on top of the cheap base generation, more expensive and more responsive "peaker" units, typically natural gas powered, are used. Managing the dynamics of the "gen stack" is the lion's share of what goes on in power trading.

[TFOGGER]

The problem lies not in generation efficiency, but in transmission losses. Some 50% of the electricity generated in power plants never makes it to the end user. The current "hub and spoke" grid is horribly inefficient, and hugely vulnerable to failures due to cascade failures. What really needs to happen is decentralizing the generation of power, with a mesh network model for the new grid. This would increase power distribution efficiency by as much as 70% according to some estimates, as well as reduce the possibility of extensive cascade failures. Maybe something like neighborhood Bloom Boxes powering 10-20 homes, networked with adjacent cells would be a good model.

[sniper7]

You know, these green idiots (hmmm, does that make them Martians...?), won't put an oil rig on a little tiny postage stamp piece of land but they are willing to use up tens of thousands of acres to collect wind power. These guys are nucking futs!

did you know PETA fights hard against wind turbines?
apparently it kills low level birds in flight when they are hit by the semitruck sized blades

if the birds are that stupid, they deserve to die.

as for wind energy, put some of those fuckers out by my house cause it is howlin right now!