You trust wind power??? (solar panels, mpg, boiler, installing)

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by my54ford

Fifty-three percent of the electricity generated in Minnesota came from coal-fired electric power plants in 2011; most of its coal supply was brought in by rail from Montana and Wyoming.

Minnesota ranked fourth in the Nation in net electricity generation from wind energy in 2011; its net generation was 6.8 million megawatthours in 2011, an increase of 42 percent from 2010.

Hawai'i's commitment to renewable energy continues to rock! I thought that HELCO's published 2011 statistic that 40% of Hawai'i Island's electricity was coming from renewable sources was terrific. But look at what I found in their June 2013 ECA Report:

HELCO’s current purchase power suppliers include Hamakua Energy Partners, Puna Geothermal Venture, Hawi Renewable Development, Pakini Nui, Keahole Solar Power, Wailuku River Hydroelectric Power Co., and a few individuals with wind and hydro generators. HELCO currently purchases about 54 percent of its net generation requirement from these suppliers.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by Febtober

Wait, did you seriously just mock someone by telling them they should take Physics 101 to learn about "numbers and formulas", while simultaneously demonstrating that you don't know what an order of magnitude is?

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Apparently liberal art majors cannot comprehend what approximations are all about and why they are valuable to examine whatever and whomever.

Originally Posted by Febtober

A) I have a BS in Aerospace Engineering
You don't know what an order of magnitude is. This can't be stressed enough regarding someone claiming to lecture others on fundamental mathematics.

Exactly! And just then he bellowed furiously "I AM OZ, the Great and Powerful." "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!"

Normally I just try to ignore windbags who claim they know better than everybody else. They proclaim that the experts are wrong and the known facts and research should be ignored, while their own questionable assumptions and faulty figures are supposedly beyond reproach. They toss away clear reason and utilize confuscation and bloviation to press their case. But this time, the blowhard in question took an arrogant potshot at me, so I decided to take the time to point out some of the holes in his arguments, in case they were not so obvious to others.

For example I highlighted the fact that he was mistaken on several of the simplest, most basic pieces of information given in the very first sentence of the article he referred to... the name of the town, and the weight of each windmill. Never mind that he messed up his own calculations, which not everyone would catch, his overall disregard for accuracy was a telltale sign that there's no particular value in what he's saying.

Then, having deflected every criticism and denied every error I uncovered, he underlined all the weaknesses I had mentioned by repeating the exact same mistakes again:

Originally Posted by RememberMee

There are no competing wind farms in the vicinity of Van Vert.
...
Apparently you have trouble comprehending that 52 weeks*2 days*2 trips =208 data points per year at least.

No, not at all, but I do have trouble comprehending how anyone could ignore so many data points that the name is actually Van Wert, not Van Vert.

Let's see, conservatively guessing that you pass 6 road signs each trip that feature the name Van Wert, then 6 signs X 52 weeks X 2 days X 2 trips =1248 reminders per year at least that the name is Van Wert. Plus the article you posted spells it Van Wert. Plus I previously pointed out that it is spelled Van Wert. It takes a LOT to ignore that much evidence that you're wrong, and NOT make a correction.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Besides such a factual guy like yourself should furnish us with an error of weight measurements before claiming it's exactly 411 ton or tonnes and not 410 or 412.

No, I just pointed out that the article you referred to listed the weight at 411 tons but you apparently couldn't even copy that information down correctly.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Frequently, the most rough approximations provide more accurate results than the most convoluted and detailed models.

Oh, Lordy, has anyone ever heard a more naive and self-serving justification? And of course, it was said with no evidence whatsoever to back it up. It's just one more thing pulled out of... nowhere. Hey, folks, if you don't have a good, verifiable fact to use, just make one up, OK!

Originally Posted by RememberMee

411 tonnes, 400 tonnes, 405 tonnes, what difference does it make?

See, Febtober, he still do not comprehend that when citing a reference... in this case the article that he brought to the discussion... that quoting it accurately is fundamental. And in pointing out the conversion error I was giving a hint, which he missed, that converting from one system of measurement to another, then back, then once again is an almost a sure-fire way to induce an error in a calculation. It's a rookie mistake.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

If you think they are 100s orders of magnitude off you should point at the exact place where I've made 100 orders of magnitude error.

But this is where it got really self-incriminating, in his response to my saying that his result was off by 10X. Nobody who really knows his stuff would equate 10X with 100 orders of magnitude.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

So all the crap necessary to make 410 tonnes of a windmill ...

Even after having it pointed out, he made the same dumb error again on this simple item. Need I say more? After all, he already stated that accuracy doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by RememberMee

I proposed a simple "first order of magnitude" (a "figure of speech", Einsteins, meaning that the actual energy expenditures to ship&manufacture a windmill are much higher than my estimates) evaluation of energy...

And here's where he tries to bluster his way past not knowing something very basic, by resorting to his standard arrogant hostility. But Oz has now really proven that it's safe to ignore him, because he clearly is just making it all up as he goes.

[OpenD]

Here's a relevant article about how ISO certified Lifecycle Cost Assessments (LCAs) are used throughout the industry. "Literally everything of any significance is measured and included in the calculations." And they're published and reviewed. In the example given, of a General Electric 2 MW wind turbine, the energy payback time is less than 6 months.

One of the B movie unkillable wind energy myths — it just keeps coming back even after it’s been run over by truckloads of facts, disembowelled by logic and burnt to a crisp by the light of reason — is that wind turbines consume so much material and carbon in mining, manufacturing and construction that they never pay back the environmental debt of building them in the first place.

It’s a bizarre myth, as the same people putting this myth forward often seem blind to the massive environmental destruction of coal generation and seem to have bought into the PR about ‘natural gas’, which has 50 times the full-lifecycle CO2e emissions per MWh as wind energy. The reality is that modern wind turbines of typical utility wind farm scale — 1.5 MW and up — pay back energy used in their full-lifecycle — materials, manufacturing, construction, use and decommissioning — in less than six months.

Wind turbines pay back total environmental ‘debt’ in under six months | barnard on wind

[RememberMee]

OpenD, are you an aspiring community organizer, a politician maybe? So little knowledge, none actually, so much BS, just flood of the unrelated useless BS (and this is not a personal attack, this is factual description of your posts). Do you have any ability to think critically whatsoever? What that nonsense you typed has to do with my elementary estimates?

Here is my last attempt to reason with you, I propose the simplest estimate of the rock bottom minimum energy it takes to transport a windmill.

Given:

Turbine power: 1.5MW
Average length of haul: 1000 miles
Average number of trucks: 10
Average fuel efficiency: 5 mpg


1. Estimate how many gallons of diesel it takes to deliver a windmill
2. Estimate how much energy all those gallons of diesel contain
3. Estimate how much energy 1.5MW windmill produces in a year
4. Compare

Four simple basic steps every semi-literate enthusiast should be able to do. Fill those steps with numbers of your own, no more BS. If you can't produce the numbers, you better apply your uncritical enthusiasm to some other political cause that excites you. I'm sure there must be a justice cause without numbers that you could embrace.

Please, no more useless ignorant posts, this thread is already overloaded with, until you come up with numbers of your own.

[DCforever]

Remembermee you have been so owned.

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by DCforever

Remembermee you have been so owned.

Another ignoramus "contributing" nothing to this thread? See simple 4 steps in the above post, fill those with your numbers. If you are not capable of the most primitive arithmetic, concentrate your powerful intellect on deconstructing feminine in the age of enlightenment and things of that nature.

[Febtober]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

Another ignoramus "contributing" nothing to this thread? See simple 4 steps in the above post, fill those with your numbers. If you are not capable of the most primitive arithmetic, concentrate your powerful intellect on deconstructing feminine in the age of enlightenment and things of that nature.

The studies that OpenD has linked to have two incredibly all important things going for them that trump everything else in the known universe:

A) They've been published
B) They've been peer-reviewed

Whereas your numbers are based off of... anecdotal evidence. There is a reason why anecdotal evidence is not generally used as a part of the scientific process.

PS: Oh yeah, just because it adds context to your condescending, "If you are not capable of the most primitive arithmetic, concentrate your powerful intellect on deconstructing feminine in the age of enlightenment and things of that nature" rant, now is a good time to remind everyone that you literally don't know what an order of magnitude is.

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by Febtober

The studies that OpenD has linked to have two incredibly all important things going for them that trump everything else in the known universe:

A) They've been published
B) They've been peer-reviewed

Whereas your numbers are based off of... anecdotal evidence. There is a reason why anecdotal evidence is not generally used as a part of the scientific process.

PS: Oh yeah, just because it adds context to your condescending, "If you are not capable of the most primitive arithmetic, concentrate your powerful intellect on deconstructing feminine in the age of enlightenment and things of that nature" rant, now is a good time to remind everyone that you literally don't know what an order of magnitude is.

I have very important things going for my 4 step estimate, it's VERY simple, it's COMMON SENSE, it's factual, it's easily verifiable by anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of energy concepts and arithmetic. After 7 pages of the spelling bee nonsense this thread couldn't attract a single person with rudimentary science and arithmetic knowledge capable of doing the most basic estimates.

Are scientifically illiterate people with BS in aerospace engineering and no critical thinking skills the only hope for Mother Earth? Can you fill my 4 steps with your numbers? If not, your BS in engineering is good only for deconstructing feminine, misspellings and things of that nature.

First, OpenD didn't provide anything remotely "peer reviewed", just industry propaganda. Second, you cannot dull my critical thinking with "peer reviewed" crap, because I know the kitchen, I know how it's done. Unlike the BS masters in the link, I outlined clearly the way to verify my numbers, as far as I am concerned they just could pull those numbers from their arse, there is no way to verify that, it's obvious nonsense though.

[RememberMee]

Here is a link for aspiring community organizers describing the value and importance of the rough estimates in engineering and science. There is no use for the rough estimates in deconstructing of feminine and the rest of liberal arts, so I somewhat understand why OpenD and his friends in this thread are so fixed on nonsensical details and googling thinking it would make up for their general ignorance.

Fermi Estimates - Less Wrong

Fermi had a knack for making roughly-accurate estimates with very little data, and therefore such an estimate is known today as a Fermi estimate.
Why bother with Fermi estimates, if your estimates are likely to be off by a factor of 2 or even 10? Often, getting an estimate within a factor of 10 or 20 is enough to make a decision. So Fermi estimates can save you a lot of time, especially as you gain more practice at making them.

[DCforever]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

I have very important things going for my 4 step estimate, it's VERY simple, it's COMMON SENSE, it's factual, it's easily verifiable by anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of energy concepts and arithmetic. After 7 pages of the spelling bee nonsense this thread couldn't attract a single person with rudimentary science and arithmetic knowledge capable of doing the most basic estimates.

Are scientifically illiterate people with BS in aerospace engineering and no critical thinking skills the only hope for Mother Earth? Can you fill my 4 steps with your numbers? If not, your BS in engineering is good only for deconstructing feminine, misspellings and things of that nature.

First, OpenD didn't provide anything remotely "peer reviewed", just industry propaganda. Second, you cannot dull my critical thinking with "peer reviewed" crap, because I know the kitchen, I know how it's done. Unlike the BS masters in the link, I outlined clearly the way to verify my numbers, as far as I am concerned they just could pull those numbers from their arse, there is no way to verify that, it's obvious nonsense though.

You mean simplistic not simple. Those of us with professional training in the disciple don't have to resort to simplistic analysis. It's to often wrong.