Futility of Wind Power (cost, water, contract, systems)
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That's why coal plants are shutting down. Solar is cheaper, and China gets stuck with the manufacturing pollution.
Wind power will not be really practical until we build a national electrical grid. They have already had to shut down the wind turbines in the Columbia Gorge because the California intertie couldn't accept any more power. We need to be able to ship that power to Chicago.
You are correct that we need a more robust transmission system to fully utilize our wind resource.
The loss for high voltage transmission is too much over that great a distance to deliver any meaningful amount of power. Either corona discharge (due to increasing voltage closer to 1 MV) or simple conductor resistance limits the range of power delivery from the station.
Unless someone designs the equivalent of fiber optics for power delivery with ultra-low resistance, we are stuck with generation at the local and regional levels.
This is incorrect. Long distance transmission of bulk power has been done for years using DC.
This might help some folks understand the US Electrical grid.
The U.S. electrical grid is the largest interconnected machine on Earth. It consists of 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines and 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines, linking thousands of generating plants to factories, homes and businesses.
That's why coal plants are shutting down. Solar is cheaper,
Solar is not cheaper and it cannot replace a coal, gas or nuclear plant. No matter how many windmills or solar panels you build you will still need to build the same amount of coal, gas and nuclear plants if you have any expectations of reliable power.
Solar is not cheaper and it cannot replace a coal, gas or nuclear plant. No matter how many windmills or solar panels you build you will still need to build the same amount of coal, gas and nuclear plants if you have any expectations of reliable power.
We may need gas for a while. Coal and nuclear are dying a natural death. How much gas we will need depends a lot on technology that is just in the development stage. Battery storage and direct load control via smart meters will likely make significant contributions in the future.
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Originally Posted by guidoLaMoto
And nobody's on it, DC. If it wasn't for govt incentives, they wouldn't be doing it at all.
Yes and no. They need the government incentives to compete with the heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry. If it weren't for those subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it would compete on its own just fine.
Yes and no. They need the government incentives to compete with the heavily subsidized fossil fuel industry. If it weren't for those subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, it would compete on its own just fine.
Can you point out how to get those subsidies? We burn lots of coal and it would be a feather in my cap if I could tell the CEO where to get free Gov money
Summary-- right now, wind supplies 0.46% of total human energy consumption per year (solar & tide combined another 0.35%). Note- that's total energy, not just electricity.
To be fair, the article says your quoted small percentages are from 2014, which the article asserts is the most current year of reliable data. I'd guess it has grown since then.
To be fair, the article says your quoted small percentages are from 2014, which the article asserts is the most current year of reliable data. I'd guess it has grown since then.
You're right-- it has grown-- but 2x not much still isn't very much.
But I repeat: that's not the point. Even if renewables were magically free of charge-- we can't do it for logistical reasons except for limited, niche applications.
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