Fossil fuels problem

[509]

Originally Posted by Terryj

Here is the link to Denmark's energy sources: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig7_320353107

What I find interesting about this chart is Denmark is that 23.8% of their energy isn't carbon free, they list wood, straw, waste and biogas, all of these energy sources produce CO2 when used.

Wind turbines take up a lot of land each, to give an example, the 2.2 MW Vestas V-120 is the largest in the Vestas 2 MW series of turbines, with a rotor diameter of 120 meters. That means that to optimize efficiency, the turbines must be 360 meters apart and 840 meters downwind. The V-90 is the smallest turbine in the 2 MW series, with a rotor diameter of 90 meters. So these turbines must be 270 meters apart and 630 meters downwind to remain efficient.*

One acre is 4046.86 square meters, so the sides of a square enclosing one acre of land will are approximately 63.61 meters long. In other words, you will only be able to fit one industrial-sized turbine on one acre, and the nearest turbine will be several acres away. In the case of the V90, one turbine needs about 42 acres of land, while the V120 will need about 75 acres of land.*

* https://www.semprius.com/how-much-sp...-turbine-need/

The source says "Composition of electricity generation from renewable energy in Denmark in 2014 Source: Danish Energy Agency (2016a)


I suspect it is "capacity" and not actual generation. It is really hard to find actual generation by source in many cases.

California does it, but it took a long time to find it.

I suspect that is why California has pretty much dropped wind power and focused on solar panels. California has a good system, solar during the day and natural gas at night. There is nothing wrong with that but California wants to be totally "pure". In a modern society, you will never get wind and solar to provide all your electricity. Too much land required for the little electricity they generate.

[Maple47]

Originally Posted by guidoLaMoto

We can't believe anything you say now. You keep quoting the 3c/kWhr BS without ever proving it except to site EIA as the source --which is an incomplerte accouting. ...Actually, you don't even site it, but just keep using the number like we're supposed to believe Moses chiselled it in stone right next to the other 10 rules.

I second that. Being arrogant and rude does not replace good engineering data...

[leastprime]

Originally Posted by 509

I would check those numbers on "usage".

With wind, folks always quote "generating capacity", instead of actual electricity generated.

For example, here in the Pacific Northwest on the Bonneville Power Grid, wind represents 10% of the generating capacity available to the grid. That is the number people normally see when they quote "wind" power availability.

I actually, had to go Bonneville (BPA) and get a spreadsheet of electricity generated by source, by day for a couple of years. It was pretty simple to roll up the daily numbers into a yearly average.

For BPA grid, which is pretty much Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana wind represented 1.4% of the power generated. That is a substantial difference of the usually quoted figure of 10%.

For the 1.4% we have destroyed well over 300,000 acres of endangered shrub-steppe habitat and worse yet, windmills did not displace carbon sources, but rather carbon-free hydro generated by dams owned by the local county governments. So the taxpayers pay twice, once well above the market rate for wind electricity, and two being unable to sell electricity during the spring run-off from local government dams.

Here is the link for power generated daily for the BPA grid.

https://transmission.bpa.gov/Busines...d/baltwg3.aspx

Watch the site and a daily basis and you will notice that 300,000 acres of Corporate Industrial Wind Areas, generate less electricity than one tiny coal fired plant and one small nuclear facility.

By the way, we are well on our way to destroying TWO million acres in eastern Oregon and Washington building industrial wind areas!! For comparison, Yellowstone National Park is 2.2 million acres. For those of you back east, that is the size of Puerto Rico, or just a bit smaller than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

That is what happens when we have scientifically illiterate politicians making environmental decisions!!!

Oh, almost forgot...."we have the best government money can buy". And when it comes to wind, the Corporations have bought it.

There are a lot of moving parts in the BPA network.
It's also going to get more complicated.

[Philip T]

Originally Posted by my54ford

I told them during the interview that in 30 yrs of plant operations in the upper midwest I never had a peaker or intermediate load eng/ct plant fail to start or run in the winter....Problems? Yes of course but never a loss of service. That include the great Holloween Ice storm of 1991.

https://www.weather.gov/arx/halloween1991

It's management job anyhow, just to run the inspection team to ensure PUC mandates are met......positions me better for retirment in 7 or 8 yrs.

All good. Yell if you need some local help, but probably much can be remote.

Thing I would suggest to look for (based on what we found back in 2011 / 2012) are water based Instrumentation and Controls. So much of it is outdoors in unheated space. While most is probably Heat Traced and Insulated, that may not be enough.

I guess you know that this time, even the Coal Stacks in the Coal Yards froze solid. General practice is to keep it watered to prevent spontaneous fire and lower dust -- but that may have to be reconsidered for some lower temperatures.

Gas pipelines are an issue, as well. Many valve sites may not have enough local electric power to have heat tracing. Dunno if you can add local gas powered generators to create more local power?

I do recall doing design work for North Dakota and up into Canada some years back . . . design factor was -50 . . . cannot recall if C or F. Anyway, we would group equipment to it could be in a heated and insulated shelter building. That seemed to work well.

[Maple47]

It happens in Germany right now!
Markus Soder: "We are withdrawing from coal and nuclear power generation, and the lack of resources is becoming more and more severe."

https://www.rt.com/business/539591-b...ream-2-launch/