Alternative Energy Confusion 558
pcnetworx1 writes "New York State is starting to get crunched for electricity. While other states may just say 'pop a couple more coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear power plants down', NY has decided to take the green route. NY State wants to get more power by strategically placing windmill powerplants in upstate NY to help the grid. While getting a dedicated power plant placed on your property for FREE (and being paid $3,000 a year per tower) may sounds good to some Slashdotters, the citizens in upstate NY still need some education in the safety of alternative energy."
What "Safety Issues"? (Score:3, Interesting)
Legalities will be the downfall of America? (Score:5, Interesting)
"So I guess my final question is: Who do I sue if I have any health problems or my property value decreases because of this project?" asked Patricia Oakes, a Hartsville, New York, resident at a recent meeting.
Innovation and a solid legal system were some of the key ingredients that allowed America to become the most powerful nation on earth during the past half-century or so. Unfortunately, innovation is often at odds with tort law, as shown perfectly by the comment above.
With increasing competition from Europe, Japan, China, India, and other areas and nations, America will have to make a choice. They can choose to continue innovating, and perhaps maintain a lead over other nations. Otherwise, they can choose to let legalities unnecessarily interfere with progress, and they will fall behind those countries who aren't bogged down with pointless and greed-driven lawsuits.
Wind energy is great, but ... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm not really defending these people; frankly, I think it would be cool to have wind turbines near my house. I'm just saying that people who are serious about solving energy problems are going to pick their battles, and this won't be one of them. Building nuclear power plants and storing nuclear waste will bring up similar "not in my backyard" protests, but at least it would accomplish something that would make a significant difference.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Things change (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wind energy is great, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
It would have been helpful if you'd spent a few minutes with Google before posting. Wind turbines range in production capacity between 500kW and 6MW. For comparison, a 5MW wind turbine produces enough electric power for 1000 homes [msn.com] and that's after taking into account fluctuating wind conditions.
I suppose a 5kW wind turbine would be enough for one house. That's the eletrical production capacity of wind turbines back from 1890 [wikipedia.org]. That's right; wind turbines have been used to produce electricity since the late 1800s. They produced enough power back in 1890 to power a single house today.
windmills are beautiful (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Legalities will be the downfall of America? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Importance of Land. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WTF (Score:2, Interesting)
I know you're asking if there's any space for you, but I'll answer the other implied question.
I have long thought that the ideal place for a wind farm is the Canadian province of Newfoundland, affectionately known by its residents as the Rock. And for good reason. Almost all of the island of Newfoundland's population lives in the capital city of St. John's, on the coast. Almost all of the rest of the island is a big, barren, windy rock.
Since upstate New York has its share of NIMBY'ers, this could be an ideal opportunity for a cross-border joint venture. Cover the Rock with turbines, pump some badly-needed money and jobs into Newfoundland's economy, sell half the power to New York at cost, and the other half to whoever else wants to buy it at a reasonable profit.
Of course, if the government (any government) is in charge of the project, it will end up being one kid holding up a pinwheel in downtown St. John's and throwing AA batteries southward.Re:Wind energy is great, but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless you want to cover an entire state in solar cells or wind turbines. Solar cells require alot of energy just to make. It takes 10-20-ish years of continuous operation to 'pay back' the energy required to manufacture it, and only then are you actualy making any 'new' energy. Up untill that point they are just really expensive batteries. And wind turbines are complex machines, a whole state filled with then is never going to have them all operational at the same time. How much energy will be spent even just driving around and maintaining them all?
Re:Nobody does the math on alternative energy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Holy cow, that's a lot of electricity. It seems from scanning that article that the majority of that electricity is used to create heat for use in their smelters. Anyone know why they don't just burn natural gas or coal at the plants for heat instead? It would seem to me that would be a heck of a lot cheaper, not to mention a more efficient use of limited resources than buying electricity from coal and gas power plants.
New York needs to know about these. (Score:2, Interesting)
Austin's Green Choice program (Score:3, Interesting)
After Katrina and Rita, I heard predictions that the price of natural gas (which is what most of the electricity is made with around here) was going to skyrocket. I figured that I'd better sign up for Green Choice immediately, because if the predictions were true, then Green Choice would be cheaper than regular energy. Plus, the Green Choice program locks in a 10 or 15 year contract with the energy providers, so the price doesn't go up.
I wish I had signed up, becuase come October it was too late and the program was full. Now if you look at the Green Choice site [austinenergy.com] you'll see that Green Choice energy is in fact cheaper than regular energy, and they're having a drawing to sign up a relatively small number of additional customers.
I think this is fantastic--it's bound to cause expansion of wind and other sustainable energy production methods.
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watch funny commercials. [tubespot.com]
energy use and labelling (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Interesting)
Now multiply that by the number of such rooms world-wide that are lit at any given time. Sure, your 200W isn't going to make any difference, but all of them together will.
The point is that if everyone turned off the lights in rooms when the last person left and they shut off all computer monitors that weren't being used, it wouldn't make a dent in electrical energy consumption.
It'll make some difference, and ever little helps. I worked on a computer help desk at a major UK university college once (Imperial College, London), and went along to a few centre meetings. At one, it was announced that it had been calculated that leaving monitors on screensaver rather than switching them off cost the college about 30,000GBP/year. Sure, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the college's total budget or to world-wide energy consumption, but so what? I don't know anyone who empties out their wallet or purse and throws away all the low denomination coins, so why waste even a little bit of energy if you don't need to?
Re:Use less energy (Score:5, Interesting)
If you bother listing all your devices in a spread sheet with their energy usage, you can easily calculate, for your situation, what types of devices are responsible for what share of electricity consumption in your home.
Of course, consumers are only a part of total energy consumption, but you can never say that reducing your own personal consumption doesn't do anything to improve the situation because the large other parties consuming too much energy, like it are only the industrial companies are too blame or that sort of thing.
Large industries typically provide their own power, for example through combined heat/power plants which are really efficient. Furthermore, because of their scale, large industries have really more incentives to reduce their energy consumption, even from a short term business perspective.
However if our consumption is to be more sustainable then we really have to look at ourselves and what we use. It is not business that drive the world's energy consumption, it is *us*, the consumers. The largest part of oil usage is for transportation, of us and our goods and consumables. Asides for the US military, which is (on a global scale) really a large consumer of fossil energy, all energy consumption is driven by you, me, we, consumers. So savings will have to start with ourselvs, not with "someone else"...
Going from where we are now to a more sustainable situation requires that we are all more willing to focus on the long term prospects of our energy usage, that we realize that what we use now is not without consequences for us a couple of years from now.
This thinking is difficult for most people, our economy is focussed on the present time, what things are worth to us now. At the moment, energy doesn't cost much, it is almost free, so we don't care.
I find out that around 25% of my personal electricity usage was lighting, 25% computers, 25% "silent energy consumption" (power adapters, little adapters, chargers, equipment on standby), 25% kitchen. Last year I thought a little about that and saw things I could improve. I installed some other types of lamps, cut back on computers and behaved differently myselves.
I just got the electricity bill for last year, I have saved around 20% in total, so I am really pleased that you can do that with small things. I imagine all people of New York could also easily save as much as I did. In that case an extra power plant easily is avoidable.
This is just like voting in a democracy: each individual's vote doesn't matter anything, but all worthless little votes combined, is a really powerful thing, the policies of a nation is decided by it.
Each individual energy consumption is nothing, but all those individuals combined, use a not sustainable amount of energy.
Re:Use less energy (Score:2, Interesting)
Then you have a problem: the difference between what you want to have and going to get, will only increase in the decades to come, as prices will rise and supplies dwindle.
The irony is funny: it is actually the leftish energy-conserving people, hated by you, are actually helping you get your energy because they use less, so more is available for others.
Whereas people who think like you, are actually stealing your energy because they consume something that could have gone to you.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Interesting)