The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms 681
DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of 'superhighways' to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"
Moving it across the country? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a job for... COMPUTOR!
Time for a new Interstate project (Score:5, Insightful)
Scary thought! (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember, if you make less than $169,000 a year, you have NO representation in Washington!
Yep, the grid does need an upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the grid needs to be changed to handle large power inputs from a more distributed system.
This would require federal tax credits as an incentive, as well as an open design.
Ok... (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you do in places that don't have sufficient wind for wind power?
Re:Thay said this about nuclear energy too (Score:5, Insightful)
The next time you drive by a nuclear plant take a look at the transmission infrastructure. You might see three different sets of pylons leaving each with a couple of 500kV circuits.
It takes wires to move electricty from generation to load, I don't know why they are surprised that when they build a wind farm in the middle of nowhere there transmission capacity to handle all that extra energy.
Especially since everybody says they have hardly built anything new in the way of transmission...of course there is no spare capacity!
It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
My parents both work for the local power company and this is a well known problem among those in the industry. I've been screaming about it forever. We can have all of the solar, wind, water and nuclear power in the world but it doesn't mean a thing if it can't be easily transferred from the places it can be generated to places where it's needed. Huge wind farms in the Midwest will only benefit the Midwest. A massive solar array in the Mojave dessert will only benefit states that are near it. Step #1 in the transition to alternative energy has to be to modernize and upgrade the power grid so energy generated in one region of the country can easily be transported to another and this is going to have to be a top down operation overseen by a single federal regulatory body. Leaving it in the hands of the states isn't going to cut it as the states have differing standards and regulatory environments.
I'm generally a libertarian but this is one area where the federal government is going to have to get involved to get everybody on the same page. It's akin to the interstate highway system. Without the direct involvement and oversight of the federal government that never would have happened and this won't either.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they aren't going to work together, build new systems that that will. It's that simple.
I realise there's the whole 'but shareholders will object' thing. Well fine, if the well off think they're in a position to survive global warming, then let them vote no.
Then the first company who gets its shareholders to understand that money doesn't provide immunity from extinction if the planet becomes hostile to our species through climate change will generate wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Why? Because any such company would be so far ahead of the competition as to be unreachable. At least for long enough to make everyone involved very rich indeed.
Peak load vs non-peak (Score:5, Insightful)
I just toured a nearby dam, and was presented some very insightful ideas.
Nuclear and coal power are great for handling base load because they provide consistent power.
But peak load is where the money is; turning on power systems when they're needed to match the load at that second. Solar, wind, and water are all peak-load power supplies because they are not always consistent, vary widely according to weather and time of year and regulations, and can be very unclean with spikes. This is why these power systems cannot replace base load systems yet.
The solution is to even out our peak load systems so that they are more consistent and more like base load systems. Whether that's tying many different types together and hoping they even out naturally, or storing the energy in some kind of battery in the middle.
Since battery technology is nowhere near ready, a viable option is to store water in reservoirs behind dams, using wind and solar energy to pump water up, then releasing it evenly through a generator. This is even being employed in some countries.
Re:Scary thought! (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL. The bar is higher than that, buddy!
Re:It's about time (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. 3 years ago I remember reading a then 10 year old analysis of the US's energy issues, and this was one of the major steps that the author indicated that we would need to take in order to take advantage of renewable energy. This is not a new problem.
This is also one of the few areas where the federal government can make themselves useful, as opposed to butting in and making life harder.
Re:The summary doesn't match TFA. (Score:3, Insightful)
When building massive wind farms, the idea is that they're going to be built in areas without a large population center (say South Dakota). The power then needs to be delivered not 10s of miles, but rather 100s to 1000s of miles (the big demand for power is in the northeast and the west coast). This will require building huge lines that need to have low losses. This will likely mean building DC lines, and the cost of such infrastructure is huge compared to the cost of building lines 10s of miles. This means that despite the fact that wind power generation is currently less efficient (on a cost basis) than coal, the true cost will likely end up being even more. If the wind power is generated 1000 miles away, the real cost of the power has to factor in the cost of building the power plants (which still cannot be part of the base power load), the cost of building transmission lines, and the cost of the significant power losses that will occur when transferring the power 100s or thousands of miles.
Phil
Note: A fixed up grid make wind & solar reliab (Score:4, Insightful)
If we imagine the combination of say, superconducting continent-wide backbones and smart, distributed-control, adaptive, switching,
then as long as the wind is blowing, waves are rolling, or sun is shining somewhere in some parts of your continent, then you have a pretty stable power source (delivering some portion of the total combined rated capacity of all those widespread generators.)
The old saw that these alternative, renewables are whimsical, unreliable sources is purely a myth, predicated on a brain-dead dumb grid.
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't put a nuclear plant next to each village
You can put one near every major city and that'll work just fine. Just have to make them medium sized and standardize on a design or two.
Re:The summary doesn't match TFA. (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA is mostly talking about there not being, for instance, a sufficient link across state boundaries - I don't think that the wind power company having to build new lines from the state in the middle of the country (where the wind is) it's generating power in to the coast of the US (where the people are) to be able to do buisiness is on the same scale as tying a plant to the grid next to it.
It's saying that "the grid" can't carry the power long-haul from sparsely populated places where there's easily collected power to densely-populated areas where there isn't, not that the local line from the wind farm is too small/too expensive.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Insightful)
Phil
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
The feds don't need authority. They already have it. Congress just hasn't assigned it to any agency yet. If you think an electrical grid that shares power generated by utilities in numerous states isn't covered by the commerce clause, you are not reading the same Constitution as the rest of us.
Federal power grid? (Score:3, Insightful)
Federal power grid = feds have the power to give a non-compliant region "power failure."
Keep it to the states, folks. Read your tenth amendment and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Oh no. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh boy! I just had an images of another few volumes added to our already byzantine tax code; for which there will be some loopholes put in by lobbyists that will allow some big corp to get some easy money. And then when or if wind or solar or whatever becomes the dominant power source, the tax incentives will still be there to further distort the economics of said power source and god forbid if anyone suggests that the tax incentives should be removed.
But hey, Washington is all about compromise.
As oil an gas gets more and more expensive, there won't be any need for tax incentives - the markets will take care of it. Maybe not as fast or as efficient as some would like it, but it sure beats a legislative solution any day.
Federal Gov't won't be stopped (Score:5, Insightful)
Like that's ever stopped them before? We have a welfare system, federal highway system, healthcare for underemployed people, and federal guidelines for public schools, none of which is constitutional. Do you honestly think they won't nose into state business again?
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_25/b4089040017753.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories [businessweek.com]
for those who won't read it Pickens has been buying rights to a massive water reserve in Texas and has been having trouble building a pipeline through peoples property, so he is buying the law instead "In January, 2007, the Texas Legislature convened.. helped win Pickens a key new legal right. It was contained in an amendment to a major piece of water legislation. The amendment, one of more than 100 added after the bill had been reviewed in the House, allowed a water-supply district to transmit alternative energy and transport water in a single corridor, or right-of-way." and then "Pickens still needed the power of eminent domain if he was going to build his pipeline and wind-power lines across private land. And by happy coincidence, the legislators passed a smaller bill that made that all the easier. The new legislation loosened the requirements for creating a water district."
Long story short he's creating a new water and power district to sell this and is using public feel good green hype to get subsidy's and push through his new project that will drain a water resource that is very slow to renewal, out from under everyone else around it, to sell at low prices to Dallas, which is one of the most wastfull cites in Texas when it comes to water. Anyone who thinks someone who was part of the 80's raiders and swift boating can actually do something without a hidden con is a fucking idiot.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real issue we will run into is the need to store power.
Storage is obviously an issue, but transmission is just as pressing. This is not a new problem, it's one if the primary drawbacks of nuke plants. Everyone has the NIMB syndrome when it comes to nukes, but the same problem arises when it comes to high tension transmission lines. No one wants to live under those things, and it's more expensive to bury them.
br>
It's not like you can just go "okay, for the next 3 hours this coal plant needs to produce more power", they just don't work that way (however natural gas plants are able to do this, which is why they're used for supplemental power despite being more expensive than coal).
Really? I thought most modern coal plants crushed the coal into a powder and used it to fire a turbine, much the same as you would with Natural Gas. Why aren't they able to vary the power production the same way the could with a Natural Gas plant?
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, a nice fat set of great superconductive power lines would be nice to run across the US. We could build a nice array of Gen III nuclear plants in the middle of nowhere and use them to power most of the US.
Re:Ok... (Score:2, Insightful)
Solar panels on every building in America? How do you propose to pay for it?
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
As an example, I know a bright, competent woman who has started putting a lot of time an thought into Boone Pickens's plan for a big move into green energy. I asked her what the plan was for storage and she said (referring specifically to home-based solar production of electricity), "That's no problem, excess electricity gets sold to the power company, who stores it for you." I tried to explain that Georgia Power has no facilities for storing your power and that in fact your minuscule amount of unreliable, intermittent electrical energy was more of a nuisance for them than anything else--until everybody tries to do it, when it turns into a big problem. This wasn't something she wanted to hear.
I would love to hear some good solutions to the engineering (and economic) problems posed by adding wind and solar to the grid, but so far there seems to be a lot of magic involved. For the uninitiated, a quick overview of the difficulties we face can be found here [denbeste.nu].
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Insightful)
Theres a good pile of evidence that this Texas wind thing is one giant con so that Oil man Mr. Pickens can use newly created government power of eminent domain to snatch up land and sell his water pet project under the radar.
I wouldn't be surprised. But, even without Pickens' wind (and water?) project, the existing wind turbines in West Texas are having difficulty delivering their full potential to where it is needed.
Anyone who thinks someone who was part of the 80's raiders and swift boating can actually do something without a hidden con is a fucking idiot.
There's no need for a partisan attitude -- hidden agendas are bipartisan pursuits. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who despite her efforts to save the planet [politico.com] by blocking repeal of offshore drilling bans, is apparently under the impression that natural gas isn't a fossil fuel [wsj.com]. Maybe she is influenced by her investment of 100-250K in Clean Energy Fuels Corp [wsj.com], a company run by Pickens that markets compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas as a fuel for motor vehicles.
Re:Ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Give houses a large tank of water. In the winter heat the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the hot water to heat the house. In the summer cool the water when there is an electricity surplus, then use the cold water to cool the house.
That would be a very environmentally friendly and almost 100% efficient way to store the energy. It would be much cheeper than batteries or any other storage method. And when you consider that 80% to 90% of domestic electricity is used for cooling or heating it would go a long way towards dealing with the problems of storing renewable energy.
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well,
It'd be cheaper than 5-years in Iraq, Yankee. And do a lot more towards keeping you secure.
But as a product of what America calls "education", you might find some dispute with that bright light of reason.
Re:Stored power (Score:5, Insightful)
New printing process? Ultra cheap cells? Mass production? Sure, I hear about those. But for SOME reason, all their output is bought up, and I can't buy the stuff. Not to get out the tinfoil, but if nothing else, it is very annoying.
Crumple up that tinfoil hat, because the answer is fairly obvious: cheap solar cells are being bought up by the power industry because... wait for it... they want to use it to produce electricity.
Cheap PV isn't going to come to the consumer level (you and I) until the industrial (solar power plants) and commercial sectors (construction & other volume buyers) get their fill. You have to remember that consumers are one time buyers. We're going to install it in/on/near our property and that's it for the next 10~25 years. Everyone else gets precedence over us.
Re:Stored power (Score:1, Insightful)
Or, at your massive wind farm you could put a couple of Hydrogen generators, and anything that can't go into the grid can be used to make that Hydrogen from water that all the Hydrogen fuel cell car people are saying "Where's that going to come from"
Just a thought.
well, here's an alternative way to look at it (Score:4, Insightful)
You are already paying for it. It just shifts who gets the cash and who gets to own the means of production. If you are more than happy to have a perpetual open ended contract where you have no idea what you will be charged in the future for the product delivered...well...doesn't that just sound dumb? In essence, signing up for grid supplied power as your only source is just that. You're going to be paying that bill the rest of your life anyway (assuming like most people you will probably want electricity forever), so the question then changes to something more directly to the point now that this money issue is resolved, do you want to buy something you can eventually pay off and own and enjoy (solar PV does this in most cases, it can be as little as 7 years on up to 20 years at today's prices, but it does get paid off at some time), or just perpetually rent forever with no fixed price to look at? Do you want to build your own equity, or just keep building your electric landlord's equity? That money is leaving your wallet no matter what.
As to the issue of windpower and the grid, again, a much larger shift to smaller and more decentralized means of production means we won't have to rebuild the entire grid infrastructure so much. A *lot* of folks who have already gone full alternative energy run both types of systems now, because in the winter months the winds usually pickup as solar gain drops, vice versa in summer. Not everywhere, but it is exceedingly common now in those circles.
I look at this energy issue the same way as I do my big garden and this "eating" thing that seems to be as popular as using electricity. Ya, I could work more, make more money, then drive to the store and buy expensive organic stuff...or..just produce it onsite, eliminate several expensive middleman steps and use a lot less energy into the bargain, and not contribute so much to excess carbon emissions and so on.
When I look how much I get out of that garden (and my other stuff, dinner tonight home produced burgers with my own tomatoes and other stuff in a salad, topped off with my own watermelon for dessert) compared to hours worked and production costs involved, it is a rather well paying "job" to just do it myself. Tradeoffs, everyone gets to pick what they want to pay for and everyone gets a choice to pick if you want to own "it", "it" meaning any number of life's necessities or things you *really* want like back to the electricity, or help someone else own it and they might turn some over to you for a price to be constantly adjusted probably not much in your favor forever.
And that's it, along with economies of scale. Computers never got cheap until it went from thousands of home PCs to millions, then the market exploded and now look at it. Same deal will happen with alternative energy, and even though the earlier adopters pay more, they still get the benefits immediately, and it just keeps getting better from that point on.
choices-it's nice to have them
no choice and vendor lockin-not so nice
Re:Time for a new Interstate project?????????? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're both right. Corruption is common in government AND private projects. The problem isn't the people corrupting, that's inevitable. The problem is that we don't have a good system of accountability set up to put all this corruption in the public eye.
Re:Ok... (Score:2, Insightful)
Aside from that point, it is not about only using solar. Wind, solar, geothermal, and yes, even nuclear power, as well as future types of power that we haven't even dreamed about yet, would all be used in conjunction to power the world.
Add into this the fact that soon, older appliances will be breaking down, and people will be buying newer, more power efficient appliances for their homes, making their power needs even less.
Then take into account the fact that as more and more people realize the little things they can do to limit their power consumption, their power needs drop even more.
So while a building with hundreds of computers running 24/7 such as Google may not be able to keep up with what solar panels generate, the average household will be able to come much closer, if not surpass, at which point their unused power is able to be used by others. And while Google may not be able to be totally self contained with solar, they can get their other power needs from wind, geothermal, and a little bit of nuclear/other technology.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah the projected cost for the Iraq War is 3+ trillion.
I can't even imagine how far you could expand the SEGs
system on 3 trillion dollars.
It would generate enough profit at that point to pay for
massive expansions every year.
Oh well...The Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big GMO Food ppl got
other plans for you and I.
Reduce consumption to balance load (Score:5, Insightful)
Heaters could work this way. They could pay a lower charge for energy in return for participating in load balancing.
Re:Time for a new Interstate project (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're gonna destroy the existing median in order to install electric/fiber/gas/whatever please add some rails on top...
Re:Scary thought! (Score:2, Insightful)
First, figure out multiple ways to build your large scale project.
This is required as part of your environmental impact statement. It is done to figure out your next point:
For example, if you're building a road, maybe you can run it through points A, B, or C.
You make the assumption that A,B and C are all equal cost and just as good. I'll punch a whole in this easy:
- Mountain Passes. Sometimes there is only one route for 500 miles.
- Transit Lines. To get any kind of ROI, you gotta have stops in pretty precise locations, often giving you only a few blocks of wiggle room. Lets not forget if you plan to tunnel, there might be geological issues that make one route much, much cheaper.
- Utilities get in the way. What if your route crosses over some other dudes utility and they refuse to budge? What if that utility was 500 miles long?
in exchange for the right of Eminent Domain over your property for the next 3 years
What uninteresting thing are you building that will only be around for three years. Last I checked the interstate highway system is older then three years. Last I checked, the Hover Dam is older then three years.
In that case, I would argue that the people have spoken.
You know what? Fuck the people. Sometimes you have to cram stuff down their throats. That is what makes a good politician... people objected to most of the bridges that were built in New York. You think people have issue with them now? People object to every sewer treatment plant and every landfill created on our planet. Yet without them, civilization could not exist.
Being libertarian means you haven't grown up politically. You can still subscribe to free market ideals and understand that sometimes you need a little central planning. Look how much more productive and environmentally "clean" a well organized, properly zoned city like New York is compared to an un-zoned, unplanned suburb like Anytown USA. Sure those suburbs were cheap to build, but look how costly they are once gas prices have gone up? Look how costly they become when they get even the least bit dense (and I'm talking "cost" in the economic sense, so I'm including Time and Psychological costs as well).
Life gets really strange when you grow up and realize you can be a democrat and remain compatible with your ideas of a free market economy.
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that we can harvest all that energy - solar panels and windmills all over everything. What will happen with the widescale use of geothermal heating? How much will the earth's temperature decrease? Let's slow down all the wind and cool the earth. That sounds like a great way to save the environment!
I don't understand why nuclear is automatically relegated to the back burner. It is the only source of power that doesn't ultimately rely on the sun, and if you're allowed to recycle the spent fuel rods it produces very little waste. France, which recycles, stores all of their waste in a single room. 80% of France's electricity is nuclear.
Also, the amount of radiation produced from a modern nuclear power plant is very, very small. You'll receive less radiation standing in the shadow of the plant than standing out in the sun. For comparison, living within 50 miles of a coal-fired plant will give you about 0.03 millirems of exposure a year, whereas being within 50 miles of a nuclear plant gives you 0.009. A smoke detector gives 0.008, and an airline flight gives about 1 per 1,000 miles flown.
Other than the risk of deliberate damage to a plant (e.g. terrorists), I don't understand why nuclear is so terrible.
Source: http://www.entergy-nuclear.com/content/resource_library/IPEC_EP/ComparisonRadiation.pdf [entergy-nuclear.com]
Re:Stored power (Score:4, Insightful)
The salts have a high melting point (but not so high as to cause problems for other materials involved) and decent heats of fusion.
It lets you design your plant around a constant T_hot. Although your peak efficiency is lower than the theoretical maximum, you can run at the design efficiency for much longer. In short, the salts smooth out the heat spikes, and as a bonus, if you have some way of measuring the ratio of still-solid salts to molten salts, provide a way to determine just how long you can run before loss of efficiency.
NO FEDS! (Score:3, Insightful)
Haven't we learned enough already? The Feds keep getting jurisdiction and the red tape gets worse. The Feds are FORBIDDEN by the Constitution from dealing in this, and most other matters. A short list of Federal agencies that are in violation of the Constitution:
Department of Education
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (would make a great convenience store)
DEA (except for drugs crossing state lines)
Department of Family and Children
Department of Labor
Actually, almost all of them that begin with "Department of" are a violation of the Constitution.
To clarify what I'm say. Here's what the Constitution says:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
That means that unless the Feds are specifically given a power in the Constitution, it doesn't have that power. Our trillions of dollars of dept are the result of the Feds sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong. Our erosion of Rights is a result of them poking around where they aren't wanted. How is this happening? You let it happen. You think that laws you like should apply equally in California and Kansas. Why? Pass your local laws and be happy. If they want to teach creationism in Kansas, so fucking what. Let them live in ignorance because it isn't any of your damn business!
Now when local governments are violating the Constitution (e.g. civil rights and voting), I want the Feds to come down hard on the local yokals. The Feds do have a legitimate purpose. Let's keep them focused on that.
Re:Stored power (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, sorry to say this, but "so what?"
I mean, I like the desert as much as the next guy, but if i were to list the places that should be left pristine and untouched, the desert would be low on the list. it just isn't that nice to live in IMHO and there isn't a huge ecosystem there to destroy.
I'm not advocating that we all get ATV's and tear up the entire desert, but with roads and simple rules we can preserve what doesn't have to be trampled on.
I mean, if you're going to screw up SOMEPLACE with solar panels or wind farms, that's about the best place we could have hoped for.
Just my city folk opinion.
d
Re:Stored power (Score:4, Insightful)
My real estate agent drove over the corner of my soon-to-be lawn, which slightly annoyed me. The tire indentations lasted a couple of years - and I live in the Northwest, with plenty of rain and greenery. But I don't think it's fair to say there was damage in the environmental sense, any more than construction of a solar plant would necessarily "damage" the surrounding environment.
I don't mean to nitpick, as I understand your point (naturally, we'd have to be very careful, especially in sensitive areas like the desert), but I disagree with the notion that an ecosystem is "damaged" just because there are signs of human life / activity. No longer pristine, fine, but not necessarily damaged. I think we have the technology and desire in these times to create these sorts of power plants while still being good stewards of the environment.
Re:It's about time (Score:3, Insightful)
A wire has a given amount of current that can flow through it before it melts. Take a thin wire and connect it to the + and - terminals on your car battery (use thick leather gloves so you don't get burned) and see what happens when you stuff too much power down a wire.
Thank you, captain obvious. Now consider you have a battery (fossil fuel) at point A powering a load (a house, for example) at point B. What happens when you add another battery in parallel (say a solar panel on the roof of said house) also at point B. What happens to the current between points A and B? Hint: it does not increase...
This is what is mean when we talk about a "grid interactive" energy source. They provide power into the grid when they can, otherwise they draw whatever the difference is between the load and what they can generate. This arrangement alleviates load on the distribution system when said power source is on the same side of the long transmission line as the power consumers, and they don't have to be at exact same location either. The fact that power sources such as wind and solar need not be concentrated at one location like a power plant, but can be sprinkled geographically close to consumers of power, is a huge advantage if properly exploited.
Obviously, there are also less desirable opportunities, as I acknowledged, where the source is not close the load, like trying to put a wind farm in the middle of nowhere. In those cases green energy would not be economical yet, until we figure out cheaper distribution or the price of fossil fuel rises some more.
Now, tell me more about what it means for a wire to be "congested".
Re:Ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cut back on the military budget 5 - 10 percent, use the annual savings on putting solar-cells, wind-turbines, etc where appropriate.
The people who loose their jobs due to the military cutback can apply for jobs producing and installing solar-cells, wind-plants and in the logistics needed to handle them.
To start with, put the new plants as far away from the big power-plants as possible to achieve maximum power savings from lessening energy loss in the power grid.
After a few decades, you'll have most of your power produced locally, with a few big plants producing backup power and power for heavy industry like steel-plants and such, who'll probably not go off nuclear or coal until we have fusion power.
Problem is, something like that is close to impossible in a non-dictatorship.
There's a certain category of people who will scream and bitch about how they don't want a wind-plant where they can see it, or how it is unfair that city X got solar power when city Y didn't, or how they don't want their tax to pay for a power plant that someone else use, or a thousand other random complaints. =P
Re:Stored power (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, there *is* a huge ecosystem there to destroy. It's just not rolling hills of green grass year-round. Those that do live here tend to like our surroundings.
Not that it changes much, because southern deserts are obviously the best place to put solar cells, and it should be reasonably simple to minimize ecological impact. But us desert dwellers are sick of ignorant fucks from outside saying "screw it, it's the desert." Our plants and critters are just as important as yours.
Re:stupid much? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is the difference between wind power generated "locally" and that generated in some other state? If you live in Kenosha and the wind power you use is generated near Eau Claire, that somehow makes it more yours than Minnesotans, who live closer? Or Illinoisers who live five miles away from you?
I bet you buy your bananas and oranges from that local Wisconsin farmer. And drive your car with local Wisconsin oil. And type your senseless blathering on a Wisconsin-built PC. Oh, right, we live in the modern world where people produce things in the place most suitable for production. Welcome to the 18th century.
Re:Stored power (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter where you go there's a huge ecosystem to destroy. Maybe I live in a make believe world, but i believe that a lot more things would live in the shade provided by solar panels (assuming that they're mounted) than would have been there before the panels were installed.
I don't think anybody's really theorizing about crapping all over the desert other than what it takes to build the sites. From a NIMBY aspect, this seems pretty tame.
I don't value your plants and critters more or less than mine, but I do weigh value based upon quantity of life and the uniqueness of life. Those are the two things that I think need to be weighted when you talk about environmental damage. Actually, the third thing which must be weighted is "how long will it take the ecosystem to recover". That's probably the biggest place where the desert should get it's due.
The desert is an area that is a lot less in demand than many (most?) other areas of our planet and this is a lot less destructive than many of the things that have been done in the name of power generation.
d
Re:Stored power (Score:3, Insightful)
it can be subsurface, so as to have little or no long-term impact on the environment (obviously construction would temporarily beat up the habitat, though.)
If it is built underground, you may increase energy density as well: use the water injected into the ground as hydraulic fluid to raise the covering terrain, thus the energy is stored as gravitational potential energy of elevated earth (well, this has to be NIMBY, as it regularly produces small earthquakes as it works).
If local terrain geology allows it (parallel water-impervious layers) you can make a sort of reverse artesian well [wikipedia.org], without much investment into construction works.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Insightful)
Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) are used. Very little heat is wasted. There is steam, it's in the name, wikipedia it.
Gas plants are huge. One CCGT being build in the UK at the moment is 1600MW. Try 5 years to build from project start to generation.
Re:well, here's an alternative way to look at it (Score:2, Insightful)
Not true - since the economics of most decentralized technologies depends on being able to sell the surplus back to the grid.
If you want to do that, you'll find that the existing grid is utterly incapable of accommodating any significant take-up of distributed generation. It was designed to be one-way (from the central power plant to you), not bi-directional (between you and your neighbors).
Adapting the grid to cope with this is horribly expensive, and typically doubles the cost of implementing distributed generation. Which kills the economics of the whole thing and brings us back to square one. :-(
Re:Oh, THAT'S It! (Score:2, Insightful)
We have a horse and buggy electric grid, courtesy of the descendants of Standard Oil which supposedly made horses obsolete. Infrastructure needs to come first. Should have started 40 years ago.
No, its USA grid that cannot handle wind power (Score:3, Insightful)
US grid has extremely low capacity in high-voltage lines. Any decently run power company would never allow that. But that is long term investment (lines and transformers last 40+ years) and no-one wants to put money there, esp. for some exotic feature called "redundancy". Last black-out in NYC (2003) was due to lack of redundancy in high-voltage lines.
Re:Ok... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well, here's an alternative way to look at it (Score:4, Insightful)
And solar panels only "pays for itself" because you are leeching off of your neighbors through subsidies in order to alleviate your own guilt. And of course you're ignoring the fact that there is currently no feasible way to not be dependent upon the grid. There are times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, and you'll need a grid to fill in the gaps. There is no way to store enough energy without an additional massive investment in batteries or something like that.
scale (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did I say dump the grid? I said add in a lot more solar so we won't have to massively upgrade the grid so much, because we can add to local production, directly for homes and businesses onsite, no grid required. And solar is more than just electricity, we have solar thermal as well, which could be used for a lot more hot water heating and space heating. The article is about the wind farms and not being able to use the power, my counter is a slightly larger emphasis on local production means we won't have to bump up the grid so much. Personally I would prefer an "all of the above" approach with energy, that and a much greater emphasis on dropping demand via better insulation in buildings and better and more efficient appliances and so on. All of the above, we are going to need all of it.
Solar as a stand alone source is very practical and thousands of people just in the US already use it, with battery banks. This isn't exotic or very rare anymore, man, this is 2008, the tech is solid and is out there working. When solar PV was first invented and used it cost thousands of dollars a watt, it is now down to full retail at some outlets under 4 bucks a watt, and getting better all the time.
Properly sized home battery banks can last for years, mine are ten years old this year and still work fine, despite any number of internet experts assuring me they might only last 2-3 years and need to be replaced. I heard the same thing when Priuses first came out, all sorts of internet experts claimed the batteries wouldn't last, but so far, very few people who own those cars have replaced them, many are well over one hundred thousand miles and still working.
As for leeching off the neighbors, well personally my panels weren't subsidized, regular plain full price retail. Hell, for the longest time home owners just in general terms were "leeching" off their usually poorer renting neighbors because they got a mortgage deduction and the renters didn't.
Governments offering incentives for this or that are common, it's beyond common, it is normal, it is exactly how this system works right now, the tax code is slap full of deductions or other ways to lower your taxes for this or that, so really, where's the beef? Local property taxes going to public schools, even single people and elderly with kids long gone out of the schools still pay that, because we the people folks decided it was a good idea for the commons. Corporate deductions for big business dudes to sit in a fancy and expensive restaurants and eat, and to travel around and show each other power points??? To own and operate private jets?? What the hell... Solar PV credits right now are such small potatoes compared to other forms of what could be called "tax payer leeching" it ain't funny.
And most other forms of energy delivery have been subsidized. The grid, just in general terms,centralized delivery, that whole idea, all those transmission lines are just put there, they cross private property all over, no one gets a rental check for that, the government mandates access. That's a huge subsidy that's an artificial subsidy worth who knows how many billions going to benefit private companies, but they deemed it a good enough way to benefit the "commons". Same with natural gas delivery and so on, or how about municipal water supply? The public roads? How far do you want to go with this?
Development of most forms of energy people get delivered have all benefited from tax monies or special grants like granted access, look at nuclear, untold huge big number billions in tax money went into developing it, and even today not a single plant out there has their own full private insurance, they all make use of the government-tax money-as the ultimate last insurer. If they had to pay full private rates, that would sure bump up that price to the end user.
We have a DOE, they do continual research work on all forms of energy, you name it, coal to hydro to e
Re:NO FEDS! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you know who disagrees with you? Yes, that third branch of government whose job it is to make those determinations.
But then again, declaring laws unconstitutional is also unconstitutional, so I guess it doesn't matter what is or isn't since nobody can decide and nobody has any authority to act even if somebody had decided. (Go ahead, I challenge you to find a right to judicial review in the Constitution; it's plenty easy to verify, since the entirety of the description of the judiciary is about a page long. Their job is to interpret laws, nothing more. And let's not pretend that it was some grand magnanimous gesture or Constitutional amendment that brought this power into being; John Marshall simply wanted to fuck over Thomas Jefferson and he couldn't find a legal way of doing it without inventing one. We've kept it because it works.)
Alternately, we can agree that strict construction fails entirely too often and begin to dig down into the REAL issues, namely whether these things should or shouldn't be the province of federal government. Personally I think infrastructure is the sort of thing that federal government was made for. There are simply some things so vital to the national interest that you don't want them done piecemeal; things like defense and electricity and roads and even Internet, more and more these days, are among them.
To steal a quote from West Wing, "there are times when we're 50 states and there are times when we're one nation." Absolutely no good comes of having fifty potentially contradictory decisions about our power grid or many other issues, and much harm can come from it.
The founding fathers would probably be pissed off about a lot of the things that have happened. Many of them would probably go grab their guns and start shooting. I admire that. But you know what they would do after the dust settles? They'd come up with solutions. What's your solution to fixing the power grid? "ZOMG CONSTITUTION!" is a wonderful appeal to authority, and maybe it's even the right thing to do. It solves nothing. So solve it. Solve telephone networks. Solve gas and oil. Solve Internet access. Fix education. Solve power inequities involving labor. And do it with 50 different groups of people making their own decisions about them.