Slowing Wind Energy Production Suffers From Lack of Wind 224
HughPickens.com writes: Gregory Meyer reports at the Financial Times that electricity generated by U.S. wind farms fell 6 per cent in the first half of the year, even as the nation expanded wind generation capacity by 9 per cent. The reason was some of the softest air currents in 40 years, cutting power sales from wind farms to utilities. The situation is likely to intensify into the first quarter of 2016 as the El Niño weather phenomenon holds back wind speeds around much of the U.S. "We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months," says David Crane. Wind generated 4.4 per cent of US electricity last year, up from 0.4 per cent a decade earlier. But this year U.S. wind plants' "capacity factor" has averaged just a third of their total generating capacity, down from 38 per cent in 2014.
EIA noted that slightly slower wind speeds can reduce output by a disproportionately large amount. "Capacity factors for wind turbines are largely determined by wind resources," says a report from the Energy Information Administration. "Because the output from a turbine varies nonlinearly with wind speed, small decreases in wind speeds can result in much larger changes in output and, in turn, capacity factors." In January of 2015, wind speeds remained 20 to 45 percent below normal on areas of the west coast, but it was especially bad in California, Oregon, and Washington, where those levels dropped to 50 percent below normal during the month of January.
EIA noted that slightly slower wind speeds can reduce output by a disproportionately large amount. "Capacity factors for wind turbines are largely determined by wind resources," says a report from the Energy Information Administration. "Because the output from a turbine varies nonlinearly with wind speed, small decreases in wind speeds can result in much larger changes in output and, in turn, capacity factors." In January of 2015, wind speeds remained 20 to 45 percent below normal on areas of the west coast, but it was especially bad in California, Oregon, and Washington, where those levels dropped to 50 percent below normal during the month of January.
Not quite ready (Score:3, Insightful)
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Creating really bad straw-man arguments and congratulating yourself on beating reflects poorly on you, not your opponent.
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It is not supposed to 'replace', but to supplement.
Creating really bad straw-man arguments and congratulating yourself on beating reflects poorly on you, not your opponent.
Judging from discussions in the US media, it is all-or-nothing - either you replace everything with Wind Power, or you replace everything with Solar Power, or you keep running 40+ year old nuclear plants and build more coal plants
Re:Not quite ready (Score:4, Informative)
Reliable hydrocarbon?
http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/local/2015/04/07/power-outage/25411283/
An equipment failure at a switching station? That is your example?
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/10/how-national-grid-keeps-the-lights-on-when-a-large-power-stations-catches-fire/
So, the grid handles a fire pretty well, thanks for that update...
Reliable nuclear?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29058644
Wow...so they found some issues that impacted safety, shutdown the reactors safely, and are now fixing the issues? Oh the humanity! All those lost lives...that didn't happen..
What was your point again?
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These things are already part of the energy mix instead of "not quite ready". Of course a strawman of 100% wind or 100% PV is just as silly as a strawman of 100% nuclear or 100% coal. Until there is a cheap 1MW nuke there is a place for windmills, PV or gas turbines since demand is not a square wave with 500MW steps.
Re:Not quite ready (Score:4, Informative)
When a hydrocarbon or nuclear plant goes offline, how does the grid handle it? By getting power from other hydrocarbon and nuclear plants.
When wind does not produce power, how does the grid handle it? By getting power from hydrocarbon and nuclear plants.
One of those is not like the other.
Switching lights on and off really fast . . . (Score:2)
You would think that if your kid was actually finding some entertainment in sweeping the living room that you would cut some slack to playing with the power switch to make a "cool" sound.
But I digress but only a little bit. The hydrocarbon and nuclear plants are backed up by brother hydrocarbon and nuclear plants. If one goes down and another takes its pl
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They're called 'peaker plants'. They're inefficient hydrocarbon plants that are relatively cheap to build that kick in when all else fails.
But not all places need them. For example, if there's hydroelectric dams nearby you can just vary the hydroelectric output; it doesn't use any more water, it averages out.
Denmark for example is on 40% wind power right now; they use Norway's hydro to even out their power. Norway doesn't on average supply them any power; but at any instant, Denmark will be powering them, o
Every night a weather map (Score:2)
Grids are the size of continents. Take a look at the weather map tonight and see if there is no wind at all on your continent.
Re:Not quite ready (Score:4, Insightful)
A switching station has exactly nothing to do with a power plant. A switching station failure does not weigh in on the unreliability of any particular source of power.
#2 was dealt with quite well by bws111 above.
So, a planned safe shutdown counts as unreliability? Huh?
Unreliable is when you expect something to product power and nothing comes out. Shutting down a power plant isn't unreliability of the power plant, it is a planned event that happens with every type of plant. If suddenly the nuclear fuel pellets stopped producing heat, that would be unreliable, however, I don't think that has EVER happened.
What I find incredible is this quote from TFS:
"We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months," says David Crane.
You never anticipated the drop off on wind asociated with El Nino? El Nino is a cycle, it cycles between El Nino and La Nina on a pretty regular basis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How could you not plan for this to happen? Why is it such a surprise that the wind could drop off for 6 months at a time due to seasonal variances?
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You're funny, we have over 1,000 years supply of coal (sadly)
Who could have foreseen? (Score:4, Funny)
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I told you so.
We need more nuclear power.
To those that say choosing nuclear power is just choosing death from radiation than climate change I say you need to look at molten salt reactors. MSRs will "eat" radioactive waste from current nuclear reactors and make it inert, while producing electricity and valuable radioisotopes for medicine and industry.
Another response to the nuclear opponents, I thought climate change was a worldwide problem that was going to kill us all so anything must be better than that.
Output is proportional to wind velocity cubed. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Output is proportional to wind velocity cubed. (Score:4, Insightful)
The service life of wind turbines is finite. If a location proves to become less windy (which won't happen overnight) and moving the turbine isn't an option, you just take the whole thing down once it breaks for good.
Climate change will make most places more windy, though, due to more energy being stored in the atmosphere.
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Just because change is inevitable doesn't mean that we can't lessen the scale of it. If you notice your car is speeding towards a brick wall too fast to stop before crashing, you still put your foot on the brake anyway.
obvious fix (Score:5, Funny)
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More CO2 in the atmosphere also increases the density of air, giving wind more power even if its velocity stays the same.
What could go wrong? Let's do it.
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If only we had some way to warm the planet, so that there would be more wind. Perhaps by putting more CO2 in the air and letting the sun warm us up.
Well, since wind is driven by temperature differentials, reducing those differentials will actually weaken winds. :P
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No, coriolis effect produces most winds.
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"No, coriolis effect produces most winds."
So you are saying that the earth has been rotating slower lately?
Wind Wind Everywhere (Score:2)
And not a gust to reap.
I find it ironic that with 3 Category 4 Hurricanes Developing In Pacific [slashdot.org] we have a lack of wind. It seems a shame we can’t mine wind in some semi-relocatable way and store the energy in some form like maybe cracking hydrogen from seawater. Similarly for lightning. Seems we let these large energy events pass by without getting some real use out of them.
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I find it ironic that with 3 Category 4 Hurricanes Developing In Pacific [slashdot.org] we have a lack of wind.
Hurricanes in the eastern pacific tend to move west and north, and then dissipate over the cooler waters of the North Pacific. They rarely track over land, where their energy could be captured by windmills.
Here is a graphic of the tracks [wikipedia.org].
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For an AC you are most wise. However it may be a while before the economics of wind-turbines in areas with lower wind currents is practical – it would be intriguing however it there were lanes of wind that worked in an almost binary fashion allowing for more smooth, more continuous output -- it might even been an under-researched idea.
Attention contrarian investors: (Score:2)
There's a reason they're called "wind farms": like a farms they have good years and bad years.
El Niños come every five to seven years, and then go away. It's called the "El Niño/Southern Oscillation", or ENSO, and we're bound to get the *opposite* end of ENSO some time in the next couple years (the so-called La Niña). So if this news has people dumping their wind stocks, this'd be a great year to buy. Then dump them in three years when the news sounds insanely good.
Who knew? (Score:2)
My fault. (Score:2)
I found activated carbon dog treats. I'm surprised the % down isn't more.
In my defense it was necessary...
Where's Al Gore when you need him? (Score:2)
>> ...some of the softest air currents in 40 years... "We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months," says David Crane.
You mean you thought Al Gore was right around ever-more energetic winds, while ignoring historical wind trends?
So wait... (Score:2)
....the fact that the wind varies is news to someone? Seriously?
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Gee... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's almost like our ancestors gave up on wind power and build power stations for a reason....
And the wind farm finances collapse like clockwork (Score:5, Insightful)
It was said when these things went in that their claims of being able to be self supporting would not pan out. That they would need extensive subsidies forever and that they would need COAL or NATURAL GAS back ups to cover their load whenever they didn't provide the power.
All comments of this nature were treated like a naughty boy throwing spiders at the girls.
A sign of immaturity, anti social behavior, and really a good reason to have their fathers give them a stern talking to...
Because... when someone points out logical flaws in a power grid design, the best response is to address them like you're a kindergarten teacher and their attempts at rational dialogue are merely an expression of immaturity. Because after all... real adults... real mature and well adjusted people... they just immediately buy into whatever whomever the politician is that tells them what to believe. And anyone that doesn't some flavor of village idiot or deviant... probably a pedophile. Nothing screams pedophilia like questioning dodgy power and financial estimates of a wind farm.
So where is this going? Same place it went last time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Am I against wind? Not at all. I think its great. I am against large amounts of public money going to build big wind farms in clusters. I'd prefer that the projects either be privately funded so it isn't just a scam to get grant money and then run when they project dries up. Or I'd like the money to instead be pushed to encourage home owners and building owners to install renewable power on their roofs and in their property thus negating the possibility that given companies are colluding or bribing the government to get contracts because the home owners will be under no obligation to buy from a given company.
Law of unintended consequences (Score:2)
The fuel of the future
Environmental lunacy in Europe
The Economist
Apr 6th 2013
WHICH source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union? Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.) Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither. By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood.
In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use i
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on the issue of wood, I've been intrigued by this thing for awhile:
http://www.allpowerlabs.com/pr... [allpowerlabs.com]
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Am I against wind? Not at all. I think its great. I am against large amounts of public money going to build big wind farms in clusters.
Hate to break it to you, but all energy is heavily subsidised one way or another. At least with wind subsidies we aren't just paying people to pollute the environment we live in.
All comments of this nature were treated like a naughty boy throwing spiders at the girls.
The argument was never that we wouldn't need other sources of energy, that was always a straw man. Now who is being childish?
The simple fact is that when you have a lot of wind energy you need less from dirty sources. It also creates financial incentives to build coal, gas and nuclear plants are can more efficiently scale their outp
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Bigger is better by what ratio?
And are you taking into consideration the increased efficiency of local consumption, lower transmission costs, better utilization of realestate as roofs are used for generation versus some random place in the wilderness? Etc?
What does better mean here?
I have no doubt you can get more megawatts per dollar invested. I just question how many of those megawatts actually get to the home, what additional costs are involved in the transmission network, the often not disclosed cost of
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That's not what I said... and even if I did... and I didn't... there are quite a few wind advocates that have said that it doesn't matter that the wind is variable. Which is really their way of saying that they simply don't care if it is... and if the concept creates problems that are not being appropriately calculated on the cost sheets.
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and thar she blows!
Off yarn port bow is the spout of the very beastie I was telling tales o'.
*harpoons creature*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
No wind? Not surprising (Score:2)
I can tell you where the wind went, it's all here in Canada due to the upcoming federal election. Just wait until Oct 20th, you'll be good to go, as everyone sighs in relief that it's finally over.
Buncha blowhards...gawd I hate how these things get more and more like a circus every cycle...
Numbers (Score:2)
Lots of number. Little facts. It reads like there has been a small change in wind turbine output, not the dramatic decline the article suggests. El Niño effects aside, is this just something to actually worry abou
Portable turbine (Score:2)
Just need a big portable turbine to stick in front of Donald Trump's mouth - there's enough wind there to power an entire city.
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You need it in front of all the GOP. They are all loud mouth idiots that moves faster than a piece of paper in a tornado.
Change everthing (Score:2)
No matter what your stand is on climate change we are running out of affordable oil and coal. We have to set up a renewable infrastructure while we still have the fossil fuel energy and wealth to do it. We can't power our current civilization with renewables so we have to change our civilization. A pastoral agricultural based civilization can get by with intermittent power. Facilities that need uninterrupted power can invest in battery storage and bio fueled peaking plants.
After over forty years of farm wor
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And coal prices dropped because nat gas prices, along with WInd prices, are much lower than electricity from coal . In fact, the ONLY thing keeping it up to this price is that fact that we co
This is why we need nukes and storage (Score:2, Insightful)
We absolutely need to have Solar and WInd. BUT, it should not be more than 33% of our capacity. We NEED Nukes to replace fi
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Convince the banks and it may happen. Convince the government to fund research into small, less capital intensive reactors and it may happen. Otherwise it's only China, India and Russia that are interested because they are not afraid to spend a lot of money on single project if it has a good enough result.
Only the really active stuff but that is the stuff that currently needs careful storage of the sort that added to the fuckup at
Weather is not the same every day or year (Score:2)
It's international news FFS that California is having a drier year than normal so has a serious fire problem this year. So if the weather is different this year to other years, what does that tell everyone apart from total idiots (or people pretending to be total idiots for political reasons) about it being likely that the amount of wind energy is going to be di
Giant fans... (Score:2)
We need giant solar-powered fans right next to the wind farms to give them a good power boost.
What, not climate change??? (Score:2)
I'm disappointed the article didn't blame it on climate change. At least they did link to an article on climate change from the middle of the text!
Congress was right .. (Score:2)
This evidence supports my (funded) belief so it must be correct.
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...my gut's takeaway from skimming TFS figured it also meant baselines, ie anything below N force won't turn blades at all...
Correct.
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AKA: Senators.
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Shouldn't that be A Mighty Wind?
If youÂre going to make a fart joke...
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Re:caused by climate change (Score:4, Insightful)
No - we just hit peak wind faster than anyone expected.
Re:caused by climate change (Score:5, Funny)
Quick!
Tax something!
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Yes! Let's tax those evil rich coal producers so we can give the money to those evil rich windmill makers!
This is what I don't get about those tax-n-subsidize proponents that want to subsidize things like wind, solar, and what not. The argument goes something like, "Those evil fossil fuel people are making money off the poor! They take our money and poison the planet! We need to make them pay!" Okay, so we tax them. What do we do with that tax income then?
I'll tell you where that money goes. We subsi
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in case anyone's brain is napping (Score:2)
In case anyone took this comment seriously, because I know some on here wish that were so:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba... [twimg.com]
That's a typical storm system. Notice 3/4 of the country is covered with clouds. It typically takes about a week for a storm system to pass across the country. The next week, it may be sunny or there may be another storm system.
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But on average, far more cost effective.
... which makes it less stupid. Wind may occasionally drop in intensity, but sunlight drops in intensity every night.
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Still, people use less energy at night, so PVs aren't as silly as they look.
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It's simple... (Score:5, Insightful)
Build up and put in the safer nuclear reactors we have nowadays...and supplement them with wind and solar.
There is no need to just have a monoculture when it comes to power.
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Actually nuclear energy is more expensive than wind, and the lead times on nuclear reactors are huge, whereas wind turbines can be put up in a few years at most.
Wind is not a direct replacement for nuclear, but it mostly doesn't matter. Also, variable power sources don't mesh well with nuclear reactors; nuclear reactors are expensive infrastructure, and have to be run flat out to be cost effective.
For these reasons, as well as others, we're unlikely to see large widespread deployments of nuclear reactors an
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Also nuclear power doesn't allow you to respond to fluctuating power demand. It's great for base load power requirements where you can set the output at a specific level and leave it running. But you can't just dial back the output by 10% or throttle it up by 5% with 5 minutes notice. For that type of flexibility you need hydroelectric (dams) or natural gas.
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Because it massively shortens the life span of the turbines and a lot of other components. That's why load following with coal fired plants isn't done very much any more. One tiny one I worked at used to have one unit at a time follow a mine dragline and that resulted in a lot of thermal fatigue and other problems over less than a decade.
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Actually, you can change nuclear power pretty quickly (provided you don't want a complete shutdown) you just shove the rods in a bit and it cools down quite rapidly.
The problem is that it just makes the electricity more expensive when you do that; when you run at 80% power, the energy is 20% more expensive, and it wasn't cheap to start with.
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Both cost and lead times on nuclear power are artificial. I agree in its current form there's little we can do, but if we were to consider wide spread use of nuclear again then we first need to overhaul the regulatory requirements which in the west gimp the investment in nuclear.
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"Jimmy Carter put a presidential order with a permanent moratorium on any and all power reactor construction."
Not so. Carter's order was against the US building a recycling plant for nuclear waste. And yes, there is a huge separation between deaths from nuclear and from the next runner up, but it's in favor of nuclear: http://www.the9billion.com/201... [the9billion.com]
Re:It's simple... (Score:4, Informative)
Just compare the deaths per terawatt compared to more stable energy sources, even coal, and you will find that there is a HUGE separation between nuclear and the next runner up, even wind. Just this fact along gives credence to the people who rather live without power than deal with nuclear.
I'm pretty sure that there is as you said a HUGE separation between per terawatt for nuclear vs other power sources -- just not in the direction you think. For coal, death and poisoning are considered standard operation, rather than a catastrophe -- and that's not even counting global warming.
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Nukes are way too dangerous. There is a reason why Jimmy Carter put a presidential order with a permanent moratorium on any and all power reactor construction.
The nuclear reactor I operated was brought back into production mode (Plutonium) during the Regan years.
The reactor was dedicated by John F. Kennedy so built prior to 1963. A lot of modernization was under way during that time.
At the same time 5 new plants were being built of which one was completed, the rest a financial disaster. http://www.king5.com/story/tec... [king5.com]
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Deaths per terawatt? You think there are actually statistics for that?
Well.. when there is an accident at a nuclear power plant everybody knows it and somebody will count the bodies. When millions of people get cancer and die some years earlier than they otherwise might have without coal exhaust nobody can identify any one specific carcinogen source that made it happen. And lets not get the increased suffering for asthmatics.
Or were you planning on moving the entire population into the desert where cloudy
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Nuclear power is so reliable, safe, and inexpensive that using wind and solar becomes nonsensical.
Reliable and safe yes, inexpensive no. Economics and a very long lead time to build are the major issues holding back the use of nukes. Numbers vary but solar and wind are now cheaper per kwh than importing brown coal to countries like India. Costs per kwh are still steadily dropping for wind and solar, whereas costs for nukes are stagnant or rising.
people will freeze to death because the sun didn't shine and the wind didn't blow when we needed it to..snip...people will die needlessly.
That's just silly fear mongering, every bit as ignorant an mis-informed as the anti-nuke people you are arguing against. Local weather variations are irrelevant
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First, nuclear reactors reduce the amount of radioactive material. The energy that comes from a nuclear reaction is from taking something radioactive and making it not radioactive. The only reason that nuclear "waste" is considered "waste" right now is because the old boiler reactors are terribly inefficient.
Sorry but that is really inane. The fuel has very low radioactivity (700 million years half-life for U235) and you create Strontium, Cesium and all sorts of crap with it.
I'm also not convinced that there exists really better tech than the gen2 1970s designs, but that may be fine. We'd know better if some non-breeder reactor designs were built for commercial exploitation rather than merely existing on paper.
I wonder if you are out of your mind, wishing fission products away is stupid.
I believe gas turbines a
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You mean those things that drop to 60% efficiency when over 80% charged?
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Great idea! Except that it would double the cost of an energy source that is already three times the cost of coal.
So, not such a great idea. How about we try something else, like nuclear power?
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Batteries are just horribly inefficient boxes of future environmental contamination. The better ones also include hefty portions of strip-mined rare earth metals. I do hope that someday batteries are better but a lot of very smart people have been working on the problem for over a century. There is still a long way to go before it's solved and given the law of diminishing returns I'm not convinced it even can be.
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HVDC supergrids generate no power whatsoever. Now plug some nuclear reactors into that and then you'd really have something that could drive civilization and prosperity for mankind forward.
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All we really need are some good batteries and portable wind turbines. Put them in the path of the latest hurricane and we are all set.
But that is the problem. There are few Atlantic hurricanes during El Nino years.
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We need LFTRs (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) to be built and we won't have to worry about the damned wind.
Nerds like LFTRs. In theory, they solve a lot of problems. Yet, nobody actually builds them. Why? They seem like such an obvious solution. Cheap, safe, endless fuel supply, etc. So why isn't it happening?
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It sort o
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It's very amusing to see "cheap, safe" mentioned in association with liquid fluoride
Umm ... they don't have any "liquid fluoride". They use a liquid SALT that contains fluoride.
Chlorine gas will kill you. Chlorine based salt makes your food taste better. Big difference.
safe if extreme care is taken with very reactive liquid metals
There are no "liquid metals" either, unless you consider salt to be "metal". Salt is not "reactive".
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A generator is just a motor with different circuitry. Maybe they could turn the windmills into giant fans whenever more wind is needed like on hot, breezeless days.
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And here I was thinking that 'peak wind' just meant Congress.
If we want there to be more wind, subsidize it. Subsidies also get you more of something.
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God made the fusion reactor in the sky; oil is for lubrication.
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