Government Approves First US Offshore Wind Farm 432
RobotRunAmok writes "In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean energy, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today he was approving the nation's first offshore wind farm, the controversial Cape Wind project off of Cape Cod. The project has undergone years of environmental review and political maneuvering, including opposition from the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose home overlooks Nantucket Sound, and from Wampanoag Indian tribes who complained that the 130 turbines, which would stand more than 400 feet above the ocean surface, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed. But George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, hailed the decision, saying it was 'a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.'"
Flashback! (Score:2, Informative)
'a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence.'" I thought that was why the Department of Energy was created.
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Re:Flashback! (Score:4, Insightful)
How many worthwhile places have you gone in a single step?
AFK
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well Nimby is hard to defeat.
Objections for marine deployment of this type of farm are mostly navigational (ships mostly skirt this area beyond nantucket Island but smaller craft and fishing vessels could see collisions), radar interference, and a whole bunch of people that want to push even visual impacts onto someone else. (Bird strikes are for the most part gross exaggerations, long since debunked.)
Driving in the west, I find the wind farms something majestic. I suppose I would not want one directly over my house, which is why the off shore solution is perfect for the eastern seaboard. These things are quiet, and have a proven track record of reliability. Standing up to the salt air may be an issue.
The Indian tribes build casinos on their own ancestral sacred grounds but somehow object to wind farms out on the water. This was never a sea-going tribe. But a few perks from Uncle Ted and sure enough a spirit dreamed up just last night will be annoyed.
Its odd that Kennedy's objections were enough to hold this project off under republican administrations, but as soon as he is dead, even the Democrats decide its good to go.
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Funny)
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What proof have they that this area was above sea level centuries ago? I think we have more proof to the contrary. We have proof that the backbay part of Boston was BELOW sea level until they brought in fill to raise
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Because they're all haunted.
Jeez, haven't you seen any movies?
Offshore casinos! (Score:3, Funny)
Once they get the rights to build casinos alongside the wind farms they'll come on board.
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Interesting)
Standing up to the salt air may be an issue.
The Dutch [home.wxs.nl] have had them for a couple of years [nytimes.com], so there's at least some precedent and any issues they encounter are likely to give a 4 - 5 year heads up to this initiative.
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Flashback! (Score:4, Informative)
Vertical axis turbines (which is what I think you're describing) aren't as efficient as horizontal axis turbines where every part of the blade on every part of the cycle experiences maximum lift from the wind.
The massive horizontal axis turbines that have a single support column with a rounded top instead of a scaffolding (like the Altamont Pass turbines, which encouraged raptors to nest on them causing much of the problem) are more than good enough with regard to bird strikes
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I love the suggestion that these turbines somehow reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We don't use any foreign oil whatsoever to generate electricity. Sorry Mr. Salazar.
Re:Flashback! (Score:5, Interesting)
We don't use any foreign oil whatsoever to generate electricity.
You got proof of that?
We use oil to generate 3% of our electricity. It's bigger than all "alternative" sources (like wind farms) combined. If we use less oil for electricity, we will need less oil overall, which will reduce demand for foreign and domestic oil alike.
If we have more electricity, we may use more electricity for home heating or cars, so this works on both supply and demand.
So unless you've got a credible citation for your claim, I'm going to say fie.
Re:Flashback! (Score:4, Informative)
the U.S. Energy Information Administration would disagree with you there. They claim (data from 2008, report released Jan 21st 2010) that 1.1% of the U.S. electrical power is generated from Petroleum products while 3.1% is generated by "Other Renewables" (solar, wind, etc)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html [doe.gov]
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Flashback! (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is possible argument. Our dependance on foreign oil is clearly for transportation and not electricity generation, but our use of oil for transportation will always be financially motivated. The cheaper we can make electricity by investing in the future of renewable energy, the easier a transition to eletric (hybrid and full) cars can be. It is already possible to recharge your hybrid car with electricity, just as you can refuel it at the pump.
About damn time. (Score:3, Funny)
As a resident of SE Mass, I'm thrilled. Just think: Massachusetts has enough windy coastline to power most of the state with turbine farms. All we need to do is go through this process another 30-40 times! We should be done by the year 2500 or so!
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I wonder how far off shore one would need to place a floating nuclear plant so that it is far enough away.
Assuming the worst devastation in the worst case scenario, how far would the damage go, and thus how far it would need to be out at sea to not affect the coast.
It's a crappy thing to do to the ocean, but still.
Another downside is that after a certain distance out, it is no longer US soil.
While I have no doubt at all that if our navy wanted to 'own' a small patch of ocean to park a plant on, they have en
Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've visited the power plant and they have a special visitor center where you can learn all about the specific processes used, from mining the fissionables to storing the waste in huge steel containers. But the best part about the exhibit is the cloud chamber [wikipedia.org], you can see all kinds of different radiation particles in the box of about 1 square meter (really awesome!). It really emphasized the fact that absolutely *no* radiation leaks from the reactor, the only trails you could see were random in all directions. In fact the kind gentlemen who showed us around told us that every single coal plant exhausts more radioactive radiation in one day than a nuclear power plant in a year!
I can also honestly say that I want nuclear power and I want it in my own backyard. Sadly nuclear is still on the decline here, mostly because people are very misinformed by the eco-mafia... If they knew that the alternative (coal realistically) is so much worse for the environment and health of locals (and that modern nuclear is completely different from Chernobyl) they would not protest. So I guess the only way is to properly inform people (so good move by E-On with their visitor center).
Nuclear Reactors Don't Release Radiation Usually (Score:3, Insightful)
But it really sucks when they do. A non-trivial but undisclosed amount of radioactivity was released from three mile island. It must be significant, as many families have won lawsuits against them.
Modern reactor designs are getting safer but they're certainly not fail-safe. I agree that it's better than coal, but the "eco-mafia" has some legit concerns. Engineers still don't fully understand everything that happens in a pressurized water reactor. Trust me on this, I've heard it first hand from engineer
Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Informative)
your a fucking retard, i this is the 3rd hit on google.
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your a fucking retard
Oh, the irony.
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your a fucking retard, i this is the 3rd hit on google.
Normally I don't comment on others' grammar/punctuation, but that's gold.
Hahahaha. Retard indeed.
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Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Funny)
When the wind stops, just connect a whole lot of fans to Flander's house.
Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Informative)
And when the wind stops, make sure you have candles handy...
This may just be a wry comment, and not an attempt at serious criticism, but this point is often brought up to criticize both solar and wind power. And certainly it sounds like a serious problem since, after all, existing power systems are on-line all the time, and having a major aspect of the power system dependent on something as fickle as weather introduces serious unresolved problems into power grid management.
Doesn't it??
No, it doesn't.
The reality is that even "base load" (constant output) plants get shut down for extended periods for maintenance of various kinds, not infrequently unpredictably due to equipment problems. And, due to large fluctuations in power demand across the daily cycle (which can be unpredictable due to weather) there must be special expensive peaking power plants anyway.
It turns out that managing a diverse national power grid has a substantial component of solar and wind power is exactly like managing one that doesn't. A lot of solar and wind power necessarily means many plants spread over a vast geographical area, and while the wind may die (or the sky may cloud over) down in one place, it will be blowing hard (or shining brightly) in others. The power fluctuations are no worse than fluctuation in demand, and both are addressed in the same way - by having peaking capacity in with costly peaking plants, or some energy storage method, and by having redundancy in base load plant capacity.
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It turns out that managing a diverse national power grid has a substantial component of solar and wind power is exactly like managing one that doesn't.
No it really isn't. Adding in intermittent supply to a system with intermittent demand makes the supply/demand balance much harder to get right.
The power fluctuations are no worse than fluctuation in demand
When everyone wakes up and turns on their toaster in the morning power usage goes up. This is highly predictable behaviour and over the course of morning, the demand will trend up. The rate of this change is a little bit variable, but it has nothing on wind farm variability.
Increases of +/- 30% are regularly observed over 15 minute periods on individual wind farms,
Re:About damn time. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but what happens when all the politician's move away because these wind turbines are an eyesore? Is it easy to relocate the turbines to wherever the politicians relocate to?
Re:About damn time. (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually think they are rather beautiful. Certainly not a "natural" beauty, but there is something majestic about them as a feat of engineering. Now the noise is what would bother me, but I think they are planned to be sufficiently far away were that wouldn't be a problem.
They only valid complaint about this wind farm was (Score:3, Insightful)
The Wampanoag Indian tribes, I totally respect their position about the burial ground.
Ted Kennedy was just a hypocrite. He was all for green energy EXCEPT when it was in his back yard.
It’s about time this was passed. Now maybe they can put these wind farms on the Great Lakes also.
Re:They only valid complaint about this wind farm (Score:4, Informative)
If Christians had said that it messed up sunrise services for Easter would you have been respecting their position too?
Mass transit authorities put trains under cemeteries all the time, why should these guys be any different?
Oh and they have really good leadership too
http://boston.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/campaignviolations021109.htm [fbi.gov]
"In February 2009 Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe chairman Glenn A. Marshall pleaded guilty to federal charges of violations of campaign finance law, tax fraud, wire fraud, and Social Security fraud – all in connection with the effort to secure federal recognition for the tribe."
Re:They only valid complaint about this wind farm (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually thought that was the least reasonable argument. Saying "somebody was buried there once" is not a good argument for, well, much of anything. Spiritual beliefs aside, the one thing we're sure about today is that you aren't using your body any more when you're dead. That pretty much precludes your having any rights regarding it. How many people have been buried at sea? How dare you lay an undersea cable, or eat a fish? The whole thing is ridiculous. Everyone else has to buy land if they want their corpse to stay there, why should they be any different? I think it's been conclusively shown that being somewhere first is not enough, unfortunate or no.
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Yea! (Score:3, Insightful)
All the other objections were just bullcrap political cover for the real reason the project never got off the ground until now; Senator Kennedy didn't want to see the turbines in HIS view. Now that he has went to Hell progress will be rapid.
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Senator Kennedy didn't want to see the turbines in HIS view. Now that he has went to Hell progress will be rapid.
Not for everyone: By the same token geothermal energy is doomed...
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Senator Kennedy didn't want to see the turbines in HIS view.
For those of us who are not intimate with American politics -- why is this moderated insightful, flamebait and troll? And which Kennedy would that be?
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It's insightful because it is claimed that it was largely Ted Kennedy's hypocrisy of wanting alternati
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The people who talk about "extreme leftist tendencies" are themselves very far to the right. They'd be the right fringe of the mainstream right-of-center party in most countries.
The "extreme leftist tendencies" they speak of would be the left fringe of the mainstream right-of-center party in most countries.
The two-party system in the US means there isn't a lot of ideological variety here.
Re:Yea! (Score:4, Informative)
> For those of us who are not intimate with American politics -- why is this moderated insightful, flamebait and troll?
Because Senator Edward M. "Swim Bitch!" Kennedy is a very polarizing figure. To people like me he represents everything wrong with Progressivism and the Democrat Party. A repulsive scion of a gangster family who made a career out of demagoguery and debauchery. To them he was sort of a god, the Liberal Lion of the Senate and the last fading glory of Camelot.
But everyone agrees with this much: he was he was a very powerful politician with essentially a lifetime appointment to the Senate who single handedly stopped the Cape Cod wind project cold in its tracks while he lived.
I'm not very green but I certainly like the idea of wind energy in places like that where it is both abundant and close enough to population centers to make delivery simple. That couldn't happen because one wicked yet powerful man stood in the way. He is now safely roasting in Hell and now we can tap a practical source of energy. Yea!
Cape Wind (Score:3, Insightful)
For those of us who are not intimate with American politics -- why is this moderated insightful, flamebait and troll? And which Kennedy would that be?
Because it is true and simultaneously embarrassing to parts of the electorate. Ted Kennedy [wikipedia.org] is who we are talking about here though the Kennedy family in general matters for this story - Ted until his death was merely the most prominent member of the family in recent years. He ostensibly supported green energy but when it was proposed to put a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts (his home state) he opposed it or at least opposed this particular wind farm. The opposition is more complicated [wikipedia.org] than many h
Figures (Score:3, Funny)
How it should have been advertised (Score:2, Funny)
Government approves offshore wind farm, with the caveat that they are responsible for the cleanup of wind spills.
Good move... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know people in the area. They told me the biggest objections came from people living in NYC and Conn. who had summer and weekend homes in the area. The thing is some 15 miles off of the coast. The people most bothered will be on their yachts miles out to sea.
Basically we have some choices;
1) Invest in newer, cleaner forms of energy
or
2) continue to destroy the environment, kill oil rig workers and coal miners, and rely on oppressive regimes in oil producing nations, e.g., Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela.
AFAIAC, this is a sudden outbreak of common sense.
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One simple fact that a lot of people miss. Industrial and contstruction accidents kill people. Has been a fact of life since the pyramids.
You die just as dead falling off a 400 foot tower as you do from a burning oil rig. In both cases it is highly likely the body is never recovered. You die just as badly buried in the earth in some mine as you do when there is a mishap involving a wind turbine or the power grid it is connected to.
This isn't going to save any lives. They might die differently, but thes
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Just because it is still possible to die doesn't mean the probabilities are the same. I'm willing to heavily bet that a wind farm is significantly safer for many, many reasons.
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i'm not sure you under stand the size of these wind mills..
a person can fit inside the gearbox normally.. they aren't going to be siting on top of the thing..
there is a risk of falling yes - 400 feet max into water.. (a lot safer than 400 feet to ground)
there is also the risk of rotating equipment.. same as ANY industrial plant that does anything really.
the people that would maintain these are normally trained very well in the hazards of their jobs.. i would expect the danger to be no greater than for the p
Re:Good move... (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL, it's the "all software has bugs, therefore all software is equally buggy" fallacy recycled for safety evaluation.
All jobs involve risk, therefore all jobs are equally risky! Every form of power generation involves the possibility that someone will die, ergo changing forms of power generation will not change the number of people who die.
Yeah.
By the way, unlike monolithic power generation, individual turbines in a wind farm can be shut down without significantly reducing the overall output. Shutting them down for maintenance is exactly what they're going to do.
Re:Good move... (Score:4, Informative)
there is zero chance you'll be able to come up with a convincing case for one oil rig being less dangerous to workers than any practical size of wind farm
The grandparent post is definitely talking out his ass, but it's an interesting question, so I ran the numbers myself.
No question more people die mining coal than running wind power, but since coal is a much bigger industry, I think the fairest comparison is number of accidental deaths per unit electricity produced.
US coal mine deaths, 2005-2009: 30/year
http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coal2009yearend.asp [msha.gov]
US coal energy produced, 2008: 22.4 quads (or exajoules)
Heat -> Electricity efficiency factor: 30%
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/energy.html [llnl.gov]
US energy from coal: 6.7 exajoules/year
Worldwide wind power deaths, 2000-2006: At least 15, avg 2.7/year
http://www.windaction.org/documents/1318 [windaction.org]
Worldwide wind power installed capacity, avg 2001-2006: 40,000 MW
http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php [wwindea.org]
Average capacity factor for wind plants: 25%
Estimated world wind energy output, 2001-2006 avg: 0.32 exajoules/year
Bottom line:
US Coal mining deaths per exajoule electricity produced: 4.5
World wind power deaths per exajoule electricity produced: at least 8.4
Surprised? I sure was! I expect the wind power number to drop dramatically as the industry develops, of course.
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How many deaths are attributable to pollution from coal power? How many deaths are attributable to diseases that are commonly acquired from mining coal?
Your figures are effectively worthless.
Re:Good move... (Score:4, Informative)
I used world wind power and energy stats rather than US-only to avoid problems with small-number statistics.
But this is a fair comparison: for the years in question, *all* fatal wind turbine accidents were in Western countries with workplace safety laws at least as strong as U.S. laws. The majority were in the U.S., Germany, and England, with a few in Denmark, New Zealand, etc.
Comparing world turbine deaths to world coal deaths would *not* be fair, because up till very recently, turbine work was only done in developed countries. I picked these data specifically to *avoid* the bias you describe.
Re:Good move... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know people in the area. They told me the biggest objections came from people living in NYC and Conn. who had summer and weekend homes in the area. The thing is some 15 miles off of the coast. The people most bothered will be on their yachts miles out to sea.
Can you really blame them? Take a look at the estimated visual impact of the wind farm:
/sarcasm
http://www.capewind.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=9&page=1 [capewind.org]
I don't know about you but I'd obviously rather stab my eyes out and burn down my vacation home than see those ugly filthy things on the horizon.
MIT has something to say (Score:3, Informative)
Pardon the bad source, but I don't have time to really look into it.
wiff! (Score:5, Interesting)
America's first? Really? Are we that far behind the times?
Sad.
It is new... (Score:4, Funny)
There aren't that many and all but a hand full were just opened in years that start with "20" (e.g. there are only 5 that opened in "19xx" and they are all "199x"...)
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Ocean-side complaints? (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd think that people with ocean-side real estate would want something like this. Either that or we can just burn some more coal or oil and their houses can underwater instead. Would they still be land owners?
Wind + Solar = Easier peak power demand (Score:5, Insightful)
There seem to be a large amount of /. posters who don't understand one of the biggest immediate benefits to wind+solar energy. Currently, if you don't want brown outs you have to build an eletric grid that can supply as much power as everyone could every try and use at one time. This causes us to spend way more in for large capacity power plants, and also lose a lot of energy in the distribution of energy itself.
So, when are the peak energy demands for the USA? In the middle of the day, and In the summer. Hmm, when are the peak production times for Wind and Solar (its the same!).
To fully move off things like coal, we would need to have better ways of storing energy, people are already working on this (gyroscopes, batteries, pumping water uphill), but that is the second step, not the first.
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So, when are the peak energy demands for the USA? In the middle of the day, and In the summer. Hmm, when are the peak production times for Wind and Solar (its the same!).
This is not true. Wind farms in Tehachapi, CA are most active during the morning and evening hours due to sudden pressure changes in the desert as a result of heating and cooling. Pressures equalize by the middle of the day and the middle of the night, precisely during peak power (needed heating or cooling). Granted, that's only one location, but it's a big one. Solar, on the other hand, is more or less most active during peak power.
Wind sites in California (Score:5, Interesting)
California has only a few good sites for land wind farms [ca.gov] - Altamont Pass, Pacheco Pass, Mojave, and Solano County are the big ones. All four now have big wind farms. Other than Altamont Pass, which is a big migratory bird corridor and has row after row of windmills, there have been few complaints. There aren't many remaining on-shore sites in California; we're about done with onshore wind. The Cape Cod people have been whining about their wind farm for a decade. Tough.
Offshore of Calfornia looks promising. Take a look at that high-wind area close to shore, west of Humbolt County. There's also a huge high wind zone south of Santa Barbara, and most of it is still on the continental shelf, so the water isn't too deep. I doubt there will be objections; Santa Barbara has already had off-shore oil wells.
Its a start (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:that's great but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear doesn't produce that much waste. Especially if we could reprocess the fuel. In the end you get a few tons of waste that's hot for a couple hundred years, but that can be dealt with better than the tons of crap coal spews out a day. It's just that we've had 30+ years of people scaremongering about Nuclear energy.
Re:that's great but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The waste is denser than lead, keep in mind. It sounds like a lot, but in volume it really isn't.
The newest thinking for the waste is really simple and, frankly, surprising it wasn't considered before: Use deep drilling technology to drill a half dozen miles deep, drop it down there, and plug the hole behind it. Problem solved.
Even weirder idea!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Use nuclear waste as ... wait for it ...
radiation shielding.
One of the issues with nuclear energy is absorbing the high energy neutrons to generate heat. We can line the reactors with nuclear waste and the neutron bombardment would transmutate it from 100s of years to safe in decades.
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Hundreds of tons a year... Cry me a river.
As we speak hundreds of millions of tons of radioactive nuclear waste are getting blown out the top of chimney stacks of coal plants every year.
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Or maybe we could put it back where it came from in the first place. Surely now that it has expended enough energy to generate all kinds of electricity, it must be less dangerous now that it was before?
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That argument does not hold. Every power plant has downtimes for scheduled maintainance or because of accidents. You need backup power plants anyway for that. The fact that the downtimes happen more often for wind power than for nuclear power does not make it a lot more expensive or complicated to provide the backup power.
For some of these scenarious (emergency shutdown of a power plant) you need special power plants (gas turbines usually) that can quickly produce additional power. Both coal and nuclear are
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Did you even bother to read my post?
Anything that can cover the emergency shutdown of a nuclear power plant (e.g. provide a Gigawatt electrical power within minutes without advance notice) can cope with the variations in wind power output.
These solutions exist and are part of the grid. It does not really matter how often you have to turn them on once you built them.
A few years ago the summer in europe was so hot, that they almost had to shut down all nuclear power plants along the river rhine at once becaus
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Did you even bother to read my post?
Anything that can cover the emergency shutdown of a nuclear power plant (e.g. provide a Gigawatt electrical power within minutes without advance notice) can cope with the variations in wind power output.
These solutions exist and are part of the grid. It does not really matter how often you have to turn them on once you built them.
A few years ago the summer in europe was so hot, that they almost had to shut down all nuclear power plants along the river rhine at once because there wasn't enough water for cooling. Again: Situations like these are less frequent with nuclear or coal compared to wind, but that does not make it any easier to provide technology to deal with them.
It's just the same as with UPS for servers: Mine has not been needed since I purchased it. In a devlopment country I might have need for it once a week. Still the one I installed in my home is not less expensive or simpler.
Right you are! And I might add that existing power grids already have to handle large short term power supply-demand mismatches due to the unpredictable nature of the... wait for it ... WEATHER! Sulimma cites hot weather shutting down nukes in Europe, but very commonly everywhere hot or cold weather (over huge areas) cause huge power demand fluctuations. That this occurs on the demand side rather than the supply side makes not a whot of difference in managing it.
Managing a nation power grid with lots of win
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Re:that's great but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been living and working on Air Force bases for the last 15 years. People in the industry know how to find and take advantage of wind conditions as they are absolutley critical to airfield operations both in runway placement as well as ambient wind speeds that assist in the takeoff and landing of aircraft. This has been going on for nearly a century, so I think it is safe to say that the guys spending the big bucks on windfarms know what they are doing.
The down time excuse are pretty weak at best, and are usually held up by the NIMBY crowd.
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Apples and oranges. Scheduled downtime is just that - scheduled. You can plan around it, sometimes months or years in advance. Windpower's downtime isn't scheduled or predictable. Nor do entire plants shut down for accidents with any great regularity. So yes, it is more expensive and more complicated to provide backup power - as you cannot predict the frequency, duration, or level of backup required.
Apples and oranges, and then there are peaches.
Coal power plants undergo unplanned shutdowns about 6% of the time (nuclear plants are more reliable), in addition to the 6.5% of the time in planned outages. Day-night power demand variation is around 30%, and daily peak power demand can vary unpredictably (in the exact same sense that the wind is unpredictable) by 10% due to extreme hot or cold weather.
Wind power doesn't add any new level of grid instability until its use level exceeds 10% (i.e is at least
nuclear waste not that much (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear Waste: Amounts and On-Site Storage [nei.org]
"Over the past four decades, the entire industry has produced about 62,500 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. If used fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, this would cover a football field about seven yards deep. "
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Part of what causes coastal wind is the temperature gradient between land and sea - the farther out you go, the weaker this effect will be. I'm not sure how much weaker, but it is something to consider.
Re:that's great but... (Score:4, Informative)
A study showed that in the Netherlands, one third of the electricity [olino.org] could be reliably generated from wind. There is a link to the Ph.D. thesis at the bottom of the article.
The Netherlands has a long coast line, which makes it a very good location for wind energy. I don't know if the US has enough good locations to place wind farms to produce one third of electricity, but if it does not, then the problem with fluctuations in how much power is supplied to the grid will only be easier to manage.
In other words, you indeed cannot get 100% of your electricity from wind, but this is no reason not to build lots of wind farms today since you're nowhere near the limit yet.
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Yeah, you just need to find the places where people don't mind the ugly behemoths rumbling all the time, high enough to be in a constant wind.
Sorta like the mountaintops that have become national parks and forestlands out here in the west. Cut down a bunch of those damn trees, move the hippie-treehuggers living in them to the city, and put up turbines. Or let the hippies live in the turbines in exchange for m
Hydrogen Electroloysis? (Score:2)
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If we are at a tipping point where any day now the sea may rise 200 feet, hadn't we better start actually doing something? While I am sure this project will make people feel better about themselves and that some small step has been taken, it doesn't really change anything.
No less coal will be burned to generate electricity.
So how about if we shut down all the coal plants RIGHT NOW and figure out what to replace them with in the next 10 years or so? If the problem is really as bad as some claim it to be, a
I disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Thorium Reactors ARE breeder reactors.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Stupid hippie.
I was sortof following your argument until there...
On the long run, any coal you don't dig up and burn for energy is an ace up your sleeve on the international energy market: "Sure, we are interested in your coal, but better make a new offer else we'll have a closer look at our cubic kilometers of coal still buried under waiting-to-be-blown up mountains. And it would be a shame if something happened to the coal price, right?"
Re:Moron Greens (Score:5, Insightful)
Electricity can be used to power electric cars.
To support a large number of electric cars you need a decent generating capacity and a good network.
If people have electric cars they don't need cars that run on petrol.
Petrol comes from oil.
More electric cars means less oil needed since there are fewer petrol cars.
Less oil needed means less dependence on foreign oil.
Stupid narrow-minded thinker!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't really refute the GP's argument. Instead, you switch to an electric-car-as-savior argument. But wind turbines do nothing to address the deficiencies of electric cars (it's not like they're being held back by a shortage of electricity).
Electric cars would be great, if they didn't suck at doing important things that petrol-powered cars do. So until some dream of yours which you can't really articulate comes true, your electric-car-as-savior theory remains no more than an optimist's dream.
And, so,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My point wasn't that electric cars will solve everything, I was questioning the GP's assertion that being able to generate lots of power cheaply (assuming a balanced network that this build would be a part of) can lead to results that don't always appear to be immediately linked.
He dismissed the "reduce dependence on oil" argument by saying that only a small percentage of power is generated by burning oil.
My point is that access to cheap energy can help remove one of the barriers to electric cars, which wou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, if you take a short-sighted view.
But energy is fungible, and it gets more and more fungible as technology advances and energy gets more expensive.
Every bit of coal we save now is a bit of synthetic gasoline we can make 300 years in the future.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why won't electric cars significantly reduce our carbon output?" -- "Because they're still recharged by coal power plants."
"Why won't replacing coal power plants significantly reduce our carbon output?" -- "Because cars are still powered by oil."
Focus on any one solution and of course you'll find that it's not the entirety of the problem. That's why you don't focus on only one solution.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except electric cars, even if 100% powered by electricity from gasoline plants, would still be a massive improvement. Internal combustion engines have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 30%, but large stationary plants can afford to be much more efficient. Collecting the energy from a gasoline plant, piping it through wires to a person's home, putting it into a battery, taking it out of the battery, and operating an electric motor adds up (or, rather, multiplies down) to a total efficiency of... 48%. That'
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Setting aside the fallacy that we can ever be "Energy dependent" or stop consuming "foreign oil" if we want to remain a first world country,
The fallacy is that we can remain a "first world" country without reducing our oil consumption past the point where we can satisfy our needs domestically. The question isn't do we stop consuming foreign oil. The question is, do we do it deliberately before we are forced by the depletion of all sources including domestic, or do we neglect the problem until it's too la
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
- don't block the sunset as much for the same reason
I was with you up until this point. This is Massachusetts, the east coast. As the Chili Peppers said, "The sun may rise in the east at least it settles in a final location."
Re:Greed Jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)