Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wind power surpassing hydro in the US

I can't get excited about wind. What nobody tells you is the amount of nameplate capacity, aka full blast power, and how many hours a year or per day that fan actually PRODUCES full power.
To replace coal, you'd have to cover entire regions (entire states) with fans, and even if you do that, what happens if there's no wind and its 40 below, or no wind and it's 100?
As long as you've got the water for the year, hydropower is clean and much more reliable.

That all might change with power STORAGE technology to buffer supplhy with demand, but for now, I'm okay if coal and nukes do the work of base load power. Not so much natural gas, that's important as a chemical process catalyst as well as a direct heat source in domestic and small scale -- save the gas for chemistry and cooking, please.

Those numbers are generated using a 40 year life for both wind and hydrocarbon, well, boilers quite often last 40 years and more, wind blows forever but wind turbines only last 10-15 years.

Wind turbines are high maintenance. I wonder which energy source is cheaper in the long run with all costs calculated in.

Turbines last longer than 10 years.

Well, from your posts, I see a strong race hating streak. Do you intend to burn them for the heat to run turbines, or just stack 'em like cord wood for the next really cold spell?
I'm not a fan of blacks for the most part, primarily because of how they act, but you sir sound like a founding member of the KKK. So you have any redeeming qualities, or are you a complete waste of space?

In 1984 I was a power conversion electronics engineer and designing wind power in my spare time.

There are a lot of reasons to avoid wind power:
1) Wind power available is proportional to wind speed cubed.
This means the minimum wind speed usable is not far below the wind speed that will destroy the mill if not shut down.
What would be good is a constant 15 mph wind. The average wind speed in the USA is 6 mph.
2) Noise.
They are obnoxious and can make you sick with subsonic vibrations.
3) Kills birds and bats
4) Maintenance is horrible. My wife's uncle's ranch used them to pump water and they kept breaking.
The wind tip speed ratio is high on most props and any dirt hitting the prop will abrade it.

Where wind power is worth it:
Off line, like; a buoy, weather station, sail boat, or a small island. In 1984 there were a lot of wind power installations in remote valleys in Hawaii.

Dutch,

Interesting talk you posted there . Reminds me of a TED talk I heard awhile back, regarding the changes in energy production systems over time and how it's perhaps time for a new dynamic. "We" started out hanging around an open fire, burning sticks, dung, whatever and progressed through water wheels, animal and human powered wheels, steam, coal, generated electricity, oil, natural gas etc and now we're at the changing time of the regime.

To paraphrase a politician: It's the economics of it, stupid.

As a fellow fish person, large scale wind farms in shallow water areas, scare me a bit. Disruption of feeding, spawning, resting areas can have "interesting" effects on fish populations. Perhaps over time they'll adapt to them, but that constant low level vibration thing might need to be looked at. I'm not sure, perhaps there's been a few studies on it already, but likely nothing long term.

I'm also a proponent of distributed generation and think EVERY new home in sunny areas should come with a solar array installed, with streets oriented so roof lines maximize power generation. I'm a dreamer, can't for the life of me see why there hasn't been requirements for water cisterns in the deserts also, at least for landscaping water, so why should I ever think new homes come with solar systems installed.

Geno

I believe that wind and solar are designed to make us feel good and virtuous about saving the planet. I would like to see an objective in-depth analysis of the net gain or loss of energy for both "renewable" sources.
I can say that our Excel energy has only gone up since the State of MN and a Republican Gov. Pawlenty pushed for this mandate. I detect a con game is afoot.

Though not a fan, this said nothing about blacks. I just suggest the faucet of free everything be turned off so that the population, if it grows, is of useful people.

It's not an energy problem, it's a population problem. At the present rate, what will the world be like in a few generations if we keep dragging the dead weight?

1984??

Wind mills are a blight on the scenic beauty of our great plains. Can't stand seeing them.

You are correct, Dave. The biggest hurdle is not how it is produced, but energy storage. Batteries have made several advances over the years, but is not quite there yet. LOTS of folks are working on better batteries and less toxic alternatives. Even used batteries from electric cars are getting new roles as battery storage in off grid homes, such as Tesla's "power wall".

who'd buy a ford f-150 all electric truck if it was available?

i would if the price is right.

jeep trucks.

tundra.

price.

The mitigation costs hydro electric companies pay for the loss of fish habitat is a figure that’s conveniently left out of the equation. The costs associated with “studying” how best to accommodate the fish, control predation by pinnipeds and birds and now the big headlines are how the loss of fish, primarily chinook salmon, has hurt the whales equals untold billions of dollars keeping lesbians employed in their government “jobs”.

You are in luck: the all electric F150 was announced this week:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a25933730/ford-f-150-electric-pickup-truck-confirmed/

"Ford president Jim Farley told investors on January 16 that a battery-electric version of the F-150 (illustrated above) is in the cards, and a Ford spokesperson has confirmed to C/D that this is the case. "

just ask, and ye shall receive, or something about like that.

i've been waiting on the jeep pick'em up truck to showcase, to replace my tundra car.

my tundra car is in mid-life, bought new in oct. 2003.

a red jeep was in my sights, but if there's an electric Ford,

well then, who knows for sure? 400 miles between re-charges?

of course there's windshield wipers, headlights & heater to reduce the impact.

mostly i haul firewood in the back of the 8ft bed of my tundracar. to keep the house warm.

You put your finger on it. It's the economics, stupid!!!!!!

It really took that presentation to drive home the point that fossil fuels are becoming the MOST expensive way to generate electricity. No, wind cannot do what coal can do, but it does what it does considerably cheaper than coal. And it's getting cheaper.

The trend is that fossil fuels are limited in supply, and solar and wind are not. Demand is increasing around the world. From a macro perspective, fossil fuels absolutely will get more expensive, and solar and wind (geothermal????) WILL get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. If Alcoa can get cheaper electricity cost for one of their aluminum smelters by locating in a high sun area to get cheap solar, do you think they would? The world will change in response to the changing costs of electricity to take advantage.

One of the things older people struggle with is seeing only one change at a time, and not realizing that one change brings on several others. "wind is never going to work because it's not steady". Well, here we are, there's a LOT of wind generated electricity out there, and it's working fine. Maybe we will all plug in our electric cars and trucks, and feed the grid when the wind doesn't blow a while. Maybe there'll be an intelligent grid where freezers, dryers, water heaters step down their use when the wind doesn't blow. But it wind is cheaper, the world will adapt to use wind generated electricity.

The interesting part is that the presentation makes the case that fossil fuels will become comparatively so expensive the public will stop using them in favor of new technology. So all this gnashing of teeth about global warming will be solved by technology. Because it's about economics.

I'll let the two charts tell the tale:

there it is, in a nutshell and with feeling.

the whole thingy is related to humans and their technological advancement.

if there's a stutter step, then katy bar the door. but otherwise, it's full steam ahead.

i'm already wondering why i didn't procure a stihl electric chainsaw instead of the 391 model.

then there's the opportunity to bore into the urth and tap into the central heat core. and the sun too.

what many of us would like to see is a modification of the DNA of humans so we could go back to full fur & hair.

it'd save a ton of energy to keep us warm in the temperate and artic zones, and we could eat the vermin on our skins.

but much more seriously, we've elected to go with technology. and so it is, and so it will be. lot's of new stuff thanks to NASA.

Despite the fact that Obama championed it, I'm all for wind power. It's a good supplement to other power sources and should be a part of any future energy grid. No one source can do it all and like any other developing technology what was true 10 years ago regarding efficiency and mean time between failure has surely improved by now and will continue to improve. Hydroelectric technology is pretty mature, everything in the U.S. that can be dammed up to run a turbine has already been done. More electricity is generated by natural gas now than any other source, even coal. Natural gas in the past was burned off as a waste product of oil production so it's good to see it being used. Where our country has woefully fallen behind is the use of nuclear. We've let the whacko environmentalists scare us off from investment in nuke power which is stupid because other than wind it's the only truly clean power source we have, and it's capacity is much greater than wind will ever be. We should be building next generation nuke plants as fast as we can, but once again we let radicals jeopardize our future.