 | Banana Methane Powered Cars, Pig Poo Power And Other Uses For Biogas | The Oil Drum | Happenings in Harmaliyah |  |
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Home Buyers Demand Short Commutes, Efficient Homes (with Backyards, Parking, lots of Square Feet)
- Streets: Utilitarian Corridors or Livable Public Space
- Summer Streets a Success!
TOD:Europe
- IEA WEO 2008 - NGLs to the Rescue?
- IEA WEO 2008 - Fossil Fuel Ultimates and CO2 Emissions Scenarios
- The IEA WEO 2008: Will coal usage be phased out?
TOD:Canada
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
TOD:ANZ
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
8 GW is good, but I think we used 3.3 TW on average in 2005 year. And I think peak was 4.7 TW. Since wind only generates at about 30% of its max rating, those wind turbines will only generate about 3 GW on average or 0.1% of our needed energy.
You are comparing one year's installations vs. the generation from the total installed base (1960 to date for FF, 1910 to date for hydro). Since we do not have to solve our problems in the next 12 months, this is a false choice.
35% capacity factor is closer for new installations. Bigger WTs go higher and get better winds (even 1 mph delta is significant). And newer seems to have fewer maintenance outages.
For the next 3 or 4 years (5 years to build a new coal plant today I think, XX years for a new nuke), conservation and negawatts are our biggest potential source of power. Wind #2.
Geothermal has great potential in the US West. I learned quite a bit about secondary cycle geothermal to exploit lower heat sources (use a working fluid other than water/steam) at WIREC. Unfortunately geothermal competes with oil & gas for drilling rigs.
And solar is coming along, with $1 billion solar PV manufacturing plants under construction.
It is *NOT* a given that much more coal is required.
Best Hopes for Conservation,
Alan
Actual wind output per hour for a 2 year period for Ontario can be found here:
http://www.ieso.ca/imoweb/marketdata/genDisclosure.asp
When you consolidate the number of hours of percent of name plate you get this graph.
Thus wind in Ontario 50% of the time is below 14% of nameplate. It never achieves nameplate output and spends 5% of the time generating nothing.