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62 comments on And the world gets 4mbpd from these guys

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Stuart Staniford on October 27, 2005 - 6:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Mmm. If the alternatives were competitive with oil at $15/bbl, we'd be doing them already.
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Engineer-Poet on October 27, 2005 - 10:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
They might not be now, but the cost of wind, solar and batteries are coming down rapidly.  The cost of oil isn't going to go down very fast even if the expensive oil gets left in the ground.

As for how competitive alternatives are, wind power is currently about 4.5¢/kWh.  If gasoline is 126,000 BTU/gallon and car engines are 20% efficient, each gallon yields about 7.4 kWh at the crankshaft; the equivalent cost of wind power is about 33¢/gallon.  That's a smidge more than the cost of raw crude at $15/bbl, and you're not going to see pollution or carbon taxes on wind.  And wind power is getting cheaper as turbines get better.

All the cost of the alternatives is in the details:  batteries, transmission, DSM, charging connections we don't have yet.  This stuff isn't together yet; we don't have the economies of scale.  But they'll build with time, if we have enough time.

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Gloomy on October 28, 2005 - 1:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The usual objection is that to get wind power you must invest a lot of oil, coal, gas and other non-renewables and so will be with the newly needed infrastructure you talked about (which would be the bigger problem I guess). It might turn out that wind power is 4.5c now because the wind turbines were built when oil was 10$ per barrel (and in addition I know that in Germany it is being heavily subsidized).

Do you have reliable estimates about wind power EROEI?

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Engineer-Poet on October 28, 2005 - 3:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Do you have reliable estimates about wind power EROEI?
On the order of 40:1 to 80:1.  At least some of those estimates are for 1.5 MW turbines; there is now a 5 megawatt turbine in testing in Germany, and some speculate that we won't hit the optimum size until we get to 10 MW.  Each increment in size puts the turbine higher and into stronger, steadier winds; this makes each square meter of disc more productive.

If wind power was an organism that multiplied using the energy it captures, it would double itself itself between 2-4 times per year.  If the average was 2.5 times per year, we would go from 14.2 billion kWh/year in 2004 to 454 billion kWh in 2006 and have all US electric demand met by wind power sometime in early 2008.

US electric demand averages about 450 GW; there is about 1.2 terawatts (2.67 times as much) of potential wind power in the continental US.

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Gloomy on October 29, 2005 - 12:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
For the sake of discussion - we will also need something to level the power up like hydrogen electrolysis/fuel cell facilities or (preferably for me) enormous flyweight systems. Consider the capital cost of building the wind farms plus building the electrical highway system plus the energy storage system and we get to why we don't do that (and unfortunately probably will not until we've burnt almost all fossil).
Mind that even in Germany now they are reevaluating nuclear because renewables are just not possible to scale up that fast.
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Engineer-Poet on October 29, 2005 - 12:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Wind power works best with good DSM, which means loads which can be adjusted in real time.  Here's a short list off the top of my head:
  • Electric water heaters.
  • Chargers for GO-HEV or electric cars.
  • Ice-storage air conditioners.
  • Zinc regeneration (by electrolysis) for zinc-air fuel cells.
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Gloomy on October 30, 2005 - 9:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That sound more complex than neccessary and I'm not even sure it would work. There would have to be a central system that controls both the production and the loads and makes sure they match. And it also leaves open the question what happens if the automous loads exceed the current production plus the potential stored power.

Another question - is 1.2 TW the net capacity or the installed capacity of the wind power potential in US? Wind turbines typically utilise on average 15-20% of their installed power.

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Engineer-Poet on October 31, 2005 - 1:03am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There would have to be a central system that controls both the production and the loads and makes sure they match.
There's already a central system which controls production (has to be); adjusting loads instead of generation would be even faster, and probably have a much lower cost.  Check the white papers at acpropulsion.com for some results of experiments on this.
And it also leaves open the question what happens if the automous loads exceed the current production plus the potential stored power.
I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
is 1.2 TW the net capacity or the installed capacity of the wind power potential in US?
Or that.  1.2 TW is the potential (average) capacity; typical capacity factor for a wind turbine in a good area is about 0.3, so peak would be about 4 TW if it was all cranking at once (very unlikely).
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Gloomy on October 31, 2005 - 10:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
"And it also leaves open the question what happens if the autonomous loads exceed the current production plus the potential stored power."

Meaning you can not control all the loads everywhere - e.g. you can not start/stop factories, hospitals, schools etc. on request. Imagine a hot sunny week during summer, most of US area is within an anticyclone (low winds) - how long will it hold? From what I've read even Denmark now is realizing the necessity to include the wind power generation within a larger grid.

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Engineer-Poet on October 31, 2005 - 2:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Meaning you can not control all the loads everywhere - e.g. you can not start/stop factories, hospitals, schools etc. on request.
When did you ever need to?  (A great many loads inside factories, schools and hospitals can be modulated, or modified to provide the desired service while throttling power demand per the needs of the utility; the facility reaps benefits as a better price on power).
Imagine a hot sunny week during summer, most of US area is within an anticyclone (low winds) - how long will it hold?
Now imagine every house sitting on ten or more tons of ice in an insulated tank, frozen when wind power was available.  A/C power demand can be trimmed down to fans and pumps without affecting climate control.  The equipment is paid for by buying power when the wind is blowing strong and it's cheap.
From what I've read even Denmark now is realizing the necessity to include the wind power generation within a larger grid.
That's so obvious it goes without saying.  It still doesn't explain why people would ignore great, big, juicy opportunities for cost-savings via DSM.
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