[mdlug] Router - now power.

[Aaron Kulkis]

Robert Adkins wrote:
>>> 	If that's really the case, then why is anyone bothering 
>> to produce 
>>> any wind power generating equipment.
>>>
>> Because the EPA and DoE are PAYING people to make these 
>> uneconomical contraptions.
>>
>> Without subsidies, their true costs are exposed, and they're 
>> just not profitable.  The Europeans wasted billions on these schemes.
>>
> 
>   I think that if you mix Wind Power with Solar, Hyrdoelectric and Nuclear,
> there is a potential for cleaner energy to be spread across the globe. 
> 
>   Wind isn't great all the time, neither is Solar. Both types of power
> generation can compliment one another.
> 
>   Yes, storage of power is an issue. Batteries and capacitors both need to
> take technological leaps to be more efficient and long lasting.
> 
>   Even with subsidies, I find it difficult to believe that Wind power
> technology is so expensive that it is otherwise a futile path.
> 

1. Because it's unreliable and uncontrollable, you have mismatches
between generation and usage.

2. generation/usage mismatches require storage.

3. Storage is a MAJOR loss.

   See 1st, 2nd, and 3rd laws of thermodynamics.
   And if someone is idiotic enough to talk about "undergound
   compressed air storage", then the 0th ("zero-th" law of
   thermodynamics is also invoked).

   ALL of them work AGAINST practicality for anything other
   than intermittent, non-demand energy production (example:
   pumping water from below ground to a large holding tank
   is practical (there's very little loss), but attempting to
   use it for pumping directly from the ground straight through
   to the shower head (i.e. shower pressure is directly
   proportional to current generated power) is a total loser,
   unless you don't mind losing access to your well whenever
   the air is calm.

>  
>> Windpower will never do anything more than nip at the edges 
>> of the total electric load.  Even if we had a 500 MW 
>> windpower farm, we would still have to build another 500 MW 
>> conventional or nuclear
>> boiler+steam turbing power plant to cover when there is no wind.
>> And since these steam-powered plants literally take days to 
>> go from offline to online, there's basically NO SAVINGS to 
>> building giant wind farms (other than killing birds and 
>> ruining the view).
> 
>   This is why you don't just build a Wind power only installation. You mix
> it with Solar and as methods to more efficiently store the energy become
> available, you build more renewable sources of generation to go above and
> beyond the peak so that the energy can be stored for later, when less is
> produced by wind or solar.

The Europeans picked all of the reliably windy places, and
they still couldn't get it to be economical.

Why we're repeating the European Fiasco is beyond me.

There are lots of promoted benefits, but no ACTUAL benefits.