There is no 100% solution to our energy needs so why dismiss a system which can reduce our dependency on fossil fuels even 10%.
If you want to reduce usage/dependance of fossil fuels, nuclear power is the answer.. not solar, not wind. A small reactor could replace a slew of panels and turbines easily..
Okay nuclear power is the answer now can we build a plant next to your home? People are building homes this past decade using thermal exchange in water or earth combined with solar panels and can sell back excess energy back to power companies. For decades those who have made billions in oil have blocked laws and backed political campaigns to make sure the cash kept rolling in at the cost of our air, land and water. For a website that attracts a lot of people interested in technology a majority here appear to be science deniers.
This Internet forum isn’t interested in technology. It’s interested in Apple products, and things related to Apple (which occasionally includes its competitors). As far as the nuts and bolts of how the products work, what the forum knows is pretty shallow. The fundamental aspects of electricity (like P = AV or P = nCfV^2) aren’t really understood. Think about the number times people say this or that battery has this or that many mAH and directly translating it to how long a device could last, or regurgitating runtime claims from OEMs. So, your average community of folks.
For this forum, since it doesn’t have user voting on posts and is basically lightly moderated, it means a just a few people can ruin the tenor of conversation for the entire forum. A lot of these anti-wind or anti-renewable comments read like standard boilerplate commentary from fossil fuel interests. I don’t think the posters really understand what they are saying beyond their tabloid or troll value.
What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.
Birds are being killed off in the USA on par with the rest of the world and wind power is not even a thing here. It's environmental reasons such as pollution and loss of habitat that killing our birds
Loss of habitat occurs when acres upon acres are cleared for the installation of solar farms.
Loss of habitat occurs when you have construction crews driving over hundreds/thousands of acres of land for a few years as the installation of the wind farms occurs.
And this loss of habitat is not limited to only birds.
"It’s likely then that the U.S. has over 500 million more parking spaces than registered vehicles. For every 100 square meters of roadway, there is about 50 square meters of parking space. In sum, the amount of land devoted roadways and parking in the U.S. can cover the entire state of West Virginia—that’s about 24,000 square miles or 62,000 square kilometers. If we use the study’s middle of the road estimates, a third of that number—about the size of New Jersey—is solely devoted to parking. Clearly, we have too much parking space in this country. The glut of free and cheap parking artificially lowers the cost of driving, encouraging people to stay in their cars, planners to pave more land, and politicians to look unfavorably on mass transit."
Remember that number that I posted above about how much area in square miles would be needed in solar panels to provide power to all of the U.S?
That number was 21,250 square miles and all of those parking spaces in excess of the number of vehicles in operation in the U.S. comes to 24,000 square miles.
More to the point, solar installations are best in the arid west and southwest, where habitat losses for indigenous species could be managed effectively with large scale solar installations.
Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”. The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous. 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades. Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine. Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????
Give me a break
energy cost to mine and manufacture a turbine is regained in 6 months of operating energy production, on average. On high-end of distribution, payback can be as much as 2 years under worst production conditions (Sovocool et al) , still WAY ahead of ~20 yr lifetime. (vs fossil gets further in energy arrears the longer it operates.) US average 2.6 avian deaths per year per turbine, 1x to 20 times less avian deaths per MWh than the birds killed by fossil generation (due to pollution, thermal, and fuel supply chain effects). Multiple studies show no health effects on humans except cases of homes much closer than siting guidelines, very rare. BTW, these are the standard anti-renewables talking points, long debunked with peer-reviewed studies.
Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”. The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous. 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades. Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine. Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????
Give me a break
energy cost to mine and manufacture a turbine is regained in 6 months of operating energy production, on average. On high-end of distribution, payback can be as much as 2 years under worst production conditions (Sovocool et al) , still WAY ahead of ~20 yr lifetime. (vs fossil gets further in energy arrears the longer it operates.) US average 2.6 avian deaths per year per turbine, 1x to 20 times less avian deaths per MWh than the birds killed by fossil generation (due to pollution, thermal, and fuel supply chain effects). Multiple studies show no health effects on humans except cases of homes much closer than siting guidelines, very rare. BTW, these are the standard anti-renewables talking points, long debunked with peer-reviewed studies.
Oh 'peer-reviewed' it must be true then. Not like 'peer-reviewed' turned out to be utter nonsense ever...
Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”. The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous. 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades. Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine. Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????
Give me a break
energy cost to mine and manufacture a turbine is regained in 6 months of operating energy production, on average. On high-end of distribution, payback can be as much as 2 years under worst production conditions (Sovocool et al) , still WAY ahead of ~20 yr lifetime. (vs fossil gets further in energy arrears the longer it operates.) US average 2.6 avian deaths per year per turbine, 1x to 20 times less avian deaths per MWh than the birds killed by fossil generation (due to pollution, thermal, and fuel supply chain effects). Multiple studies show no health effects on humans except cases of homes much closer than siting guidelines, very rare. BTW, these are the standard anti-renewables talking points, long debunked with peer-reviewed studies.
Oh 'peer-reviewed' it must be true then. Not like 'peer-reviewed' turned out to be utter nonsense ever...
All things being equal I'll take peer-reviewed studies over unsourced internet ranting 11 times out of every 10. The number of studies in question attests to their validity, you should try reading them.
Worlds ending guys. Greta told me. Just think of the children, won't you? Pahaha The world is way more likely to 'end' thanks to gullible people who think organizations such as the IPCC have credibility. Whilst you pat yourself on the head and virtue signal how much plant food you have removed, your countries diminished efficiency will have transferred its wealth towards despotic regimes who ignored and masterminded your hysteria. That shift in the world's balance of power, you probably don't want to do that.
What happened to the mountain of dead birds the windmills killed? The Chinese probably ate them.
Birds are being killed off in the USA on par with the rest of the world and wind power is not even a thing here. It's environmental reasons such as pollution and loss of habitat that killing our birds
Read an article once about a wind turbine that killed a bald eagle. Even though the wind farm was encouraged by government grant the company that owned the wind turbine was still fined for killing the eagle.
My son is an engineer in the power industry. He designs add-ons to existing power plants that captures the exhaust, scrubs it, extracts the heat from it and uses the heat to boil more water and generate more electricity. They are called HRSGs (heat recovery steam generators). He also was involved in the design of a containment vessel for a solar plant in Nevada that uses liquid salt to store energy at night. During the day, hundreds of mirrors focus sunlight on a tower that has a large containment vessel on the top and liquifies the sodium which is then pumped into large storage vessels that can boil water for steam.
So I listen to my son when he explains things. We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply. The world’s energy needs are growing, not shrinking. Activists like Greta Thunberg think that fossil fuels can and should be eliminated altogether. Wind and solar will never be able to meet the energy needs but the activists don’t accept that.
1. Coal needs to be banned.
2. Natural gas needs to be banned.
3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
4. Hydroelectric dams are out because of migrating fish don’t you know.
5. Fusion is always 20 more years away and always has been “just around the corner” for decades.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply.
We will within a century. There needs to be a push to stop it using it within 50 years, but the market forces in favor of renewables + storage means fossil fuels as an energy source will be gone within a century, relegating to low single digits share of the energy mix. It is inevitable by economics alone. The only way that it doesn’t is if regulation and politicians stop it, which has been occurring and likely will occur in the future, but the market forces means renewables + storage will be the dominant >90% share eventually.
1. Coal needs to be banned. 2. Natural gas needs to be banned. 3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
Coal is already headed for the exits in most modern countries. England was what, 80% 50 years ago, and today they run days to weeks without burning coal. Their natural gas plants will be next to the exit as offshore wind gets built out. They will need solar too for their increasingly hotter summers and AC needs.
In 2019, renewables generated more energy than coal in Texas for the first time ever (22% to 21%). For a few days only, but a milestone to where energy production is going. In the USA, renewables also generated more energy than coal for the first time ever this year too.
In Texas, there’s currently very little solar and off-shore wind. When those get built out over the next decade, renewable share will be in the 50% range, and there will be days, weeks, where no coal will be burned at all. The gas peaker plants will be the first type of gas plant to decline as storage gets built out. Every year there will be milestones like this in various parts of the world. As said before, I want this transition to go faster.
Solar, wind and storage is already competitive to gas per kWH. It’s what, 2x cheaper than coal per kWHr, and 3x cheaper than nuclear and coal+CCS. Heck, there are situations where it is just cheaper to build renewables than to run an existing thermal plant. With economies of scale and efficiencies still to be had, solar, wind and storage costs per kHWr can drop by another factor of 2. It makes no sense to build a thermal plant when 2x, 3x, 4x as much capacity can be built out using renewables for the same price.
If nuclear was cheaper than coal in the 80s and 90s, market forces would have meant a lot more nuclear would have been built out then. Didn’t happen. As long as nuclear stays expensive, it is going to stay as a nation-state capital investment, and it’s pretty tough to have that when there other means that are cheaper. If it was the same cost as gas, the USA would be building them en masse right now.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
The rich NIMBYers will eventually lose, and those off-shore wind farms will go up. There are other ultra rich people trying to make money of those off-shore wind farms, and and entire industrial complex transitioning to a different means of energy production, with big pushes from the public, will be trying to get them there.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
As already been said, it will take the land area equivalent to about a 150x150 mile square, or about 15m acres, to power the USA electricity needs, let alone a big city. But that’s back of the envelope concept stuff to show that it is more than possible. In reality, there will be solar farms, rooftop solar, over-water solar, and even agrivoltaics and solar+ranching. It’s going to be integrated into normalcy, just as fossil fuel generation is normal now.
Batteries aren’t needed to provide power overnight, and they won’t be built for that. Over night can be powered by wind or hydro, etc. Batteries will be needed for the same reasons peaker or reserve plants are. Reserve, cover for issues, provide voltage regulation, etc.
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Weird point. Well, of course Dyson Spheres and space solar is complete science fiction at this point. Renewables replacing fossil fuels? It’s already happening.
In the ten million year timescale though, something has to be done as solar output is increasing through time. The Earth has to be moved to a higher orbit, L1 solar farm and reflector, CO2 has to be drawn down to 250 ppm, etc. A L1 solar farm/reflector would be a tiny tiny not even a step towards something akin to a Dyson ring. Solar farms at the Sun-Earth L1, L4, L5 points with microwave transmission to orbital colonies? Nuclear would be fine, presuming it is cheaper than space solar.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
Uh, gazillions of dollars are being put into CCS. We will eventually have to draw CO2 out of the air and bury it, in all its forms (farming, concrete, direct air capture, etc). In the future, CCS technology will be used to make gas that can power airplanes, whatever, and replace the need to extract it out of the ground. Heck, you can have a refrigerator sized machine that uses rooftype solar to make gas out of the air, saving it for heating purposes (cooking, heater, etc). Not now, but eventually.
What the USA is probably really behind in is HVDC transmission. A lot of money needs to be put into building a HVDC interstate highway as it were.
We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply.
We will within a century. There needs to be a push to stop it using it within 50 years, but the market forces in favor of renewables + storage means fossil fuels as an energy source will be gone within a century, relegating to low single digits share of the energy mix. It is inevitable by economics alone. The only way that it doesn’t is if regulation and politicians stop it, which has been occurring and likely will occur in the future, but the market forces means renewables + storage will be the dominant >90% share eventually.
1. Coal needs to be banned. 2. Natural gas needs to be banned. 3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
Coal is already headed for the exits in most modern countries. England was what, 80% 50 years ago, and today they run days to weeks without burning coal. Their natural gas plants will be next to the exit as offshore wind gets built out. They will need solar too for their increasingly hotter summers and AC needs.
In 2019, renewables generated more energy than coal in Texas for the first time ever (22% to 21%). For a few days only, but a milestone to where energy production is going. In the USA, renewables also generated more energy than coal for the first time ever this year too.
In Texas, there’s currently very little solar and off-shore wind. When those get built out over the next decade, renewable share will be in the 50% range, and there will be days, weeks, where no coal will be burned at all. The gas peaker plants will be the first type of gas plant to decline as storage gets built out. Every year there will be milestones like this in various parts of the world. As said before, I want this transition to go faster.
Solar, wind and storage is already competitive to gas per kWH. It’s what, 2x cheaper than coal per kWHr, and 3x cheaper than nuclear and coal+CCS. Heck, there are situations where it is just cheaper to build renewables than to run an existing thermal plant. With economies of scale and efficiencies still to be had, solar, wind and storage costs per kHWr can drop by another factor of 2. It makes no sense to build a thermal plant when 2x, 3x, 4x as much capacity can be built out using renewables for the same price.
If nuclear was cheaper than coal in the 80s and 90s, market forces would have meant a lot more nuclear would have been built out then. Didn’t happen. As long as nuclear stays expensive, it is going to stay as a nation-state capital investment, and it’s pretty tough to have that when there other means that are cheaper. If it was the same cost as gas, the USA would be building them en masse right now.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
The rich NIMBYers will eventually lose, and those off-shore wind farms will go up. There are other ultra rich people trying to make money of those off-shore wind farms, and and entire industrial complex transitioning to a different means of energy production, with big pushes from the public, will be trying to get them there.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
As already been said, it will take the land area equivalent to about a 150x150 mile square, or about 15m acres, to power the USA electricity needs, let alone a big city. But that’s back of the envelope concept stuff to show that it is more than possible. In reality, there will be solar farms, rooftop solar, over-water solar, and even agrivoltaics and solar+ranching. It’s going to be integrated into normalcy, just as fossil fuel generation is normal now.
Batteries aren’t needed to provide power overnight, and they won’t be built for that. Over night can be powered by wind or hydro, etc. Batteries will be needed for the same reasons peaker or reserve plants are. Reserve, cover for issues, provide voltage regulation, etc.
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Weird point. Well, of course Dyson Spheres and space solar is complete science fiction at this point. Renewables replacing fossil fuels? It’s already happening.
In the ten million year timescale though, something has to be done as solar output is increasing through time. The Earth has to be moved to a higher orbit, L1 solar farm and reflector, CO2 has to be drawn down to 250 ppm, etc. A L1 solar farm/reflector would be a tiny tiny not even a step towards something akin to a Dyson ring. Solar farms at the Sun-Earth L1, L4, L5 points with microwave transmission to orbital colonies? Nuclear would be fine, presuming it is cheaper than space solar.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
Uh, gazillions of dollars are being put into CCS. We will eventually have to draw CO2 out of the air and bury it, in all its forms (farming, concrete, direct air capture, etc). In the future, CCS technology will be used to make gas that can power airplanes, whatever, and replace the need to extract it out of the ground. Heck, you can have a refrigerator sized machine that uses rooftype solar to make gas out of the air, saving it for heating purposes (cooking, heater, etc). Not now, but eventually.
What the USA is probably really behind in is HVDC transmission. A lot of money needs to be put into building a HVDC interstate highway as it were.
Wishful thinking nonsense. Flowery environmental utopian predictions but none based on engineering realities. Just because it works out on paper doesn’t mean it works in the field. As I said, the world’s energy needs are growing exponentially and solar, wind ain’t gonna to do it.
We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply.
We will within a century. There needs to be a push to stop it using it within 50 years, but the market forces in favor of renewables + storage means fossil fuels as an energy source will be gone within a century, relegating to low single digits share of the energy mix. It is inevitable by economics alone. The only way that it doesn’t is if regulation and politicians stop it, which has been occurring and likely will occur in the future, but the market forces means renewables + storage will be the dominant >90% share eventually.
1. Coal needs to be banned. 2. Natural gas needs to be banned. 3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
Coal is already headed for the exits in most modern countries. England was what, 80% 50 years ago, and today they run days to weeks without burning coal. Their natural gas plants will be next to the exit as offshore wind gets built out. They will need solar too for their increasingly hotter summers and AC needs.
In 2019, renewables generated more energy than coal in Texas for the first time ever (22% to 21%). For a few days only, but a milestone to where energy production is going. In the USA, renewables also generated more energy than coal for the first time ever this year too.
In Texas, there’s currently very little solar and off-shore wind. When those get built out over the next decade, renewable share will be in the 50% range, and there will be days, weeks, where no coal will be burned at all. The gas peaker plants will be the first type of gas plant to decline as storage gets built out. Every year there will be milestones like this in various parts of the world. As said before, I want this transition to go faster.
Solar, wind and storage is already competitive to gas per kWH. It’s what, 2x cheaper than coal per kWHr, and 3x cheaper than nuclear and coal+CCS. Heck, there are situations where it is just cheaper to build renewables than to run an existing thermal plant. With economies of scale and efficiencies still to be had, solar, wind and storage costs per kHWr can drop by another factor of 2. It makes no sense to build a thermal plant when 2x, 3x, 4x as much capacity can be built out using renewables for the same price.
If nuclear was cheaper than coal in the 80s and 90s, market forces would have meant a lot more nuclear would have been built out then. Didn’t happen. As long as nuclear stays expensive, it is going to stay as a nation-state capital investment, and it’s pretty tough to have that when there other means that are cheaper. If it was the same cost as gas, the USA would be building them en masse right now.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
The rich NIMBYers will eventually lose, and those off-shore wind farms will go up. There are other ultra rich people trying to make money of those off-shore wind farms, and and entire industrial complex transitioning to a different means of energy production, with big pushes from the public, will be trying to get them there.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
As already been said, it will take the land area equivalent to about a 150x150 mile square, or about 15m acres, to power the USA electricity needs, let alone a big city. But that’s back of the envelope concept stuff to show that it is more than possible. In reality, there will be solar farms, rooftop solar, over-water solar, and even agrivoltaics and solar+ranching. It’s going to be integrated into normalcy, just as fossil fuel generation is normal now.
Batteries aren’t needed to provide power overnight, and they won’t be built for that. Over night can be powered by wind or hydro, etc. Batteries will be needed for the same reasons peaker or reserve plants are. Reserve, cover for issues, provide voltage regulation, etc.
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Weird point. Well, of course Dyson Spheres and space solar is complete science fiction at this point. Renewables replacing fossil fuels? It’s already happening.
In the ten million year timescale though, something has to be done as solar output is increasing through time. The Earth has to be moved to a higher orbit, L1 solar farm and reflector, CO2 has to be drawn down to 250 ppm, etc. A L1 solar farm/reflector would be a tiny tiny not even a step towards something akin to a Dyson ring. Solar farms at the Sun-Earth L1, L4, L5 points with microwave transmission to orbital colonies? Nuclear would be fine, presuming it is cheaper than space solar.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
Uh, gazillions of dollars are being put into CCS. We will eventually have to draw CO2 out of the air and bury it, in all its forms (farming, concrete, direct air capture, etc). In the future, CCS technology will be used to make gas that can power airplanes, whatever, and replace the need to extract it out of the ground. Heck, you can have a refrigerator sized machine that uses rooftype solar to make gas out of the air, saving it for heating purposes (cooking, heater, etc). Not now, but eventually.
What the USA is probably really behind in is HVDC transmission. A lot of money needs to be put into building a HVDC interstate highway as it were.
Wishful thinking nonsense. Flowery environmental utopian predictions but none based on engineering realities. Just because it works out on paper doesn’t mean it works in the field. As I said, the world’s energy needs are growing exponentially and solar, wind ain’t gonna to do it.
Then the solution is to restrict and reduce the world's energy needs.
Wishful thinking nonsense. Flowery environmental utopian predictions but none based on engineering realities. Just because it works out on paper doesn’t mean it works in the field. As I said, the world’s energy needs are growing exponentially and solar, wind ain’t gonna to do it.
Why are you saying this? I gave you examples if it working, in the field. All technology transitions start on paper, and there’s more than enough to support growing demand. That’s what the back of envelope math is telling us. There aren’t any engineering impossibilities. It’s all working in the field and they are riding economies of scale as we speak.
Apple isn’t funding renewables, like this China fund, just because it is the right thing to do. A big reason, but not the only reason. They’ve done the math and it is a win-win. They are funding these renewable energy projects because they are net-net cheaper over the long run, and it nudges the market towards more renewables quicker, allowing them to have cheaper energy (virtuous cycle) as time goes on, and it meets their company “green” goals. You don’t sign 10, 20, 30 year power purchase agreements without doing the math.
There aren’t any new coal plants being built in the USA, and most of the existing ones are too expensive to operate and have sunset dates, with some requiring subsidies to stay operational. Gas and renewables are killing coal and nuclear. Pure market economics. Renewables without storage is already competitive to natural gas. Renewables+storage is trending to have cheaper $/kWH than gas, and gas will be next to decline when that starts happening.
England is an example of this. It used to be powered almost entirely by coal, where what, the industrial revolution got its start almost 200 years ago. Look at this plot of Great Britain (England? UK? Never can keep the difference in my head) electricity generation since 2006:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb Coal had a seasonal peak of 39% share in 2012. It has been sitting at less than 5% for the past year or so. That drop took 7 years! Their gas share has also been declining from a seasonal peak of about 47% to now about 36%. They are being replaced by renewables and hopefully carbon neutral “bioenergy”. Their off-shore wind farms are starting to come online this year. This signals the start of a steeper decline for gas. Off-shore wind farms have capacity factors from 40% to 60%, and as more get built, they get cheaper. It’s a virtuous cycle.
Texas is on the same path. They have 22 GW of wind in 2018, basically zero solar and zero storage. They will have about 30 GW in 2020 if the planned developments pan out. There is about 30 GW of solar in planning. Texas’s peak power usage is about 80 GW. Renewables are about 20% share now. In 5 to 10 years, probably 40 to 50%, with most coal plants shut down and gas plants starting to be retired. It’s going to look a lot like the plot for England above. This isn’t been done in Texas because “politics”. It’s being done because of money. This will be repeated over and over as more and more states add renewables.
I’m always going to say do it faster. We need more and more energy to draw CO2 out of the air, bury it, turn it into gas for whatever needs, etc.
Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”. The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous. 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades. Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine. Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????
Give me a break
China is actually one of the countries building next generation nuclear reactors (so-called thorium or pebble bed reactors) which are far safer and cleaner than the nuclear reactors we’re familiar with. And they are a consistent power source. Wind farms have too many negatives.
We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply.
We will within a century. There needs to be a push to stop it using it within 50 years, but the market forces in favor of renewables + storage means fossil fuels as an energy source will be gone within a century, relegating to low single digits share of the energy mix. It is inevitable by economics alone. The only way that it doesn’t is if regulation and politicians stop it, which has been occurring and likely will occur in the future, but the market forces means renewables + storage will be the dominant >90% share eventually.
1. Coal needs to be banned. 2. Natural gas needs to be banned. 3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
Coal is already headed for the exits in most modern countries. England was what, 80% 50 years ago, and today they run days to weeks without burning coal. Their natural gas plants will be next to the exit as offshore wind gets built out. They will need solar too for their increasingly hotter summers and AC needs.
In 2019, renewables generated more energy than coal in Texas for the first time ever (22% to 21%). For a few days only, but a milestone to where energy production is going. In the USA, renewables also generated more energy than coal for the first time ever this year too.
In Texas, there’s currently very little solar and off-shore wind. When those get built out over the next decade, renewable share will be in the 50% range, and there will be days, weeks, where no coal will be burned at all. The gas peaker plants will be the first type of gas plant to decline as storage gets built out. Every year there will be milestones like this in various parts of the world. As said before, I want this transition to go faster.
Solar, wind and storage is already competitive to gas per kWH. It’s what, 2x cheaper than coal per kWHr, and 3x cheaper than nuclear and coal+CCS. Heck, there are situations where it is just cheaper to build renewables than to run an existing thermal plant. With economies of scale and efficiencies still to be had, solar, wind and storage costs per kHWr can drop by another factor of 2. It makes no sense to build a thermal plant when 2x, 3x, 4x as much capacity can be built out using renewables for the same price.
If nuclear was cheaper than coal in the 80s and 90s, market forces would have meant a lot more nuclear would have been built out then. Didn’t happen. As long as nuclear stays expensive, it is going to stay as a nation-state capital investment, and it’s pretty tough to have that when there other means that are cheaper. If it was the same cost as gas, the USA would be building them en masse right now.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
The rich NIMBYers will eventually lose, and those off-shore wind farms will go up. There are other ultra rich people trying to make money of those off-shore wind farms, and and entire industrial complex transitioning to a different means of energy production, with big pushes from the public, will be trying to get them there.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
As already been said, it will take the land area equivalent to about a 150x150 mile square, or about 15m acres, to power the USA electricity needs, let alone a big city. But that’s back of the envelope concept stuff to show that it is more than possible. In reality, there will be solar farms, rooftop solar, over-water solar, and even agrivoltaics and solar+ranching. It’s going to be integrated into normalcy, just as fossil fuel generation is normal now.
Batteries aren’t needed to provide power overnight, and they won’t be built for that. Over night can be powered by wind or hydro, etc. Batteries will be needed for the same reasons peaker or reserve plants are. Reserve, cover for issues, provide voltage regulation, etc.
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Weird point. Well, of course Dyson Spheres and space solar is complete science fiction at this point. Renewables replacing fossil fuels? It’s already happening.
In the ten million year timescale though, something has to be done as solar output is increasing through time. The Earth has to be moved to a higher orbit, L1 solar farm and reflector, CO2 has to be drawn down to 250 ppm, etc. A L1 solar farm/reflector would be a tiny tiny not even a step towards something akin to a Dyson ring. Solar farms at the Sun-Earth L1, L4, L5 points with microwave transmission to orbital colonies? Nuclear would be fine, presuming it is cheaper than space solar.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
Uh, gazillions of dollars are being put into CCS. We will eventually have to draw CO2 out of the air and bury it, in all its forms (farming, concrete, direct air capture, etc). In the future, CCS technology will be used to make gas that can power airplanes, whatever, and replace the need to extract it out of the ground. Heck, you can have a refrigerator sized machine that uses rooftype solar to make gas out of the air, saving it for heating purposes (cooking, heater, etc). Not now, but eventually.
What the USA is probably really behind in is HVDC transmission. A lot of money needs to be put into building a HVDC interstate highway as it were.
Wishful thinking nonsense. Flowery environmental utopian predictions but none based on engineering realities. Just because it works out on paper doesn’t mean it works in the field. As I said, the world’s energy needs are growing exponentially and solar, wind ain’t gonna to do it.
Then the solution is to restrict and reduce the world's energy needs.
Code words for rationing electricity. How many hours a day are you willing to go without electricity? Ever see a satellite picture of North Korea at night?
Wind farms don’t provide “clean energy”. The amount of materials and fossil fuels required to make the three blades and base is enormous. 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Then there is the devastating effect the number of birds, bats and other insects killed by the blades. Also the long term health effects of living within a miles of the turbine. Oh and what happens when the wind is not blowing????
Give me a break
China is actually one of the countries building next generation nuclear reactors (so-called thorium or pebble bed reactors) which are far safer and cleaner than the nuclear reactors we’re familiar with. And they are a consistent power source. Wind farms have too many negatives.
As I said in a previous post, the activists have so completely scared the American public about nuclear power over the past decades that no nuclear reactor , no matter how safe, will ever be built here again.
Comments
For this forum, since it doesn’t have user voting on posts and is basically lightly moderated, it means a just a few people can ruin the tenor of conversation for the entire forum. A lot of these anti-wind or anti-renewable comments read like standard boilerplate commentary from fossil fuel interests. I don’t think the posters really understand what they are saying beyond their tabloid or troll value.
Remember that number that I posted above about how much area in square miles would be needed in solar panels to provide power to all of the U.S?
That number was 21,250 square miles and all of those parking spaces in excess of the number of vehicles in operation in the U.S. comes to 24,000 square miles.
More to the point, solar installations are best in the arid west and southwest, where habitat losses for indigenous species could be managed effectively with large scale solar installations.
The world is way more likely to 'end' thanks to gullible people who think organizations such as the IPCC have credibility.
Whilst you pat yourself on the head and virtue signal how much plant food you have removed, your countries diminished efficiency will have transferred its wealth towards despotic regimes who ignored and masterminded your hysteria.
That shift in the world's balance of power, you probably don't want to do that.
Just think of the children.
So I listen to my son when he explains things. We will never, in the foreseeable future, ever stop using fossil fuels as a base energy supply. The world’s energy needs are growing, not shrinking. Activists like Greta Thunberg think that fossil fuels can and should be eliminated altogether. Wind and solar will never be able to meet the energy needs but the activists don’t accept that.
1. Coal needs to be banned.
2. Natural gas needs to be banned.
3. Nuclear is out because the same activists scared the public so badly it made nuclear the spawn of Satan. Even so, a few environmentalists want to take a second look. Good luck with that.
4. Hydroelectric dams are out because of migrating fish don’t you know.
5. Fusion is always 20 more years away and always has been “just around the corner” for decades.
6. Wind farms kill animals and they are eyesores. I remember when a wind farm was proposed off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The ultra rich who live there went bananas because it would ruin their view they said. It didn’t happen.
7. How many million acres of solar panels would be needed to power Chicago or New York City. How big would the storage batteries have to be to keep the city running at night?
8. Dyson Sphere? Massive orbiting solar reflectors? Complete science fiction at this point.
Sure, we can do more to improve the carbon and CO2 issues but don’t buy into the argument that the entire world can run on safe, non-polluting, renewable energy. It can’t. Fossil fuels are here to stay for the foreseeable future. How about more research on trapping and containing carbon and CO2?
Coal is already headed for the exits in most modern countries. England was what, 80% 50 years ago, and today they run days to weeks without burning coal. Their natural gas plants will be next to the exit as offshore wind gets built out. They will need solar too for their increasingly hotter summers and AC needs.
In 2019, renewables generated more energy than coal in Texas for the first time ever (22% to 21%). For a few days only, but a milestone to where energy production is going. In the USA, renewables also generated more energy than coal for the first time ever this year too.
In Texas, there’s currently very little solar and off-shore wind. When those get built out over the next decade, renewable share will be in the 50% range, and there will be days, weeks, where no coal will be burned at all. The gas peaker plants will be the first type of gas plant to decline as storage gets built out. Every year there will be milestones like this in various parts of the world. As said before, I want this transition to go faster.
Solar, wind and storage is already competitive to gas per kWH. It’s what, 2x cheaper than coal per kWHr, and 3x cheaper than nuclear and coal+CCS. Heck, there are situations where it is just cheaper to build renewables than to run an existing thermal plant. With economies of scale and efficiencies still to be had, solar, wind and storage costs per kHWr can drop by another factor of 2. It makes no sense to build a thermal plant when 2x, 3x, 4x as much capacity can be built out using renewables for the same price.
If nuclear was cheaper than coal in the 80s and 90s, market forces would have meant a lot more nuclear would have been built out then. Didn’t happen. As long as nuclear stays expensive, it is going to stay as a nation-state capital investment, and it’s pretty tough to have that when there other means that are cheaper. If it was the same cost as gas, the USA would be building them en masse right now.
The rich NIMBYers will eventually lose, and those off-shore wind farms will go up. There are other ultra rich people trying to make money of those off-shore wind farms, and and entire industrial complex transitioning to a different means of energy production, with big pushes from the public, will be trying to get them there.
As already been said, it will take the land area equivalent to about a 150x150 mile square, or about 15m acres, to power the USA electricity needs, let alone a big city. But that’s back of the envelope concept stuff to show that it is more than possible. In reality, there will be solar farms, rooftop solar, over-water solar, and even agrivoltaics and solar+ranching. It’s going to be integrated into normalcy, just as fossil fuel generation is normal now.
Batteries aren’t needed to provide power overnight, and they won’t be built for that. Over night can be powered by wind or hydro, etc. Batteries will be needed for the same reasons peaker or reserve plants are. Reserve, cover for issues, provide voltage regulation, etc.
Weird point. Well, of course Dyson Spheres and space solar is complete science fiction at this point. Renewables replacing fossil fuels? It’s already happening.
In the ten million year timescale though, something has to be done as solar output is increasing through time. The Earth has to be moved to a higher orbit, L1 solar farm and reflector, CO2 has to be drawn down to 250 ppm, etc. A L1 solar farm/reflector would be a tiny tiny not even a step towards something akin to a Dyson ring. Solar farms at the Sun-Earth L1, L4, L5 points with microwave transmission to orbital colonies? Nuclear would be fine, presuming it is cheaper than space solar.
Uh, gazillions of dollars are being put into CCS. We will eventually have to draw CO2 out of the air and bury it, in all its forms (farming, concrete, direct air capture, etc). In the future, CCS technology will be used to make gas that can power airplanes, whatever, and replace the need to extract it out of the ground. Heck, you can have a refrigerator sized machine that uses rooftype solar to make gas out of the air, saving it for heating purposes (cooking, heater, etc). Not now, but eventually.
What the USA is probably really behind in is HVDC transmission. A lot of money needs to be put into building a HVDC interstate highway as it were.
Apple isn’t funding renewables, like this China fund, just because it is the right thing to do. A big reason, but not the only reason. They’ve done the math and it is a win-win. They are funding these renewable energy projects because they are net-net cheaper over the long run, and it nudges the market towards more renewables quicker, allowing them to have cheaper energy (virtuous cycle) as time goes on, and it meets their company “green” goals. You don’t sign 10, 20, 30 year power purchase agreements without doing the math.
There aren’t any new coal plants being built in the USA, and most of the existing ones are too expensive to operate and have sunset dates, with some requiring subsidies to stay operational. Gas and renewables are killing coal and nuclear. Pure market economics. Renewables without storage is already competitive to natural gas. Renewables+storage is trending to have cheaper $/kWH than gas, and gas will be next to decline when that starts happening.
England is an example of this. It used to be powered almost entirely by coal, where what, the industrial revolution got its start almost 200 years ago. Look at this plot of Great Britain (England? UK? Never can keep the difference in my head) electricity generation since 2006:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb
Coal had a seasonal peak of 39% share in 2012. It has been sitting at less than 5% for the past year or so. That drop took 7 years! Their gas share has also been declining from a seasonal peak of about 47% to now about 36%. They are being replaced by renewables and hopefully carbon neutral “bioenergy”. Their off-shore wind farms are starting to come online this year. This signals the start of a steeper decline for gas. Off-shore wind farms have capacity factors from 40% to 60%, and as more get built, they get cheaper. It’s a virtuous cycle.
Texas is on the same path. They have 22 GW of wind in 2018, basically zero solar and zero storage. They will have about 30 GW in 2020 if the planned developments pan out. There is about 30 GW of solar in planning. Texas’s peak power usage is about 80 GW. Renewables are about 20% share now. In 5 to 10 years, probably 40 to 50%, with most coal plants shut down and gas plants starting to be retired. It’s going to look a lot like the plot for England above. This isn’t been done in Texas because “politics”. It’s being done because of money. This will be repeated over and over as more and more states add renewables.
I’m always going to say do it faster. We need more and more energy to draw CO2 out of the air, bury it, turn it into gas for whatever needs, etc.
As I said in a previous post, the activists have so completely scared the American public about nuclear power over the past decades that no nuclear reactor , no matter how safe, will ever be built here again.