Has America reached an "Oh Sh!t" moment?

keycocker · Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 3598

"I wonder if the Brits on Maui are surfers/windsurfers who are in 'the mecca' for that reason. If so, I doubt our social and economic woes were foremost on their minds. "
Nah Gurgle, they weren't sailors or even all Brits. Not a very scientific survey at breakfast upcountry.Even without the sailing Maui has an appeal so your point is well taken and likely correct.

GURGLETROUSERS · Joined: 30 Dec 2009 Posts: 2643

Yes Feuser, I think there is a lobby (not clandestine either) which tries to sell us clean air. They make windmills ( and not for peanuts) which our government has fallen for, lock stock and barrel! As for being got at by the coal lobby, I wouldn't know such a dastardly person from the candy man.

My argument is clear. I find it crazy that we are heading down this unreliable windmill road when we sit on masses of coal, which we are told can be used with carbon capture technology to produce all the power our country could ever need. But our government is hell bent on financially crippling our economy with expensive, and often unreliable wind technology just to set some kind of example to the rest of the world!

Another report (there has been plenty of them) quoted in todays paper claims that; 'Shelving expensive wind farming in favour of gas and nuclear fired power stations would save every single person in the country at least £550 a year. The governments plan to cut cur pollution by a third by 2020 (relying on wind power) will cost the country £108 billion pounds to implement. Shifting the emphasis to nuclear and gas, apart from ensuring reliable power supplies, would slash this bill by £34 billion pounds.

There is a great deal more detail in the report but, naturally, our pro green energy secretary pooh poohs it. He's set on windmills at any cost. (While grudgingly admitting that we may need to build some new nuclear power stations after all!!)

boggsman1 · Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 9120 Location: at a computer

boggsman1 · Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 9120 Location: at a computer

capetonian · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 1197 Location: Florida

feuser · Joined: 29 Oct 2002 Posts: 1508

MalibuGuru · Joined: 11 Nov 1993 Posts: 9300

Gurgletrousers, I have a close friend who owns wind turbines in Tehachapi, Ca. We often talk about the economics of electricity generation. He says he goes weeks without generating any power. Tehachapi is the windiest spot during spring and summer. (peak energy usage) But he often just sits on his hands waiting for the wind.

I can only wonder what will happen in your country when a large high pressure system parks over the turbines and bakes for a month or two. Even the candles will run out.

Not to mention the dead birds, vegetation, snakes and mammals. There is a huge environmental cost to leveling thousands of acres of land, digging and pouring thousands of tons of concrete, new roads to service the turbines, and all the energy it takes to manufacture them.

GURGLETROUSERS · Joined: 30 Dec 2009 Posts: 2643

I'm not trying to be awkward Feuser, and I believe we both wish for a sustainable and fairly prosperous future for the human race, along with a better quality of life. My problem is visualising how?

Impartial opinions on green issues are difficult to find, but as you don't appear to one of 'the nuts', does our governments 30% dependance on wind power really sound workable?

As windsurfers we all know how unreliable the wind can be, yet we are being led to believe that a nationwide network of turbines connected to the grid, with conventional back up, will see us through, presumably on the basis that it will always be blowing somewhere in the country. (There's even talk of a Europe wide network all sharing with each other. After the Euro debacle that would seem unlikely, to say the least!)

The problem I have is that the 'back up' would need to be able to supply a full winter load, especially during those windless icy high pressure calms which can sometimes last for weeks. Even our present system is unable to manage that, and power has to be imported.

The only way I can see it working is by building a full compliment of new nuclear power plants, capable of supplying all our power when need be, which begs the question, why not just spend all those billions on the nuclear plants in the first place and forget the windmills?

I won't add any further, but I would be interested in how you see it all panning out from your relatively balanced point on the see-saw? Wink

capetonian · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 1197 Location: Florida

Wind and solar are wonderful for natural gas demand. And in fact there is a symbiotic relationship between natural gas and renewables as natural gas plants are the easiest power plants to turn on and off as needed. Nuclear and coal plants are only good for base load power as they are expensive to stop and start and take a relatively long time to come back online after shutting down.

If the regulators had any sense they would encourage nuclear power for the majority of any country's base power needs, and layer on wind and solar to meet the peak demand spikes (think solar in Texas during the midday heat), backed up by sufficient natural gas capacity to meet a 2 standard deviation event of lack of renewable power (thick cloud cover and no wind at the same time as a heat wave).

Here in the US we are blessed with being the Saudi Arabia of natural gas so we can afford to pursue a nuclear / renewable / natural gas future (not that we are). The UK is not that fortunate.