German Warning For UK Wind Power or Don Quixote Where Are You

[poptones]

That's completely unproven. It's NEW TECHNOLOGY. Any new technology has problems to solve, that doesn't mean its a dead end. Variability of wind farms is not unpredictable. Some problems, like storage, will be solved over time as we move to local power storage. When you have a giant battery or two sitting in your garage there's all sorts of new potential. Maybe the car becomes a storage cell for other uses. Inland wind farms tend to produce better at night and early morning - just when present demand is low, but also when people in the near future might be charging the family cars. As the technology becomes commoditized maybe homes start incorporating storage charged from the grid to help supply their own demand in peak times.

Ask most folks in 1985 why they don't have a home computer, the common response would have been "why do I need one? I can balance my checkbook with a pen." The point is the evolution of new technologies cannot always be predicted in how it will affect our daily lives - for better, or worse.

What IS sure is that, once some of these issues are solved, wind farms, hydro dams, PV collectors and solar furnaces will not require sending americans abroad to fight for more wind, more sun, more rain.

[SgtRock]

Dear Pop:

--You stated "That's completely unproven. It's NEW TECHNOLOGY. Any new technology has problems to solve, that doesn't mean its a dead end."

--If you would state exactly which assertion is completely unproven, I could better address your comment. It is certainly not unproven that Germany is building huge amounts of back up power generating capacity, to cover for the vicissitudes of Wind and Solar. Certainly your statement about new technology is correct. My objection, is the Governments selling this kind of thing promising certain (not probable) cost savings, decreased reliance on fossil fuels, and concomitant reduction in CO2 releases, only for it to turn out that their scenarios were either stupidly rosy or else completely dishonest. If I criticize your neighbor for selling you a lemon car that blows up in a week, it does not mean I am against automobiles, I hope you see the difference.

"Does not squirrel crack nuts on bough of oak tree."
Lao Fu 1410 1620

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[poptones]

What's completely unproven? ALL of what you said in the realm of "opinion." The fact there are some problems NOW doesn't mean you quit, it means you overcome the problems. These are not cars coming off an assembly line, they are NEW TECHNOLOGIES. It is completely disingenuous to present these problems as insurmountable barriers, as they most surely are not.

Problem: tidal and wind energy is most prevalent where there are few people.

Solution: just as cities grew from transportation centers of old, so can new cities grow around new energy sources. If you want a steel plant you need transport and you need energy.  Maybe the steel plant sees the free energy as worth the cost of railroad development. Build a steel plant and a railroad, you got the makings of a new city.

Problem: wind energy is most prevalent at night

Solution: store the energy when it's cheap and use it during the day when it's not. The same technology going into the development of electrified transport can be applied to home energy storage. When you have thousands of homes each storing several KW of on demand energy those rolling blackouts can become a thing of the past. Smart meters, like them or not, are becoming the new standard. Being able to bill users based on peak demand is going to give end users more incentive to adopt such technologies.

I have no idea what America you live in, but in the America I occupy I don't see decreasing our reliance on foreign energy sources as a matter of "lower cost" nor do I often see it presented as such in the media. I see it as a matter of national security and a means of lessening our standing armies and our comingling with governments in places where thousands of years of tribal fighting is being ratcheted up by our endless bolstering of those tribal militias only because it suits our short term corporate interests. Cut off the money to the mideast and they'll soon have to either shift their focus to new means of positively generating income, or fighting it out with their neighbors over the last remaining drops of foreign investment.

[SgtRock]

Dear Pop:

--You, not I stated "That's completely unproven It's NEW TECHNOLOGY. Any new technology has problems to solve, that doesn't mean its a dead end."

--You are verging onto complete incoherence. You are mistaking things you said for things I said. And you are arguing with things I did not even dream of saying. I repeat the bulk of my previous post below. If you answer in such a way as to indicate that you read it, I will respond, otherwise I think you and I have said enough to each other, for now.

--If you would state exactly which assertion is completely unproven, I could better address your comment. It is certainly not unproven that Germany is building huge amounts of back up power generating capacity, to cover for the vicissitudes of Wind and Solar. Certainly your statement about new technology is correct. My objection, is to the Governments selling this kind of thing promising certain (not probable) cost savings, decreased reliance on fossil fuels, and concomitant reduction in CO2 releases, only for it to turn out that their scenarios were either stupidly rosy or else completely dishonest. If I criticize your neighbor for selling you a lemon car that blows up in a week, it does not mean I am against automobiles, I hope you see the difference.

"Does not squirrel crack nuts on bough of oak tree."
Lao Fu 1410 1620

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[poptones]

fossil fuel savings due to these huge Government Wind and (to a lesser degree) Solar Projects will be few and very far between.

This was your apparent conclusion of the article, not what was stated directly in the article. And it is unproven conjecture and, as I numerously pointed out, feeble in evidence.

The government seeks to reward good behavior. This is the excuse given for our numerous corporate subsidies, removing those subsidies from developing technologies that have such obviously redeeming potential and then saying they "can't compete" with subsidized industries constitutes a direct deception.

[SgtRock]

Dear Pop:

--The article states "Meanwhile, firms such as RWE and E.on are going flat out to build 16 new coal-fired and 15 new gas-fired power stations by 2020, with a combined output equivalent to some 38 per cent of Germany’s electricity needs. None of these will be required to have “carbon capture and storage” (CCS), which is just an empty pipedream. This makes nonsense of any pretense that Germany will meet its EU target for reducing CO2 emissions (and Mrs Merkel’s equally fanciful goal of producing 35 per cent of electricity from renewables)."

--That is not, Sir, my opinion that is what is directly stated in the article. Now either the facts as stated in the above quote are either true or they are not, but they have nothing to do with my opinion, and there is nothing conjectural about the above factual assertions.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."
William Claude Dukenfield, W. C. Fields 1880 1946

Best Regards
Clear Ether