Bird Bopping Eggbeaters Benched

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Please see below link for an interesting article about wind farms being abandoned, once the subsidies have run dry.

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/46519

--I wonder how long it will be before we hear reports that PV panels are being taken by metal thieves, only to be discovered weeks or months later.

"È finita la cuccagna!" Translation: "No more free lunch"
Fiorello La Guardia 1882 1921
TANSTAAFL Translation: "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch."
Robert Anson Heinlein 1904 1981

[Zero999]

So what are we going to do once oil, coal and gas run out?

And don't say it won't happen, it certainly will, maybe longer than some say but it's a certainty.

The answer is we're screwed. Wind, solar etc. may not be very profitable at the moment but it's good to move over to them before they are.

[SgtRock]

Dear Hero999:

--Obviously the article mentioned shows exactly what you do not want to do, no? What if it is a thousand years rather that one hundred? Quit panicking. Let the market operate.

--Let's assume, arguendo, that you are correct. Why waste trillions of dollars on useless wind, solar, ethanol, electric cars, etc. Would it not make sense to save the money and energy being wasted on these huge government boondoggles? Research yes. Huge monuments to hippie stupidity, no.

--Is it really necessary for the governments keep pounding more and more sand down more and more rat holes. Why not proceed on a rational and scientific basis. Spend money only to develop and prove technologies. Do not just build them willy nilly, even though they do not work. That is insane.

--Plus you missed the Elephant in the room. Nuclear energy.

“World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
James Earl Carter 1924 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[Zero999]

--Plus you missed the Elephant in the room. Nuclear energy.

That's hardly renewable either,

[Rufus]

--Plus you missed the Elephant in the room. Nuclear energy.

That's hardly renewable either,

Nuclear is the only energy source. All the claimed 'renewables' come from the sun which is nuclear and isn't renewable.

We have enough nuclear fuel to last thousands of years, millions if we can make fusion work.

[PetrosA]

I think the reasoning behind the "impending doom" arguments is psychological. It helps put pressure on people to look for alternatives in the first place. Most humans wait until a deadline to do tasks, so moving that deadline up prods thought.

There are some usages of fossil fuels that we can't even begin to replace with alternate technologies while fulfilling our needs like ocean and air transport, and we will have to reserve fossil fuels for those needs at some point.

I agree that the average consumer can't make a big or meaningful impact through alternate sources yet because things like solar are just out of reach financially and don't compute without rebates (the payback period for a non-rebated 10 kW solar installation is longer than the life expectancy of the panels) and taking the average North American home off the grid completely with solar would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at present consumption levels. The biggest impact most of us can make is consuming more conservatively.

[SgtRock]

Dear PetrosA:

--I agree with you comments. As a retiree living on an extremely fixed income (less than 10K US per year), if I get any better at consuming less (with the present administration's help), I am going to be invisible. Ha, Ha.

--Seriously though, I am getting reports that Solar Thermal Water Heat has a payback time of 3 to 5 years, without subsidies, in many areas.

--I will gently disagree with you on one small point, however. The best that an individual consumer can do to save energy is to use your voice and your vote to stop "fly by night" government energy Ponzi schemes like the ones mentioned. 14,000 abandoned Wind Mills (soon to be 140,000) represent a significant energy wastage.

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

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[EEVblog]

We have enough nuclear fuel to last thousands of years, millions if we can make fusion work.

Fusion is the only nuclear power that is acceptable, and it's most likely viable, they just need to keep the research up and I think they'll eventually crack it.
If you think current nuclear technology is the ducks guts, just look at the cost of decommissioning and that no one has actually figured out a practical (and politically acceptable) way and/or place to dispose of it yet - they just keep playing hot-potato with the waste in temporary storage facilities - next generations problem, right?
And if you trust the government or private industry to actually collect decommissioning money from the users as part of the 50 year operational span of the nuclear plant and actually still have the money at the end to pay for the decommissioning, then I've got a bridge to sell you...
Those countries who have gone the nuclear route will eventually regret it, I'm glad Australia hasn't gone down that path.

I pay extra so my new lab is 100% wind powered (as my home has been for 8 years now). I'm happy to put my money where my mouth is and actually support the renewable energy industry, instead of just bitch about the price of electricity like many Australians do.

Dave.

[Uncle Vernon]

I pay extra so my new lab is 100% wind powered (as my home has been for 8 years now). I'm happy to put my money where my mouth

As do a great many people, and I think it good to see people prepared to pay extra forsomething they see as worthwhile. The problem I have with this is that supply authorities will gladly take your extra contributions and a lot of other contributions. Every second website has the company proclaiming their good citizenship and use of renewables to the point where the consumption of green energy grossly exceeds green energy production.

It's good business, jack up the base price to subsidise a solar rebate, on sell that production at a higher rate to those wealthy enough to afford the premium. Lot's of feel good for everyone except the odd fixed income pensioner who perishes because he cannot afford to run his fan or heater. It's one enormous hoax and one stillvery dependant on burning metric shitloads of coal.

Same applies for the electric car set, WA has just done some sums on projected loadings from recharging all these short range buggies and the only conclusion possible is they'll need to build some extra coal fired power stations in the medium term future.

Your office isn't run solely in wind energy, sorry that simply isn't possible, certainly not on a 365 day 24/7 basis it is not. 

I'm not for a moment saying an increase in wind farm farm production would not be a good thing.




is and actually support the renewable energy industry, instead of just bitch about the price of electricity like many Australians do.

Dave.
[/quote]

[SgtRock]

Dear Uncle Vernon:

--I concur with your remarks.

--You might want to check your ignore list though.

"The telegraph is a kind of a very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Radio operates the same way, except there is no cat."
Albert Einstein 1879 1936

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[EEVblog]

I pay extra so my new lab is 100% wind powered (as my home has been for 8 years now). I'm happy to put my money where my mouth

As do a great many people, and I think it good to see people prepared to pay extra forsomething they see as worthwhile. The problem I have with this is that supply authorities will gladly take your extra contributions and a lot of other contributions. Every second website has the company proclaiming their good citizenship and use of renewables to the point where the consumption of green energy grossly exceeds green energy production.

That's why we did extensive research before picking Origin 100%, there are many schemes out there that are borderline scams. Jackgreen was one of them and they eventually went under.
And we keep an eye on Origin's audited power generation figures just to make sure it's all above-board...

Dave.

[Zad]

Firstly, be aware that the Daily Mail is a scandal paper, they specialise in only telling part of the story. The part which is most likely to outrage and disgust people.

It is a difficult subject to investigate. There are many forces at work, the most powerful ones being local, regional and international politics at government and corporate level. None of which react well to things like logic, science, engineering and mathematics.

I think the future may well be in the direction of technologies that are not yet fully evolved. For example, the equatorial African countries are ideally placed for solar energy, but it is difficult to transmit that energy to the industrialised world. One possibility is that they use either bio-solar or electro-solar energy to process H2O+liquid CO2 (tankered in from CO2 sequestration) into liquid hydrocarbons, which are tankered back out. In these regions, massive corporates already have more power than governments and local militias. This sort of thing is do-able now, but the will isn't there. Yet.

[Rufus]

I pay extra so my new lab is 100% wind powered (as my home has been for 8 years now).

Do the lights go out when it isn't windy?

[Uncle Vernon]

And we keep an eye on Origin's audited power generation figures just to make sure it's all above-board...

Investors of Bernie Madoff kept a close eye on audited figures too. I have little doubt about the generation figures but I'd question how many times they are being resold.

sale of green energy is a much higher percentage than the amounts actually being generated. Subsidising RECs might have a feel good effect but its doing nothing in terms of actually reducing emissions.

[SgtRock]

Dear Dave:

--Please consider doing an episode about your wind power setup. My understanding is that the smaller blades have little or no noise problem.

--I love wind power and PV, especially for individual companies and home owners. It is only the huge national subsidy programs and their rape of the small rate payers that I object to.

--As the technology improves I see great growth for PV and yes even wind, but I do not think they will ever supply a majority of grid power.

--The new class of Thorium Reactors, which will generate much less waste, and have the ability to consume weaponisable and problematic isotopes, may provide a useful stopgap until Fusion comes along.

"Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked."
Steve Wozniak 1950 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether