Barry wants more of these
- Thread starter Gilligan
- Start date
Vince
......
Solar power doesn't work, wind power doesn't work, have the greenie weenies ever come up with a plan that doesn't spend more of our tax dollars than it's worth? We could have used the money to drill for oil and there's enough in our country and off our shores to make us energy independent.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
It's not that - they're not cost effective on a grand enough scale, because the technology isn't there yet. It's easily possible to decrease your energy footprint and make enough from wind and solar to go off the grid - but you can't power a city with it. Not yet, anyway.
Going solar or wind is like buying a car that gets a thousand miles a gallon - but only lasts five years and costs a half million. It sounds cool, because fuel is basically free, but you can't recover your costs. IF they can make solar or wind that is cheap enough and durable enough, it easily does what they want. For single family homes. Too bad that the majority of Americans live in cities where wind and solar aren't going to be all that useful.
But hugely expensive.
We own an island that is about 1/2-mile offshore and power is provided by diesel generator, a 50kw unit. About two years ago, we had the design of a hybrid power system done.
A combination of a smallish windmill (50' tower), some solar panels (about 500 sq feet), a 15 kw diesel genset, large storage battery bank, DC-AC power inverters, and the automation/controls to make it all work together automatically. Total cost with installation will be about 45 grand.
Sounds neat, huh? Here's the rub: Power is seldom ever required during the week. The small clubhouse is typically only used for weekend guests and events...and even then not every weekend. That duty cycle was why we could get away with such a cheap system; small power producers and a fairly large amount of power storage capacity. Were the duty cycle more "level" like a typical home, that system would be far less than adequate to supply all electrical power required.
GWguy
*
So the drain is huge over the course of a day or two (weekends, holidays), mandating fairly large battery backup, supplemented by genny, as I assuming they party at night.
Sounds good, pretty sure it works well, but going to cost a fortune when it's time to replace those deep-cycle batteries.
No, not "huge" by any standard. Simply normal everyday power demand you'd expect for a 3000 sf building with lights, AC and the usual electric appliances.
The battery bank was sized to provide power for essentially a typical 3-day use period, with the genset to take care of peak demand when its really hot and AC demand gets too large, or its really cold and the electric baseboard demand gets too large.
And yes...not only was the cost of the batteries one of the biggest ticket items in the system, they have to be replaced.
In this case, there was also a large "added value" attached to not having to haul so much expensive diesel fuel to the island.
GWguy
*
Ok, I guess huge was the wrong term. I meant as compared to the rest of the time when there is little to no usage.
C
czygvtwkr
Guest
A flywheel could store energy....hmmm time for the calculator to see how big of a flywheel would be needed
GWguy
*
I remember seeing a flywheel based car in Popular Mechanics back in the 60s/70s. A small motor slowly spun up a flywheel, and then a transmission took the power from the flywheel to the wheels. Apparently very efficient, but never got past the prototype.
Driving a Flywheel Car – John's Journal on Autoline
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czygvtwkr
Guest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Rosen_(electrical_engineer)
I think this guy had something to do with Compaq computers start too.
More good reasons showing why Barry's schemes are a really good idea.
The dirty secret of Britain's power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there's no wind for turbines - and other insane but true eco-scandals | Mail Online
The dirty secret of Britain's power madness: Polluting diesel generators built in secret by foreign companies to kick in when there's no wind for turbines - and other insane but true eco-scandals | Mail Online
Just Google 14,000 abandoned windmills and you’ll find that there is no factual basis for article.
MMDad
Lem Putt
What I find is just more propaganda that says the 14,000 isn't true. They don't use any facts to actually refute 14,000 - like what the true number really is. Just emotion, obviously biased toward the false notion that windmills are an effective way to provide power.
Do you have any facts? Or just emotion?