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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 4 years, 6 months ago
    The best thing we should be doing for clean energy is to push for modern nuclear energy systems. Molten salt reactors have a passive shutdown mode, making the Chernobyl, Fukushima type problems not a possibility. Use of thorium, which is much more available than uranium, would ensure nuclear power for hundreds of years. Thorium reactors could also dispose of existing nuclear waste.

    Michael Shellenberger, and environmentalist, says it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZXUR...
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  • Posted by GaryL 4 years, 6 months ago
    I have read extensively on the concept of wind power and the real costs and it is a complete joke that is not the slightest bit funny. When you do the total cost estimates of everything involved from mining the materials, transporting the materials, manufacturing the materials, preparing the land provided it is government owned, Transporting the manufactured turbine and installing it plus purchasing all the lines and wires from the turbine to the power grid and all those costs the wind turbine would have to run at 250% of its total generating capacity and for well beyond its full life expectancy. In other words, there is a snowball's chance in hell you will ever get return of the initial investment back out of any of them. This of course makes not a single mention of the effects these monstrosities have on birds or any of the other environmental issues and effects associated with them. Whenever you drive past a large wind farm with many dozens of giant turbines take note of how many of them are not spinning and therefore not producing a pennies worth of electricity or return on the dollar.
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  • Posted by mshupe 4 years, 6 months ago
    I wrote a piece last year about the scam economics of the wind industry and their lobbyists. Like all authoritarians, they take over the linguistic territory be redefining words such as ROI (return on investment).
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  • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 6 months ago
    True story.

    I was sitting on a plane one day and got into a discussion with the gentleman next to me. At the time I was living in Montana, which has a great environment (theoretically) for wind power. The man happened to be a wind turbine technician who flew out to Montana regularly but was based in Missouri. So we got into a discussion about his job.

    He gave me the numbers on a typical wind turbine. They cost about $250,000 and are predominantly manufactured in France and then shipped over to the US and trucked to their new station. With these costs in mind and the amount of power a typical turbine can generate, the payback time for a generator running 100% of the time is nearly 25 years. In reality, the wind is only sufficient to turn the turbine about 50-70% of the time (in a windy area). Oops. That pushes the payback time out significantly.

    But the real problem, he said, was that they aren't engineered for the extreme temperatures involved in Montana (metallurgy, etc.). According to the very technician who worked on these turbines, the ones in Montana were only functional about 30% of the time they could have been operating. What that does is basically say that a wind turbine never pays for itself. Without government subsidies, they are a project which is DOA.
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    • Posted by exceller 4 years, 6 months ago
      Wonder if the Germans are also using French made turbines.

      They have a large turbine operation in the North Sea, thanks to Merkel's push to replace fossil based energy with wind.

      The predictable result so far is that Germans pay several times higher rates for power than we do.

      Add to this the ROI on the cost of the turbines and it looks like quite an attractive alternative!
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 4 years, 6 months ago
      Here in Alabama September can be hotter than August at times.
      Yesterday a thermometer on the front of my home read 102 degrees in the shade.
      Wondering if a late Alabama summer that's usually in the high nineties would mess up the functions of a French windmill.
      Or how about Florida for that matter? The coastline is often breezy down there but never always.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 6 months ago
        Sure they would. The turbines built in France are engineered for a moderate climate and minimal temperature range. Humidity wouldn't necessarily be a concern in Montana, but would in Alabama. In Montana, they had to engineer for temperature extremes which could go from -60 F to 110F in a season. Even more destructive are the chinooks where the temperature can fluctuate 100F in two hours. Ask any metallurgist and you're describing a nightmare scenario.
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        • Posted by $ allosaur 4 years, 6 months ago
          With respect, your response is not clear to this old dino. Maybe the humidity part is throwing me off.
          Are you saying "sure they would" to my "wondering" if my Alabama and Florida that "would mess up the functions of a French windmill?"
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          • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 6 months ago
            Apologies. I was confirming your concern was entirely valid.

            France is a North Atlantic nation. Though France does encounter significant humidity, atmospheric saturation is a factor of humidity and temperature, ie. the higher the temperature, the more water vapor can remain suspended in the air ready to condense. The temperatures in Alabama are typically higher than in France, so items engineered for use in Alabama are going to have to accommodate this higher saturation level (water is typically a very bad lubricant but a great corrosion agent) as well as the higher temperatures (metals have individual coefficients of expansion and tolerances in precision engines are and must remain very tight). What they really should have (at a bare minimum) are turbines engineered for the specific atmospheric/weather conditions in which they will be operating, ie different turbines for France vs Alabama vs Montana.
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            • Posted by $ allosaur 4 years, 6 months ago
              Thanks. I was betting with myself that's what you meant. Just wasn't sure.
              Thanks for the extra data, too. Sometimes the humidity here can really be bad.
              Not presently, thank goodness. The predicted high for today is a more normal 97.
              It usually feels like Fall in Alabama around mid-October. Sometimes Halloween night can actually be chilly. Sometimes . . .
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              • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 6 months ago
                Montana Halloweens were either just cold (you put clothing on under the costumes and limited things like ballerina costumes) or downright frigid (my kids made it through about six houses before their fingers were too cold to hold the candy bags). I saw snow in every month of the year during my seven years there - including the middle of July and August. Of course I also saw a couple of nice full-size trucks go right through the ice on the Missouri river because of stupidity...
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                • Posted by $ allosaur 4 years, 6 months ago
                  Last winter me dino was receiving medical treatments that lasted two hours every week day for about two months. Snow was in the forecast for one of those days. Since Alabama drivers unused to snow have wrecks all over the place, the entire staff and patients were all given a snow day to stay safe at home. During that day a few snow flakes came down and did not stick. That was all the snow we had last winter.
                  Some winters there is no snow at all.
                  During the Nineties my Birmingham area and above actually had a blizzard that buried entire cars in places. Never saw anything like it.
                  About three years later an even weirder ice storm trapped me at the prison I'm now retired from working at. In rotation, officers slept on thin inmate mattresses and slightly thicker pillows on the floor in the visitation area or otherwise worked. The prison was locked down due to two-thirds of a single shift on their feet while the rest slept.
                  Heard on the car radio that cool air will move in wuithin a couple of days, dropping tempos into the eighties. I'm pretty sure that will be temporary, though. Been there, done that.
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  • Posted by $ pixelate 4 years, 6 months ago
    Wind turbines directly change the climate. They parasitise the convective air currents to the extent of 10's of thousands of cubic miles of surface air flow each day. This impacts the vertical mixing layers all the way up to cloud formation strata. Even the wind turbine company engineers acknowledge that the back rows of turbines in a large wind farm are negatively impacted by the reduced air flow per the forward turbines. And yet, you hear not a peep from the Union of Concerned Communists or the Friends of Global Progress. This is because Wind Turbines have been elevated to be Good and are part of The Solution. Any reference to the true economic costs or impact from Wind Turbines is not part of the liturgy and is to be dismissed without further thought.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 4 years, 6 months ago
    I've actually done a little engineering in the wind industry. Not a lot, but some. I have seen a couple sites where it makes sense. In a vast majority of areas it doesn't. But, I'm an engineer..."When I see something, I see it..."
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 4 years, 6 months ago
    I agree with DrZarkov about Molten Salt Reactors which the liberals and Dems have no knowledge of or ignoring the subject or again they are afraid of it. They don't understand that Lithium batteries are a dead end. FWG/Working Ink in Great Britain is making good progress on Carbon/Graphene batteries. Libs and Dems don't seem to have any knowledge of that either.
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    • Posted by exceller 4 years, 6 months ago
      Of course the Dems don't understand any of the technical terms, let alone use them.

      What they understand is "community organizer", "racist", "free stuff", "climate change" (according to them not in reality) and anything that falls into communist terminology.
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