Wind becomes No 2 power source in US, beating coal and nuclear

[flacaltenn]

Are you under the impression that e=mc^^2 describes the fuel vs power ratio of a fission power plant?

Is that the only physics equation you can remember? LOL.. Wasn't relativity at all. Just 8th grade math dude.

 

[HenryBHough]

At Harvard, so close to MIT where actual science is taught, they've spending millions of federal grant money on energy research. So far they're not on the trail of a sort of drone that is attracted to tornados where they can harness the terrific wind energy that's going to waste. It's working generally well but there is one hell of a problem with the trailing cable being severed by ground-based bird killing machines.

Oh shit! I just joked and Harvard got donations from a dozen liberal do-gooders!

 

[ReinyDays]

You can scale ANYTHING to sound scary. Some of the GWarmers equate the 3 W/m2 at the surface increased forcing to a number of atom bombs worldwide per day/week/month. When it's really less than a couple Christmas tree light bulbs.

I guarantee you each of those households in your "scaling exercise" illegally dispose of 8 oz or more of lithium batteries per year which either cause fires at the dump stations and recycling centers OR sit in landfills with a half life of FOREVER for toxics and heavy metals...

It's VERY doable to get a RELIABLE, virtually emission free grid generator with a 60 yr or more lifespan. Even wind/solar toys last LESS than 25 years.

A "grain of wheat" bulb every square meter ... not as bright as fire flies ... Is lithium toxic? ... pretty sure that recycles ...

Why are you defending Light Water Reactors? ... look around you, they're unsafe ... sodium-cooled breeder reactors solve most of these problems ... go ahead and cut the pumps when you SCRAM, the sodium won't boil ... and we can re-process all the fuel rod waste into new ones ... not just part that the French can manage today ...

Will oil run out soon? ... who knows, but we can say cheap oil is gone ... now we're burning not-so-cheap oil and we should be able to guess that someday we'll be burninng hey-this-shit's-getting-expensive oil ... and we need to prepare ourselves ... and safe, clean and reliable nuclear power plants is going to take A LOT of preparation ...

[wolfish grin] ... or just use less energy ...

 

[flacaltenn]

The point of the OP was that for the first time, for one day, wind production exceeded that of both coal and nuclear. It was a comment on the growth of alternative power infrastructure in the US. Wind and solar output are obviously always going to vary with conditions and both benefit from large scale storage systems and smart grids. No one has ever claimed otherwise.

You'll NEVER see conservative, anti-science posters like FlaCalTenn here put up data comparing wind, solar and fossil fuel plant fuel consumption and GHG emissions. But then, we never expected they would do so.

I just put up data showing why wind is an expensive fad and will never be "an alternative" to current Grid generators. Here's a test -- How many wind turbines does it take to power a single supermarket? NONE - because they'd have to take out the refrigerators and freezers to avoid rotting food.

The OPost had a POINT? That for 8 hours of entire year -- wind was the SECOND largest contributor on the grid? Explain the "significance" of this to me. Especially since in the FOLLOWING DAYS it contributed largely NOTHING.

 

[ReinyDays]

There are about 3 or 5 US companies actively developing 4th gen nuclear reactors. The type that can be BURIED (with a complete backup during replacement at end of life) and virtually forgotten. And instead of 10 ton fuel rods, their "fuel beads/pebbles" are VERY recyclable.

When NuScale goes public -- I'll be camping out in line to become an investor. Their design just got approved by the NRCommission.

Power Companies Turn to Small-Scale Nuclear Reactors - Zenger News

Gone are the soaring, cylindrical cooling towers — new reactors are designed to look appealing.

www.zenger.news

In a bid to revive a slowing industry, several U.S. nuclear power companies are employing a novel idea to invigorate the technology: go smaller.

The concept took a step forward last month when the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the small modular reactor design of Oregon-based NuScale Power, paving the way for wider deployment of the innovative new type of nuclear power. NuScale described its nuclear module as a “safer, smaller, scalable version” of more traditional nuclear reactors. It’s not the end of the regulatory process, but the approval was seen as a major milestone by the nuclear industry.

6 Nuclear Energy Companies Building Molten Salt Reactors

According to the World Nuclear Association, electricity demand almost doubled from 1990 to 2011, and is projected to grow 81% from 2011 to 2035. Nuclear power currently provides for about 11% of the world's electricity, and 21% of electricity in OECD countries. While nuclear power is the most...

www.nanalyze.com

Research continues ...

 

[flacaltenn]

At Harvard, so close to MIT where actual science is taught, they've spending millions of federal grant money on energy research. So far they're not on the trail of a sort of drone that is attracted to tornados where they can harness the terrific wind energy that's going to waste. It's working generally well but there is one hell of a problem with the trailing cable being severed by ground-based bird killing machines.

Oh shit! I just joked and Harvard got donations from a dozen liberal do-gooders!

Good satire has grains of truth. OH WAIT - you weren't joking !!!!! Heres a ground tethered wind turbine.. Imagine scaling THAT up to meaningful levels about your locality.

What's happening is youre dealing with people who have identified the solution and will do ANYTHING to make it work. Like drown us in battery waste, or harness the winds at 10,000 feet and occlude the sky and the air traffic lanes.

Ever try to keep kites untangled on a windy day? It's like Elon Musk shrugging off the loss of 20% of Inet spaceballs that serve as satellite global ISPs to a bad solar flare day. At least Musk has a chance of fixing that. Not so with controlling where and when the blows.

 

[flacaltenn]

Research continues ...

Should take those 6 designs out to some AMPLE Govt land and have a 3 yr "fizz off" and grant unlimited permits to the WINNING design. So that they can deployed QUICKLY.

 

[flacaltenn]

A "grain of wheat" bulb every square meter ... not as bright as fire flies ... Is lithium toxic? ... pretty sure that recycles ...

The design of power cells for cars and home solar storage or Grid Scale storage for trying to fix the flakiness of wind/solar dont lend themselves well to recycling because of the multi-layer modularity of the cells. They dont use ONE BIG lithium battery in an EV -- they use something like 750 "slightly bigger than AA" batteries multiply packaged in "cells, modules, banks" and the packaging that has to be opened and removed means they'd rather BURN all that up to scavenge the lithium, cobalt, other heavy metals and materials. It AINT GONNA BE PRETTY to dispose of. Those combustion methods are too expensive to JUSTIFY recycling.

1.2 Oz of nuclear fuel to run the house. Another maybe 1.0 Oz to charge your EV --- PER YEAR. Problem fixed. INSTEAD -- we're gonna BAND-AID flaky wind and solar installations to add literally GIGA TONS of battery waste to the problem. They all DIE in 20 years. The Grid Scale storage batteries - maybe a bit sooner.

What's that term??? OH - sustainability !!! NOWHERE in the Green Raw Deal plans.

 

[Sunsettommy]

The point of the OP was that for the first time, for one day, wind production exceeded that of both coal and nuclear. It was a comment on the growth of alternative power infrastructure in the US. Wind and solar output are obviously always going to vary with conditions and both benefit from large scale storage systems and smart grids. No one has ever claimed otherwise.

You'll NEVER see conservative, anti-science posters like FlaCalTenn here put up data comparing wind, solar and fossil fuel plant fuel consumption and GHG emissions. But then, we never expected they would do so.

It was MISLEADING because this is the part of the year where wind is at its best being in the springtime and the Coal, Nuclear and Coal were lower than usual for the date.

Can't you read the chart?

=====

Watts Up With That?

Fake News: Wind Tops Coal & Nuclear for First Time in US History​

April 17, 2022

Guest “Situational statistics” by David Middleton

Excerpt:

Who else used to play Strat-O-Matic Baseball? One of my Moneyball–type strategies was to draft players with great situational statistics. I remember two players, in particular. We were drafting based on the 1989 Major League Baseball rosters. Paul O’Neill, then with the Cincinnati Reds hit .455 against righthanded pitchers and Fred Manrique, a utility infielder with the Texas Rangers, had nearly a .500 batting average with runners in scoring position.

LINK

=====

It is media inspired misleading bullshit.

 

[ReinyDays]

Good satire has grains of truth. OH WAIT - you weren't joking !!!!! Heres a ground tethered wind turbine.. Imagine scaling THAT up to meaningful levels about your locality.

What's happening is youre dealing with people who have identified the solution and will do ANYTHING to make it work. Like drown us in battery waste, or harness the winds at 10,000 feet and occlude the sky and the air traffic lanes.

Ever try to keep kites untangled on a windy day? It's like Elon Musk shrugging off the loss of 20% of Inet spaceballs that serve as satellite global ISPs to a bad solar flare day. At least Musk has a chance of fixing that. Not so with controlling where and when the blows.

Ah hell yeah ... big damn wind farm up here in the Pacific Northwest ... the wind howls up the Gorge ... about all the time ... over Bonneville Dam, then over The Dallas Dam, then over John Day Dam ... ask S'Tommy about the dams above that ... the wind just keeps blowing all the way to South Pass ...

The key here is that it's windy along the hydro-electric cables running down to California ... wind mills just plug-and-play ... and California pays a premium for this energy ... for us it's still cheapest electricity in the nation ... smelting aluminum cheap ...

 

[flacaltenn]

Ah hell yeah ... big damn wind farm up here in the Pacific Northwest ... the wind howls up the Gorge ... about all the time ... over Bonneville Dam, then over The Dallas Dam, then over John Day Dam ... ask S'Tommy about the dams above that ... the wind just keeps blowing all the way to South Pass ...

The key here is that it's windy along the hydro-electric cables running down to California ... wind mills just plug-and-play ... and California pays a premium for this energy ... for us it's still cheapest electricity in the nation ... smelting aluminum cheap ...

They said that about Altamonte Pass in the San Fran area and some of Mojave locations. But Altamont Pass is an antique now. Too many lawsuits from bird suites and bad OVERALL performance. The more "flaky stuff" you rely on -- the MORE Grid scale storage facilities you NEED.

The only reason they can do that UP THERE is BECAUSE OF THE HYDRO --- which can modulated somewhat to fill the 2 or 4 days a week the wind IS NOT THERE..

 

[ReinyDays]

The design of power cells for cars and home solar storage or Grid Scale storage for trying to fix the flakiness of wind/solar dont lend themselves well to recycling because of the multi-layer modularity of the cells. They dont use ONE BIG lithium battery in an EV -- they use something like 750 "slightly bigger than AA" batteries multiply packaged in "cells, modules, banks" and the packaging that has to be opened and removed means they'd rather BURN all that up to scavenge the lithium, cobalt, other heavy metals and materials. It AINT GONNA BE PRETTY to dispose of. Those combustion methods are too expensive to JUSTIFY recycling.

1.2 Oz of nuclear fuel to run the house. Another maybe 1.0 Oz to charge your EV --- PER YEAR. Problem fixed. INSTEAD -- we're gonna BAND-AID flaky wind and solar installations to add literally GIGA TONS of battery waste to the problem. They all DIE in 20 years. The Grid Scale storage batteries - maybe a bit sooner.

What's that term??? OH - sustainability !!! NOWHERE in the Green Raw Deal plans.

You seem off on a tangent here ... we're hooking up wind/solar to the grid so we can save on gas ... a save some money ... if wind/solar doesn't pay for itself where you live, don't bother ...

I have never said battery technology was up to the task ... it isn't ... and until there's some break-through, grid-level storage ain't happening ...

 

[ReinyDays]

The only reason they can do that UP THERE is BECAUSE OF THE HYDRO --- which can modulated somewhat to fill the 2 or 4 days a week the wind IS NOT THERE..

In part ... the other is the moderate climate ... rains all the time and that keeps temperatures stable ...

 

[flacaltenn]

You seem off on a tangent here ... we're hooking up wind/solar to the grid so we can save on gas ... a save some money ... if wind/solar doesn't pay for itself where you live, don't bother ...

Wish it was ME off on a tangent. YOUR GOVT has taken a solemn pledge to KILL fossil fuels when ALL THEY GOT TO MANDATE is wind and solar. And at the same time KILLJNG gasoline powered vehicles and MOVING all that to the grid which will require somewhere around 33% MORE generation.

That's worse than a tangent -- that's a dead end with piles of body bags at the end of it. So -- excuse me -- but as an environmentalist -- I'm gonna take this (like I most things) DEADLY seriously.

I have never said battery technology was up to the task ... it isn't ... and until there's some break-through, grid-level storage ain't happening ...

Not only NOT up to the task -- but a collision of all these hare-brained "mandates" would be enviro armageddon with all the mining and disposal of GIGATONS of battery waste. Someone needs to tell the left that batteries (with the exception of single use "primary" batteries) DONT GENERATE a whit of power. They are power HOGS. And show them that this "battery centric" solution to "fixing" wind and solar as PRIMARY grid generation is UNSUSTAINABLE and a potential eco-disaster.

Most car companies are speeding towards this armagedon with 1/2 of them pledging "all -electric" by 2030.. If folks think they cant afford a car NOW -- JUST WAIT six years.

 

[ReinyDays]

Wish it was ME off on a tangent. YOUR GOVT has taken a solemn pledge to KILL fossil fuels when ALL THEY GOT TO MANDATE is wind and solar. And at the same time KILLJNG gasoline powered vehicles and MOVING all that to the grid which will require somewhere around 33% MORE generation.

That's worse than a tangent -- that's a dead end with piles of body bags at the end of it. So -- excuse me -- but as an environmentalist -- I'm gonna take this (like I most things) DEADLY seriously.



Not only NOT up to the task -- but a collision of all these hare-brained "mandates" would be enviro armageddon with all the mining and disposal of GIGATONS of battery waste. Someone needs to tell the left that batteries (with the exception of single use "primary" batteries) DONT GENERATE a whit of power. They are power HOGS. And show them that this "battery centric" solution to "fixing" wind and solar as PRIMARY grid generation is UNSUSTAINABLE and a potential eco-disaster.

Most car companies are speeding towards this armagedon with 1/2 of them pledging "all -electric" by 2030.. If folks think they cant afford a car NOW -- JUST WAIT six years.

For the record ... fossil fuels were DOA from the beginning where I live ... the transportation usage came later ... and once BPA was up and running, coal and natural gas became too expensive ... still is ... so why should we burn gasoline when electric cars are all but un-metered ... you sound like a Republican, bitching about your own rights while taking away my rights ...

Your death-dealing hyperbole works against you ... environmentalists want 90% of passenger vehicles off the roads, both gas and electric ... traffic accidents kill more people than lithium poisoning ... just saying ...

You still haven't explained why batteries can't be recycled ...

Most car companies are speeding towards this armagedon with 1/2 of them pledging "all -electric" by 2030.

If you believe that ... we'll need to work on gullibility issues ... the New Green Deal is the end of most car companies ... buy a Lada, you'll love it, I swear ...

You can scale ANYTHING to sound scary.

Just following your example ...

 

[Crick]

I wish you hadn't written inside your quotation. Aside from that, I don't have the faintest idea what you're babbling about. Orange County's energy consumption says nothing about the growth of alternative energy technology in the US.

 

[Crick]

33 g x (3X10^8 m/s)^2 = 10^15 J ... if per year, then 30,000 kW average ...

Oh wait ... 1.2 oz of fuel produces 1.2 oz of waste ... AA battery sized per home per year ... 100,000,000 is a lot for just the USA ... it's been fifty years so we have 5 billion sitting around already ...

Spend the money and build plants that don't produce waste ... easy peasy ... except for Windscale, all accidents and waste problems come from LWR ... maybe LWR is the problem and not nuclear power ...

BTW ... Westinghouse bankrupted out from underneath their reactor vessel manufacturing department ... we'll have to have the Chinese come in and build our new plants ... [giggle] ...

Is that the only physics equation you can remember? LOL.. Wasn't relativity at all. Just 8th grade math dude.

No, I remember quite a few. But Reiny Days posted "33 g x (3X10^8 m/s)^2 = 10^15 J ... if per year, then 30,000 kW average .." which clearly is attempting to use E-mc^^2 to calculate how much fuel would be required to produce a given amount of energy with our assortment of FISSION plants, to which the equation, which describes total conversion, certainly does NOT apply

 

[skookerasbil]

Again...you would be very hard pressed to find a thread in this forum sillier than this one.

Anybody thinking this legitimate is not a serious person.

 

[ReinyDays]

No, I remember quite a few. But Reiny Days posted "33 g x (3X10^8 m/s)^2 = 10^15 J ... if per year, then 30,000 kW average .." which clearly is attempting to use E-mc^^2 to calculate how much fuel would be required to produce a given amount of energy with our assortment of FISSION plants, to which the equation, which describes total conversion, certainly does NOT apply

You need to use a better flux capacitor is all ... what you got there was old back in the 22nd Century ...

 

[flacaltenn]

No, I remember quite a few. But Reiny Days posted "33 g x (3X10^8 m/s)^2 = 10^15 J ... if per year, then 30,000 kW average .." which clearly is attempting to use E-mc^^2 to calculate how much fuel would be required to produce a given amount of energy with our assortment of FISSION plants, to which the equation, which describes total conversion, certainly does NOT apply

Well heck -- You're right. What made that fly over my head - was the 30,000KW average RESULT that MIGHT be right for what 1 oz of fuel rod would produce INSTANTEOUSLY. So I flew right over it.