Alternative Power Sources?

[Zkribbler]

Can anyone tell me, what's the state of the development of alternative energy sources?

I've seen windfarms in California near Livermore, Mojave and Palm Springs...so they appear to be reaching economic viability.

What about solarfarms? There's one honkin' big desert just over the hills from L.A., so transmission costs here wouldn't be prohibitive. Why aren't we building huge solarfarms over there. They'd work great in summer, when we need most of our power. (Decades ago, my sister had solar-powered water heating in her apartment, but it needed tax breaks to make it economically viable.)

And fusion? That was supposed to be the cure all, once it was developed. But that was decades age.

Tidepower? Wow, talk about a renewable resource.

I always though Geo-thermal was over rated. You need thin areas in the Earth's crust, like in Hawaii or around Yellowstone.

[Dis]

It's funny that top deomcrats like Ted Kennedy oppose windfarms on some fancy Massachussetts island because it will ruin their view of their million dollar homes. That island has constant wind, and would be a good place for windfarms.

The problem will continue. No one wants power generating stations in their back yard of any type.

[Zkribbler]

That's why I'm focusing on the Mohave Desert, right over the hills from L.A. Other than in the towns of Palmdale and Lancaster, there's not a lot of people there to complain, and lizards can't vote.

[Az]

Fusion Fusion Fusion Fusion. It's the only way to go.

If the amount of money invested in it would be even remotly near the amount of money invested in defence, we'd have fusion much faster. But I guess we only have to wait for the last second or a **** in the ME to get things going.

3 Billion USD. that's the amount of money invested in it. It's ****ing pitiful.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Windfarms are sporadic producers even when there are winds (they're efficient only in a certain velocity range), and they're a pain in the ass because you have to synchronize a lot of separate little generators and provide protective relaying and transformation all over the place.

The reason you have three sets of them in California is that they were driven by Reagan-era tax subsidies (10% investment tax credit + 15% energy tax credit).

The biggest promoter of them in the US, SeaWest, makes their money up front by syndication fees. (I did some consulting work for them in '99 and 2000). Basically, they take a windfarm project, jack up the capital cost for a nice fee for themselves, and market participation on a per-windmill basis.

Even then, it only works on a fairly small scale, and if the power can be marketed with "green power" subsidies.


Solar is great in theory, and a turn in practice. If you want to invest in solar, California had a bunch of non-operating plants using different technoligies, and most of them could be bought from the lender for 10-20% of their original constructed cost. I don't know if they're still for sale, or scrapped now and written off, because there's been no interest in buying them.

There's two basic routes you can take with solar - photovoltaics, which involve mining and production of lots of toxic and expensive rare earth metals (Gallium Arsenide Phosphide just rocks, baby ), or mirror arrays. Mirror arrays just present an avigation hazard, take up a lot of space, and out in the desert, sand and grit gets in the bearing seals, which have to be fairly loose to allow for thermal expansion over the desert temperature range, and the added expansion from heating the individual cells in the mirror array. So you have no fuel cost, great. You have a capital cost per megawatt that would embarass the nuke people, and then you have to babysit the damned things and constantly take array elements out of service to rebuild bearing assemblies.

Within the mirror array route, you have two main subdivisions - directly heating water for steam to drive a steam turbine, which means lots of piping and valves and parasitic loads for pumping, or a sodium tower to provide your thermal transfer medium for the water-steam turbine loop. That just gives you a different set of maintenance headaches.

Solar is great for direct heat applications, and limited specialty power applications, but it sucks on a large commercial scale.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Azazel
Fusion Fusion Fusion Fusion. It's the only way to go.

If the amount of money invested in it would be even remotly near the amount of money invested in defence, we'd have fusion much faster. But I guess we only have to wait for the last second or a **** in the ME to get things going.

3 Billion USD. that's the amount of money invested in it. It's ****ing pitiful.

Ok, you take care of the arabs for us, and we'll spend the money on something else.

[Sandman]

Wind power is decent. A negligible ecological footprint, simple, proven technology and relatively cheap. On a local scale it's unreliable, although a national network of windfarms eases this a bit, since the wind will always be blowing somewhere, right?

You need a windy country (Britain is good), and even then it will only be good for about 20% of our energy needs. Still, that's nothing to laugh off.

Despite the utter, utter pillocks who protest at visual pollution, they are getting built, often out to sea, where the wind is stongest.

[Vandal-1]

Check into Fuelcells and Gas Turbines also

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Sandman
Wind power is decent. A negligible ecological footprint, simple, proven technology and relatively cheap. On a local scale it's unreliable, although a national network of windfarms eases this a bit, since the wind will always be blowing somewhere, right?

You need a windy country (Britain is good), and even then it will only be good for about 20% of our energy needs. Still, that's nothing to laugh off.

Despite the utter, utter pillocks who protest at visual pollution, they are getting built, often out to sea, where the wind is stongest.

In the US, I think studies have shown a maximum theoretical contribution of about 1.5 percent nationwide.

[The Andy-Man]

wind power is a waste of time.


Nuclear power is the way to go imo...

[Dinner]

Re: Alternative Power Sources?

Originally posted by Zkribbler
And fusion? That was supposed to be the cure
I always though Geo-thermal was over rated. You need thin areas in the Earth's crust, like in Hawaii or around Yellowstone.

Last I heard California was the largest geothermal producer in the country. We have several in the Imperial valley where crustal thinning is occuring due to Baja California being rifted off of the mainland. Plus we have several large transform faults which produce natural hot springs via frictional heating and ther are volcanos in the far northern part of the state (around Mount Lassen Volcanic park).

Iceland has everyone beat on Geothermal production though. Those guys have geothermal as there primary energy source.

[The Andy-Man]

'Baja California being rifted off of the mainland'


IS this an 'escape from LA situation'?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman
Wind power is decent. A negligible ecological footprint, simple, proven technology and relatively cheap.

Are you insane? A negligible foot print?! Have you ever even seen how much space one of those things takes up? During the Enron inspired power crisis here in California the media ran all sorts of stuff on the vasious alternatives to fossil & traditional energy sources and wind power came in with the second highest average costs per mega watt and it took up the most space to generate those expensive mega-watts.

Nuclear power is the way to go. The amount of pollution produced is very small and the plants take up a reasonable amount of space. If I were in charge we'd have most of our power coming from nukes since they don't produce green house gases and we would be able to slash the money we give to the murdering Arabs.

[SlowwHand]

Wind.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: Re: Alternative Power Sources?

Originally posted by Oerdin


Last I heard California was the largest geothermal producer in the country. We have several in the Imperial valley where crustal thinning is occuring due to Baja California being rifted off of the mainland. Plus we have several large transform faults which produce natural hot springs via frictional heating and ther are volcanos in the far northern part of the state (around Mount Lassen Volcanic park).

Iceland has everyone beat on Geothermal production though. Those guys have geothermal as there primary energy source.

You're close to a bunch now, in the Geysers KGRA over in Lake and Sonoma Counties. Not sure how many are still running.