Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
Beskar had a good point. If it could make it past all the stupid political BS, ITER has a huge potential to revolutionize energy production for the world. Too bad it might actually prove to be far too safe and efficient, and would put all those poor coal and oil barons right out of business.
Failing that, there are plenty of good ol' fission nuke plant concepts that are ridiculously safe and generate roughly the same amount of waste as current plants. Pebble bed reactors for example. The reason you won't see many pebble bed types at all is because they're very poor at acting as breeder reactors for weapons grade material. We gotz to have our nukuler bombz.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Whacker
Beskar had a good point. If it could make it past all the stupid political BS, ITER has a huge potential to revolutionize energy production for the world. Too bad it might actually prove to be far too safe and efficient, and would put all those poor coal and oil barons right out of business.
It's pretty much that holding it up, also it is the "Green Agenda" as they are being forced to funnel money into things such as solar panels and windfarms which are far cheaper to setup, but far far less efficient. If they get ITER up and running, it would decimate oil based economy as oil would only be used for things like making plastic.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Ice
Unforunately wind power can not be transfered using conventional power grids, so you would have to build an entirely new grid system throughout the state of Michigan to transfer power to the population centers of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing...etc.
That sounds wrong to me. Never hear of similar before.
Edit:
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Originally Posted by
rory_20_uk
There are ways to store the energy - counter weights, turbines to pump water or increase the pressure of a gas, hydrolysis of water.
~:smoking:
Such a system has indeed been implemented on a Norwegian island as a pilot project.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Viking
That sounds wrong to me. Never hear of similar before.
Why does that sound wrong? Any engineers on this board who can verify this claim?
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
I think that all that jazz about cars CO2 pollution is a bunch of of nonsense. Have big enough forests and CO2 will never be a problem. Global warming is just a gimmick used by government to get our attention off more pressing matter and give us the illusion they care while they can go on with their 'shady' business.
Basically we could all drive electric cars, yet if there is no trees left we're still done for because of cows farts. What we should realy worry about is NOx and SO2 (those do not come from properly equip cars) pollution that translate to acid rain that decimate forests. Water and soil pollution should be our main concern. What will we do with all the trash we are dumping in the water and burring in the soil? What to do about companies that clear entire forest and do not replant? Is our current trees replanting technique effective? What about genetically modified seeds that get sterile once grown? Is ruining (as in nothing will ever grow there for the next 100-300 years) high producing wheat fields and contaminate water on a 3:1 ratio to produce oil worth it?
Always laying everything on the shoulder of common citizens while big corporations have free reign.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Ice
Why does that sound wrong? Any engineers on this board who can verify this claim?
Well, I've had wind power on my curriculum; only as small portion; but the drawbacks you mention seem so huge and well worthy of inclusion in any text concerning wind power.
The only drawbacks of wind power my curriculum mentioned, IIRC, are:
* enviromental
* aesthetical
..and of course you need enough wind.
If I've understood you correctly, you said that we basically have to build things like this
https://img132.imageshack.us/img132/...wer20linec.jpg
all over the state again?
This NYTimes article talks about the grid system being to old to keep up with modern energy demands; but none the less, wind mills are already connected to it. Is this what you meant?
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
Overground is probably cheaper, but there's no technical reason why the cables can't be buried.
~:smoking:
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Ice
Why does that sound wrong? Any engineers on this board who can verify this claim?
therev was a der-spiegel article some time back talking about the perils faced by national grids around germany from the 'backwash' or suprlus wind-power, but i cannot find the article.
of interest:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/ww...%20Systems.pdf
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Viking
This
NYTimes article talks about the grid system being to old to keep up with modern energy demands; but none the less, wind mills are already connected to it. Is this what you meant?
Yeah that's what I meant. Like I said, carrying windpower from the few places that are have a lot of wind, to places around the country which don't have a lot of wind is a challenge. Apparently you can use conventional grids to transfer such power, but not very well.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ice
Yeah that's what I meant. Like I said, carrying windpower from the few places that are have a lot of wind, to places around the country which don't have a lot of wind is a challenge. Apparently you can use conventional grids to transfer such power, but not very well.
Well we do it without problem here in Quebec and we have large number of wind turbines. We even sell the electricity to the USA.
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
I once read a report that said that with today's technology, a solar plant of 10.000km2 (About New Jersey?) could provide all the energy needs of Europe. If build, unfortunately, in the Sahara.
Luckily, America has the space and the sunshine in the Southwest.
Ah. Things are at last moving forward.
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On Monday, a group of companies including some very big industrial concerns - Siemens, RWE, E.On - met with representatives of the German government and other political players to sign a memorandum of understanding that could eventually see the flowering of desert power - the Desertec Industrial Initiative.
Partners will now spend three years putting together viable financial packages that could plant solar facilities across large swathes of the Sahara by 2020.
There is talk of 400bn euros being invested. For comparison, that would dwarf the cost of the Iter fusion power project.
Remember those startling high-tech photos of mirrors gleaming in a Californian dawn that filled the covers of glossy magazines back in the 1980s? That's a concentrated solar thermal power station.
So is the space-age tower rising from Spanish soil, just outside Seville, which may soon provide enough electricity to meet that city's needs.
The Desertec project's initial goal is "to produce sufficient power to meet around 15% of Europe's electricity requirements and a substantial portion of the power needs of the producer countries".
These will be in North Africa and the Middle East, probably stretching round as far as Jordan, whose Prince Hassan bin Talal declared that "partnerships that will be formed across the regions as a result of the Desertec project will open a new chapter in relations between the people of the EU, West Asia and North Africa".
But the dreams are even bigger. Why not power much more of Europe from the region? Why not electrify much of South America from the Atacama desert and the mountain tops of Patagonia? Sydney and Melbourne from the Simpson desert, and western China from the expanding Gobi?
One reason why not may turn out to be security security of supply. Why trade dependence on Middle Eastern gas for dependence on Middle Eastern solar electricity, some would ask.
Politically, the project will build better bridges between the EU and countries that would like to be closer to it; other benefits could flow over those bridges. For EU nations, one of the attractions is that it provides a partial route to the target of providing 20% of the bloc's energy by 2020 - a target that, in many observers' eyes, is considerably more ambitious than the 20% greenhouse gas reductions that the EU has also pledged.
1) Why oh why is this mostly a German project, instead of an EU one. :bangshead:
2) We should never have given up on Algeria. We're swapping dependence on oil states for dependence on solar states. :bangsheadsomemore:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Louis VI the Fat
At least you can stockpile oil in the event of a disruption.... :sweatdrop:
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
For those pondering 'Why not build a bunch of solar farms in desert states of the USA?''
A huge wind power plant, with already hundreds of millions USD invested, was canceled;
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HOUSTON (AP) - T. Boone Pickens disclosed today that his plans for the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped.
The Dallas energy baron says he's now looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines that he's already ordered. Those turbines stand on pylons
Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which stand on 400-foot-tall pylons - taller than most 30-story buildings.
In Pickens' words, "My garage won't hold them. They've got to go someplace."
Pickens' company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric in a $2 billion investment a little more than a year ago. Pickens says he has leases on about 200,000 acres in Texas that were planned for the project, and he might place some of the turbines there. But he says there's a problem in getting power from the proposed site in the Panhandle to a distribution system.
The problem is the distribution of power; it's clear you can't simply build lines from the desert to the cities.
CR
Re: Global Warming Bill passes House
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Originally Posted by
Crazed Rabbit
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Though, the ultimate reason he cites for changing courses this time around is constraints on transmission lines.
From this brief sentence it appears the environmentalist Luddites are at it again. Or, that's just my bias talking.
