Wind Farm Cloud Cuckoo Land
zbnoo
Christopher Booker
29 Jun 2008
Since Gordon Brown on Thursday launched what he called "the greatest
revolution in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power",
centred on building thousands of new wind turbines, let us start with a
simple fact.
Nothing conveys the futility of wind power more vividly than this: that
all the electricity generated by the 2,000 wind turbines already built
in Britain is still less than that produced by a single medium-sized
conventional power station.
There are nearly 50 nuclear, gas or coal-fired power plants in Britain
today each of which produces more electricity in a year than all those
2,000 turbines put together.
I make no apology for returning to this subject because the "£100
billion green energy strategy" published last week, by what is now
laughably known as the Department for Business, Enterprise and
Regulatory Reform (BERR), contains not only many smaller deceptions and
self-deceptions but one so great that almost everyone has fallen for it.
The starting point is the EU's requirement that, to combat the "threat
of climate change", we must drastically reduce our CO2 emissions,
chiefly by building thousands more wind turbines.
It is quite clear from the paper that BERR's officials know we haven't
the faintest hope of meeting our EU target in this way. So its
number-crunchers have been working overtime to squeeze down the amount
of energy we source from wind to the lowest figure it thinks can be made
to sound plausible.
Until last week BERR had been claiming that our EU requirement meant
that we must generate 38 per cent of our electricity from renewables,
the largest contribution coming from 11,000 offshore turbines,
representing 33 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. But all this has changed
dramatically.
They now talk only about the need to meet 32 per cent of our total EU
renewables target through our methods of electricity generation, with
only 32 per cent of that needing to come from wind - and that, they say,
can be done with a mere 7,000 new offshore and onshore turbines.
However, our present generating capacity is 76GW. By 2020, on projected
demand, to replace one third of one third of our capacity with wind
power would mean generating an average of 10GW.
And herein lies the central misconception which bedevils the entire
debate. Because of the wind's intermittency, turbines generate on
average at less than a third of their capacity. Thus to contribute 10GW
would need 30GW of capacity, which would require up to twice as many
turbines as ministers are talking about - needing to be erected at a
rate of more than four every working day between now and 2020.
In practical terms, even if they grossly bend the planning rules (as MPs
voted for last week), there isn't the remotest chance that anything like
this number of turbines could be built in time to meet their target.
For instance, the world only has five of the giant barges that can
install monster turbines offshore - and for more than half the year our
weather conditions make installation impossible anyway.
But in addition we should also need to build at least 20 new
conventional power stations simply to provide back-up for all the times
when the wind is not blowing - at a time when, within seven years, we
already stand to lose 40 per cent of our existing generating capacity
through the closure of almost all our ageing nuclear power plants and
half our major coal and oil-fired power stations (due to the crippling
cost of complying with an EU anti-pollution directive).
It is a total mess. The reality is that, thanks to the dithering and
wishful thinking of our politicians, it may already be too late to avert
that breakdown of our electricity supply which would be one of the most
serious disasters Britain has ever faced.
And, ironically, no one at present looks more likely to inherit this
mess than David Cameron - whose only response to last week' s
pie-in-the-sky from Gordon Brown was to say that the Government should
have been building all those useless windmills years ago.
Warming denial a 'high crime' says NASA chief
James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
(GISS), is to ask Congress for the chief executives of US energy
companies to face trial for the "high crime" of denying global warming.
Since his historic speech to Congress in July 1988, Mr Hansen and his
close ally Al Gore have done more than anyone else to promote the
warming scare which has since swept the world. Yet this is the man who
last summer was forced to correct erroneous temperature figures on his
influential GISS website, to show that the highest recorded US surface
temperatures were not in the last 10 years, as Hansen claimed, but in
the 1930s.
His latest outburst is only one of many recent signs of desperation in
the warmist lobby, as falling global temperatures threaten to undermine
the central tenet of their orthodoxy.
Far from continuing to rise in sync with CO2 levels, as the theory says
they should, temperatures have not only been dropping but are now lower
than when Hansen and Gore set the scare in train in 1988. (For latest
graph see the Watts Up With That website.)
Even fanatical upholders of the dogma are having to admit that warming
seems "temporarily" to have stopped (along with the sunspot activity
they try to ignore), although they weakly claim, on no plausible
evidence, that in 10 years' time it will somehow return worse than ever.
Such delusions might be viewed as no more than a comical instance of
human folly, were it not for the fact that almost every politician in
the Western world has fallen for them, and is now blindly supporting
such crazed initiatives as that launched in Britain last week by Gordon
Brown, at fathomlessly destructive cost to us all.
Warnest Regards
Bonzo
"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods
but by perpetual repetition." Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of
Meteorology, MIT
Stringer
>
>
> Christopher Booker
>
> 29 Jun 2008
>
>
>
> Since Gordon Brown on Thursday launched what he called "the greatest
> revolution in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power",
> centred on building thousands of new wind turbines, let us start with a
> simple fact.
>
>
>
> Nothing conveys the futility of wind power more vividly than this: that
> all the electricity generated by the 2,000 wind turbines already built in
> Britain is still less than that produced by a single medium-sized
> conventional power station.
>
the making of wind turbines components, don't you think the net energy
produced is more beneficial long term with continuous generation with near
zero emissions?
>
>
> There are nearly 50 nuclear, gas or coal-fired power plants in Britain
> today each of which produces more electricity in a year than all those
> 2,000 turbines put together.
>
and the CO2?
>
>
> I make no apology for returning to this subject because the "£100 billion
> green energy strategy" published last week, by what is now laughably known
> as the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR),
> contains not only many smaller deceptions and self-deceptions but one so
> great that almost everyone has fallen for it.
>
>
>
> The starting point is the EU's requirement that, to combat the "threat of
> climate change", we must drastically reduce our CO2 emissions, chiefly by
> building thousands more wind turbines.
>
Wind is not the solution I agree. But you might be forgiven in thinking that
reduced CO2 is worthy of consideraton in some other initiatives or a
combination of renewables thereof.
>
>
> It is quite clear from the paper that BERR's officials know we haven't the
> faintest hope of meeting our EU target in this way. So its
> number-crunchers have been working overtime to squeeze down the amount of
> energy we source from wind to the lowest figure it thinks can be made to
> sound plausible.
In itself... That doesn't sound plausible. The number-crunchers would surely
put a spin on all the numbers in a concerted effort to squeeze down all our
energy consumption from all technologies to meet targets? That sounds more
plausible... and more likely.
<SNIP>
Because we are regarded as having one of the windiest countries in the
world, it follows that we should build wind farms to capture all the energy
but this is only fractionally of what we require and an attempt at building
more now is a futile attempt at bolting the stable door after the horse has
fucked off.
Indecently. The design of the three bladed windturbines are poorly
inadequate (ask any self sustaining US farmer) and needs a redesign using
multi-faceted props for greater torque and power generation whilst utilizing
greater step-down gear ratio or better;
Nuclear power generation that is.. co-generation using the heat produced to
drive both the steam turbines (electricity) and heat excesses for the
reaction: H2O > H2 > H+ H+ = H2+O2 for the advent of a proposed hydrogen
economy.
Like the goal post, targets can be moved ad-hoc!
News
"Stringer" <stri...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:S2gEk.21206$Cl....@newsfe18.ams2...
> Because we are regarded as having one of the windiest countries in the
> world, it follows that we should build wind farms to capture all the
> energy
> but this is only fractionally of what we require and an attempt at
> building
> more now is a futile attempt at bolting the stable door after the horse
> has
> fucked off.
>
> Indecently. The design of the three bladed windturbines are poorly
> inadequate (ask any self sustaining US farmer) and needs a redesign using
> multi-faceted props for greater torque and power generation whilst
> utilizing
> greater step-down gear ratio or better;
It is feasible to get 30% of the UKs electrical energy via wind. Yes, using
better turbines and locating them correctly too. Many are poorly located. If
less energy is used overall by better town planning avoiding use of
vehicles, superinsulation and passive solar in house designs and use of
ships more to transport goods, then great saving can be made reducing the
need for power stations pushing up the greener options.
On point about power stations. They may produce "n" amount of GW, but lines
losses tend to drop that a lot as many are remote. Many turbines are nearer
the point of use wasting less. Turbines run mainly 24/7, so lots of wind
overnight and power stations can cut back.
Tidal lagoons in the Irish Sea hold more promise, as they can produce all
the UKs power needs, with knock on benefits which no nuclear plant would
give......ever.
Stringer
> It is feasible to get 30% of the UKs electrical energy via wind. Yes,
> using better turbines and locating them correctly too. Many are poorly
> located. If less energy is used overall by better town planning avoiding
> use of vehicles, superinsulation and passive solar in house designs and
> use of ships more to transport goods, then great saving can be made
> reducing the need for power stations pushing up the greener options.
>
and reduction of consumption than production.
Town planners typically consult with undergraduates and the locations are
determined initially on their inexperiences whereby the proposed site(s) are
then routinely objected to.
> On point about power stations. They may produce "n" amount of GW, but
> lines losses tend to drop that a lot as many are remote. Many turbines
> are nearer the point of use wasting less. Turbines run mainly 24/7, so
> lots of wind overnight and power stations can cut back.
>
> Tidal lagoons in the Irish Sea hold more promise, as they can produce all
> the UKs power needs, with knock on benefits which no nuclear plant would
> give......ever.
>
Not sure what the knock on benefits of tidal might be unless your idea is
with doing away with nukes, but again such an ambitious project would still
be subject to planning which is a pain in the proverbial and no less
problematic than planning required for new nuclear plant facilities.
There was a news item tonight BBC which highlighted a £2M project for a
prototype tidal power generator up the Humber estuary which sounded
promising suggesting that it could be deployed where water is less than 20m
deep. The technologies are based on either Hydrofoils or Turbines in shallow
waters which make installation, connection and maintenance more
straightforward than in remote locations. It was interesting up to the point
where it said it could provide electricity for up to 70 homes but at a cost
of £2M ?
http://renewableenergydev.com/red/tidal-energy-pulse-tidal-shallow-water-device-pulse-stream-100/
http://www.pulsegeneration.co.uk/
Don Kelly
"News" <kill...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:gbss4c$hp0$1...@registered.motzarella.org...
>
> "Stringer" <stri...@virgin.net> wrote in message
> news:S2gEk.21206$Cl....@newsfe18.ams2...
>
>
> It is feasible to get 30% of the UKs electrical energy via wind. Yes,
> using better turbines and locating them correctly too. Many are poorly
> located. If less energy is used overall by better town planning avoiding
> use of vehicles, superinsulation and passive solar in house designs and
> use of ships more to transport goods, then great saving can be made
> reducing the need for power stations pushing up the greener options.
>
> On point about power stations. They may produce "n" amount of GW, but
> lines losses tend to drop that a lot as many are remote. Many turbines
> are nearer the point of use wasting less. Turbines run mainly 24/7, so
> lots of wind overnight and power stations can cut back.
And what losses do you think occur on the grid -even for remote stations?
"A lot" implies what? 5% 10% 50% ?? Do you really know? Secondly, often the
best wind and tidal sources are just as remote and also have conversion
losses so do they do better in terms of losses? Thirdly, a wind unit may run
24/7 but what is the actual energy available when it is needed- what is the
backup when the wind isn't available. A n MW wind unit may be able to
produce n MW for 4 hours a day and less than that on average- with
variations from N+10% to 0 MW the output is quite a bit less than n MW and
backup capacity is needed when the wind is too high or too low (which is
much of the time) . An n MW nuclear plant can run 24/7 at its rated capacity
all the time. Scheduled maintenance shut downs are equivalent)
>
> Tidal lagoons in the Irish Sea hold more promise, as they can produce all
> the UKs power needs, with knock on benefits which no nuclear plant would
> give......ever.
----
Certainly, all that the UK people and industry need to do is adapt their
working and living habits to the tide. The advantage over wind is that it
is possible to predict when tidal energy is available.
Note that France has been far ahead of the UK in terms of tidal power and
its tidal plant simply means that the load on nuclear and other sources is
ramped up or down accordingly. The Bay of Fundy tidal project is one of , if
not the. largest tidal plants envisioned and studied for over 50 years and,
except for a small (150MW if I remember correctly) pilot plant, has
languished because of economic and ecological factors.
We must use all the options available to us but lets not let wishful
thinking get in the way of hard nosed engineering because, in fact, it
won't- and all the advances in wind, tidal, and solar power are the result
of the latter.
--
Don Kelly dh...@shawcross.ca
remove the X to answer
----------------------------
>
News
"Don Kelly" <dh...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:B8fFk.18511$kc....@newsfe12.iad...
>> Tidal lagoons in the Irish Sea hold more promise, as they can produce all
>> the UKs power needs, with knock on benefits which no nuclear plant would
>> give......ever.
>
> Certainly, all that the UK people and industry need to do is adapt their
> working and living habits to the tide.
You need to understand what a tidal lagoon is. This has been explained on
recent threads. Think of a wall in a circle in shallow sea with a high
tidal range and a wall dividing the circle creating two lagoons and tidal
gates on walls. One will always be producing power as one lagoon lags
behind the other. With enough lagoons it will always produce power
irrespective of tides (tides are highly predicable) - and knock on
advantages of bridges, barrier to tidal surges, tsunamis (yes the UK had one
in the 1600s), etc. 20% of the Irish Sea lagooned off will provide all the
UK & Irelands energy needs.
> We must use all the options available to us but lets not let wishful
> thinking get in the way of hard nosed engineering because, in fact, it
> won't- and all the advances in wind, tidal, and solar power are the result
> of the latter.
Read above. If oil/energy was so expensive or scarce, the UK can become
energy independent - and that means running full electric vehicles. The
cost of the lagoons? Look at the cost of building and maintaining all the
power stations nuclear or what. The lagoons can be brought into use one at
a time for the cost of a few power stations. More detailed studies are
being undertaken, and models of the lagoons, but it is clearly feasible so
far. It is then political will to implement.
CO2 output is even a topic in the US election.
Don Kelly
Yes, I do know what a tidal lagoon is. I also know enough about utility
systems, engineering and loads to know that you are blowing it out your ear
when you say that tidal lagoons in the Irish See could satisfy the needs of
Great Britain. In theory the total energy could be handled but since the
energy required is dependent on man's needs, not natures cycles, there is
a problem. We don't use energy at the time it is available from such
plants.
Please note the tidal cycles which mean that in the periods between high and
low tides, there is an appreciable period where generation is 0 or very
near 0 because generation only exists when there is enough of a head
difference between a lagoon and the sea. For much of the time, this isn't
the case. Don't confuse peak tidal plant capability with average capability
(and I suspect that your sources actually do this). Look at the conditions
at La Rance, France and note that the only way that this works is that there
is enough other capacity (mainly nuclear) to handle the variation which is,
as you say, predictable.
Why aren't there more "La Rances"? After all, France has a lot of coastline,
some of which is suitable and the feasibility of incorporating more tidal
plants into the French system is just as good as it is in the Irish Sea.
Now consider that over the time diversity of tides in a region such as the
area surrounding the Irish sea is small so there would be times where the
energy available cannot be used and other times that it is insufficient. The
former is not a problem, the latter is definitely one. Check out tide
tables for different locations in the region for the variation in the times
of high tides. Where I am, on the Canadian Pacific coast, the divergence in
peak tides over a distance of over twice the length of the Irish Sea is less
than 1 hour. Today the morning high tides at Belfast and Liverpool are 10
minutes apart. That won't do much to even out the tidal generation
capability. In other words, the output from all such lagoons on the small
Irish Sea will peak within a few minutes of each other and a meaningful
time diversity will simply not be there. Add to this the fact that high and
low tides (peak generating) shift daily- here, it is about 1 hour a day.
That doesn't fit any schedule that modern man works to (even less so than
solar)-my original comment. Do we have storage for the excess and other
sources to carry through the mid -tide periods? We can have, but there is an
associated economic and environmental cost.
I have been to the Bay of Fundy which has the highest tides in the world and
is a great candidate for tidal power. Proposals for a large generating
facility have been around for 50 years or so - with a great deal of
engineering and economic analysis/design behind them, including a small
150MW pilot plant. I recall this as quite exciting in technical meetings in
the 70's but before it's time. It is still before its time- It is
feasible but the reason nothing more has been done is that economic and
environmental costs are still too prohibitive.
Now- do you think that a tidal lagoon which produces X MW peak and possibly
a maximum of 4000X MWh per year is cheaper than a nuclear plant that can
produce x MW producing 8000X MWh per year, and can be, considering that
capital costs are about the same? The nuclear plant does produce waste heat
and effectively all the energy into it eventually becomes heat. However all
the energy into the tidal plant also eventually becomes heat. The nuclear
heat will be greater (but no CO2) but the tidal plant may have an equally
bad effect on the marine environment - do we know or are we stumbling from
one "not so good" solution to another "maybe no better" solution?
All of the above comments do not mean that it is not worth pursuing tidal
energy. It will be, and must be, pursued but it will be done on the basis
of sound engineering,including environmental, social and economic effects,
rather than "pie in the sky" wishful thinking.
We have to consider the alternatives for a given region and balance these
rather than say "wind is the solution, solar is the solution, tidal is the
solution, nuclear is the solution ,Natural gas is the solution, coal is the
solution, hydro is the solution...etc, etc, when none of these alone is the
solution.
What I am suggesting is that when all is considered, it is not "political
will" that is the stumbling block but a hard nosed cost/benefits in which
both monetary and environmental costs and benefits must be balanced. I
suspect that most of the funding for further study comes from the
state -political will says "check it out". Where does one spend the
trillions of pounds, dollars or euros most effectively? --
Don Kelly dh...@shawcross.ca
remove the X to answer
----------------------------
"News" <kill...@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:gcnh8e$3vq$1...@registered.motzarella.org...
Whata Fool
It is not an issue to the average voter though, most people
consider algore and alarmism to be a joke, just a conversation piece.
The price of gasoline is no joke though, because of the long
distances to travel for necessities and work.
Tidal Lagoons will not even provide power post places,
but wave power should be much better if the right mechanism is
used.
What is needed at the present is cool heads making intelligent
decisions, and allowing the market place to work without regulation
or commodity market speculators running up prices, everybody should
have seen the speculation bubble ready to burst, copper and nickel
and platinum and oil losing near half their value in three months.
The investment banking problem is a different issue, people
selling paper without means of recovery is more along the lines of
fraud and grand larceny.
News
"Whata Fool" <wh...@fool.ami> wrote in message
news:tid3f4d89lill9e13...@4ax.com...
> Tidal Lagoons will not even provide
> power post places, but wave power
> should be much better if the right mechanism
> is used.
Lagoons are best in shallow seas with high tidal ranges. The Irish Sea is
that - Liverpool has the 4th highest tides in the world and on the Irish
Sea. Wave maybe better elsewhere.
> What is needed at the present is cool heads making intelligent
> decisions, and allowing the market place to work without regulation
> or commodity market speculators running up prices,
They is contradictory. The problem with "free markets" is that they are
open to manipulation and cornering.
The solution is power generated via nature not market driven commodities.
Then a country has stability.
> The investment banking problem is a different issue, people
> selling paper without means of recovery is more along the lines of
> fraud and grand larceny.
Most of the world's banks appear to be in line for an element of
nationalisation. The system is flakey. The USA building too many houses and
lending money to people who had a high risk of not paying back should not
cascade to the rest of the world. Then it is a matter of route cause
analysis to ascertain what the problems were, then install mechanisms to
ensure they do not occur again - on a world level. Then government can sell
their stakes in the banks when the system stabilises.
A rampant free market does not work. To think the stability world's
financial system partially based "confidence" and "rumour".
News
>
> Yes, I do know what a tidal lagoon is. I also know enough about utility
> systems, engineering and loads to know that you are blowing it out your
> ear when you say that tidal lagoons in the Irish See could satisfy the
> needs of Great Britain.
It is not me who is saying it - I am just the messenger. If you think you
know better inform the UK government. You had better know what you are on
about though.
> In theory the total energy could be handled but since the energy required
> is dependent on man's needs, not natures cycles, there is a problem. We
> don't use energy at the time it is available from such plants.
> Please note the tidal cycles which mean that in the periods between high
> and low tides, there is an appreciable period where generation is 0 or
> very near 0 because generation only exists when there is enough of a head
> difference between a lagoon and the sea.
It is clear you do not understand what a Lagoon system does. There are a
number of them at various states of water levels. There will always be
power generated. Think of one large dam wall in a circle in a shallow sea,
split it into three sections. The centre section could be 30 foot below the
outer two and the high tide level, and fill up via the other two or the high
tide.
It is a matter of having the lagoons filling and emptying at different times
to ensure full power production 24/7.
A test lagoon is being suggested at Swansea in South Wales.
> Look at the conditions at La Rance, France and note that the only way that
> this works is that there is enough other capacity (mainly nuclear) to
> handle the variation which is, as you say, predictable.
La Rance is just one power station. It only generates when the tide is
running one-way. It is quite old now - 1966. Pioneering it is.
> Why aren't there more "La Rances"?
See above. Also France had a political policy of being electricity
generating independent, hence the large volume of nuclear power stations
tidal, hydro in the Alps, etc. They export electricity to the UK.
> What I am suggesting is that when all is considered, it is not "political
> will" that is the stumbling block but a hard nosed cost/benefits in which
> both monetary and environmental costs and benefits must be balanced.
Hard nosed cost/benefit eliminated the British coal industry (or was that
political spite by Thatcher hating miners?). Middle Eastern oil was buttons
to buy and the North Sea was full of cheap gas. Mrs Thatcher was told to
reserve the gas for primarily domestic use and not use it to generate
electricity - use the masses of coal we have under the country to generate
electricity. She never. We are now are semi-dependent on Russian gas as we
used a lot of our own reserves needlessly. Russia refused to supply gas to
the Ukraine a few years ago, so alarm bells rang. We need stable fuel
supplies. We get oil and gas from the politically unstable Middle East and
Russia - which is a political concern over cost/benefit. They have to look
at the long term and stability, not short term gains of utility companies.
One coal mine has now re-opened in Yorkshire.
David Williams
-> low tides, there is an appreciable period where generation is 0 or very
-> near 0 because generation only exists when there is enough of a head
-> difference between a lagoon and the sea.
No. You don't have the full picture. The variation of the level of the
water in the lagoon is phase-shifted relative to the tides in the sea.
The highest level in the lagoon happens somewhat later than high tide.
If there is a second lagoon which is fed from the first, the variation
of its water level is phase-shifted even later. If necessary, third,
etc., lagoons can be added to the chain. So turbines in the streams of
water flowing in and out of all the lagoons can produce a reasonably
constant amount of power through the whole tidal cycle.
However, there is another problem. Around New Moon and Full Moon the
tidal efects of the moon and sun reinforce each other, but at the
quarter-phases they oppose each other. As a result, the tides are about
twice as high at Full and New Moon than at the quarters. There are also
other, smaller effects. The tides are larger when the moon is closer to
the earth, on its elliptical orbit, than when it is further away, and
also larger around the equinoxes than the solstices, because the
geometry is more favourable. The amount of power available is
proportional to the square of the sizes of the tides. The output of a
tidal power station is therefore about five times greater when the
tides are largest than when they are smallest.
Some sort of storage system would be needed to smooth out these
variations, and it would have to be capable of holding enough energy
to run the load for a period of a week or more. Flooding old Welsh
slate quarries (where, incidentally, some of my ancestors worked) is
not going to provide anywhere near enough capacity. Some truly immense
reservoir would be needed, greatly increasing the cost of the whole
scheme.
However, it might be a great "make work" project during hard economic
times.
dow
Eeyore
zbnoo wrote:
> Christopher Booker
> 29 Jun 2008
>
> Since Gordon Brown on Thursday launched what he called "the greatest
> revolution in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power",
> centred on building thousands of new wind turbines, let us start with a
> simple fact.
He can stuff that 'cos there's not going to be enough left in the kitty after he's nationalised all the banks.
Graham
Eeyore
Stringer wrote:
> Like the goal post, targets can be moved ad-hoc!
As can politicians !
Graham
Whata Fool
Maybe you aren't paying attention, or are mislead by the media hype,
the problem has been the artificial high price of gasoline, and the liberal
influence on "helping the poor" buy homes and borrow money.
Relative to copper, aluminum and platinum, the dollar is worth
almost twice what it was a couple of months ago, people with dollars
are in good shape, those that played the commodity market and who had
high risk "investments" (gambling) are the losers.
If 700 Billion is needed to bail out the investment banks, then
either people bought 700 Billion worth of high risk paper, or the
market price quoted for that paper was inflated.
There also has to be an element of fraud, at least some of the
"swaps" (called something other than insurance" was sold or traded
without the proper backing.
Any energy production is a commodity if the stock is traded or
if futures are sold, in fact, a lot of the "crisis" was caused by a lot
of money being invested in non-productive activity, such as the futures
market, "green" stocks and carbon credits, any time money is payed out
and nothing tangible received in return, it is a drain on the cash flow
of the entire economic engine.
Actually, if it was not for the large number of investors that were
NOT American that prompted the "bailout" to protect the integrity of the
US dollar, chances are the congress would have just let the foolish risky
investments do whatever the market brought.
There is some element of "panic" involved, a bank cannot afford to
have cash on hand, all the deposits and investment money has to be loaned
out and collecting interest, that is the only way a bank can cover the
expenses and pay interest.
So any unusual withdrawals or less payments or new deposits can
quickly look like a problem, even if the bank holds adequate collateral
to cover all depositors or investors.
With all the media hype, I haven't seen anything different at all
on the main streets of the US. Buffet was running TV ads, but they
will probably not be productive and might not be continued.
All companies are running some kind of green program, but viewers
are completely bored by them.
The local power company is pushing CFLs, even had a lady explain
how they will save on the energy bill year round, when incandescents
help heat the house in cold weather.
All types of alternate energy will work where it works, most
types do not work very many places, solar would work best on the
Arabian Peninsula, and there are a few bays where tidal power will
work.
But one industry is running ads urging use of a technology that
will cut carbon emissions in half immediately, and that is natural
gas, with compressed natural gas cars and conversion kits.
All it will take is people getting used to having a high pressure
bottle of natural gas in the trunk.
I try to get by on all electric, the local power company can buy
nuclear or hydro or can run the plant on natural gas, so it is up to
them to reduce my carbon for space heating.
I am also converting some of my air conditioners to heat pumps,
which just means jumping the thermostat so the run on a line current
heating thermostat and then I turn them around and weather proof any
electrical circuits or switches.
I have a feeling that a lot more types of efficient electrical
heating appliances are available in Europe or Great Britain, that
is how I found out about the "cove" heater I put in my bathroom,
now I only use 451 watts max to heat the bathroom, rather than
keeping the whole house warm.
Wind farms are fine for utility companies, but solar is best
for individuals in tropical and some temperate locations.
But some isolated properties may benefit from any form of
energy if grid power is not feasible.
Eeyore
News wrote:
> It is feasible to get 30% of the UKs electrical energy via wind.
Only if you build the same amount of high cost standby 'peaking' generation. And
then don't use it much of time. The economics are those of the madhouse.
Graham
Whata Fool
In the UK, maybe, or at least keep enough standby or base reserve.
But in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and South America,
having both types of plants in different time zones can reduce the
reserve needed.
Have you seen any study of how long it takes to anticipate NO
wind, until the wind power drops off?
Spinning reserve does not require much fuel, so maybe wind
is not all that bad where there is a reason to reduce the amount
of fuel burned, especially coal.
Is a short power outage all that bad, the power here goes off
for a second or two quite often, usually when I have written a long
email and not saved it. :-)
Ike came back to hurricane strength here and I was lucky, only
36 hours, while others not 2 miles from the Eon power plant suffered
a week or more.
Chances are the longer more wind farms operate on grid, the
more information will be known, and planning will improve.
At least there is hardware that works, that is better than
some other power sources promised.