Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[a_majoor]

One little point that supporters of windmills fail to mention is that a back-up power supply is needed for when the wind fails. This means for every megawatt of potential wind turbine energy installed, there must also be a megawatt of thermal power on tap.

Since the back up power needs to be available instantly, this means the back up system is a series of gas turbine generators running on "hot idle" 24/7, ready to be throttled up the moment the wind shifts or changes. Imagine the amount of "greenhouse gas" that is being produced by "Green" energy...

 

[Haletown]

One little point that supporters of windmills fail to mention is that a back-up power supply is needed for when the wind fails. This means for every megawatt of potential wind turbine energy installed, there must also be a megawatt of thermal power on tap.

Since the back up power needs to be available instantly, this means the back up system is a series of gas turbine generators running on "hot idle" 24/7, ready to be throttled up the moment the wind shifts or changes. Imagine the amount of "greenhouse gas" that is being produced by "Green" energy...

Same for Solar.

So unfortunate that solar doesn't produce anything during that pesky "night time" or "cloudy" period.  The engineers are working on a solution we are told so "don't worry"

So unfortunate that windmills don't produce anything when the wind doesn't blow - although they don't kill birds & bats either, so there is some good news.

Ontario is so screwed pursuing greenie power.  Dulton's attempt to buy himself a green legacy, like Chretien supporting Kyoto (the treaty not the dog), that his real political legacy will be that he was sucked in by the great Hairy-Scary Global Warming Armageddon Con Job.

Some legacy.

 

[Redeye]

Dalton's an idiot for not realizing that base load power cannot come from solar or wind - they're great to have to feed into the system when they are producing, but what Ontario actually needs if they want green power is more nuclear.  Dragging their heels on Darlington-2 (and/or Bruce Power's interest in building in Nanticoke, where a lot of the skilled folks needed for a generating station already live because of Nanticoke TGS) is going to bite them hard.  Yes, nukes are expensive, but they are green power that's reliable and always available, and they need to get on with it.

 

[Haletown]

Dulton should have supported nuclear - open market nuclear not just a protectionist AECL nuclear, but is a whipping boy for the greenie envirojihadis and they despise nuclear.

They wouldn't support him if he actually had the best interests of Ontario at heart instead pandering to the envirocrazies.

On the other hand if I had stock in the companies making those stand-by gas turbines . . .  I'd be laughing on the way to the bank and praising Dulton's gift of stupidity.

 

[drunknsubmrnr]

Unfortunately they're backing down on installing the stand-by turbines due to NIMBY's. One just got cancelled in Oakville.

 

[YZT580]

Same topic but slightly different solution, the October edition of Canadian Trucker featured an article regarding green energy.  It seems that a Canadian trucker has devised a method for converting the draught from a rig into electricity.  100 vehicles (18 wheelers) per hour passing through a 1 km dedicated lane would produce enough electricity to power a reasonably sized city and all without being visually disruptive.  Certainly would be better than these windmill monstrosities that are popping up all over southern Ontario.  cost is 24 million per kilometer.

 

[George Wallace]

Is it windmills you are against, or windmill farms?  There are a lot of remote locations that would be perfect for windmill generators, where hardly anyone would notice them, but instead we are plunking them down in densely populated areas.


As for the Rigs generating electricity, how fast do they have to be travelling to get 100 per hour through a 1 km stretch of "collection devices" to work efficiently?

 

[Haletown]

Is it windmills you are against, or windmill farms?  There are a lot of remote locations that would be perfect for windmill generators, where hardly anyone would notice them, but instead we are plunking them down in densely populated areas.

Nothing against windmills . .  but against heavily subsidized windmills producing very heavily subsidized electricity. 

 

[George Wallace]

Ah!  The "Romantic" in you is showing.      ;D

 

[YZT580]

According to the article, normal speeds 80km and up.  There is sufficient volume around Toronto, Montreal, and the other major cities to provide the generating capacity.  Requires a dedicated lane for trucks.

Windmills are great where other forms of generating capacity is not readily available or where fuel supplies are expensive to import and store but they are not reliable.  Either alternative sources of power must be provided as well or the users must be prepared to go without electricty during calm periods.  Wind farms are a needless waste of land and raw materiels and extremely costly.  As England, Spain, California and Germany have all discovered they won't work without enormous subsidies.  Remove the subsidies and the companies soon go out of business or charge production costs to the consumer and watch your industrial customers re-locate to another country. 

 

[Fishbone Jones]

If the Liebrals in Ontario were serious, they'd have the coal plant that they just shut down demolished right away, so they can't be used again.

Nope. They know they are going to be needed, so they just mothballed them.

When they get kicked out next year, and the PC takes over, realizing the province has been had and the coal plants have to come back on line ( at extreme cost to the taxpayer)  the Liebrals will then try sieze the opportunity to blame the pollution and extra cost on the PC gov't.

Sound familiar? It just keeps going round and round. It's amazing how much people's memories fail after eight years.

 

[safetysOff]

Here's some info on the current energy contribution that windmills make in Canada.  Apparently only 1.1% of the total energy going into the grid.

http://www.canwea.ca/farms/index_e.php

So according to this, one of these beasts supplies energy to 500 homes.  So a whole whack of em would be needed if this was the way to go. 

http://www.cityofpickering.com/standard/lifestyle/waterfront/images/BackgrounderPWGS.pdf

Why not scrap coal and get a combination of hydro electric, wind, solar and nuclear?  Ohh yea, what the heck happened to that whole nuclear fad anyways?

 

[GR66]

Increasing our energy efficiency is an obvious solution that we really haven't had the collective willpower to follow yet.  We need to keep building more capacity just to keep pace with our growth. 

We also seem to be ignoring the idea of energy storage.  If we could efficiently store the energy produced during non-peak times (from Hydro, Solar, Wind and even Nuclear) then our overall production capacity wouldn't have to be so high to cover peak usage times. 

Like any massive system there is alot of inertia to overcome in making real, outside the box changes.

 

[Redeye]

There is research into the storage issue, but there's not been much large scale progress as I understand it. 

Increasing our energy efficiency is an obvious solution that we really haven't had the collective willpower to follow yet.  We need to keep building more capacity just to keep pace with our growth. 

We also seem to be ignoring the idea of energy storage.  If we could efficiently store the energy produced during non-peak times (from Hydro, Solar, Wind and even Nuclear) then our overall production capacity wouldn't have to be so high to cover peak usage times. 

Like any massive system there is alot of inertia to overcome in making real, outside the box changes.

 

[Haletown]

According to the article, normal speeds 80km and up.  There is sufficient volume around Toronto, Montreal, and the other major cities to provide the generating capacity.  Requires a dedicated lane for trucks.

The article reads a bit like a stock promoter ad copy .  not saying it isn't all true but I'm skeptical of all the claims.  Like the windmill promoters who always quote the maximum theoretical output as if that is what their products will produce while they know from field data that the real output of most windmills is about 20% of the Sticker number.

 

[Haletown]

Increasing our energy efficiency is an obvious solution that we really haven't had the collective willpower to follow yet.  We need to keep building more capacity just to keep pace with our growth. 

We also seem to be ignoring the idea of energy storage.  If we could efficiently store the energy produced during non-peak times (from Hydro, Solar, Wind and even Nuclear) then our overall production capacity wouldn't have to be so high to cover peak usage times. 

Like any massive system there is alot of inertia to overcome in making real, outside the box changes.

Storage costs money and that just adds to the cost to produce electricity.

Except in the case of Hydro.  A dam is needed to create the headwater drop and the same dam is the basis of the "storage device".  I recall a story about Ontario Hydro's Niagara Falls installation throttles back the water flow at night when demand is down and "stores" the "electricity" in a non-kinetic form that can be converted to electricity in peak times.

 

[Haletown]

Very good summary of the crap that was/is used by the envirowhackos to push their greenie energy cult.  How Dulton was lead down the green garden path like a giant sucker.

http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/mckitrick_windconference.pdf

McKitrick is one half of the M&M team that was responsible for breaking the Hockey Stick & beating up on the Team Mann.

Coal makes sense after all.

 

[Redeye]

I was going to put something about that in but couldn't remember the details - as I recall they actually use their baseload to run pumps to pump water back into the reservoirs behind the dams to drop again making for more power.  If I remember right from the article I read about it (been a while), the real cost of electricity at night is essentially negative because the base load is not used fully, which is why they can run the pumps.

Storage costs money and that just adds to the cost to produce electricity.

Except in the case of Hydro.  A dam is needed to create the headwater drop and the same dam is the basis of the "storage device".  I recall a story about Ontario Hydro's Niagara Falls installation throttles back the water flow at night when demand is down and "stores" the "electricity" in a non-kinetic form that can be converted to electricity in peak times.

 

[a_majoor]

A 29 page thread with technologies, facts figures and "real" numbers exists here.

The reason most of these technologies are not used is because they are extremely marginal, or have giant technical issues to overcome (or both). Unless they have an effective marketing team that can extract government subsidies, they will probably always remain marginal or niche players, much like wind energy actually is.

Building or rebuilding nuclear powerplants is the only practical and effective "Green" solution in both senses of the word, but a powerful lobby exists to oppose nuclear energy in any form (even new inherently safe systems powered by Thorium salts, or "pebble" based high temperature gas cooled reactors). For the present, I would strongly advocate conservation and efficiency measures, mostly for you, the consumer and taxpayer, to save money and protect your wealth.

 

[Haletown]

its Friday, so everyone, Sing Along   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-t9k7epIk&feature=player_embedded#!

Singing is good for the soul.