Comments on: Over-Stating Our Ability to Adopt Renewables

By: Brit-Mueller

Brit-Mueller — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:53:40 +0000

Great idea, but will this work over the long run?

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:59:16 +0000

Wind can work on an individual basis in some areas of the country even without government subsidies. There is a company called prairie turbines(prairieturbines.com) that both sells affordable 5.5kw turbines as well as the instructions on how to build one yourself. I would very much like to put one up myself as the payback for me would be less than 5 years with no subsidy. However despite the abundance of wind and owning 3/4 of an acre, local zoning laws won’t let me put up a windmill unless it is set back sufficiently that if it fell over it would still be ten feet from the property line. As the trees on my property are approximately 65′ tall and my property is 150′ wide that only leaves the dead center of my property to locate the windmill which is where my house is located. Even without the house the windmill would only be allowed to reach the tops of the trees at the upper tip of the blade which makes it useless. So just remember for everything that your federal government is forcing you to do or taxing you if you don’t, there is a local community telling you you can’t do that here.

By: Al Fin

Al Fin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:58:14 +0000

Pickens is smart to dump his wind farm investment. Wind and solar are better suited for small scale projects for single homes, farms, ranches, etc.

Keep in mind that all fossil fuels are solar energy, stored and concentrated over a long time scale. We will need all the fossil fuels we can get over the next few decades.

Biomass, a less dense form of stored solar energy, can be huge within 20 years. Several approaches to increasing the energy density of biological energy are likely to succeed within 10 years, and take another 10 years to scale up.

Bioenergy fits the local and regional planning scale, and that is where it should start. From there, it can be scaled to affect national and international energy markets.

By: Bob Smith

Bob Smith — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:06:24 +0000

IIRC, it’s something like 6 kw-hr/day on average per square meter. It is going to take a lot of space to get terawatts.

That’s the problem with all “renewable” energy sources: the energy density is way too low. It makes me wonder why a class of people who endlessly complain about “sprawl” and want to mandate densification want to promote low-density energy sources.

By: Ian Random

Ian Random — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:59:49 +0000

I just hope research like this pans out and in 50 years they’ll regulate how much CO2 you can extract from the air.

http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:090707:rp.pl-translation:Gasoline_from_carbon_dioxide_is_not_science_fiction

By: Dr. T

Dr. T — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:34:48 +0000

Wind power is great, if you need to pump 20 gallons of water an hour to water your cattle. Wind to electricity is a bad joke.

My family drove through western Texas last summer and saw hundreds of wind-powered electricity generators. Not one was turning. It was 90 degrees and winds were 5-10 mph. With those rare 10 mph ‘gusts,’ some blades might start to move, but then they would stop. The only saving grace was that these wind devices were no uglier than the rusty oil derricks.

By: smurfy

smurfy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:32:43 +0000

Perhaps I should add ‘challenge to large scale roll-out’. What are we now, 20% underwater nationwide?

By: smurfy

smurfy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:25:25 +0000

Another challenge I see for residential photovoltaic, at least in the next few years, is the evisceration of home equity. It’s scary, and arguably stupid to sink another 20k into a house that’s 100k underwater. Plus HELOCs have been a major financing vehicle for home improvements over the last few years.

By: steep

steep — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:54:29 +0000

Sorry, spelling error

“There are many small irrigation and flood control reservoirs around that have NO power generation systems installed.”

By: steep

steep — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:53:06 +0000

Coyote,
There is still room to expand hydropower production. There are many small irrigation and flood control reservoirs around that have now power generation systems installed. There are also pumped-storage reservoir projects that can be done to moderate peak load needs. I personally know that these people ” http://www.symbioticsenergy.com/index.html ” are trying to make money on it.