Windmills!

No, just the empirical evidence that EMS can be carcinogenic.

Further, my father lost many colleagues to cancer over his working life. Colleagues who had the most exposure, as it happens. This was going back a ways (he worked in the job between 1952 and 1998 ), so not sure how many cases made it to the stats.

 

It has already happened. The the immediate success of the Hornsdale project is South Australia has utilities all over the world planning wind and solar facilities tied to battery farms.

The Hornsdale project immediately stabilized the creaky grid. It also is making a fortune, because it stores wind energy and sells it back to the grid at the highest price. The plant is now expected to pay its investors back in three years. A payback that is astounding in an industry where paybacks on nuclear and coal plants are measured in decades.

 

Yeah, I get it.
The problem occurs when you try to go to zero fossil plants.
There are only hours or days at best in the storage facilities.
This is why they are perfect for peak demands but not as a replacement.

 

Not really no. The flow varies with the seasons and recent rain fall. The deeper the water behind the faster the flow through.

 

By whom - Nazis? Soviets?? Martians???

 

To be clear, that was a sarcastic joke.

 

In addition the wind farm operators have much lower operating and maintenance costs. Overall renewables are turning into a win-win for them over the fossil fuel cartel.

 

Probably infinitely LESS than all of the toxic oil spills that wipe out marine life and tourism.

 

Lithium batteries are recycled and as it becomes harder to find recycling will become way more common.

https://waste-management-world.com/a/in-depth-lithium-battery-recycling-the-clean-energy-clean-up

 

Then the onus is entirely on you to PROVE that the noise made by windmills is identical to "concentrated radiation".

 

Then there is the cost of the corrosion on the plant equipment caused by the sulphur in the coal itself.

https://www.brighthubengineering.co...end-corrosion-in-a-boiler-and-its-prevention/

 

This is where Supercapacitors come in handy because they can quickly respond to greater demands.

 

Proven to be untrue.

Hey, there is some koolaid over there and I bet you are thirsty.

 

In which case you won't have any problem supplying a link to this latest allegation of yours, right?

So let's all see what you have.

 

Why is the cost of windmill power delivered at such high costs to the utility? One of my clients, now retired from PGE gave me quite an education on PGE costs. He holds a doctors degree as an engineer I might tell you. He informed me that PGE churned out electric power from hydroelectric and nuclear at far less cost than the power they were forced to purchase from windmills. They could not recover the costs of the power from windmills.

 

It seems difficult to imagine at the present, that renewables will eventually replace burning non renewable resources to make power.

However, as the market share of renewables continues to grow (it went from about 5% to 22% in the US in 15 years, and the trend is accelerating, not slowing). Wind efficiency is still improving, and solar efficiency and cost are falling like a rock. So is the cost of battery technology.

100% of both the replacement and new electric generating capacity in the US in the last two years has come from renewables. And this is WITHOUT battery farms. So the 22% market share that renewables have now does NOT depend on peak power supply.

As the advantages of reliability, low operating costs, and (especially) low capital investment renewables becomes more and more apparant, fossil fuels and nuclear power will look less and less attractive.

That seems difficult for many people to imagine now. After all, the business model of the electric power industry, one of a one way distribution network fed by large high capital cost power plants, has been around for 110 years. Ever since Sam Insull built the first steam turbine power plant in Chicago in the 1900’s.

But that model is being upended.

Hornsdale is only the most visible example./

And it’s immediate success has spawned investors to rush to put their money into similar projects all over the world.

 

The plants exist now, as I said I don't see a trajectory towards 100% renewables in this generation. I want the coal plants phased out and converted to Natural gas preferably and oil secondarily. And I see electrical use declining over the next generation. And I certainly don't have a problem with nuclear power. I am for government led programs that "force" us towards this end and not a market driven one that would have us burning coal in perpetuity for electrical generation. Cutting use by conversion to geothermal heat pump technology for both residential and commercial uses. Mandated efficiencies in motors, 1/2 the cars to be electric, Auto mileage standards of 50MPG by 2026 (exists now) for all gasoline powered cars and 35MPG for trucks. NEW Cars and non commercial trucks that don't meet this get an excise tax. You want to drive a f250 to work 20,000 miles a year, fine but you will pay a tax in order to do so.

The current trajectory of building renewables sources will be as it has over the last 15 years to at least double again and get us to 50%. As far as electrical power companies go, they still own the business, they just have to continue to have a decline in hydrocarbon release. How they get to that end game should be market driven not the choice of fuel.

 

This whole debate on renewables reminds me of the debate on the environment in the 60s. Power companies and auto companies were saying that it was too expensive to clean the rivers and create new efficient engines for the auto industry, that smoke stack scrubbers would cost to much. Well at least 50 years later you can swim in rivers and go outside and play on calm days. The same people who did not want to pay 10% more for their cars and taxes then for pollution controls are the same segment of our population that opposes renewables now. I am just glad tat my generation got that one thing right.

 

Sure there was a far greater incidence of cancer then any other group and it was cover up. Nonsense.

By the way there was such claims for people living near long distance power lines and when look at the figures there was no indicated of such effects.

Hell we are all surrounded by such fields 24/7 to one degree or another and if there was any repeat any effects that would tied cancer to those fields the death rate would be out of sight.

 

Well, the electric power industry wants that too!

Zero new coal fired plants have been ordered in the last ten years. The heavily subsidized carbon capture coal plant that the Federal government and the utility industry threw cash is operating now.

Burning natural gas.

 

Couldnt' have said it better myself (and I have been saying much the same thing for years!).

 

No, and no. Who told you lithium was recyclable?

 

Lithium is an element an off hand I can see zero reason why it could not be recover from spend batteries and reused.

A fast google check confirm my opinion it would seem.

 

Another thing that we also got right was the ban on indoor smoking. A couple of years ago I was in a bar/diner where indoor smoking was still allowed and that made me realize just how bad it used it be. Eating while someone is smoking at the next table is enough to put you off your food.

Change for a better environment is always good IMO. Eliminating dirty coal power stations does more than just provide clean air. It also reduces the pollution that gets into our water systems. Those who object to windmills and would prefer to have smokestacks belching black toxic smoke into the air are rapidly losing support for their position as people find out what it means to live with fresh clean air instead.

Another form of pollution that will disappear as more and more EV's take to the roads is noise pollution. The roar of the traffic that seems to be just part of the background drops away to just the sound of tires on the road. Not many people are fortunate enough to live in an area where there isn't the constant noise of traffic. That constant noise is a form of stress. When it disappears some of our stress will go with it.

 

Sure, theoretically it works out that way on paper, but the reality with wind and solar, is the wind blows and the sun shines, or they don't. and we do not have any control over it. Many areas in the US get an average of 4-5 hours of sunlight a day.

If money were no object, and energy was of no object either, then sure, we can go all renewable, use massive batteries for storage. But we live in reality, where the wind and sun are unreliable, unpredictable, and recycling lithium batteries will use the same energy we are asking them to store.

In other words, we are still in the experimental stages, so trying to force us to go all renewable is a pipe dream. It's like when Obama's EPA passed new regulations mandating any new coal-fired power plants had to employ sequestration, it was absurd, since that was still experimental.

Just slow down and let the engine of private industry go to work. We will get there one day, but that day is not today.