The man speaks the truth!
March 1st, 2009
|
| Share |
We need more like this guy. Ideally, going into more detail, but some people do get it.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, Humor, Misc, Not Even Wrong, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
March 1st, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Well haven’t we all felt like doing that when arguing with these types, most of us don’t have our own radio-show to do it in though. While I do indulge myself in blog-comments here and elsewhere, in meatspace one has to be more circumspect.
Solar is an easy kill up here in the Great White North, because even the stupidest have observed the fact that sunshine is a limited commodity in the winter, and understand that snow covered solar collectors won’t make much power. There is some support for home solar-thermal, but wind is the alternative energy drug of choice up here.
Fortunately wind power manifests many secondary problems that can be leveraged in a discussion, some of which are more apparent than solar. NIMBY is a powerful tool when it comes to wind farms, particularly as the rural social information networks are now full of horror stories about wind projects.
Quote Comment
March 1st, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Speaking of Solar being Way Expensive. Checkout this installation in the Federal Building in Northern Canada – Yellowknife. Cost $500,000 for the Solar Panels from Germany, total cost of $2.8 million. See Greenstone Building in:
Greenstone Federal Building Solar PV, a Green Energy Pork barrel
Was projected to produce 35.5 MWh a year, but in actual fact has only produced 15 MWh a year. That’s an average output of 1.7 kw over a year which works out to an impressive $1.6 million per avg delivered kw. And nuclear is supposed to be expensive at $5,000 per kw.
To make this project even more stupid, Yellowknife always has surplus hydro power in the spring & summer, the only time Solar Power is significant, and throws away 10’s of GW-hrs of hydro power down the spillway every year. Energy use in the North is minimal in the summer with 24hrs of daylight, very little air conditioning, and low heating loads.
If you look up Greenstone Building, Yellowknife on the Internet you will find nothing but glowing reports on the Solar PV.
Quote Comment
March 1st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Yellowknife? Yellowknife is ~200 miles south of the Arctic Circle(!) What the hell were they thinking? Oh – right the Federal Building, that explains everything. Jesus weeps.
Quote Comment
March 1st, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Solar PV is cheaper than Diesel Power (which is in the $0.30 to $1.50 per kwh range) – without storage, in the Southwestern parts of the Northwest Territories, that is it will replace spring & summer Diesel Loads, less expensively. However, you need tracking Solar PV, as the Sun rises in the NNE and sets in the NNW, so putting Solar on a south facing, vertical wall is just plain stupid, especially in a Hydro area.
In communities, that are on Diesel, Solar PV would be cost effective, but only to replace the spring & summer baseload. It makes much more sense to build Hydro and supply everyone on Hydro.
Just one river, the Mackenzie with three 2.5 GW dams would generate $75,000 in income for every person in the NWT, every year, from green electricity exported to Alberta. No interest whatsoever in that project.
Only alternative to Hydro in the North is small Nuclear, Hyperion’s would be the cat’s pajamas. Typical Mine Camp loads are about 25 MWe, just what the Hyperion produces. An example of where Nuclear does displace Oil consumption.
Hydro is problematic in the North, since most river flows are several times greater in the Spring & Summer than in the Winter when energy needs are several times higher. So you need to size your plant for Winter energy needs, and throw away probably 80-90% of the power generated the rest of the year. The Sane thing to do is build large Hydro plants, and export large amounts of Hydro to Alberta, so peak spring & summer hydro is exported, leaving plenty of winter hydro for the Northern Communities. A sane energy solution for the North that the morons in municipal, territorial and federal governments completely ignore. Mostly they tout Wood Pellets, transported all the way from British Columbia and Alberta as their green energy solution.
Quote Comment
March 1st, 2009 at 10:16 pm
nfw said:
Well I can’t see that it would be any different than Hydro in Northern Quebec, and Labrador which are at about the same latitude as the Territories. However you are right that small modular nuclear reactors would be ideal. Did you know that AECL developed the SLOWPOKE III for district heat & power in the early 1980’s. Of course the project never got off the ground.
Quote Comment
March 1st, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Big Rivers, like the Mackenzie, Lockhart, Slave, Hay or Talston have good, large flows year round, like the rivers in Northern Quebec and Labrador, which you are referring to. Hydro for any of them is way beyond the NWT’s energy needs – suitable only for export. And the NWT government is only interested in importing wood pellets and dirty oil from the South – and could care less about exporting green hydro to the South.
Small nuclear is badly needed in all Northern regions, or equivalent in the Southern Hemisphere, and will directly displace extremely expensive Oil as an energy source. The advent of the Hyperion, Nuscale and PBMR will bring about a major, no-holds-barred, battle between the environmental fanatics, the phony Armory Lovins/Joe Romm paid-by-fossil-fuel types and pragmatic, realistic energy consumers in the North.
Quote Comment
March 5th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Oregon Solar Highway Project:
http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/OIPP/docs/solar_factsheet.pdf
Cost: $1.28 million
Project Capacity: 104 kilowatts (dc)
Electricity Production: 112,000 kilowatt hours (ac) annually
Since I don’t know an awful lot about dc/ac power conversion, I’ll skip right over the fact that 112,000 kWh seems like an abysmally low amount of generation from 104 kilowatts of capacity.
But a quick division shows: $1.28 million / 104 kW = $12,307.69. And nuclear power is supposed to be prohibitively expensive?
Quote Comment
March 5th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
That means the capacity factor of the project is about 12%, which is about par for the course for solar power in a temperate to high temperate zone. The solar power plants in Germany, Southern Canada, the UK do about 10% or so, so in Oregon, which is hardly an arid and sunny area, that’s about what I think could be expected.
In terms of actual energy, what this represents is something like ~12.5-13 kilowatts of continuous generation equivalent. So I’d maintain that it’s unfair to consider it a 104 kW power source, as that would be assuming it produced 104 kW most of the time. It only would produce that much under optimal conditions (Noon, bone dry during the summer solstice) It’s really equivalent to twelve or thirteen kilowatts.
Just to put this in context: There are simple cycle generator systems that produce twice as much power output and will fit in a standard sized shipping container. Some of the larger GE locomotives will do about three megawatts when pulling a heavy load and about four at peak throttle. So considering that long trains are usually multi-unit, this saves about as much power as a coal plant uses just to get the fuel from the mine to the burner.
Quote Comment
March 6th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
112,000 kwh = 12.7 kw avg power production. $1.28 million / 12.7 kw = $101 thousand per kw for unreliable, intermittent, highly fluctuating power. Of course the Renewables Fan Club never give these examples when they discuss the merits of Wind / Solar Energy. They always show the absolute best case examples, which certainly can be reasonable in cost.
There is an inherent quality about the Renewables and Energy Efficiency bandwagon that will consistently lead to wildly extravagant boondoggles like those mentioned above. The scam artists, snake-oil salesmen, the lobbyists and politically connected contractors eager to grab a lucrative piece of the Big, Fat Renewables Pie, will be happily selling the most ridiculous projects to politicians and politically appointed bureaucrats, who couldn’t pass a grade 9 physics or math test.
Quote Comment
March 6th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
nfw said:
Yea verily:
“Wind and solar plants have been popularized partially due to the unrecognized difference between their name plate (which is heavily advertised) and the average power rating. While a name plate 1 GW nuclear power plant produces that level of output for most of its life (93 percent for 24/7, i.e., 930 MW continuously), a 1 MW wind mill will net a fraction of that rating, about 1/5th (200 kW) on the 24/7 basis. That means that not 930 of the 1 MW mills would replace one nuclear plant, but rather 5 x 930= 4,650 of them.”
From: The Energy Tribune via: NEI Nuclear Notes
Quote Comment
March 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
DV82XL said:
or “Would replace one small nuclear plant.”
The modern plants being built now are often dual reactor plants which use two AP1000’s or ABWR’s or EPR’s or something. Those reactors put out about 1.2-1.5 gigawatts each. Some of the real big guys are pushing 1750 gross/1600 net megawatts output.
So really, replacing a modern, nominally large nuclear plant is going to be about 15K of the bigass 1MW wind turbines. Which is… a lot.
Quote Comment