6/1/2009 10:22:47 PM
they wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that they put a fence up around the perimeter of CSP plants.The discrepancy is this: the people who order the plants to be built want what's better for the environment, but the people who build the plant want to finish their contract and move on.
6/1/2009 11:04:51 PM
Solar power technology can be used for more than gigantic fields of panels.Many promoters want a move away from that level of centralization.
6/1/2009 11:17:11 PM
6/1/2009 11:58:09 PM
6/2/2009 8:36:40 AM
6/2/2009 10:51:34 AM
^Dude there is a difference in acknowledging the potential or occurance of AGW versus agreeing with all the crazy moonbat liberal hippy legislation out there (i.e cap n trade, carbon quotas, car MPG regulations, etc).
6/2/2009 11:30:31 AM
I'm making a good observation, and you seem to be arguing against points that I haven't stated. Go play with the other slow kids in chit chat.
6/2/2009 12:14:46 PM
If we assume that taxes to reduce CO2 emission is proper, then I see nothing wrong with burning trees. Afterall, they do grow back. And the process would actually remove CO2 from the air: the trees collect it, and some of it is captured in the ash and burried. Planet wins. The only question is how efficiently this process can be carried out. Which is answered by the marketplace as companies increasingly engage in the practice, asserting that it is cheaper than paying the socially accepted price for emitting CO2 in the form of coal.
6/2/2009 12:50:08 PM
Burning chipped stumps and branches is going to create far less harmful substances than burning coal. I don't really care much about CO2, but it would do a lot of good for public health to get rid of slag, sulfur dioxide, and mercury emissions. Plus, isnt wood ash good fertilizer?Granted, this is just speculative oversimplification, but that seems to be the trend in this thread.[Edited on June 2, 2009 at 3:43 PM. Reason : .]
6/2/2009 3:35:06 PM
^Let's not go on a tangent here. Nobody in this thread is arguing that sulfur and nitrious oxides aren't harmful. We're talking about CO2.It's pretty clear that if burning wood caught on in a bigger way (and would be encouraged if taxes were levied on CO2 emissions) that deforestation would become a bigger problem than it already is. And in my (denier) opinion Deforestation remains a huge environmental problem throughout the world (not really in the US anymore though). I feel it's a real problem, not a made up one.
6/2/2009 4:22:40 PM
n/m ]
6/8/2009 10:42:15 PM
these biomass-to-energy processes can utilize more than just for-purpose wood, but are never going to be scalable enough to provide a huge chunk of our energy needs. feedstocks will vary by region, and most current facilities utilize waste products such as municipal waste, forest waste (leftover from tree farms after trees are cut for paper mills), corn stover, etc as the economics really only work today if you can get a free feedstock. if we institute a national "renewable power standard", as we likely will, we should see more of these plants pop up in the southeast and other places where solar and wind renewable power won't work...but at that point the economics will be subsidized by renewable energy credits and addtional tax incentives - which is how these processes currently stay afloat in the EU.know this is a late response, just saw the biomass post today though! [Edited on June 10, 2009 at 9:35 AM. Reason : .]
6/10/2009 9:34:26 AM
6/10/2009 9:40:56 AM
^nothing new to me my friend
6/10/2009 11:31:40 AM
^ thats kind of a narrow minded view. wind power would not work in the south east but is viable in places such as the coast of california and western europe. Of course you gotta factor in the economics of cost of land v energy output cost per unit etc
6/10/2009 11:59:40 AM
why did Obama say it's cool for Iran to have nuclear power if we should be running off solar panels and wind mills?
6/10/2009 12:31:54 PM
^^as the sole provider of energy in any moderately populated area, wind power does not work. Forgive me for not being more specific.^Agreed. It's bullshit that we're helping the UAE and Saudi Arabia with nuclear power technology, as well as "allowing Iran to have it" when we ourselves make it so difficult to build new nuke plants. Utter bullshit.
6/10/2009 1:00:54 PM
^^^wind energy isn't viable anywhere on earth. It's a brownout waiting to happen, as has been demonstrated in countries like Holland. They aren't even at 20% wind energy yet and their grid has become horribly unstable.[Edited on June 10, 2009 at 1:01 PM. Reason : ^^^]
6/10/2009 1:01:16 PM
What isn't viable about wind and solar energy? There may be a sizable initial cost, but a turbine/solar panel on ones roof will eventually save lots of money on grid-power costs.
6/10/2009 1:24:15 PM
no one is claiming that wind and solar will ever provide the majority of our national energy supply - but when the RPS is put in place, they WILL fulfill the majority of the RPS requirements in areas such as California, great plains, the southwest, etc. My point was that, in areas such as the southeast where wind and solar simply won't work, biomass-to-energy facilties will be needed to plug that gap.
6/10/2009 1:47:38 PM
6/10/2009 2:05:16 PM
Sure. If there's a point you want to make, then make it.
6/10/2009 3:40:27 PM
6/10/2009 5:07:29 PM
^ The fact that something a large initial cost is irrelevant of the net economics of it. Something can have a large initial cost and never save money. That's what you call a bad investment.Now, low variable costs (O&M plus fuel) is good, but again, that's a meaningless statement. If two projects have the same net present value and all other things are equal then the one with the higher operating costs and lower initial cost is favorable. No informed individual claims that wind O&M is greater than coal. But that means nothing!What you said was about like saying "Things that cost less save money, therefore we should use solar and wind power"
6/10/2009 5:11:52 PM
6/10/2009 6:16:44 PM
Nuclear
6/12/2009 11:46:24 AM
Can we just admit that wind and solar will never provide adequate power needs for the U.S?To me, the best options to explore are nuclear, hyrdo, and geothermal. Maybe if we weren't such big pussies about nuclear this wouldn't even be a question.
6/12/2009 12:04:31 PM
Hot Damn I'm loving Ron Paul more and more these days...
6/12/2009 1:04:22 PM
6/12/2009 3:43:19 PM
The "we" in the statement was referring to humanity, not the posters on this board specifically.I mean as a species, let's stop wasting time on solar and wind and start focusing on improving nuclear, hydro, and geothermal.[Edited on June 12, 2009 at 4:12 PM. Reason : thanks!]
6/12/2009 3:53:20 PM
agreed!and its hydro
6/12/2009 3:59:16 PM
6/12/2009 4:23:05 PM
as far as small scale local use, like on the roof top of your house, I agree. Use what's there. As far as powering a city, no.
6/12/2009 4:26:57 PM
I'd be all for using wind and solar if it wasn't hooked directly into the grid. If you could use them to power some sort of electrochemical hydrogenation facility that recycled CO2 emissions and converted it back into methanol, we would be getting some energy storage potential out of the units without having to worry about grid stability.
6/12/2009 4:30:07 PM
You've got to love close mindedness like this, it really shows you how serious this problem is.
6/21/2009 12:56:42 PM
Yes, those poor film-makers, suffering from ideological discrimination. How dare those bigoted liberal companies try to exercise their own ideological freedoms, let alone make sound business decisions!
6/21/2009 2:10:30 PM
Georgia is a bastion of liberal thought and oppression.[Edited on June 21, 2009 at 2:38 PM. Reason : ]
6/21/2009 2:37:45 PM
6/21/2009 5:47:42 PM
geothermal scares me almost as much as wind power. Yes, it'd be a great idea to suck energy out of the earth. Talk about unintended consequences
6/21/2009 8:14:33 PM
true enough, but it also shows how people are (now more than ever) treating this like a religion.
6/21/2009 9:40:01 PM
pumping heat out of the desert doesn't sound much different than pumping it out of the earth, and solar facilities installed in the desert are going to see the largest increases in the coming years.
6/21/2009 9:42:20 PM
There's nothing wrong with pumping heat out of the ground and using it for electricity. No, it will not likely cause earthquakes. If anything, it will stop earthquakes. They could prevent the formation of volcanoes in the future and slow tectonic movements if we basically sucked the Earth cold. Not good. But also not significant.Furthermore, if geothermal plants haven't screwed up something yet, those (same) plants are not likely to screw something up in the future. Why? Because eventually any site where your extract heat reaches equilibrium, where the heat you're sucking out is replenished by the radioactive decay in the center of the Earth.--There's also nothing wrong with pumping heat out of the desert. The issues are land development and land use. When they build a square mile solar thermal plant they put a fence around it, drive around trucks, and do maintenance. Whatever ecosystem did exist in that area doesn't anymore. That's the same for ANY large industry you site. The problem with solar thermal is that it takes so much MORE LAND than anything we're used to.The only thing dangerous about the 'heat' being removed is possibly the effect on the total surface albedo of the Earth - i.e. global warming concerns. If solar PVs absorb 99% of the sunlight that hits it, they are contributing to global warming. 10% of that may go to electricity, but if it wasn't there, maybe 40% would have been reflected back into space. This may sound nit-picky, but there are farmers who have painted their roofs white to help cool the Earth. In a cap and trade system the guberments should be paying you to paint surfaces white. Correspondingly, in a cap and trade system, a solar thermal plant should be paying money to the whitewashes to offset the excess heat from the sun their plant absorbed and did not emit back into space.
6/21/2009 10:03:01 PM
I wasn't trying to imply that they'll cause any problems pulling heat out of the desert - just that this type of power plant is going to be much more prevalent than geothermal. besides, all the large scale solar facilities being built in the desert right now aren't PV - they're parabolic trough and steam turbine designs. I'm interested to see how they're going to handle coolant water in the desert.
6/21/2009 10:19:09 PM
Ah yes, I did neglect possibly the biggest environmental issue for solar thermal. It doesn't help that they're some of the least efficient steam plants on Earth - causes you to use a lot more water for the same output. And ironically they're in the desert.
6/21/2009 10:51:38 PM
the total amount of energy produced, with is directly correlated with the amount of energy pulled out of the surrounding environment. I don't think the development is that big of a deal, because most of the plants and transmission lines being built are being routed directly beside major highways and on federal lands that will be strictly regulated. What does concern me is the capacity of the plants, which will affect how much water is needed and how much of a heat sink we may be creating in the environment.
6/22/2009 8:25:40 AM
Where did you get your info on these plants being built in the desert?
6/22/2009 10:37:05 AM
6/22/2009 12:21:01 PM
ha"research "
6/22/2009 12:32:44 PM
^^^recent bids I've prepared and articles in Transmission and Distribution magazine. Spain and the US both have plans for about 3GW of parabolic trough systems to be installed in the next 3-4 years.
6/22/2009 12:45:36 PM