It is supposed to save money, not throw it away as not renewable.
I'm in Australia not the US but the same fuckery, the same three card trick is being played everywhere so I'm gonna bite bitterly on your insightful question.
When I found out the lifetime of a wind turbine is 20 years it was quite clear that the build out would never be completed because after 20 years you have to do it all over again. Real power stations have a fifty year life time - the 30 year difference is significant.
The basic engineering question of "Does this have a hope in hell of working?" was never addressed because fanboys are in charge. It wasn't a difficult question to ball park. Lots of weather stations record wind speed. Assuming you can put as many wind turbines at each weather station you could get a first approximation as to if it was a GO or NOGO and how much it would bloody cost.
As it turns out it is a NOGO. With lots of installed capacity the effective capacity is at best 20% of installed capacity and quite often only 10% and sometimes 0%. The theory was that a specific wind farm might be becalmed but other wind farms would be spinning and it would average out. Wrong, the entire 4,000 Km eastern freeboard of Australia can be becalmed. That assumption could have been easily tested. but of course they didn't.
One of the funny ones was the Australian state most dependent on wind power omitted to observe they could have a week in a becalmed state. They couldn't restart when the wind did blow because you have to sync generators because if generators aren't in phase there is an enormous short circuit between the generators. Elon Musk rang up and said I will build you the worlds largest battery.
The ignorant thought that meant the state would run off the battery when the wind wasn't blowing. Wrong. The worlds largest battery was just able to substitute for one wind farm for two hours. A big three card trick. The impression given is way way different to the reality.
The most current three card trick is that offshore wind is stronger and more constant. My question is what makes us think so? What wind data do we have for offshore? We will have some because ships take wind measurements but shipping lanes and offshore wind turbines aren't a good mix.
So just for devilment I have requested the entire offshore meteorlogical record for Australia from our met office. So far I have just got fortnightly emails telling me they are 'working' on my request. If I had requested the entire land met data for Australia I would already have it because when I requested it only took a week to get.
My net step after our met office answers my request in the negative (i. e. by not supplying) will be making a Freedom of Information request to my Federal Gov't. I want to make them fess up to not having any actual wind data and at best they have 'modeled' data and hence have no bloody idea if the billions they intend to spend has a prayer of working.
Love the pic by the way.
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We used to use wood and whale or vegetable or animal fat oil for lighting
Then we used whale oil for light. Then kerosene.
Then we switched to electricity powered by coal. Trains and ships ran on coal.
Ships and trains switched to diesel.
Electricity is produced with coal, natural gas, hydro-power, geo-thermal power, wind, and solar.
Times change and sources of power change.
Time will come when fossil fuels are no longer needed to produce electricty: batteries will be longer lasting and hold more energy to make-up for down time in wind or solar. Cars, etc will become more efficient. It's the march of progress.
Progress is not easy, cheap, or clean. It's messy. We will find better more affordable and more sustainable ways.
No one thinks breathing air with coal particles and ash in it is good for you.
I don't support ANY gov subsidies for any energy source. We do NOT need to "save coal" if it means tax-payer money or price floors. We don't need to subsidize fossil fuels or green energy.
Let the markets and the consumers decide.
Oh God, is it EVER! I could go on a very long rant about all of the things that are wrong with 'green energy', from the fact that it isn't at all 'green' (i. e. friendly to the environment), to the fact that it ultimately relies upon fossil fuels to provide the back-up energy requirements that are needed during peak times of usage, to the exploding Tesla cars, the huge amounts of waste generated by these hopelessly inefficient contraptions, to the birds that are killed by those blasted wind turbines, to list just a few.
But I'll spare you all that. :)
Making sustainable and recyclable products isn't in interest of industry. And interest of the richest 1% stand far above interest of the pleb and whole humanity.
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I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a scam, but there are certainly real concerns, particularly with the increasing number of electric cars in use. Out electrical grid is already at or near capacity. Whenever we have an extended Summer heat wave, residents are encouraged to conserve energy and to use air conditioning sparingly. Electric cars need to have their batteries charged. Where is that extra electricity going to come from? If we will have to burn more fossil fuels to produce the additional electricity, then why not just cut out the middle man and burn the fuel in a conventional gas engine vehicle instead? Another concern is that the electric car batteries are no longer suitable to power cars once their charge capacity drops below 80%. Without enough alternative uses for these used batteries, they’ll end up in landfills, and their contents aren’t exactly environmentally friendly. Finally, when going on a road trip, who wants to be forced to stop for upwards of an hour every few hundred miles to charge the car?
The CONCEPT of shoving it down our necks- on the pretext that it is helping things in the long run- is the scam. There are a few things we can do to use less energy in the total equation, but everything we can do will ALWAYS have an effect on something else. The problem is that very few really think about the upstream and downstream effects of alternative power sources. Wind farms? Ooop - a bird might get whacked. Old lithium ion batteries? Good luck getting rid of them. AND paying for the replacement. Using obviously less efficient sources? That's a biggie. Solar cells are the answer? Oh, sure - until a hailstorm takes out 90% of your grid. etc
Yes it’s a scam. And I have the perfect example to prove it too.
Bill Gates is backing a company (the article is in Forbes behind a pay wall or I would post the link) basically trees capture carbon so if you cut trees down and burry them you trap the carbon underground.
If that isn’t a bunch of shit I don’t know what is…. Trees also give us oxygen, and carbon is plant food.
seriously what tree hugger (and I’m not one) would believe that cutting trees down is better for the planet?
Oh and to let you know why they are doing this it’s because by burying the trees this company creates carbon credit which Bill Gates then sells for millions of dollars.
The man is a scum bag!I'd say I'm a sceptic.
It needs to be balanced against the very real and impoverishing effects of green subsidies and technology on the population, which is essentially a regressive taxation;
the adverse impacts upon business and the economy;
the dubious green credentials and just downright crappiness of green technology, such as electric cars, which I think are garbage. Consumers are voting with their feet and recently sales have slowed.
I note in the UK we have reduced CO2 emissions by a half since the 90s. But we have also lost around that much of our manufacturing capacity. Essentially outsourced the dirty parts of the production chain to poorer countries.
No it is not a scam and there is a very good reason why green energy is the largest growing industry in many countries. Furthermore, it is an industry that is rapidly growing in technology as well which means every dollar invested into it not only gives you great returns but also fuels new technology that performs even better in a year or so.
Also we do have the technology to recycle windmill blades but without government regulation it is unlikely that the industry will do it by themselves. Knowing you I do not think you are in favor of government regulations so I am just going to assume that you are cheering on that tractor as it buries those blades.
Nope, its not. Why would it be a scam?
There are a lot of companies "greenwashing" their practices, which may be a scam or not. Some are actually doing good things others are just trying to maximize profits while pretending to do good.Best source of renewable energy is nuclear reactors. Not enough power cam be generated by wind. Solar is only 50 ish % effective. And hydro has wear and tear problems long term. If we want more sustainable/clean/renewable energy nuclear reactors are perfect
Of course it is. Everyone who is pushing this is going to get rich from it. During the industrial revolution there were so many coal fired plants that soot would get deposited on the plant life and choke them out. We did not have global warming then. Anyone thinks they are saving the planet by driving a battery powered car is an idiot
As things have unfolded, that's certainly how it appears. The infrastructure for everything except nuclear is an environmental warcrime to produce, it's insanely expensive, and the energy output is comparably low and unreliable.
Green energy initiatives aren't very productive if they result in coal power plants being fired up when energy needs can't be met through the renewables.
Green energy it's self isn't a scam, but a lot of the means at which were trying to achieve green energy is a scam. Eventually were going to run out of fossil fuels and renewable energy will be our only options, but we must do renewable in a way that isn't impacting the environment like wind turbine blades that can't be recycled.
Yes - 'Green' energy is a scam (and I say that as someone who has researched the hell out of it) there is no 'end of life' recycling for the wind turbine blades or the glass of the solar panels and there is no convenient way to store any excess energy if there is any that is.
It makes sense for small 'off grid' applications where it is not economically viable to run in mains power or solar PV works out cheaper than mains power from a local utilities.
They never think far enough ahead to know what to do with the waste of green energy like the batteries from electric cars and phones, if they ever figure out how to do that like they can with regular car batteries from a gas motor then maybe it will all be worth it and if the infrastructure could be made to handle being electric, but until then it’s really not practical
If nuclear power isn't being discussed, you can't have a serious conversation on the subject for anything large scale. Solar and wind are not, and never will be anywhere close to good enough.
No, no, no... you got it all wrong. It is not supposed to save money. It's supposed to be good for the environment, because we are using renewable resources to generate energy.
Of course not. That isn't to suggest we've properly figured it out but sustainability will be critical to the survival of civilization going forward.
I think so. It isn't actually renewable as people claim. It's also much more expensive to produce and install. Not to mention all the negative externalities that are associated with their production
Pretty much. A combination of both a money making racket and a bunch of left wing virtue-signallers.
Not a scam. Just in some ways aspirational Because we haven't developed the infrastructure and modeling for scaling it up.
At least where I live it is. The government is promoting Solar panels meanwhile it’s cloudy and dark most days of the year. Also they won’t let you cut down trees so the panels can get full sun when it is out.
No it's just hard to impliment because most of the whole world runs on fossil fuels. We can't just Stop.
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