May 18th, 2010
Categorized under: Renewable Energy
Renewable Energy Solution of the Month: Wind – Part 2
If the first wind video is blocked in your area, try here www.greenmanstudio.com I couldn't fit nearly enough into my first wind video, and many of the unused clips address questions that viewers have since asked. Interconnecting wind farms www.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Comments
Amazing as always. Congrats on winning the contest!
airandfingers
May 18th, 2010
Nice primer. Maybe the next one can focus on the barrier to RE. Ie, how the grid is operated, how intermittent resources are priced by the transmission providers, how old (mostly coal) baseload plants are inadaquate to work with wind. etc. There is an energy revolution going on.
mbaker64
May 18th, 2010
@philipmach I agree with you about trains. The hard part, though, is building a massive national rail infrastructure. Costly to build. Costly to maintain. That’s the big advantage of aviation. A 2 mile long runway gets you pretty much anywhere in fuel range.
robhoneycutt
May 18th, 2010
@christo930 Actually, I would hold that the housing bubble would make such data MORE exaggerated. Houses with less desirable locations are the ones that took the worst beating in the market. If there was some inherent negative to being located near a wind farm you’d expect that negative to be strongly expressed in a down market.
robhoneycutt
May 18th, 2010
Your two videos on wind energy spurred me on to find out more about getting a home unit installed! Turns out that I’m not the best candidate for wind energy due to the size of my yard, large trees, and high initial investment. But I greatly look forward to other possible avenues for lowering my utility bills and helping curb my CO2 footprint! Needless to say, I’m anticipating your solar energy videos.
Keep up the great work!
Mephmt
May 18th, 2010
@BlooDbeak
Yes, and no. Windfarms are increasingly placed offshore, and solar farms could soon be flaoting above our heads in near-earth orbit. Add in tidal flow and wave generators and a shift to a hydrogen economy and we can keep the prescious little crude we have left for products that can’t be found elsewhere – petrochemical drugs being one example.
Origen305
May 18th, 2010
@Origen305
will do
greenman3610
May 18th, 2010
cont..
I’d rather have a vista of windfarms and solar farms than a skewed Middle East policy that perpetuates war and support of some of the world’s most oppressive regimes. Energy solutions need to me local, mixed, and renewable.
Keep the great videos coming.
Origen305
May 18th, 2010
It seems many people have an ‘inertia’ problem when it come to adopting and accepting new technologies for energy needs. We forget that currently a vast and interconnected system of geo-political manipulation, militarisation, and a highly inefficient method of energy extraction of finite resources is our current model, yet balk at the site of a wind farm!! cont…
Origen305
May 18th, 2010
While no system is perfect, Wind and solar systems are definitely better options than what we usually give them credit for. Its a shame that it is taking so long to adopt them. I bet if we let utilities and energy companies operate in a completely unregulated free market with no tax money going in or out, We would adopt the best solutions faster. Because right now, government bureaucrat control our energy system, and their pay depends on an inefficient system. -Libertarian Party
Skyler827
May 18th, 2010
OTECs are the way to go, you get electricity, salt, hydrogen, fresh water, food, metals, minerals, etc. A 100MW OTEC can produce 113,593,938 gallons of fresh water a day.
theinsane101
May 18th, 2010
@ketos234 I agree with much of that. Very large high-capacity grids are required to support the significant use of renewables. For example, I attended a lecture last year by a representative of the Norwegian national grid. His personal opinion was that high capacity links running between Norway and Britain would be highly cost-effective. They would link UK & French nukes with Norwegian pumped-storage hydro and North Sea wind farms, leading to a very robust system.
bimblinghill
May 18th, 2010
@KelvinGreyheart The need for power supply flexibility is not new. The ‘Coronation Street’ problem, where millions of people put the kettle on during a commercial break in a popular TV programme is something that power companies are well used to dealing with. Changes in wind conditions would be no different. Storage is not the only means of dealing with intermittency, spinning reserve and continental cross-links are more important.
Once again, your final sentence is a complete untruth.
bimblinghill
May 18th, 2010
@TinyCoconut another alternative to fossil fuelled flight is to move as much of that traffic over to high-speed trains as possible. Not only do you have the potential to move the energy over to cleaner sources, but fast trains are a much nice way to get around than planes: no sudden unexpected bounces, you can walk around, you get elbow room to work, you can walk onto the train in an urban centre without sitting in traffic for half an hour to get to the airport ,,,
philipmach
May 18th, 2010
You got my 3 votes. Keep up the good work. This is a valuable channel.
y0nd3r
May 18th, 2010
I am not comparing wind to using fossil fuels here. Consider alternatives that actually don’t require a backup in place. Comparing wind + fossil fuels to just fossil fuels is a meaningless statistic.
With wind you MUST have some form of storage for the energy (we have nothing that can hold that much currently), or some sort of on demand energy. That is an increase in dependence, despite a decrease in consumption because to break away from the dependence you must then scrap the wind as well.
KelvinGreyheart
May 18th, 2010
@TinyCoconut There are developments going on right now with electric powered aircraft. There are some major advantages to electric relative to temperature, moisture and altitude. And there are several new breeds of energy storage coming along with thin film ultracapacitors and lithium-air batteries.
robhoneycutt
May 18th, 2010
@jnn6700 I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I read that the swoosh sound they create can cause health problems. I also read that something like 70% of people live less than 100 miles from the ocean and so wind farms a few miles out to sea could solve much of that problem.
christo930
May 18th, 2010
@bimblinghill I mention the UK, Germany and California because I have the stats. “Somewhere” isn’t good; you need to have a wind farm there, and you need to have a grid that can shift the power to meet demand. California has had the same issues; they got only 5% rated output in the 06 heatwave.
Gemany has had slews in wind production of 6GW in a few hours; that overwhelms most backup. In practice they use the throttlable French Nukes.
Secondary issue is still only getting 2W/m^2 out of wind…
ketos234
May 18th, 2010
Greenman, is it true that mating with one of these fans is possible?
MilitantAtheistAhole
May 18th, 2010
@greenman3610 FUCK IT, catapult your way instead of flying
MilitantAtheistAhole
May 18th, 2010
im curious how much does it take to set up one windmill and howw long does it take to produce enough energy to cover that cost?
Dubbo9876
May 18th, 2010
every little bit helps!
RavenBlaze
May 18th, 2010
@TinyCoconut
there are some processes that rely on carbon input from fossil fuel plants, and so
are not carbon neutral. otherwise, I think algae will have some applications.
greenman3610
May 18th, 2010
Wind power is an excellent solution, but light fuels are still a necessary evil in aviation technology. There is no magic electrical system that can fly an airliner as efficiently as kerosene.
What is your opinion on bio-fuels derived from algae? We can still use hydrocarbon fuels, just as long as they are carbon neutral. Will you ever make a video on microbe-derived bio-fuels? Any chemical engineer can see the benefits algae offers over other terrestrial plant-derived bio-fuels.
TinyCoconut
May 18th, 2010