If we listen to the political spin on energy we only get dizzy. The wind farms seem to be sky hooks to me. Solar panels are mostly an expensive image tool for the environmentalists. How many homes will have solar panels installed on the roof facing the street when the street is to the north?
WI believe the greatest un tapped source is hydro power. Not in traditional damns that we see today but tidal currents. The problem up until now is not in getting enough energy but the opposite. It has hampered our ability to make anything to withstand these forces. I feel the solutions and designs to cope with them are closer now. When that happens, the energy potential just from the most easily accessible areas is about 1420 terawatt hours per year or about one third of our energy needs. I have always been a proponent of it with it’s minimal invasive impact using under water, floor dwelling turbines.
Lets take a look at what works very good,solar-but the caveat is,you had better learn to be a power miser,I would say a good total solar energy system(living as usual)will probaly cost in the neighborhood of 50K,but there are folks who can teach you how to live a lot cheaper(Steve Harris comes to mind)consider what the biggest consumers of electricity are in your home and adjust or substitute appropiately,BTW solar works very well for water heating and lights dont cost a fortune.live like an astronaut and you will see you dont have to give up much.I would imagine by lowering our expectations a bit we(or a lot of us) could posses automobiles that were charged by good ol 'Sol,be expensive ,but doable.
The bubble will bust one day despite what the Pollyannas say and all I can say is when our petroleum based agriculture collapses,there is going to be a lot of hungry and bored Folks scrounging around.I give it 30 years,feel sorry for your children and their progeny,when energy becomes really scarce,things will change in a hurry-WE ARE EXCEDDING THE CARRYING CAPACITY OF THIS PLANET,can you imagine 300 million people trying to live off the land in the US?-Kevin
Couple of options are available to the homeowner. I forget he exact particulars but I THINK one option was the homeowner fronts the install costs but gets tax credits and utility must buy the power. The other option is the solar company fronts the costs and homeowner gets a discounted energy cost and no tax credits. GS announced 500million investment towards what I believe is option #2.Solar Company benefits in that own the solar cells and sells the power to the wired electric company.
We most of homes in our neighborhood have southern exposure roofs. We have a southern roof perfect for panels-problem is spouse was not involved in the buying decision and we unsure on how much longer we will stay in this house. Salesman’s program indicates we can have a 3 year payback on option #1 which is typical for the couple of people I know who have panels (12cents/kwh).
The most impressive eco home that I have seen used a passive geo-thermal HVAC system and a solar water heater but the owner was only able to build the home with cash. No bank would loan money on the plans. That was 30+ years ago and much has changed since then. Banks may jump at such an idea today.
The practical floor plans and building methods that took advantage of local climate and conditions have been relegated to the history books as would be homeowners find themselves enamored with the “soup du jour” of styles.
“It would be to our advantage to have some non partisan, long term planning to be used in deciding what course to take on energy and that ain’t happening right now.”
I agree. But Republican or Democrat state election committees nominate evermore extreme candidates. If the only candidates are extremists, then of course we can’t get anything done.
Saw one of those in home geothermal installations on ‘This Old House’ - looked like the HVAC system for a large building, pipes everywhere, pumps, exchangers, etc. I wonder what the cost was (retail, not the “TOH” discounted version).
The geothermal installations is VERY expensive. Minimum of $20k last time Here in the North East you have to put the pipes down below the frost line of 4’.
The one I saw was built on a lot that made it convenient to bury the 12" pvc pipe to take advantage of condensation drainage and although I was not told what it cost I can’t imagine it costing more than $10,000 if built today. There is no power involved other than 2 squirrel cage fans.
test
TOH,can be very deceiving-Kevin
Probably where you live has a lot to do with it. Labor rates are very high here in NH. Neighbor had a new septic system and leach field put in at a cost of $15k. And the geothermal systems have to go down below the 4’ frost line…so that’ll add to the expense.
–never mind–
@kmckune Oil is the least abundant resource, but even it is extremely plentiful. The countries with the largest resources are Saudi Arabia, Canada and Venezuela. The US is rapidly developing more domestic prodcution. Then we have natural gas of which there is an incredible amount all over the world and tied up in gas hydrates in the Arctic. Both can be used to make fertlizer and provide transportation fuels, so as to keep agriculture from “collapsing”. Because of a developing land shortage, aquaculture and very conentrated farming will develop to keep us fed. Israel is a desert country but it exports flowers and fresh fruit and vegetables. Just look at a satellite photo of the Middle East and you can see a green wedge which is Israel.
Then we have coal, of which the US has more than any country in the world. It can also be used to make fertilzer, fuels, and plastics, as well as power electric generating plants. Before the widespread use of oil, many things were made from coal.
The doomsayers are living off the generous gifts of scared people, and would be better off making an honest living. The most useful thing mankind can do is to practice birth control and lower consumption of energy. In the early 70s the “Club of Rome”, an aristocratic Think Tank published a book called “Limits to Growth”, and forecast a dire shotage of all manner of energy and raw materials by 2010. It’s now 2013 and we don’t have a scarcity of anything except common sense.
Most people have trouble comprehending that resources are defined by the current price the market pays. In the early 70s that was $3.50 for a barrel of oil and 40 cent per million BTUs fixed very unwisely by Richard Nixon, and at that price there was a shortage forecast. At $14 a barrel, a whole lot more oil was found, and now at $95 doillars world price there is even more. Gas is now at $3 per million and lots more is being found. In the mean time the higher price has made us more frugal in the design and use of energy consuming equipment.
If you look in an old Sears catalogue, a double door fridge of the 70s consumed 2500-3200 KWHrs of electricity per year; that figure now is down to 550 KWHrs for the latest models.
The fact that we will not run out of resources any time soon does not mean we can continue wasting energy by driving a 2 ton vehicle with 300 HP to the 7-11 to get a loaf of bread.
Maybe for energy we can put a huge generator up in space and power it with a belt around the equator. The belt would have two metal bands on the outside and we would have brushes on the generator and here on earth to pick up the power. The bug in this system I need to work out is what to do when the belt needs to be changed.
@Triedaq - don’t tell Rick, he’ll want to use a chain…
To nudge this conversation back towards wind power for a moment, I want to respond to a couple of OK4450’s comments.
Just because wind power is often mismanaged does not mean that it is inherently a bad idea. I will grant you that there is a lot of mismanagement in that field right now.
Small windmills use a synchronous motor generator. Those are great in an area with 100% wind. They were used in some areas of California near Edwards AFB where the wind blows almost all the time, only a few lulls in the wind occur for a couple hours each year. At that time, the windmills become motors and use electricity from the grid.
The big windmills called “clippers” in the trade that are 400 feet tall and have 150’ blades will only turn the blades at about 2 revolutions per hour in a calm condition to keep the blades from warping. They can be shut down completely for a week or two at a time if needed but eventually the blades must turn.
When you see these big blades turning fairly fast on what appears to be a calm day to you, it is not calm up there at 400 feet.
I also want to comment on some observations by another poster a couple pages back, well written post BTW. He (or she) commented that much of the power made in the PNW and used in California is lost in transmission and by transformers. About 10 to 15% each as I recall.
The losses from the transformers is improving. Modern advances in core technology has greatly improved the efficiency of transformers, but of course there are still a lot of legacy transformers in use and at up to $10 million for a large substation transformer, they will remain in use for up to 50 years or more.
The issue with the long distance transmission lines is one of timing, not so much resistance. The AC grid for local distribution grids is a great design. The problem comes when you try to link all the individual distribution grids together with the transmission grid and you use AC to do it. If you tie two distribution grids together with a transmission line and then have two or more sources of electrical generation, the power gets out of phase and begins to cancel each other.
There are a few long distance DC transmission lines in use and they are proving to be successful. The problem with getting more built is the permitting problems. You can run an AC transmission line with very little trouble, but to put in a DC line, because it is a new technology, you run into a mountain of regulations and permitting that has to be overcome.
One big advantage to the DC lines for the environment and our health is that the magnetic field around them is relatively weak and is stationary, not moving. It is the rapidly moving magnetic fields that are suspected of causing health issues, we have been living in a giant stationary magnetic field since the dawn of life on earth.
With coal, even if you assume it can be burned cleanly (which I am not willing to stipulate without proof), there are still two very good reasons not to use it as an energy source:
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To get to it safely, companies are strip-mining mountain tops in some of the most pristine areas of the U.S. I can’t tell you how destructive this is in words, so here are some pictures.
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To get to it without strip mining puts miners at grave risk, both in terms of mining accidents and black lung.
I wonder, if you lived in a part of the country pictured below, would this bother you more than it does currently?
Taylor University, a small liberal arts institution in Upland, Indiana has two wind turbines used to generate electric power. According to its website, the wind turbines generate about 17% of the power required for its science building. Another 3% is generated by solar panels. Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana has operational the first phase of a 66 million dollar geothermal system and should have the second phase operational in a year or so. Apparently, the payback will occur over the next 30 years. I applaud these two institutions for testing these technologies.
A 30 year payback is way too long; the turbines will be worn out by then. The cost of money has to be figured in as well. However, I applaud the demonstration and educational part of the effort.
By comparison, in 2006 I converted our house furnace to one with a high efficiency, and paid $4200 for it including a new humidifier. The payback was less than 5 years. My gas consumption dropped from 230 million BTUs per year to just 132 last year, and 127 the year before.
Sears pushed high efficiency instant hot water heaters at $2500. The payback for those is around 20 years and if you put it on your Sears account with 29% interest, it will take forever if you make only minimum payments. They’re not selling too many.
The public, by and large, is not stupid. Something that is significantly better will sell. Solar panels for most people don’t make sense, although Wallmart have them on their new warehouses.