Commenter Rob B. asks me to comment on this, but I’m kind of busy. The two major elements seem from my skim to be 1) utilization of wind, 2) natural gas for autos. In my very superficial gloss I don’t see anything about more nuclear. Nevertheless, it’s a good pretext for a discussion about what’s available and how to optimize.
T. Boone: it’s what’s at steak
Maybe It’s just that I feel dark and cynical today, but Picken’s plan has the whiff of investment scheming. Or even scamming.
I think that you are right, Sarah.
i’m immediately skeptical of plans that include only some options. why just Natural Gas for transportation and not Hydrogen or Electricity? Why no mention at all of nuclear? I didn’t see any cost to KWh on all of the turbines that will be needed to be built.
All in all I found it a nice start but grossly incomplete and stinking just a little bit of self promotion.
I wonder of ric locke is around. I’d love to hear his take on this.
– Untold Billions of brls offshore on all three coasts, which other countries are posed to side drill if we don’t.
–
1 trillion+ brls in Colorado shale.
– 700 billion cubic feet of gas in the dome.
– Forget ANWAR. Unless its really needed it just gives the ECO-nuts an excuse to block any progress.
– 100 new Nuke plants immesiately, with another 100 intermediate sized facilities fror eueal customers.
– Serious investment in electric vehicals for all local, non-commercial commuter traffic.
– Kick the Left out of the way and get on with it.
The United States is the Saudi Arabia of wind power is the gayest thing I’ve heard in some time. Let’s just build some nuke plants like normal people and not be gay if that’s ok with you, T Bone.
BBH: Yes to all you list plus continued serious investment in hydrogen, solar and, way down the road, fusion.
Also, stop using food for fuel, already.
C’mon now people, that picture of t-bone as a youngen in his cowboy getup screams trustworthy. SCREAMS IT!
Back in the 60’s John F. said “we WILL go to the moon before the end of the decade” and by God we pulled out the stops and did…
We need a regular supply of oil now so drilling makes sense but I’d sure like to see a leader emerge and say “We WILL kick our oil habit by 2020 and replace it with well built and guarded nuke plants, hydrogen cell cars, wind turbines and solar farms… and leave backward as China to kiss OPECs ass..
Arthur C Clarke, author and futurist, foresaw us using cheap and plentiful nuke energy by this time.. There’s no good reason that we’re stuck buying $140 barrels of oil except for greed and the profit left to be made by milking the crude down to the last drop.
– Agreed BJT. Instant generation of hydrogen at point of use from water will be the ultimate “alternate” source for transportation, and other uses eventually.
– That would make us totally energy independent, even in terms of fuel.
– Spot generation would remove the storage danger.
– You could set up your own fuel “condenser” in the back yard. No more gas stations except for maintainance.
– No more fuel taxes.
– America. Fuck Yeh!
I don’t have any use for this T-Bone person. He’s at least gonna have to buy me dinner first.
I like T Boone but then he’s a kind of Texan so I would be predisposed, wouldn’t I?
– Hold out for a 32 oz NY strip feets. Screw the T-Bones, cuts are too unpredictable and the damn bone in thing eats up to much meat space.
Oh. I just remembered this is that guy that was on teh NPR this morning. Here. That guy that sounds like a kindergarten teacher pretended to interview him. Blah blah blah I didn’t really listen.
Hey, as far as facilities go are nuke plants substantially more expensive than other types of utility companies to maintain? I mean, beyond the large investment to build… Is there some reason that a bunch of nuke plants couldnt be supplying a ton of cheap energy right now? Thats what Clark wrote about.. lots of electricity real cheap… any reason that cant happen?
From ‘feet’s NPR link:
SarahW called it in the first comment.
T. Boone Pickens is a genius. This not always or inevitably a Good thing.*
When money, especially in the form of subsidies, falls from the sky, it’s worth remembering that Texans wear big hats. Pickens’s hat is capacious and nicely leak-proofed, and he really doesn’t mind getting his hair mussed by the downpour. For the last decade or more he has been investing in natural gas and land. Notice anything about his proposal? He’s been the most avid promoter of vehicle conversion to natural gas fuel for a long time.
As it happens, I just recently had reason to travel I20 through Sweetwater. The windmills there are awesome to see, but there doesn’t seem to be any information anywhere that gives good numbers for how much energy they’re actually producing. Certainly when I was going through a few of them were turning lazily in the breeze, but at least as many were stationary and a lot of them were faced in directions that wouldn’t be very effective at catching the wind.
Natural gas as a motor fuel? Well, maybe. One of the ways I disagree profoundly with Big Bang Hunter is that I don’t believe hydrogen will ever be widely deployed as a fuel, first because its energy density is miserable, but more because there’s no such thing as a “tank” for hydrogen, only various porosities of filter. Hydrogen is a clever escaper and does a lot of damage on the way out regardless of the materials used to try to contain it. If we ever invent a force field that will keep hydrogen in, it’s my belief that we can then just compress it until it fuses, making the matter moot. In the meantime, all we can really do is attach carbon to it as a ball and chain to restrict its flighty tendencies. Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the simplest hydrocarbon. It serves well to prevent the hydrogen from getting away, but it, too, has lousy energy density. There are successful users of natural gas, but car design will never be quite the same if it’s adopted across the board. Among other things, it means the return of the gas station attendant. Having the untrained and/or careless transferring natural gas with multiple make-and-break cycles is purely explosion bait.
Pickens isn’t going to advocate nuclear power. IIRC he got badly burned investing in it back in the Sixties and Seventies, and has become a thoroughgoing cynic on the subject, especially as regards the legal and regulatory climate. I’m not saying he’s wrong about that.
Regards,
Ric
So Pickens is a businessman pushing his book, so what? That seems to me to be a particularly upright American behavior which is all-in-all a good thing, not an (evil?) scheme and certainly not a scam. Can do!, get ‘er done!, etc. Ya’ll ought to be applauding this guy as he for one is putting his money where his mouth is and has spent his life pointedly learning what it is he’s talking about.
He also looks like he has way bad old man smell.
…there doesn’t seem to be any information anywhere that gives good numbers for how much energy they’re actually producing.
I would like to see some numbers on the projected impact on weather patterns. A windmill converts wind energy to mechanical energy, which means it slows the wind down. A miniscule amount normally, but if you start talking about hundreds of square miles of 500 feet tall mills producing 20% of the US required electricity, it seems to me that might scrub off enough speed to impact weather patterns.
If you think this is silly, watch how many storm fronts seem to split when they pass Atlanta.
Sdferr: Pickens is a businessman pushing his book which pushed the selective energy alternatives that he is heavily invested in. I’d feel better about his philanthropic largesse with regards to energy policy if he didn’t have so much money tied up into selective energy sources at the exclusion of others.
He’s not wrong but I’m not buying an energy “plan for the future” that isn’t wide ranging.
He’s the George Soros of energy policy!
Pickens gets nice tax incentives and production credits for his windfarms. Texas has six new reactors underway (STP 3 and 4, Comanche Peak 3 and 4, and two units in victoria County) all competing to serve the same demand. Why would he extol the competition?
It’s a financial play for him. He gets property tax relief, accelerated tax depreciation (writeoff in three years), AND a premimum price for whatever juice come out.
BJTex, he’s one guy with his one guy’s input. Where the hell does philanthropic largesse come from? He’s interested in making money? Ohh! How terrible! His choice to exclude other sources of energy production from his portfolio deserves your scorn? Wide ranging you can get from many other guys and their respective inputs (and should, as wide ranging is what we need in the end). Like the Boilermakers Union and the Pipefitters Union will be in favor of nuclear power plants and building refineries, cause that’s what they do. The miners union will want to dig more coal since that’s what they do, etc. Why select the productive interests of anyone for scorn? I don’t get it.
And in reality, I’m pretty much of an admirer of T. Boone Pickens. One of the reasons for that is that using the word “philanthropic” within the same paragraph as his name is cause for side-splitting guffaws. He is famous for preferring steady income to windfalls and structuring his affairs accordingly in contrast to the way much American business is conducted, but you must assume that anything he proposes will result in money in his pocket at the end. That doesn’t mean it’s a cheat or a bad deal, mind you, and if you shake hands with him there’s no need to keep the other hand on your wallet or count your fingers afterward, but if you’re looking for altruism you need to find a better-placed lamppost.
Pickens is quietly one of the main proponents of the “peak oil” theory. I put that down to age — his early experiences in the oil patch were in places where recovery was relatively easy, and compared to what he had to do, finding oil these days is hard. That doesn’t mean impossible.
He would not propose any plan that didn’t promise long-term profit, but one of the most admirable things about him is that he thinks of profit in rather libertarian terms, that is, if he actually provides a valuable good or service he expects to be paid for it. In terms of the plan he’s presenting, that creates the presumption that at least he expects it to be a valuable contribution, with consequent rewards to the contributors. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way forward, let alone the only one.
Regards,
Ric
sdferr: “His choice to exclude other sources of energy production from his portfolio deserves your scorn?”
Yes. Especially considering that his exclusion of nuclear generating facilities is colossally self-serving and stupid.
I don’t like him cause he did a phony interview on NPR where you could tell it was scripted and so he’s pretty much lost it with me. I’ve just lost all patience with that shit.
My parents dressed me like T Boone was in that picture when I was three yrs. old too. Parents do that sort of thing alot, I think.
He lost me at “We can’t drill our way…etc., etc.”
He does, however sound like he’s in lockstep with the current (D) stratery regarding increasing supplies of energy:
“Exactly when Democrats will change their present course and bring an energy bill to the floor remains uncertain.
“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ †said a Democratic aide.”
That quote is from here (via Ed @ Hot Air):
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/energy-bill-out-of-gas-2008-07-07.html
Squid? Self-serving? Well, yes, I hope so. Stupid? How could you possibly know that? Seems to me nuclear power would be better vested in the investments of an outfit like TXU or some such.
Folks, the crisis isn’t about energy.
It’s about creating a society subservient to government.
Got it? Think about that a little bit, and the fact that all we need to be INDEPENDENT of foreign energy is to build less than thirty nuc plants and open up already known fields.
Period. Maybe not cheap, but cetainly affordable energy from proven CLEAN technologies. Energy not at the mercy of barbarian posturing or super power competitor strategies, energy that we control, the fuels that will allow us to prosper as a nation, but more importantly ushering back in an era where individuals will find themselves with time, capital, and inspiration to achieve new heights in innovation and excellence.
That is not an outcome that generates a politiy that cries out “O! O! Save me, daddy Baracky, from my own misbegotten earth-blighting self!”. You free up people by getting government off their throat, and they are much more likely to look at that form in April and go more like “Just damn. How much tax money does it take to defend the borders, protect the constitution, and defeat Islamist terror…? Oh – wait – THEY AREN’T INTERESTED IN DOING ANY OF THAT!!! We’d better put those characters back on cable – anywhere but in office!”.
Fuck a Leftist, and the campus commies they ride on Friday nights. And fuck what they’ve done to what’s supposed to be “the other option” in our political system.
Congress approval in single digits is all well and good. Nailing their useless hides to a barn door and having an auction for outhouse accent rugs – priceless.
It’s the FREEDOM, stupid. I’d like to see a Dem blue dog stand up and sponsor a bill to gut McCain – Feingold. I know, they want iced tea in hell, too….
I’m beginning to feel the effects of the four different scrips I just picked up for my killer bronchitis, so I’ll just seet on baaaaaack and watch teh show. I’d be angrier but I just can’t find the air…
“…like he’s in lockstep with the current (D) stratery…”
Pickens is about as far from a Democrat as you can get, so don’t fret that canard.
He sounds to me like he would be happy to have his happy little plan mandated. Also, where the fuck was his visionary ass self ten years ago? He can a lot kiss my ass I think. Coal-fired electric plants kick his pansy assed faggot wind farm’s ass any day of the week. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal for reals. Opportunistic wanker.
Don’t like.
Nuclear energy is not the answer to save us from global
warmingclimate change!All that concrete needed to build the things makes it an environmental wash, don’t you see…
Sdferr, I think we’re just not gonna see eye to eye on this. Inasmuch as this guy’s plan will help reduce our reliance on foreign oil, it’s a good thing. But his little website doesn’t say a peep about nuclear power. That means that the Pickens Plan isn’t a serious plan for energy independence. A serious plan would look at the most effective and efficient ways to achieve independence; this looks at the most effective way to make Pickens (even more) rich, while ignoring alternatives that have real strengths.
As a wealth-generating plan for Pickens, it’s great. As a make-work plan for rural middle America, it’s great. (Hell, I’m considering an investment in a line of turbine-repair technical schools right now. Study at SquidTech!) As an energy plan, it’s appallingly incomplete, to say the least.
There’s nothing wrong with making a buck, mind you. I just hate to see some guy’s marketing brochure treated as though it were a serious policy piece.
I have no problem with his plan despite the no nuke and the “we can’t drill our way out of this” mantra.
However, I will forever respect the man for offering up a cool mil to anyone who can factually and completely refute the Swift Boat Veterans claims about John F’n Kerry’s unfitness for command. And yes, I realize that a million is chump change to him, but it also remains true that he hasn’t had to pay it out.
And yes, I fucking loathe Kerry.
In unrelated news, we’ve just narrowed down the list of suspects for who’s behind ProggHero. It’s one of the few of us who knows how to use the strikethrough code and the href link code in a single comment without screwing up either one.
You’re tipping your hand, mate!
NPR treated his marketing brochure like it was a serious policy piece. They’re such a cheap date like that.
Oh, wait. That wasn’t him at all.
Damn.
I need to make sure that SquidTech is promoted as some kind of new cutting-edge educational program. Then I can get me some o’ that NPR luv.
Oh. I thought the (in my mind) thing meant it wasn’t for real Mr. ProggHero. If it’s one of us then Karl and Jeff know who it is cause they can see the IP thingers.
Sdferr: Take a deep breath. Let it out. Serenity noooooooow…
I’m not “scorning” T. Boone for his energy investment choices. If he were making a pitch to me as an investor, I’d be very interested and I’ll bet that the deal was probably a good one.
However, when he’s promoting a web site on “policy making” for an energy policy and the only energy alternatives presented happen to be the ones he’s invested in then my cynical side comes out. My concern is that he’ll be using his considerable clout in DC to advance this program just as the agribusinesses advanced Bio fuels years ago. We still won’t drill to secure short term (5-10 year) economic gain and solar, hydrogen and nuclear get the short shrift.
Cynicism, Sdferr, not scorn. I actually admire the guy and he’s not all wrong.
Hey. What’s cool is that widget thinger on his page. I’ve kinda wondered why google or yahoo finance don’t have one of those.
Picken is just making his late-night infomercials political. He’s a used-car salesman, and I don’t like used-car salesmen.
Wind is irregular power that’s expensive and can’t be adjusted to demand.
Natural Gas is only cheap because we aren’t using it to drive all our cars – the price would go through the roof and we’d have to import a heck of a lot of it if demand went up that way.
The only thing his plan would optimize would be his portfolio.
Oh, and hydrogen isn’t a fuel, it’s a piss-poor battery. Physics overrides fiction every time. Until somebody invents Mr. Fusion, at least.
I don’t know where anyone would get the idea that Picken’s plans are proposed as an all encompassing solution nor why for any reason they should be. That strikes me as like someone asking casually where we should go out for dinner and then complaining I haven’t solved the problem of world hunger when I answer with the name of a chinese restaurant.
T Bone is more than welcome to build his happy wind farms and build natural gas stations all he wants. I think that would be a way he could make himself useful actually. But he’s slagging oil and, worse, he’s opportunistically leveraging his plan off of the groundwork set down by global warming propaganda. It’s creepy and I’m not going to give him a cookie for it.
Hmmmm.
1. Paving over critical, and highly valuable, farmland in order to put up wind turbines instead of nuclear power plants is idiotic.
2. There is a huge transmission cost in transporting electricity over long distances. So you’ve got wind turbines in North Dakota. So what if the electricity is needed in Los Angeles?
3. What if the wind becomes too minimal to generate electricity? What? Are we going to have batteries the size of skyscrapers?
4. This is definitely going to need federal subsidies *and* power of eminent domain in order to work. Which is why Picket is trying to gin up support.
5. I wonder if this is one of those schemes, always involving federal subsidies, where the profit is in constructing these things rather than in operating them.
Like public housing a la Obama.
6. So why shouldn’t we just build nuclear power plants instead?
It’s a risky scheme.
I think you take that slagging oil a little too far there, happyfeet. It’s foreign oil he has a problem with. I very much doubt that Pickens is in any way opposed to drilling in the US anywhere you may want to drill. He probably does recognize the growing costs of productive drilling and that likely plays a role in his own plans for drilling. He may not have the requisite capital to undertake the sort of drilling necessary and so just leaves it out of mention, believing rightly that the people will demand it, the repubs will write the laws to fit and the big oil companies with the dough will go drilling when they’re satisfied the risks are balanced. That in turn doesn’t mean he has to believe that oil drilling alone is going to solve the problem and who would disagree? As to global warming, climate change or whatever I’m 100% with you. It’s bullshit plain and simple. Public figures have a hard time saying stuff like that though.
On the other hand, you wanna believe something else about Pickens? Go right ahead. ‘Pave the farmland’ with memomachine.
Hmmm.
Fix the energy problem?
1. Build 100 new Westinghouse 1,700 MwH nuclear reactors on *federal* land. The reactors can be owned by private companies but they are subject to review of operations by the US Navy which has administrative control.
This undercuts much of the regulatory bullshit that nuclear reactors have to go through.
2. Solar power panels take up space, land and sunlight. What totally fucking astonishes me are the numbers of greenies that don’t yet understand this. When I mention that forests may have to be cut down to put up solar panels, their heads almost explode.
3. We’re shifting to either all electric or hybrid cars. A *personal rail* system that’s designed to transport, manage and electrically power these cars would enable electric cars to travel long distances, at high speeds and continue on regular roads.
Plus the weight of these cars is much lighter than a real railroad so they can be stacked on top of one another with upramps and downramps to go from one level to another. This would also allow long distance commuters to sleep on their way to work, all power used would be electricity passed from the track to the electric or hybrid car. Additionally skyscrapers could be built with multiple levels for loading and unloading passenger vehicles. Instead of trying to find parking space at ground level and then take an elevator to the 100th floor, just go to the offloading platform at the 100th floor.
Plus since centralized computer control is much easier with a set rail system you could disembark at your office and then instruct your car to travel to a local automated parking garage.
Lots of benefits to this system.
Hmmmm.
Want to see an operational equivalent of an electrical personal rail system?
A slot car track.
Oh, wait. That wasn’t him at all.
Damn.
Ha! You will never catch me!
Sdferr, I think maybe I just find his infomercially approach with its quasi-Perot/Howard Beale overtones a lot offputting. I’ve had all I can stomach of the rallying around the visionary figure thing for awhile. Plus he’s acting like it’s such a big rah rah deal when the truth is all we have to do is get the retarded U.S. government out of the way and our energy problems will be solved really fast. Stupid retarded US government.
The personal rail system sounds neato though. You should sent T bone that idea.
Sdferr:
From T Boone’s website:
Sounds an awful lot like a political manifesto to me. Self serving with starry eyes.
“1. Build 100 new Westinghouse 1,700 MwH nuclear reactors on *federal* land.”
Screw that.. build ’em on Native American reservation land.. Let the Indians run them like they do the casinos and sell us back the electricity at big discount prices to undercut the existing greedy bastard utilities…(and maybe a great $10 all-you-can-eat buffet thrown in to boot) They have a great track record with taxfree Marlboros $20 under the Safeway price … With so much of the cost of gas coming from taxes imposed by every level of government I’d love to see an energy source the politicians couldnt morph into their own private revenue generating program.
Ok. You should *send T Bone that idea* is what that’s supposed to say. While I was typing that NG messaged she wants to go get milkshakes. It was kind of distracting.
“Ha! You will never catch me!”
– the fact you think that shows exactly how easy you will be caught if need be.
– If you’re usung a dynamic addy you can be identified in other ways and suto blocked.
– If you’re using a proxie, it has to send an ID packet, which can be auto blocked.
– No matter how you slice it, all the hidey schemes have some weakness.
– For now, no one gives a fuck enough to bother.
– Behave yourself and you won’t have to worry about it. Act out and go over the line and you’re toast. Ask all the “elites” that thought different in the past. This isn’t blogspot.com douchenozzel.
Hmmm.
“While I was typing that NG messaged she wants to go get milkshakes.”
Soooooo.
Her milkshake is better than yours??
She wants to walk down to In N Out is what that means. It’s hot out there and I’m finishing losing weight cause it’s on my list of things I am going to do before I look for a new job and I really don’t want to walk down to In N Out for a milkshake. A Java Monster sounds good though.
– Would you do it for a Scooby treat feets?
Hmmmm.
Just joking. First time I’ve ever been able to use that phrase.
Frankly I could go for a good milkshake but the closest decent place is about 10 miles.
Jeez BBH, can’t a guy put a smelly old sock on his hand without you getting all judgmental and pissy and stuff?
Oh. I never did see that movie… also I’ll do just about anything for a rooby rack. That and fudge.
Agreed to stupid retarded US gov. ‘feet. No question. Now we face the how the hell we gonna do that question (I mean persuade San Franciscans to abandon Nancy P? Yeah. And how.)?
How come you didn’t bold “bridge to the future” BJTex? Doesn’t sound ‘all-encompassing enough” for you? That’s odd. Of course it sounds like a political manifesto. Duh. It is. Starry eyes? Ha. See Ric Locke above.
Wind is a minor (forever minor) component of energy production. It is relatively easy to get through permitting and build-out to production though, when compared to coal plants and nuclear plants. For the forseeable future oil will provide our major transportation fuels. Pickens thinks (and maybe with good reason, I don’t know) nat. gas can be a practical addition to transport fuel in availability and power/pound. In any case, as he says on the touted website wind and gas are only bridge elements to another better technology (otherwise unnamed). So he’s pushing ‘quick and relatively easy’ stuff now. Makes sense to pick the low hanging fruit first. Or no?
Maybe the problem is I haven’t heard the infomercial well enough (at all?) to engender the needful disgust and am merely working off what I’ve known of T B Pickens over the last decade plus I’ve paid any attention to the business pages. My bad. Unless you think we ought not to spend any capital on wind and gas fueled-car conversion, in which case I’d probably still disagree.
– …and if it wasn’t for those meddling kids I’d have gotten away with it too….
C’mon, lighten up, BBH.
Yeah, BBH, give the guy a break.
Can’t a guy comment here at PW without being hassled by reich wing thumb screws?
Honestly, can’t a guy get a word in edgewise?
Darn it!
It’s like a dirty clothes hamper around here!
Household odors getting you down?
Oh. I like wind energy. It’s neat. There was this one guy in my hometown that was generating electric from wind like decades ago in his backyard. He got a kit or something. It’s smart when it’s distributed. But to use kajillions of square miles of land out in the middle of nowhere for it is sort of gay when nuclear is available. Ok not sort of. It’s really a lot gay.
Hmmmmm.
liberals. idiotic and predictable.
Hmmmm
“But to use kajillions of square miles of land out in the middle of nowhere for it is sort of gay when nuclear is available.”
Actually that’s prime farmland.
Oh. Then that’s gay and also it’s rape.
– T-Bone is on an all out media blitz, so hes in the tank for wind. Wind only works in very specific locales. So when you see him do that and ighore nuke, you know what hes up too right away.
– I don’t share Rics admiration of him. Hes an old time Silver Fox moneymaker amd smake oil salesman, because he read the same book I did, and stacks the deck. Thats street smarts, not genius.
– Hes running out of time, so he’s pushing this for quick gains. He uses the phrase “can’t drill our way out”, because wind is one of the less cost efficient approaches and oil, gas, and nuclear, are direct rivals in the energy sweepstakes game.
What I want to know is, why aren’t all new buildings required to be roofed with solar panels and outfitted with a wind turbine, with huge incentives for retrofitting of existing structures?
Wouldn’t that energy, with excess power being fed back into the system, take a huge bite out of energy needs?
Granted, there would still be a need for the present system for calm, cloudy days, but the infrastructure is already in place, and the strain on the thing would be way less.
When I was a kid we were supposed to build big ass solar arrays in space and shoot the power down on giant frickin’ lasers. What happened to that idea?
What happened to that idea?
People saw Akira and realized what happens if you miss. Plus, two words – Audubon Society.
– Lets put this in prespective so we can get on with things that will actually work. If transmission lines are run coast to coast, in itself a problematic idea at best, then the remote vast fields of wind turbines, using the most optimistic projections, might take 3% of the total national energy usage in electrics only, by the year 2030. Good luck. Pickens 650 turbines will service about 750,000 homes, less than even one medium sized city. Turbin power production versus area used sucks. And if the wind stops you’re back on the power grid. The biggest wind in this idea is coming from Pickins himself.
– One of the things that drives the whole power/energy issue is a good long term storage. If we get that then a lot of things could change. until then, drilling is the only cheap readily available source we have to break the logjam. For now, sans some breakthroughs in storage and alternative sources, everything else is a pipe dream.
– Local building mounted systems can do what you asked, but they are seldom cost effective until they’ve been in use for many years because of initial costs. Many are hesitant to sink the large initial outlay in these plans because things can change in the energy industry overnight.
Hmmmm.
“What I want to know is, why aren’t all new buildings required to be roofed with solar panels and outfitted with a wind turbine, with huge incentives for retrofitting of existing structures?”
Because a solar power system for a medium sized house costs an average of $40,000 dollars. Bigger the house, more it costs. Smaller the house … same price. Theres kinda a economic “floor” where the cost doesn’t decrease beyond.
Plus you cannot have anything that interferes with the sunlight. No trees, structures, etc.
Hmmmm.
“and outfitted with a wind turbine”
We’re not talking about some goofy windmill. These systems cost $20,000 and only work if there’s a minimum amount of wind.
Combine solar ($40,000) and wind turbine ($20,000) and a regular house at $250,000. Seriously you want to spend 1/4 of your house’s purchase price on a system that only has a 5 year warranty? Especially since it’ll take 40 years to earn back the cost of the initial installation, and not including maintenance calls or repairs.
Build nuclear.
Proggy could be FAKING the sockpuppet – just to attempt to convince us that the real proggs isn’t a parody.
Shit, now I’m confused what I meant.
Nuclear plants are super-efficient plus you can paint murals with social justice themes on the sides of the towers.
– there are some plans on the drawing boards for new efficient, and reliable storage systems. If any of them work well that could change the whole nature of what is and isn’t an effective way to generate power. Until then we need energy on demand, and only nuclear and fossil fuels work well in that situation.
This seems easy to me. 15 year total tax moratorium on all zero carbon energy sources. No cap gains taxes, no business income taxes, no sales taxes, no property taxes, and make it open to anyone. If Exxon makes energy from zero carbon sources then any of those profits are tax free. If Mocrosoft spends a billion dollars on zero carbon energy research it’s a total write off. Any profit made from selling their data and results from said funded research is tax free.
After fifteen years you look at it again and decide if you want to make any changes. Current revenues are very low right now from these industries cause they’re so small, so it doesn’t make a huge hole in the budget and the potential for growth is enormous.
The other change is to renovate the grid and allow for users to be producers too. The energy your home creates from solar panels (or business, or turbines, whatever) when your at work can be traded to the power company at spot market prices and credited to your monthly bill. The national power grid needs an overhaul anyway (bury the cables?) and these renovations and market oriented improvements might be the thing fiscal cons need to ease the indigestion over those expenditures.
BBH – – Forget ANWAR. Unless its really needed it just gives the ECO-nuts an excuse to block any progress.
I agree with that, due to the distance involved in removing the oil, even if it can be sent through the current pipeline. Off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts would be better as the oil would be closer to the markets and the already developed pipeline infrastructure – especially in the Gulf. Fewer tankers would be needed, and from what I know the greatest chance of a spill is in transhippment from one conveyance to another, i.e. pipeline to tanker, tanker to pipeline. Direct pipeline connections are relatively robust.
“bury the cables?
– Not practical above about 20K volts. Leakage starts to kill you in losses. 500Kv forget it. You;d need mositure proof climate controled tunnels 100 feet in diameter over hundreds of miles for a few dozen lines, spaced far enough apart. Course with enough money anything is possible. Power transmission and storage are as big a part of the energy problem as the source. Thats why everyone is always looking for a cheap point of use approach. Small home unit nuclear sources for a neighborhood would be ideal if sealed disposable nuclear materiaal pods can be developed and made idiot proof. Gets rid of both the storage and transmission problems, loses go way down, efficiency way up, reliablity up, and costs way down. Scares the crap out of the electorate.
The energy your home creates from solar panels (or business, or turbines, whatever) when your at work can be traded to the power company at spot market prices and credited to your monthly bill.
That would also help pay off the high initial cost of personal systems. I like it.
Combine solar ($40,000) and wind turbine ($20,000) and a regular house at $250,000. Seriously you want to spend 1/4 of your house’s purchase price on a system that only has a 5 year warranty? Especially since it’ll take 40 years to earn back the cost of the initial installation, and not including maintenance calls or repairs.
Well, If there is tax incentives to get the things, and you are paying $1,000 per month for PG&E, I would say it would pay for itself sooner than 40 years. Also, if everyone had the system, it would drop the price of oil pretty substantially I would guess, making the price of everything drop.
I’m not saying it’s a stand alone solution, but it seems more practical than covering half the country in solar panels and wind farms.
“…covering half the country in solar panels and wind farms.”
– Not in Kennedys back yard you don’t. Ecology stops at the Hyanisport doorstep.
Check out this.
In a normal residential application, a home is served simultaneously by the wind turbine and a local utility. If the wind speeds are below cut-in speed (7-10 mph) there will be no output from the turbine and all of the needed power is purchased from the utility. As wind speeds increase, turbine output increases and the amount of power purchased from the utility is proportionately decreased. When the turbine produces more power than the house needs, the extra electricity is sold to the utility. All of this is done automatically. There are no batteries in a modern residential wind system.
The bolded part goes for solar panels too.
squiggly bulbs!
Quick question for anyone familiar with wind turbines, do they have a transmission to allow for “gear changes” that might take better advantage of storm fronts or real gusty days vs. light wind days?
Yes, Mr. Apologist, they do.
#18 BMoe – Weather happens in the troposphere, which extends up to 20 miles in the tropics to four miles up at the poles. I doubt any windmill, or banks of windmills will affect that. The forces of nature are so powerful as to go off any table you want to create.
His plan has some merit, however, it doesn’t address the major problem we face. Wind power, solar power,etc will generate electricity. There are 250,000 cars in this country that use what for fuel? GASOLINE! I am so tired of hearing the lefty’s talking about alternative sources of energy when the conversation is high gas prices. Build all the solar, wind, nuclear plants you want, but until we start extracting more oil from our own territory, we will feel the pain at the pump.
Aircraft propellers had that back in the 1940’s. An electric prop could be feathered in the event that an engine on a bomber quit, letting the air pass the prop without the prop rotating.
BigD, you are right – except about the number of cars and trucks. I think a few more zeros need to be added to your figure.
Another question, admittedly OFF-TOPIC, but no less important to our future: Has anyone played the new Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution yet? Is it worth the cost of finally upgrading my computer to handle it’s life-sucking asskickitude? The upgrade will come eventually, as all upgrades do, but is Civ. Revolution awesomely obsession worthy enough to break my camel’s back? Just saw an ad for it on FX and hadn’t even realized it was coming. May have to take half a Zoloft to sleep tonight. Okay, maybe two halves.
No, but I have the Sid and Marty Krofft one.
Hmmmm.
@ The Apologist
“The other change is to renovate the grid and allow for users to be producers too. The energy your home creates from solar panels (or business, or turbines, whatever) when your at work can be traded to the power company at spot market prices and credited to your monthly bill.”
Sorry but pretty much wrong.
You don’t actually sell your excess power to the energy company. The electricity you generate from a residential system is pretty much worthless. It’s simply not packaged properly to be used by other users on the grid. So the whole: let’s put solar panels on all houses and make money selling power kumbaya … is totally false.
Instead what happens is that you sell the clean energy **credits** you generate from the installation of the solar power system. In other words it’s just a bullshit government subsidy repackaged to make people feel better about blowing $40,000 on a solar system.
Once Obama is in the WH, we can harness his aura for energy usage.
Hmmmm.
@ lee
“Well, If there is tax incentives to get the things, and you are paying $1,000 per month for PG&E, I would say it would pay for itself sooner than 40 years. Also, if everyone had the system, it would drop the price of oil pretty substantially I would guess, making the price of everything drop.”
If you’re spending $1,000 a month on electricity then a $40,000 solar system is probably going to be too small for you.
Does nobody but me see the problem there?
everybody has excess power at the same time. Your house is generating ten kilowatts of excess power. You could sell it to your neighbor, or to the guy across town via the power company, but your potential customer also has ten kilowatts of excess to sell! And deep in the night, in the still cold of a clear winter, you need ten kilowatts — but neither your neighbor nor the guy across town has it; they need the same.
Storage, fooey. The problem isn’t means. The problem is scale. Here is a marvelous table showing relative energy density for various processes. ‘Way down at the bottom you will find batteries. –What does that mean? A megajoule (MJ, the first column with numbers) is a million Joules or watt-seconds, so 277.8 watt-hours, call it 0.28 KWH. The United States used 1.14 trillion KWH just for domestic electricity in 2001 — not counting natural gas or any industrial uses (i.e., supporting your job.) The availability of a wind turbine is about 0.2 to 0.3 — that is, if it’s designed for one megawatt it makes between 200 and 300 kilowatts average, counting the times the wind isn’t blowing. So we need to generate about 5 trillion KWH, and store 4 of that for later. 4 trillion KWH x 3600 sec/hr = 14,400 trillion KWS x 1000 W/KW = 14.4 TRILLION megajoules. The best lithium-ion battery stores 0.72 megajoule per kilogram, so we need 20 trillion kilograms, twenty billion tonnes of lithium. From the-infoshop.com: “…world lithium production is estimated to have increased by some 4%py from 15,300t Li in 2002 to 18,800t Li in 2005.”. So at present rate we could have enough lithium to make the batteries in a mere twenty million years!
Bah. The numbers are there on the web, people. Look it up.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmmmm
“There are 250,000 cars in this country that use what for fuel? GASOLINE!”
Uhhhh. Not to be the resident Mr. Reality here but there are 60,000,000+ gasoline cars in the USA. That’s 60+ million cars. Not including trucks.
Sorry. PWBMF if there was one. There should be a </a> after “Here is a marvelous table…” If one of the Proprietors would insert same, I’d be obliged.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmm.
“Storage, fooey. The problem isn’t means. The problem is scale.”
Yeah. And transmission inefficiencies.
Whoa, href city, dude.
Why can’t we just stop using electricity and gas and coal and shit?
I don’t really think we need all that negative energy, Mr. Memomachine. Buzzkillmachine would be more like it.
Why can’t we just stop using electricity and gas and coal and shit?
I might consider alternatives to the first three, but I ain’t giving up shit, dude.
It’s simply not packaged properly to be used by other users on the grid.
Not sure what you mean by this. Is there no way technologically to send it down the block to a stay at home mom who is using her home at the time (in which case, this is precisely what I’m talking about fixing)? Or is it that it simply produces too little electricity to make it worth distributing (in which case, increase efficiency on panels and you solve that problem)?
In other words it’s just a bullshit government subsidy repackaged…
Yeah. I’m with you on this point. Fuck subsidies. Just wait till we get cap and trade A.K.A. Gaian Indulgences. I don’t care if Catholics want to try to buy their way into Heaven, but Gaians are going to drive me into the fucking poor house with their scheme just so they can make breathing a sin…with a sin-tax to boot. Boot to my throat. Fuckers. Now I’m definetly gonna need that Zoloft and a glass of the house red while I’m at it.
In other words it’s just a bullshit government subsidy repackaged to make people feel better about blowing $40,000 on a solar system.
Well, I don’t have one myself, but our local radio personality who spent last year bitching about $1000+/month electric bills had solar installed, and he raves about it. Claims his meter runs backwards during low consumption times, and his bills have now been ranging fron $0.18 to $25.
By my math, the thing will pay for itself in about 4 years, then in the next four he will be $40,000 ahead of the game.
Again, maybe it’s not for everybody, and it’s not a total solution, but it sure would take a little strain off power company oil consumption, and it’s better than these all over the place.
Hmmmm.
@ The Apologist
“Not sure what you mean by this. Is there no way technologically to send it down the block to a stay at home mom who is using her home at the time (in which case, this is precisely what I’m talking about fixing)? Or is it that it simply produces too little electricity to make it worth distributing (in which case, increase efficiency on panels and you solve that problem)?”
Both.
The problem is also in terms of cost. Consider this:
Let’s say the average home solar system costs $40,000 and the government will give you $30,000 of that.
Let’s say that there are 40,000,000 homes that could use solar power.
That’s cost: $1,200,000,000,000 dollars. $1.2 TRILLION dollars.
Now look at nuclear power. If you build 100+ nuclear power plants you’ll have economy of scale. So let’s say each nuclear power plant costs an average of $2 billion each. The earliest ones will cost more, the later ones will cost less.
That’s 600 1,700 Megawatt nuclear power plants for that $1.2 trillion. That’ll be around 1,000,000 megawatts total added to the power grid.
*shrug* it’s more efficient IMO.
Hmmmm.
“By my math, the thing will pay for itself in about 4 years, then in the next four he will be $40,000 ahead of the game.”
The only problem is that solar panels also degrade over time. They’re sensitive to damage, bird droppings, leaves and other gunk. Plus too the weather and the sunlight will cause damage to the solar panel regardless what you do. Some people claim 20 years as the normal lifespan for modern solar panels.
YMMV.
Yeah, lee, that works fine for one individual or a few. When you deploy it widely and start depending on it, you run into the problem that when your DJ needs power from the grid, so does everybody else — the sun is down, the wind isn’t blowing, and it’s frickin’ frigid out there. So you still need the full capacity of the grid for times when “alternate energy” isn’t available. What’s worse, you have to start and stop the generators as needed. The whole point of a hybrid is that it’s more efficient if the engine runs continuously at optimum speed, and the same is true of a big generator except worse. You gain nothing. In fact, you go backwards, because the lesser efficiency of stop-start use makes the fuel consumption go up!
There are lots and lots and lots of things that work well on a tabletop or for a single house that are ridiculous to impractical when scaled up. This is one of them.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmm.
Especially in the north and during winter.
I wouldn’t relish having to sweep off my roof solar panels during and after every snowstorm.
Hmmmm.
And that doesn’t include the 60+ million cars we’d like to see run on electricity. Since most people don’t use their cars at night, and so will most likely recharge them at that time.
Then 60+ million people will be needing an enormous amount of power at the very time solar panels don’t work.
OK, I’m just floating it as a supplement to the grid, but I guess it’s impractical.
Here’s another one, and honest, I’m all for nuke energy too. But how about we start building more dams and utilizing hydroelectric? I don’t know about the rest of the country, but energy needs in California are going to be rivaled by water needs very soon, and the fuck’in Sierra Club has stopped dam construction just as effectively as nuclear power.
“Does nobody but me see the problem there?”
Yeah, but it’s fun to watch anyway. The cool part is when you lifecycle cost the batteries as well as the PV or wind units.
Makes nukes look downright reasonable.
lee,
The problem with that is, all the decent hydroelectric sites are already used. You have to have two things: head, the height the water can fall, and volume. California has lots of head (shut up, JD) but the volume isn’t there in any of the remaining sites. I forget the exact figures, but IIRC we could expand hydroelectric by only 10-20% before we’re up against the absolute wall, and that’s for the whole country. California itself is much closer to tapped out. That doesn’t count pumped storage, which is one possible alternative to batteries for times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, but that’s storage rather than production.
As for total water use: either the California population has to contract (not likely), agriculture has to use less (almost certain), or the State’s going to have to go to desalinization. As the Legislature shuts agriculture down with, among other things, restriction on water usage, there will be more for the population, but the end of that is zero production while you’re still drinking the Colorado, the Owens Valley, and Yosemite dry. And no, the Oregonians are not gonna divert the Columbia down your way. Call it spiteful.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmmmm
And waiting for the Holy Grail of fusion isn’t a solution either.
Actually, the Brussard Fusion reactor is pretty promising.
Well shit.
OK, how about this.
The World Energy Council estimates
that the energy that can be harvested from the
world’s oceans is equal to twice the amount of
electricity that the world produces now.
Yes, the Bussard polywell design appears to have a great deal of promise, but if “we can’t drill our way out of this!” on the ground that it’ll take five years for results, you sure as Hell can’t depend on fusion, Bussard or otherwise.
Regards,
Ric
lee,
wave and tidal power is just windmills, except that they have to work while immersed in sea water. Google “Bay of Fundy tidal power” and marvel.
Regards,
Ric
There are lots and lots and lots of things that work well on a tabletop or for a single house that are ridiculous to impractical when scaled up. This is one of them.
Except for:
That doesn’t count pumped storage, which is one possible alternative to batteries for times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine, but that’s storage rather than production.
Still not very efficient at this point, but I think this is a much better use of reservoirs and hydro plants than just straight generation. Make them all into giant flywheels for the grid.
I can haz pebble bed?
Oh screw it. I’m just going to bury one of these in my back yard!
Say, anyone have $20,000,000 I can borrow?
I’m confused as to why someone does not have a plan to reduce the cost of energy.what is wrong with a wind mill?I can’t afford the cost of living anymore. elderly will suffer the worst & dieing because they can not afford to heat their homes. It seems like no one cares. The rich can take care of their self & the rest of us have to qualify for assistance and won’t happen funds are low because to many people need to apply.Makes me sick to see people go through this.Instead of shipping oil out to other countries leave it home where it belongs.Someone has to take control of tax payers dollar spending.How is this all going to end???