Windmills and energy input

I don't know how much energy is consumed manufacturing wind mills

The windmills being installed in Iowa and Minnesota; $1 billion per 62 qty.

9-11 years payback every 5 years a major overhaul.

I got this info from a nephew who works for the former NSP (northern states power).

I don't know how this cost jives with any others, post in this thread.

Thats what you get for hanging upside down on the bottom of the earth. :)

John

Itotally agree with your numnbers, thanks again.

the key word is capacity. The nuke plant can put out the capacity day after day. Thw windmills can achieve their capacity only if the weatherman lets them. :) according to power company in Wisconson that has a windfarm, the expected energy delivery from a farm is only 30 to

35 % of capacity which actually still makes its output more than the PPL plant, but then looking further into it the output comes when it's mostly not needed, at night and this fluxuation screws up the orderly flow of power in the grid.

John

Load-leveling is a problem with wind and solar, but the people who have studied it conclude that it can supply a significant amount of power, the amount depending on how it's implemented.

And the range of those conclusions appears to be pretty wide. Without doing a real study of it, it appears to me that the small projects now in the works, which generally are aimed at 5% or so of local capacity, are no problem. Projecting into the future, they point to some systems that run pretty well at close to 20%, where there is a good grid to work with. And there is that study of the "wind belt" up the center of the US, which says that if we had real long-distance distribution and a smart grid, combined with very spread-out geographic dispersal, the system should be able to run at 50% of the system load.

And then there is pumped storage, which seems to be mostly of use in mountainous areas, where it's possible to work with a large head and fairly efficient water turbines. That changes the entire equation.

All in all, my sense of it is that it's doable in the relatively modest system percentages (maybe 5% - 20%, including solar) that are likely to happen. So they should be implemented, IMO. Wind can be installed in a minute fraction of the time it takes to build a nuke and get everything running. And that renewable capacity, however small, will be a benefit to us for a long time to come if it's economical.

None of this suggests that it's going to replace the majority of base-load capacity. For that, the best candidate looks like nuclear fission. And I think we should be going full-speed on those, too, with the first priority being the development of a universal design and a streamlined approval process. Otherwise, the up-front costs will be prohibitive, and the implementation will be unnecessarily slow.

-- Ed Huntress

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:49:57 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress" scrawled the following:

Right, and if you put 34,000 miles of New Mexico under solar panels, one little cloud mass will black out the nation.

Right. The night winds seem to be more steady and the power can be sold outside the wind farm's local area, where it's needed.

That seems awfully optimistic. ;)

Ayup. It adds millions (billions?) to the initial outlay for a mountaintop lake, pumps, motors, pipe, etc.

Plug-in, modular nukes would handle the delays, but they're not on the market yet. ;)

Hear, hear!

The first application (for a reactor) in 30 years was made and approved by the NRC in 2007. Since then, 23 apps have gone in, for a total count of 34 units. 15 of those have been approved and 3 more are under acceptance review. It's looking better!

wrong clipboard.

Here it is:

------------------------------------------- Jack Kevorkian for Congressional physician! ===========================================

it takes to

Hi Wes,

Being as this is a do-it-yourself kind of newsgroup I checked out

It has a fair bit of information on constructing a windmill at home, including some discussion of a 2 kW unit that should, if one is connected to the grid, reduce electric bills to roughly zero. Cost of construction is variable but there will be at least a few hundred dollars in magnets even if one is able to scrounge most of the other hardware. I'd probably have had to tuck about $2-3000 into the project to get it finished.

However... there were two rather large problems for me personally in carrying out such a project, which is why I didn't go for it.

First, my location in western KY is lousy for wind power.

Second, erecting a 50 foot item in my backyard might get some notice from the neighbors.

Third, that tower would be the tallest object for at least several hundred yards around. Lightning is not your friend when it's close by...

Anyway, my two cents on the topic. I'd love to give it a shot if we lived someplace where wind was a viable option.

Best -- Terry

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You guys are going about it all wrong. You are all trying to generate electricity from wind power. Then use the electricity to drive stuff. I think that's very ineffective.

Use the wind to drive stuff directly. Like this...

Clean, efficient, environmentally sound.

And the girls dress a lot better!