Posted on 07/27/2007 8:34:36 AM PDT by Uncledave
These are well scheduled in advanced and coordinated on the grid with other suppliers. The problem with large wind projects is that you can not predict when and how long and how much electricity they are going to produce, thus you need to have the regular plants turning over, burning fuel anyways. We can dig up more money and build these things, but they are not going to reduce the costs of the existing system. It’s kind of like putting a solar electric motor on a eighteen wheeler. Yes it will generate forward thrust, but you are going to have to have the 300hp diesel.
It's nothing like that at all. Denmark, as one example, gets 20% of their electricity from wind energy, and growing. Do you mean to suggest that if they shut off all their wind farms it would have no impact on conventional base load capacity factor or fuel consumption?
Ever get the feeling some of these people would have complained at the migration away from whale oil too?
Do they have a diagram. I can’t picture how they would need an active system unless the LSM keeps the magnets from drifting laterally.
Good question, and it's surprising that no one else thought of it. This is where the linear induction part comes in. Linear induction motors are used to magnetically exert driving force to a railroad car without drive wheels. Some new subway systems, like the Tokyo Oedo Line, operate in this principle. When you use maglev technology, where the car floats above the track like the new Shanghai Airport line in China, linear induction is the ONLY way of driving the train, since there are no wheels to push against the track.
This wind turbine scheme uses linear induction in reverse. The wind-driven turbine, floating above its track, uses linear induction to generate power.
I don't know how we can test this but I am certain that I would still win the bet if you told people, for scientific reasons, it HAD to be identical to Shaq's white-man-humiliating for scientific thermo-dynamic reasons, they would bite. So to speak.
Reminds me of an episode of Southpark where Mr. Garrison tries to compete with the airlines (awful) with an invention of his own (less awful) method of transportation. Enjoy here.
Count me among them. Whale is DELICIOUS!
I'm sure that a vertical axle exists, for reasons of safety. In "hurricane mode" the blades would be closed, the rotation stopped, the maglev turned off, and the rotor pulled down mechanically against the base while the storm raged. In that configuration it would be as safe as any other small round tower.
Nice post...I wonder if it’s all it hypes up to be. Time will tell.
I am planning to buy one right after I purchase that controlled nuclear fusion reactor I have been eying for 50 years now..
In anything in this world we can find times and places where particular events come together which often seem as if these small, tiny, events could be expanded to the entire activity. For example, all batters in the MLB should hit home runs on every pitch. They don’t. It’s an anomaly. All cars should be as fast as Ferrari's and as cheap as bicycles.
Let look at tiny special unique Denmark, and the actual facts.
It is true windpower in Denmark accounts for 20% of Danish electrical production.
However, Denmark does not ‘get’ 20% of it’s electricity form wind power. The windpower electricity is all exported to Sweden and Germany. It is not used because...it is unreliable. So when the Danes get some juice, it is exported, unused and at a economic loss to Sweden where it is used to pump water up into damns, in a way a battery bank. In Germany, it is dumped into the German power grid because Germany is so large, so electrical consuming that the half of Danish wind power it gets isn’t hardly notable. In a phrase, it is dumped, again at a loss to the Danes into the German grid.
The Danes get their electricty like the rest of us, by powerplants. That is what they keep and use. So to be more accurate, the 20% generated in Denmark is folded into the Danish/Swedish/German grid where that amount looks large in little Denmark but is tiny in Sweden and Germany. I am not sure, but I am guessing like under 1 percent.
All this is done at a loss.
Also, Denmark is the most perfect place in the world to put turbines. Again a unique environment.
And the Danes themselves do not use this electricity. It is too costly, too unreliable so they pay the Swedes and Germans to take the electricity that they ‘dump’ into their electrical generation schemes.
The Danes donot and can not use windpower in a modern economy. Neither can we. We can build it. We can do it, but we will have to pay to dump it. So, what is the point of this other than feeling good and burning money?
More here. http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/sharman-winddenmark.pdf
That looks VERY interesting! Do you think this would work in areas that the ‘normal’ type wouldn’t like here in FL which you said did not have enough wind?
gracias senor!
i visited the web site.
Yes the would ‘work’. They wouldn’t be economical. Just like building large cargo sailing ships with carbon fiber masts 300 ft high and kevlar sails, each a football field in size. They would ‘work’. We have the technology. It’s just that it would not be economical. What is a sailing ship other than a direct, no moving parts generator? Why are sailing ships not used? Why are the economic realities of why it is sailing ships are not used, why isn’t this accepted for why wind powered electrical generation on a industrial scale is not economical?
http://www.windpower.org/composite-53.htm
It is false and misleading, at best.
Again. Denmark is unique in being a small place with a lot of wind connected to large electricity consuming nations. Even Denmark being ideal, their wind farms are boondoggles. They require subsidies. This besides Denmark having something like ten times the amount of windy days, and potential wind energy. Do the Danes do wind energy. Yes they do. Does the Danish project, the best, the largest under the most ideal conditions by a factor of ten make money, or economic sense or provide steady, relible, cheap electrical energy? No it does not.
Wind energy costly for consumers January 29, 2007 The government’s plan to increase the nation’s reliance on green power could expand a black hole that already sucks nearly two billion kroner out of consumers’ pockets annually. In order to promote construction of wind turbines, the government has agreed to purchase the electricity they generate at a minimum price. The guaranteed prices have had the desired effect: some 5300 wind turbines dot the Danish countryside, producing 18.5 percent of all electricity generated. The practice has its downside, however. The guaranteed prices for wind power results in an overproduction that cost the state an excess DKK 21.6 billion between 2001 and 2005, according to figures from the National Audit Agency. Due to the uncertainty of whether the wind will blow, Energinet.dk, the organisation responsible for ensuring that the country can meet its electricity demand, has to keep a reserve of conventionally produced electricity in case the wind dies down. The extra cost is typically passed on to consumers in the form of higher electric bills.
Just what I need. Another subsidized interest group, using the government to tax me to fatten them. Yeah, baby.
Hey, nothing is stopping you from writing a business plan, the world is awash, sloshing with cash and savvy tech investors, and you can get rich and famous with your plant. Well, save the customers want power when they want it and as much as they want every single moment of the year, and wind can not supply that service or product.
Of course you can do what the Danes and even our government does, and that is to use government force to make companies buy your product, when it is available at amount of varying availability. That would make your balance book profitable and you would be a success! IN economics that is called 'rent seeking'. You want steady income with in this case a unsteady product. Nice. Americans love stuff like that. Maybe I'll show up with electricity, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll be a lot, maybe a little. Naturally the regular power generators will have to dance around what ever electrical tune you are calling that hour, that day, that week or season. Naturally they'll pick up the costs, which won't show up on your books and make them more expensive so that you'll even look 'cheaper'.( sarcasm off)
Anyways, there is a reason nobody moves boats by wind , nor generates electric power without massive robbing of the taxpayers( This is called a market signel). It is because wind generation is physically inefficient and economically expensive and unprofitable. The Danes do it because they tax the Danish citizens tens of billions of dollars and deliver it to the wind industry.
Basically, any off grid application could be effective. Factories running 24/7 could be off grid for large periods of time. Another good method would be to create a peaker power plant by creating a resevoir and using excess power to pump water up the hill. Then during the day when consumption hits its peak demand, you open the flood gates and let water flow power turbines to cheaply create peak power. There’s one of these in CT now.
1 magleve = 1,000 windmills
Maglev powers 750,000 homes vs 1,000 windmills power 500,000
This does not compute.
The water pumping strategy has been used for decades but is rather inefficient. If the power source is cheap enough, it can make sense.
This is the thing that gets my goat about all of these "renewable energy" debates. We're talking about a resource that, if fully developed, will account for only a fraction of our projected demand, maybe 20-30%. So where do we get the other 70-80% that we're going to need? We're wasting a lot of time debating and money developing something that will only provide a fraction of the total. The larger problem remains.
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