Posted on 04/02/2011 9:51:54 AM PDT by Scottmkiv
Despite some rather daunting technical difficulties, many people including President Obama, are pushing hard to have "alternative energy" take a bigger role in our nation's energy production. In fact, Obama plans to reduce our oil imports by 1/3 and using alternative energy as the main replacement.
Alternative energy may be expensive and in it's infancy, but surely the enlightened hand (and pocketbook) of the federal government can transform these technologies into a mature, reliable, and pollution free power source? Obama, and the Democratic party have made that claim part of their party platform.
In fact, they say alternative energy will give us energy independence and create up to 5 million jobs in the process. Lofty claims indeed.
A few weeks ago, I presented an analysis of green energy. In it I argue that main problem with alternative energy ever working is not cost but energy density. Make no mistake cost is currently a massive problem, but perhaps it won't always be. Even if solar panels and wind farms were free, they simply take up too much space per kilowatt produced to be a useful answer.
Well, that me present the story of the Los Angeles Community College District. It demonstrates the problems I've pointed out in spades. It also points out how Democrats will pick their ideological goals over things like math or reality any day of the week.
(Excerpt) Read more at rationalpublicradio.com ...
Yeah, it's a 40 year old infant. These greenie alternatives have been pursued at least that long and they are still too expensive to compete on their own without government subsidies. And they always will be. It will take a complete government shut down of conventional sources (via high taxes or outright banning) to ever make the alternatives a market reality. But then your energy costs will be at least double what they are today, probably more.
These greenie alternatives have been pursued at least that long and they are still too expensive to compete on their own without government subsidies.
I get sick of hearing alternative energy is "cutting edge" as if it is new. As you say, many of these methods have been around a long time.
There is a reason they never developed on their own merits, they are not competitive on a large scale.....even WITH government subsidies.
I argue that main problem with alternative energy ever working is not cost but energy density. Make no mistake cost is currently a massive problem, but perhaps it won't always be. Even if solar panels and wind farms were free, they simply take up too much space per kilowatt produced to be a useful answer... Democrats will pick their ideological goals over things like math or reality any day of the week.They're not alone.
Larry Eisenberg approached them with a vision. A glorious shining green vision. For a mere 975 million dollars, he could take them off the grid... Eventually, the project was scrapped, but not before 10 million dollars were wasted.
I wonder how much of that $10,000,000 ended up in Mr. Eisenberg's pocket? I would hope Mr. Eisenberg is now in jail.
What a strange way to see the immediate problem. The main immediate problem IS cost.
The dreamers (with the taxpayer checkbook) have no problem compounding the problem of cost by making other proven forms of energy illegal or forbidden, or so expensive through taxes and other manipulations of the private exchange, free enterprise system such that --- in addition to hiding the true cost of their madness --- they continue to permanently raise the cost of ALL energy.
Energy density is the long term problem.
Unfortunately, we have to deal with the short term with money we don't have.
In 1972, when I was a Junior in the ME program at Mizzou, I took a required course called “Engineering Economics.” It provided the finance knowledge required to do a steely-eyed comparison of the economics of investment alternatives. It is almost as if that entire discipline has ceased to exist and has been replaced with wishes and unicorns. I wonder if courses like that are even taught any more. It’s a cinch that no Democrat or liberal or marxist (but I repeat myself) ever took that course.
Cut our dependence on foreign oil by 1/3 in 10 yrs. instead of cutting it 100% rat now? That makes sense Gomer, Batman.
“I get sick of hearing alternative energy is “cutting edge” as if it is new. As you say, many of these methods have been around a long time. “
Yes I do remember a guy, Spanish guy,
going around tilting those wind mills to get more energy. Not very successful but then he wasn’t an American with all
that great ingenuity. Amen
All us engineers who exist in the real world must take one or more courses in Engineering Economics. We're expected to design cost effective things that don't fall down or blow up and perform their intended function efficiently.
I can guarantee that neither Larry Eisenberg nor the clown-politicians and bureaucrats who reviewed his proposal had a clue about science, engineering and economics --- or are incompetent. No other explanation, short of criminal collusion, is possible.
Same ol' same ol'
"Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)."
That article is soul-crushingly awesome.
I did the math for people that claimed the payback period on solar is reasonable.
I’ve never seen anyone produce numbers that show solar paying off before the 20 or 30 year warranty expires even with the government subsidies.
I’ve seen a few people cut their electricity use in half (or more) and compare the cost it takes to make half the solar with the cost of conventional electricity.
For example, lets say you are unwilling to let your kids roast in the august sun, so you will need to run your 2.5 ton a/c for 12 hours out of the day. The a/c requires 3.5kw/h even when it’s dark
That adds up to 42 kilowatts of power just to run the a/c per day. That breaks down to an average of 1.75 kw/h round the clock. According to the DOE’s calculations, solar panels produce 21% of their rated capacity on average thanks to things like clouds and darkness.
That means we need enough solar panels rated to output 8.75 kw/h.
I saw a deal for solar panels that sold you 130 watt panels for $800 each. So, just to run the air conditioner in August you will need 68 panels for a cost of $54,400.
That’s not all, you also need a battery bank sufficient to store 12 hours or more of power. That means we need enough batteries to hold 21 kwh of power.
http://www.altestore.com/store/calculators/off_grid_calculator/
This calculator says we need 3200 amp hours of battery bank to meet our demands. That adds up to about 9 of these batteries:
http://www.altestore.com/store/Deep-Cycle-Batteries/Batteries-Flooded-Lead-Acid/MK-8L16-370-Ah-20-Hr-6-V-Flooded-Battery/p4115/
At $266.18 each for another $2395. Don’t forget inverters, charge controllers, mounting hardware and wiring, plus labor if you don’t install it all yourself.
When all is said and done, we are talking about a $100,000 system just to be able to run your air conditioner and literally nothing else. It will also only give you 12 hours of back up, so virtually any cloudiness means you are sure to run out of power.
In reality, you would need to double that figure if you wanted to do things like run your washer, dryer, dishwasher, lights, tvs, computers, and other electronics. You’d also need a massively bigger battery bank so that you don’t run out of A/C in August.
Don’t forget the batteries need to be replaced every 3-5 years for a recurring cost of more thousands of dollars.
There’s also the cost of insuring your hundreds of thousands of dollars of solar equipment which can be ruined by any good hail or wind storm.
Biggest of all is the opportunity cost. What if instead of spending $200,000 on this solar dream, you invested it at a safe rate. Say 5%. 25 years from now, it will be worth $677,270.
25 years from now your expensive solar system will be junk.
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