Put a wind turbine in front of Barry’s teleprompter.
There’s always wind there.
If the wind don’t blow,
The turbine don’t go.
Perhaps tidal turbines would be better. The tide works twice a day every day.
The scale on the two lines differs by over an order of magnitude. Although it appears at first glance that there were short times where wind generation exceeded total demand, by showing the blue line above the green line, in reality, wind generation never rarely met even 10% of total demand.
Sheesh, Bryce, you are presenting facts here. Who cares about facts? Truth is what we say it is. Wind is “green” and will save us all from demon fossil fuels.
Do you mean to tell me that those Smelly Hippie Environmentalists were wrong again? Gasp!
Most Texans know...when it’s 110 degrees, there’s very little breeze.
Tax the heck out of technologies that compete with your little boondoggle and use what remains of the tax money, after you have hired a bunch more of bureaucrats with it, to subsidize your boondoggle.
Nudge... nudge...
Looks to be 180 degrees out of phase. Figures.
“Perhaps they could set blowers in front of the turbines to keep them going” - Imaginary quote from Øbumbler
I have a simple solution for Texas, with known technology, that could turn most of the State green and keep it green even if it never rained again. And it’s all based on just one thing. The Gulf Coast.
The Gulf Coast has a vast amount of water, albeit salt water. But underneath the Gulf Coast is an enormous amount of natural gas.
Put those two things together and you have desalinization. Fresh water in vast amounts.
So build natural gas powered desalinization plants and pipelines to ship the water inland. Such plants can run year around, and during wetter seasons can fill reservoirs. And when those reservoirs are filled, use electricity generated from natural gas to pipe the water to ever deeper inland reservoirs.
Certainly it will be expensive, but it will turn big sections of desert Texas green with farmland and water using industry.
Here's the vastly better solution, as shown by this large schematic:
The US has 440,000 tons of thorium-232 that can be used for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, plus many tons of spent uranium fuel rods that could be processed into fuel for this reactor, too. If we standardized a design for a 1,000 MW LFTR, we could build hundreds of them not only to expand available power, but also phase out coal-fired powerplants, too.
Mayor Nutter’s Call: It is a sign of the times that basic decency has grown unusual.
The blame game: America's economic panic is the fault of Tea Partiers, S&P, speculators, and Big Business. And it's up to Obama to convince us to put country first Bob Shrum, who else?
Who Lost the Middle Class? - A question for historians in the not-too-distant future
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Okay, first, how did this happen in Texas??? Texas freepers, can you explain this to me. I live in the Seattle area, so I am never surprised at the doofuses here doing idiot stuff like this. But, I expected Texans to be more sensible. Have I misjudged you?
Also, we now know that these wind turbines can't help much in the heat; and, that they freeze up (Minnesota, Scotland) in the winter. What the hell do they do, besides kill a lot of birds?
ping
Turbines don’t work unless there is a steady wind. Until somebody figures out a practical way of storing the electricity, windmills are useless.
When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle, who never threw anything away, still had the remains of an old windcharger mounted on an old shed on their farm. The shed was full of 6-volt batteries wired in series to store the electricity, which they used to power their milkhouse. They never had electricity in their actual house until REA came along in the 50’s. This “turbine” concept is not a new idea, and it has never worked very well.
I have one that trickle charges a bank of 16 royals deep cell batteries that provide emergency power through a trace inverter.
Works well but I’m living in a place where wind averages 20mph an I don’t depend on this source. It will run basics in my home when we lose power in ice or thunderstorms etc...
They have their place but not in the commercial energy grid IMO.
Ones we have here in the panhandle of Texas are running yet the quality of power to the distribution point is so up an down its expensive to corral properly according to friends that do such for a living.
1 thorium based nuclear power plant per 1 million in population is a formula America needs to adopt.
Got to be fixed yesterday....
I think the turbine problem will resolve itself. The thieves are going to run out of copper & air conditioners to steal and sell for recycling. the only things left to steal will be the wind turbines.
I can’t sleep well without a floor fan blowing on me all night.
In order to power that fan by wind i believe i would need a slightly bigger fan out in my backyard with wind spinning it at a slightly faster rate than the one inside for 8 hours straight while i sleep.
Ya ok.
Makes sense.
Whats billions and billions of dollars anyways?