Posted on 11/19/2011 2:34:29 PM PST by Steelfish
As you say, to keep batteries charged. You have a way to store it, therefore it’s useful.
But, like solar, it is only really usable on a very limited scale.
It’s not ready for mass usage at this time.
Wind farm illness: Waubra Disease
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYnNQoTcsHY
Protect yourself.
Acoustic Vibration Disease Hat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El2vVl5Figk
66 percent of Tea Party members would agree with having wind turbines near their homes (Saint Consulting Group, poll of 1,000 in US, June, 2011). 73 percent of men agreed but far fewer women.
Environmentalists are against Wind power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pODvhqSfyeM
Wind turbine syndrome news report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRCekFYWsPo
Wind Nimby Spanking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLHOydx2RTA
Wind Nimby Rant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KurAbrMHu2k
John Stossel Wind Power and NIMBY
[Environmentalists against wind turbines.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2rMj8KVtQ
They are also noisy, I would hate to live near one. I stopped at a wind farm in NY state a while back and was astounded at how loud it was.
Holy Toledo Ernest! Lookit this!! Reality is makin somewhat of a comeback!!!
Too bad his wisdom on wind farms hasn’t been inherited by his nitwit son Chuck.
In general, wind power is a joke; nobody could possibly operate solely on wind.
What wind power is good for is small, off-grid solar power users that need a source of power that tends to run well when the sun doesn’t.
As a source of power for the main grid, wind falls flat on its face.
Chuck doesn’t seem to have inherited any wisdom of any kind.
>> “Reality is makin somewhat of a comeback!!!” <<
.
But it’ll never make it across the California border.
>> “Its not ready for mass usage at this time.” <<
.
And never will be!
Both wind and solar are voracious consumers of resources, and tremendous producers of industrial wastes.
>> “Sounds like the Duke is of stong mind.” <<
.
Refreshing, huh!
Not necessarily. If the right technology comes along, in terms of maximizing the generation, storage and transmission of power, then maybe.
But there should be no subsidies in development. A company should be prepared to do such R and D, for the benefits that will come long term.
The “Right Technology” came along a long time ago, but it cannot do what it is being asked to do.
To increase the output of solar panels, for example, would require elimination of thermal conduction from the cells to the backboard. That is where the lost energy is going for the most part.
Lightning?
I think they just turned it on.
Then it’s not the right technology, if it cannot do what it is supposed to do.
I’m not saying that it’s just around the corner, or even 50 years away. But I do believe that it will come, at some point.
It does exactly what its supposed to do.
Some public expectations are out of line with the real world.
I don’t think so.
I don’t think anybody in the 90’s thought that you could hold a computer as powerful as a Cray supercomputer, nut your smartphone is exactly that, even more so.
Now, it is expected that laptops and desktops will go away and everything you need to do computing will be contained in a smartphone. You’ll just go home and plug it in a docking station and run a monitor and keyboard off that.
If I told you that five years ago, there’s a good chance that I was just fantsizing an impossible fantasy.
Same with solar or wind. It’s just a matter of figuring out the right materials, circumstances, and understanding. I don’t necessarily expect to run whole cities off these technologies, but there’s no reason, if we can overcome the limitations that they can’t be an eventual part of how we generate our power.
I won't say never. But there is one thing that will keep your unlikely dream from happening.
Subsidies.
So long as a technology is subsidized, there is no incentive to improve upon it.
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