Wind farms kill birds too. Is there any economically feasible way to shield the turban blades to keep birds from flying into them?
Not all solar power involves photovoltaic cells. The big solar power plants use mirror arrays to produce high heat to generate steam for turbine generators. They need water, too. And water is scarce in the deserts where mirror farms work best. Because coal is a limited resource, it will be important to produce new coal plants that are not only cleaner but also more efficient to use it while we can. There might be some economy of scale if we build them at the rate that China is building them. Depletion of fossil fuels will force this at some point, anyway. I have looked at solar panels and decided it was a money loser. It will not get you "off the grid". Super-insulation actually made more sense.
Those use sodium or water on a closed loop system. Water use is minimal....That type is a minor portion of solar. There is only one plant in the US. Is that a typo? A limited resource isn't a good one to count on. Regardless The future of coal is very cloudy. An attempt to build a "clean coal' plant, Kemper Cty by Southern Co is suffering from cost over runs and delays. Its financial potential is questionable as it depends on the sale of CO2 and sulfur to be profitable. Also the very effectiveness of coal scrubbers is yet to be proven. There have been pilot plants but none have successfully run at the rates required to work in a real power plant. Again if you accept the data that man made additions to CO2 is one of the significant factors in global warming coal has a limited life. Finally economics 101 is adding to its demise gas is cheaper. That is what Westinghouse and Shaw Stone & Webster tried at Southern Co Plant Vogtle and in China. It hasn't worked so far. Vogtle is years late and billions over budget due to issues with prefabricated components built in Lake Charles. The individual requirements of each site make it difficult to build modular plants. The other types of reactor you mentioned in earlier posts have not been able to make it past the model stage. I do agree that it has a significant future and support the building of them. My point was that it wasn't as easy as some claim. We agree as I noted it has a 30 year payback which isn't a good investment. The whole point of my post was that development of all energy generation modes needs to continue. No one know what breakthrough will change things...one day fusion may be made practical.There is NO ONE solution and a mix is required to solve our energy requirements. Finally those who support solar and wind as the final answer have no clue as to how much electricity is used, the insignificant percentage solar has and how much would be required to make a dent in the generation of the US.
You can't tell me that we can't create solar cells and wind powered energy to sustain this state. We put mother fuckers on the moon with a computer larger in size than a car but smaller in power than my iphone. Come on...
LaSalle you haven't a clue my friend. Louisiana has on average 5 hours a day of sun...where are the other 19hr of power coming from? The area required to generate enough power would be staggering. Don't say batteries. Batteries required to store enough energy don't exist and there are engineering challenges that make putting a man on the moon look easy. It is a pipe dream. As Red noted earlier the only way (in the foreseeable future) to have enough solar power is from orbiting solar stations and that is way outside of our capability AND capacity. NOAA has created a wind map of the US and Louisiana doesn't have enough wind
I posted earlier that there was a project at MIT where they created a solar panel that worked better in the shade than most current panels. Obviously on a much smaller scale. It is only a matter of time before shade is not an issue. Also, panels still work in shade, they just do not operate at 100%. I also think people are thinking of giant plants when in reality it should what can each new home/retrofit do to reduce grid load. http://www.fastcoexist.com/3030921/mit-students-create-solar-panels-that-still-work-in-the-shade
We recently had to replace our roof and we did a few things that have helped tremendously. We changed the roof color to black and added more insulation, but the real kicker was the solar vents we installed. They have fans that are powered by the solar panels and pull much more hot air out than before. My AC runs much less than before. I will know the exact savings once my energy bill shows up.
So you mean to tell me that people in Louisiana, all these people I see with solar panels on their homes, have those for nothing? I see houses here in my hometown, LARGE houses that run on solar, hell 1 is a damn farm and it runs on solar. I'm not buying that shit man. It can be done we just can't get that needle full of oil out of our junkie arms.
