Within 10 years all flying creatures will be wiped out, because of these monstrosities.

Really, there was only a 20 mile stretch of windmills seen from Interstate 40 between Amarillo and the New Mexico state line.

You want alternative energy sources yet you complain about them. Nice. A politicians dream ... having it both ways.

 

I'll just plug my fuse box into a potato.

 

My idea of renewable technology is that the Earth is predominately ocean and we should make use of that for some serious solar projects out at sea. I've always contemplated the idea of a solar panel belt around the equator. I think we need to be utilizing as much as we can.

 

It's fine to dream up fanciful ideas. It's another to explore the realities that such ideas would need to deal with.

 

All I'm trying to say is that instead of focusing on the yield that some inshore solar/wind farm could achieve, why not consider the geographical area and branch out a bit more; instead of restricting it to inland, where nine times out of ten somebody's going to oppose the idea because it's on their doorstep, you could always utilize as much surface area of the ocean as one wishes .

 

You might want to make an addition to Solar cons: Storage cost, Batteries or disposal, recycle once depleted.

kv

You can always use the solar to pump the water back up to the lake in the daytime.

 

Within 10 years all flying creatures will be wiped out, because of these monstrosities.

But the real danger is the planet over heating.
You see the wind spreads the heat all over the planet.
And if you use that wind for any other purpose.......you will certainly kill us all.

Currently, the turbines rarely tower 200m with 100m rotors. So if birds are flying above 300m, it is unlikely to encounter one of these monstrosities. 300m seems fairly low for migrating birds. The local birds would avoid them due to the noise.
Since the wind carries air from a high pressure to a low pressure, the turbines slow the movement of the air below 300m. The troposphere is 11km high. That's a lot of space above 300m where the wind is unimpeded.

 

The troposphere is 11km high. That's a lot of space above 300m where the wind is unimpeded.

Which is why it will take ten years for the wind turbines to kill that last bird. Otherwise they'd all be dead by next Tuesday.

 

All I'm trying to say is that instead of focusing on the yield that some inshore solar/wind farm could achieve, why not consider the geographical area and branch out a bit more; instead of restricting it to inland, where nine times out of ten somebody's going to oppose the idea because it's on their doorstep, you could always utilize as much surface area of the ocean as one wishes .

You will always have issues when it comes to actually building something. Even political interference is an issue to be dealt with.

Everything has a cost. The yield is the yield. The infrastructure, to political opposition, the years to get a project completed ... all cost money. Money that you want to recoup over a reasonable period of time.

I applaud your efforts, now, how much will it cost per unit for the consumer? Make it under a dime, tax included, and you might have people signing up.

 

I have no problems with "thinking outside the box", but it is pointless unless it also looks at practicality to some degree. Saying that we are going to pull solar panels on the ocean at the equator is fine. But now let's look at just a few things that come up: How are you going to transmit the power back to where it is needed? How are you going to deal with keeping these solar panels in place and connected? How are you going to manage servicing these panels? How are you going to deal with maritime traffic that would like to cross the equator from time to time? How are you going to deal with hurricanes and typhoons?

Let's look at just some numbers to see the scale we might be needing to talk about:

World electric production rate is a bit over 2TW and total production is about 20,000 TWh. The sun provides about 1kW/m² at the surface of the Earth and, ignoring cloud cover and other obscuration, we can probably figure that we can get useful power from about 3/4 of the Earth's diameter, or about 10,000km. Assuming that the oceans were uniformly distributed around the equator, at any given time there would be about 8,000km of ocean producing power giving an oceanic insolation of about 8GW per meter of width. With an efficiency of, say, 25% then each meter in width of the oceanic equator can produce about 2GW. So our panels would have to be 1km wide and span the ENTIRE equator. I think the width of the Pacific Ocean at the equator is over 10,000 miles, so some of these panels are going to be 5000 miles away from the nearest appreciable land mass.

For comparison, the total world-wide installed capacity of solar PV is presently about 1% of the 2TW needed to meet demand. The largest solar installation presently produces 550MW and annually produces about 1TWh, so we would need 20,000 such plants to meet demand.

It's also interesting to note that 13 of the 20 largest solar producers (and 8 of the 10 largest) are in the U.S.. The top 20 total out at 5GW of capacity and account for about 25% of ALL worldwide installed PC capacity. Of that 5GW, the U.S. plants account for nearly 75% of it. Of course, that's just one way of looking at things and there are lots of reasonable ways of looking at this stuff.

 

Activist love to use engineering math and statistics to prove the viability of their solution.
How's come these same people can't understand a simple ratio?

 

Activist love to use engineering math and statistics to prove the viability of their solution.
How's come these same people can't understand a simple ratio?

What's your point?

 

Activist love to use engineering math and statistics to prove the viability of their solution.
How's come these same people can't understand a simple ratio?

Okay.

Per year averages.

Wind turbines; ~30,000
Vehicles ; ~60,000,000
Cats; ~500,000,000
Windows; ~950,000,000

From http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/

Or by treehugger estimates.
Wind turbines; ~300,000
Cats; ~ 3,000,000,000

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable...ds-annually-house-cats-around-3000000000.html

BTW there are something like 100 - 400 Billion birds in the world of which about 20 - 30% die a year from natural causes.

http://www.arbotopia.com/how-many-birds-in-the-whole-wide-world/

 

Okay.

Per year averages.

Wind turbines; ~30,000
Vehicles ; ~60,000,000
Cats; ~500,000,000
Windows; ~950,000,000

From http://www.sibleyguides.com/conservation/causes-of-bird-mortality/

Or by treehugger estimates.
Wind turbines; ~300,000
Cats; ~ 3,000,000,000

http://www.treehugger.com/renewable...ds-annually-house-cats-around-3000000000.html

BTW there are something like 100 - 400 Billion birds in the world of which about 20 - 30% die a year from natural causes.

http://www.arbotopia.com/how-many-birds-in-the-whole-wide-world/

You forgot BB guns.

kv

 

You can always use the solar to pump the water back up to the lake in the daytime.

I remember that one; probably piss the fish off.

I think that was Nigel's idea or he was quoting someone else's.

kv

 

wind and solar are complimentary. when one is getting the input it needs the other is usually idled. bright sunny day but little wind. cloudy and wet usually has wind with it but no useable solar input. i feel that they should always go together when getting off grid.

 

@bushrat they have an average time between failures of 10 years

Where did that figure come from? You do realize that in the 21st century, we don't put exotic metals in the landfill, right? And most of the material in solar panels can be recycled.

 

Where did that figure come from? You do realize that in the 21st century, we don't put exotic metals in the landfill, right? And most of the material in solar panels can be recycled.

If the trash comes from a house hold, who knows what's in it.

 

Who said anything about trash? We're talking about solar panels.

 

Who said anything about trash? We're talking about solar panels.

You mentioned putting items into a landfill. To me, that means that trash is being taken to the landfill. The trash can be industrial or household. Most industrial trash is monitored by the city, and household trash is picked up (with whatever is in it).
A DIYer would probably send the used solar panels to be recycled, if the recycle depot took them. Otherwise, it into the trash.