By: CwV1

CwV1 — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:40:00 +0000

There is a solution to the intermittency of wind. Instead of running electrical generation directly from the turbine, use the wind to either pump water up into a high tank that is then used to run generators on demand, or to raise a large weight, again running generators as needed.
My hope is for new turbines that don’t include three huge blades with a tip velocity of near the speed of sound.
There are some other designs in development that are far friendlier and can use wind coming from any direction, such as an updraft between buildings in an urban setting.
And speaking of urban wind, moving the windfarms closer to the energy users is probably the most important reform in our approach to it. Long transmission lines lose a lot of energy, they are a massive scar on the land they cross and have to be maintained (cleared) every few years. That often means a swath of land being drenched in herbicides, regardless of what else is on that land. And did I mention that they are expensive?
For far too long we sited energy infrastructure well away from population centers, both to be closer to the sources of fuel and because Coal plants are ugly and smelly, they bring down property values, doncha know. And few people want to live near a nuke, particularly if they have had one of these monsters built near them. About as popular as having a prison for a neighbor.
And that tendency to build HUGE and distant is carrying over into alt.energy. With wind and solar, it’s unnecessary, it’s wasteful and it makes alt.energy projects harder to get off the ground.
By bringing wind and solar projects closer to their users, smaller and more distributed systems and shorter distribution lines, we increase our efficiency, increase our dependability and decrease our cost/Kw and shorten the time from project pitch to energy flow.

Comments on: Wind Power Cuts CO2: Fact

By: CwV1