Loss of wind causes Texas power grid emergency

[billvon 3,008]

>What would be the weather and climate effects in the rest of the US and Canada?

If we could stop a significant portion of the winds that influence weather, the effect would be large indeed.

However, wind speed increases almost linearly as you go up in height. Which means that if you go up, say, 400 feet, you are getting almost none of the potential energy of the wind. If wind turbines extended into the jet stream (i.e. were six miles tall) then that would indeed be an issue.

[rushmc 23]

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Okay - a serious question here. I've been thinking about this for a while, but never mentioned it. I reckon now's the time to poitn out my own ignorance.

It gets me to wondering what happens if we start doing things like wind power generation on a massive scale. I saw a show a while back that mentioned that "North and South Dakota could supply the nations electricity needs via wind farms." Let's say that the wind WAS harvested in along there.

What would be the weather and climate effects in the rest of the US and Canada? I mean, that wind energy would be transporting weather from one place to another, and the energy would be converted.

Could there be some short or long-term environmental and/or climate damage from harvesting large amounts of wind power?

wind farms can provide large amounts of energy but, they will never cover base load. But to your point.

Iowa is among those states with large potential for wind energy. The rub comes in the electrical infrastructue (grid) to get that energy from there to load centers of the country. Permtiing and building transmission line is time consuming, expensive and it is subject to many of the same enviornmental legal challenges we see for generation plants.

Everybody thinks wind, cool, but you are not building that transmission line threw my yard.

The coal plant we are building (we hope) here in Iowa was located because the easements needed to transmit the power are already in exisitance because there already is a plant on the same site.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Amazon 7]

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>But how long does it take to bring a nuclear plant online from start to finish?

Depends on the design. Build-in-place (like most plants today) took 4 to 5 years to build in the 70's. Modular reactors (PBMR's, AP600's) would take even less time. Nowadays the time can stretch to 10 years or more for standard plants due primarily to the permitting process.

Now if we could just get contractors to BUILD THEM FOR THE AGES.... instead of trying to cut corners and use crap that will not even meet the design specs.....

[rushmc 23]

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>But how long does it take to bring a nuclear plant online from start to finish?

Depends on the design. Build-in-place (like most plants today) took 4 to 5 years to build in the 70's. Modular reactors (PBMR's, AP600's) would take even less time. Nowadays the time can stretch to 10 years or more for standard plants due primarily to the permitting process.

Part of the length is also due to a lack of companies qualified and geared up to build the high tech internal workings of the plant. (same thing but to a smaller degree for coal plants)

Heck, even for a coal plant bids are going out to build a boiler where the specs will not be fully known (to some degree) up until nearly construction start. The lead time to get a boiler construction contractor is measuered in years

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[nerdgirl 0]

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By opening Yucca Mountain ...

When do you see that actually happening? (As opposed to the DOE's latest proposed date.)

I have a bet w/a nuclear physicist colleague that the US chemical weapons stockpile will be eliminated before Yucca Mountain accepts any spent fuel.

Until we -- as a nation -- effectively deal with the spent fuel storage issue, pursuing new nuclear power plants is shortsighted, im-ever-ho.

VR/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[billvon 3,008]

>Until we -- as a nation -- effectively deal with the spent fuel storage
>issue, pursuing new nuclear power plants is shortsighted.

I'd tend to disagree. In situ storage can effectively work forever. It's not a functional issue, only a security one. Dry cask storage is safer than Yucca from a groundwater perspective, less safe from a security perspective - but it's definitely another option, and all you need is concrete and a fence.

Once we have the political will to do it, it will be a piece of cake. Until then in situ will work.

[kallend 2,030]

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By opening Yucca Mountain ...

When do you see that actually happening? (As opposed to the DOE's latest proposed date.)

I have a bet w/a nuclear physicist colleague that the US chemical weapons stockpile will be eliminated before Yucca Mountain accepts any spent fuel.

Until we -- as a nation -- effectively deal with the spent fuel storage issue, pursuing new nuclear power plants is shortsighted, im-ever-ho.

VR/Marg

The answer is FUSION. The Power Source of the Future, always has been, always will be.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[nigel99 507]

This thread should be locked while rushmc and Billvon are in agreement Has that ever happened before for an entire thread?

However on topic it does seem that politics, economics and the "green" agenda are undermining a fundamental principle of grid electricity supplies - and that is the provision of reserve capacity to deal with short term peaks in demand. I don't believe that wind or solar energy are efficient generators for large scale electrical generation - but they do work very well (solar in my experience) for micro-generation at homestead level. In essence there is a choice do people want to have low cost energy that is stable in supply and "unlimited" at domestic level or move to green energy supplies on a micro-level and pay the price (it is much more expensive).

In many ways the 3rd world is ideally positioned to prototype and explore radical concepts in clean energy generation as they do not have established supply to homes. For example I would be curious to see if micro-generation could be modelled at say village level to exploit mesh networking techniques and topologies.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[billvon 3,008]

>and that is the provision of reserve capacity to deal with short term
>peaks in demand.

Yep. But again, that's not baseline load. Large combined-cycle plants are best operated at maximum output to provide a baseline load, and peakers are used to provide the reserve capacity.

>In many ways the 3rd world is ideally positioned to prototype and explore
>radical concepts in clean energy generation as they do not have
>established supply to homes.

But they don't have any money. It has often been said that you can't care about the environment until you stop caring about filling your belly, and that's largely true. When it comes to intelligent power networks vs. millet, millet wins every time.

[nigel99 507]

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But they don't have any money. It has often been said that you can't care about the environment until you stop caring about filling your belly, and that's largely true. When it comes to intelligent power networks vs. millet, millet wins every time.

Actually I disagree with this. They don't have money but there are a very large number of charities that pour resources into the 3rd world. Even strategic pilot projects can help prototype idea's. So as example instead of you & I rigging up solar to "supplement" our nice low cost electricity that won't make an iota of difference to our countries supply output, we could install the systems in a village in country x giving someone a lifestyle improvement & probably reducing deforestation etc at the same time. I am also specifically thinking groups like greenpeace could do something productive like this - rather than commiting expensive terrorist acts (they recently broke into Heathrow and climbed on a plane).

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[billvon 3,008]

>They don't have money but there are a very large number of charities
> that pour resources into the 3rd world.

Right. A very large number of charities in the US that send money to the third world - because the US can afford it and the local people can't. That's my point.