put a windmill in front of obama's mouth
Wind energy not viable says CERN's head
- Thread starter Debaser82
- Start date
...or erect Dyson spheres around his telepromters.
No he is not. Real life projects give feedback that is not favorable toward wind. The largest windification project, which was in Denmark, ended up in the nation having higher generation capacity, yet increased & more expensive imports of power.
Nighttime demand is very low. And the sun shines all day, even if you don't see it behind the clouds. Didn't you learn this back in middle school?
Wind can be thrown in the mix, but the general statement is right. It is not viable as a major energy source.
I don't know why there is such hesitation with the alternative fuel sources we have. Nuclear energy is the best solution to all our problems. Fission is amazing and we should be putting our resources into fussion. That is our future. I say we stop wasting time on these tiny projects that will never be able to produce the same amount of power. 1 nuclear plant can replace 4 coal plants.
On a daily basis average wind speed is higher during the day and lower at night:
http://www.windwisdom.net/
Being that a solar energy system cannot work at night it should be pretty obvious that any comparison of the two technologies is on a longer term basis. Here's a link to the NOAA's collected average wind speed data over decades and broken down by month:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/wndspd.txt
The numbers for all the cities listed in that chart support the graph in the link I posted -- wind and solar are complimentary to one another. Wind has lower average speeds during the summer months, when the sun's solar radiation is strongest. Conversely, wind speed is higher during the winter when solar radiation is decreased.
Cheap shot. Wind, like solar, is a source that emits energy.
And, while there are storage methods available for solar heat collectors, solar PV arrays are faced with the same storage issues as wind power.
On a residential and small business level there are commercially available battery storage systems not unlike those used on WWII diesel submarines. If you convert or replace the appliances in your house to use D.C. you're good to go for a day or so, depending on use.
There are also test systems in limited use for large commercial installations and even a few pilot programs at the utility level. Widespread use is still a bit in the future but it will be here sooner than not.
Do some more/better DD.
Florida Power and Electric has the largest windfarm in the world at 735MW.
And, while Demark's total capacity is 3,100MW, they are the 3rd largest in Europe with Spain at #2 with 11,000MW and Germany in 1st with over 20,000MW.
BTW, until the end of 2008 Germany was the largest in the world. But, the U.S. added over 8,500MW last year to put them slightly ahead of Germany.
As the link I posted mentioned, Germany's wind power provides 6.4% of their needs while solar only provides .6% Moreover, they're concerned that as total solar capacity ramps it's going to have a big impact in end user's energy bills.
Solar might get there eventually, but like Ethenol, it's more bullshit than fact right now.