Just to add a debating impetus (if any inflamatory ideas are necessary here) We expect that the traveling restrictions and bureaucratic silliness will last a few years, so to balance out our loss on carbon contributions (foregone) by way of flights south for winter sojourns, we are putting in a 12 month year lap pool 75x10x4ft6" with heat pump and mega gas fired heater. In my own little way I am trying to offer some global warmth to Texas. (no pockets in the shroud)
When 20% of your state’s power comes from wind and you have little or no excess capacity, when the wind stops or the turbines freeze up, you shut down as many as 20% of your customers. Possibly for days. With all the engineers looking at the purchasing orders for wind power surely there was someone raising the issue.
some will remember a guy who used to post here called damnthematrix. he was one of the most brilliant members on the martenson site. he was friends with pedro prieto a spaniard who works in alternative energy in duh spain which went nuts into alternatives. it is one of the reasons spain was the s in “pigs”
dtm posted this letter from pedro , who btw has done huge work on eroei with charles hall (the inventor of the concept). i saved it in my docs and have used it many times when in discussions with alternative energy dreamers. btw aoc if not any idiot is certainly an intellectual lightweight.
me again…… Here’s an email Pedro Prieto sent me. Oh, and his English is waaaaay better than my Spanish! 1. Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis have recently wrote an article about solar energy in Scientific American. They claim that by 2050, the US could get some 100% of its electricity needs, by installing a combination of 2.9 TW PV fed into the grid, 7.5 TW to cumulate energy with compressed air; 2.3 TW in concentrated solar plants; 1.3 TW of distributed solar plants and just to fill the gap, some 1 TW of wind fields. This ‘just’ is ten times more than today is installed in all the world, just to satisfy a small, collateral portion of the electricity needs in 2050 of the US. 2. If we succeed in growing at 27% cumulative per year, and we reach, as the report of Science & Technology says, the 3 TW of wind installed power landmark by 2020, this will represent the production of, let us say and maximizing sizes and minimizing costs, some 1,500,000 times 2 MW wind generators in the period. Considering each generator has 150 tons of steel; that every ton of steel requires at least 1.5 tons of coal to be produced; between 500 and 1,000 tons of concrete in the foundations; 30 tons of glass fibre and some 5 tons of copper; the “clean” wind industry will demand from now to 2020 (12 years) 225 million tons of steel, some 350 million tons of coke coal; 45 million tons of glass fibre; some 7.5 million tons of copper and some 1 billion tons of concrete. I am not counting the energy spent in building up factories; transporting the huge wind generators, most of the time at big distances, using heavy weight cranes or huge crane ships when offshore; opening pathways to the generally inaccessible places where the wind blows regularly (in mountain passes, plateau’s edges, etc.) It is neither included the steel to make long evacuating lines (in Spain, a small country with a dense electric network) generally 10 to 25 km of evacuating high tension line, per each 150 MW wind field average), or the copper or aluminium wires used in the power lines; the additional power stations required, etc. Nor it is included the maintenance or the infrastructure needed to stabilize an intermittent source of energy. 3. This installation of some 1.5 million generators of 2 MW each, from now -2008- till 2020, will require, for your information and order of magnitude, some 2 times the present world annual production of steel; about 30 times the present glass fibre world production and almost the annual concrete world production. I strongly recommend to read the article “Coal Can’t Fill World’s Burning Appetite With Supplies Short, Price Rise Surpasses Oil and U.S. Exporters Profit” By Steven Mufson and Blaine Harden. Washington Post Staff Writers of last Thursday, March 20, 2008; It exemplifies very well how the industry is struggling to get coal and steel and the effect of prices of coal and oil on them. Who says this is a `green’ or non polluting industry? I would ask the people to keep in mind that these are NON RENEWABLE SYSTEMS, able to capture some renewable energies. These systems have a short life cycle, specially when in offshore, or in dusty places, subject to heavy corrosion or grinding of their mechanical parts. They have to be maintained very much and are heavily underpinned in the fossil fuel society (helicopters for maintenance, huge and heavy cranes and ships, long and heavy trucks, maintenance of compacted gravel roads in mountains, the gravel in itself, metallic piece parts, lubricants, high level (hence highly consumerist) people in maintenance tasks with fossil consuming SUVS going everywhere, etc. etc. 4. All the above assumption of 3 TW of installed wind power by 2020, to generate some 1.5 TW times 2,000 hours/year nominal (if these fields are available for the new parks; in Spain, for instance, they could hardly find onshore fields and from now onwards with this load factor); that is, to generate 3,000 TWh; that is a 15% of today present world electricity consumption. (Not primary energy; just electricity. Not in 2020: today). 5. When going to global figures and potential increase of wind energy worldwide to cope with the ever growing electricity (or primary) energy needs, I think it is time to make wind energy prospects top down, rather than we make them now as usual: bottom up. I am amazed that supercomputers are not used to simulate these huge dreams of wind installations. An anemometer in Tarifa, close to the Gibraltar Strait gives 2,500 nominal hours a year. Another anemometer offshore in the Cadiz Gulf, some 100 miles of distance from Gibraltar, gives some 2,500 nominal hours. If I put 1 GW in Tarifa and 1 GW in the Cadiz Gulf, perhaps both of them will run at 2,500 hours/year. But what if I put 100, or 500 GW in both places? Is the wind obliged to go the same usual path, if friction reaches certain levels, or could perhaps divert to the natural lowest effort path, leaving the magnificent parks idle or with 1,000 hours/year? When trying to get conclusions from wind maximum capacity, one should remember that all winds at all altitudes in the globe represent some 70 times the present human energy consumption. This is apparently too much, enough for us all. But from that we could hardly capture a small fraction (with a huge use of non renewable and polluting materials) of the energy of wind flows of up to 150 m. over the surface and those in offshore relatively close to the mainland. That a big portion of these winds are at speeds that wind parks could not profit form them (over 80-100 km/h or lower than 5 to 9 km./h). Then, we could perhaps note that these are going to be just a drop of relief in the ocean of the insatiable human consumption. Not to consider the effect of being able to change some wind traditional patterns, when reaching certain values of friction/interception. 6. All the World wind installed park from the beginning up to 2007 (93,212 MW) produces 5 times less electricity than JUST the increase of electricity consumption worldwide between 2005 and 2006 (765 TWh) and represented just 0.8 of the world electricity consumed. 7. The increase of the electric consumption worldwide (some 4% annual) goes 25 times faster than the production of the installed capacity in 2007. The industrial kart goes 25 times faster than the ecologic horses. And ecologists still pretend to win that unbalanced and crazy Ben Hur race, without saying a word of the insatiable energy consumption increase that the Caesar Roman model is imposing into the arena of this unbelievable circus!! Sorry if I have poured on optimistic and enthusiastic people a cold jug of water. The above are available worldwide data. I just wanted to put the article in the context and in front of the challenges we are going to face. Pedro from Madrid P.D. I have not said a word about birds, or about the financial possibilities and sensible timings for these megaprojects in 180 of the 195 countries I see in the UN list.
To piggy back on your post, MM:
Once they are in the ground, the blades will remain there essentially forever -- they do not degrade over timeThat from this article in the Daily Mail, May 2020, on decommissioning wind turbine blades.
I like the idea of thorium reactors and wonder what the hold up is there. The strangest thing is, from an environmental perspective, it could turn out that even traditional nuclear power beats what is currently being pushed. There is a video called, ‘The Wolves of Chernobyl,’ that makes me question some of the information about radiation exposure we have been taught.
In the final analysis, lower population is required. If our energy needs are met, ennabling us to continue to grow, it will be on the back of displaced species populations, and really, the planet doesn’t ‘belong’ to us. It’s not ours to trash.
It’s terrible what is happening in Texas.
Hi,
Could you possibly break your post into paragraphs? It looks interesting and informative but many will have a problem reading it. Thanks!
I have a little stream next to my little house and have been keen to build a micro-hydro. Anyone I ask says the stream is too small, I’d need a waterways permit, and to just go solar. I don’t have much sun. Is there a way to build a “dumb” hydro which just heats hot water or performs some other simple task without need for expensive electronics?
I obtained a DC treadmill motor a while ago and was wondering what it would do if paired with a simple waterwheel. I don’t really have a workshop, however.
no.
i copied it from a post on chrismartenson.com.
strange i don’t recall anyone having a problem back then or since. but if damnthematrix shows back up i will take it up with him.
in the meantime i can summarize it …windmills are stupid
edit: 5 likes/ 1 complaint. we have a winner
Oh Sebastian, You have NO idea how stupid it can get. One of the water districts built an expensive new water treatment facility, to serve about half the island’s needs. It is uphill from most of its customers, so relies partially on gravity plus a few workarounds all the time, power on or off. Problem is, some customers need power to push the water uphill…when electricity fails, during storms. During storms, generally, it’s pretty cloudy. A diesel generator costing 30,000.00 for these crucial events, which might happen twice a year for a couple of days, is required.
I received a newsletter from the district that acknowledged the problem, but nicely provided the explanation that they would be setting a poor environmental example with a purchase of this kind and were thinking of a solar powered generator to do the same job.
Cost of the water plant, 2 million. And the diesel generator would hardly ever be used, other than running it to keep it in working order. Grrrrr…Environmentalism good. Eco-fascism bad.
As has been mentioned, people on every side of an issue can be blinded if they lose a sense of proportion and become zealots for a cause.
Being outside of zoning law sounds appealing. I am sure there would be some drawbacks to that though. Are there? What services are you going without, if any? If you are, are they easily remedied?
Thanks for your response, btw!
You could go into the edit function and do it from there. It is up to you, if you want to have an audience for your post. It is a very common complaint of those trying to read online and discouraged by most forum moderators, administrators.
Islands Trust and Capitol Regional District. Both nightmarish. At the same time, though I very much like the Horgan provincial government, I think they are planning to continue with Site C dam, which is a boondoggle as Mark describes. Totally different issue. That’s a really big impactful environmental issue, not one of the petty issues the Gestapo here get wrapped around the axle about.
Western countries focusing on increasing population as native birth rates drops is nuts. Lets just invite foreigners here and offer them lots of goodies…and they will have the kids. Not good for the planet or social cohesion.
Small waterwheel power generation kits are available for seasonal farm stream use, which several people I know use to sell power to the grid, during peak stream flow months. You do not need to invent anything…but, you must learn enough about small waterwheels designs to know what to do with what you have.
Heck. Use the fish pond to grow Talapia to eat and duck weed to feed them and any chickens, or ducks, you wish to raise.
In California, there are places where municipal water supply is not metered to each property. This allows one to use the 80psi water in the municipal water lines to run water powered electrical generators and pipe water directly into a “decorative” water wheel, in a backyard “garden” with a gobi fish pond. If you needed to generate free power, you simply turned on the water and let is flow into your 6’ or 8’ overshot water wheel, which powered an electrical generator in its “quaint tiny mill house.”
Since the water was not metered, your water bill remained constant, even though you were constantly supplying water to your water wheel generator. You then charged your UPS batteries, and sold excess electricity to the power company. The wheel could be left running 24/7, or just when you needed the electricity. The excess water from the wheel flowed into the pond…which was cement lined…and then into an overflow drain into the sewer. (No water flowing down the gutters)
Even with a water meter, the use of this kind of system to generate power remains viable until the water pressure in the water system drops and water stops flowing from the home faucets. A silent electrical generator, which runs on water, and is able to do mechanical work, directly from its central spinning shaft.
You are on the right track. The trick is to be clever about it and disguise it as decoration.
Hi AP,
being outside the zoning by law enforcement zone is nothing but a plus as far as I can see…
We don’t get garbage or recycling picked up at the curb but that’s the biggest difference. The tax collector finally showed up and assessed my house after I built it 2 years ago, so my property tax will be going up (I was paying 600$ per year). The roads are plowed and I have hydro at the lot line. I’m on 9 acres so my heating is mostly through wood heat and I’ve got a well. My water is abundant and under my control. I can siphon out of my well as the static water is 2’ below ground level and the well head is atop a hill. I’m very happy with this property and the neighbours are amazing. Starting from scratch is a long haul but it has been very much worth it.
S.
Sounds like a dream. But what about sasquatches? I used to think this was pure myth, but listening watching this dude has me scratching my head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQUrPdFNh1M
Horgan govt thumbs up. CRD and Islands trust not so much, for reasons you state, and then some.
Site C dam is a colossal disaster - no wins from any angle. We are so gonna pay for that… in every way. Mark_BC nailed it re Crispy Clark, who like many other politicians, should be in jail, rotting. She was the epitome of corruption.
And yes, over-population is the core issue. It seems Klaus Schwab and friends are intent on resolving that for us… guess we will find out how it rolls in the next year or so.
Sasquatches… I’m more concerned about the deer and the Lyme ticks they carry. Either way long term scratching a living out of dirt is no easy game so I’ll hedge my bets and stay put. Perhaps I’ll plant a little extra for any hungry beings that come a knocking 
Sebastion – I was joking around a bit. I have been watching quite a few of these videos lately, so it’s been on my mind. But usually they are the last thing on my mind!
Jan—Christy Clark was a complete horror. Totally agree. She definitely should be in jail, but when organized crime intersects with politics at that level, it’s pretty near impossible to get cold hard proof. What a dispiriting time it was, when she was premiere.
For all those on a well, the government has that in their sights as well. It’s under water rights, for those interested in obeying.