Comments on: Why did we wait so long for wind power?

By: Albion

Albion — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 16:22:40 +0000

I have heard it said that the problem with wind turbines is not just the vast amount of concrete and steel and other materials required to make it, but also that each generator-on-a-stick will not produce enough energy in its useful life to make another wind turbine.

If this is true then entropy takes over. In other words, we are screwed.

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 06:22:01 +0000

No one will tell you this, but the true reason that the dark forces of the U.N. et al. overthrew the inestimably great President Richard Milhous Nixon is because he would have brought clean, cheap, and infinitely abundant nuclear energy to the United States of America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Independence

Nuclear energy is the holy grail and ark of the covenant.

By: Light

Light — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 03:58:58 +0000

Years ago when I was in a top tier university (the kind that had weed out courses) we researched ideas like wind power, etc. and found that no matter how much weed or money we threw at the concept…they just didn’t work. When you had honesty in the lab, none of these happy hippy horseshit ideas ever worked. Science fiction is what they were. Science fiction. We did manage to have a pretty good run with these concepts in the entertainment industry.

By: Michael van der Riet

Michael van der Riet — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 11:46:23 +0000

Even though the swept area of the modern wind turbine is twenty-five times that of a turbine twenty years ago, the cost per megawatt hasn’t fallen much even in real terms. All the aerospace geniuses who were fired when the Space Shuttle stopped flying have had a go at improving efficiency and come up against the limit. Wind technology was obsolete a century ago and this is putting lipstick on a pig. I see quite a lot of potential for solar, in fact the problem is that prices are coming down so fast that the payback period has to be under two years, at which time your contract ends and you have to bid against cheaper solar.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 11:23:01 +0000

In order to provide “green” power to meet the present needs of just California, the entire land area of the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico would have to be covered by solar panels. And they wouldn’t provide any power at all at night, so you’d still have to have other sources.

Power from wind turbines is less dense than solar.