My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil

BMT (RIP) · 07-09-2008, 03:30

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1215...n_commentaries

BMT

nmap · 07-09-2008, 07:45

Great article, Sir.

I'm not sure that natural gas powered vehicles are an optimal choice; but at least Mr. Pickens is opening the conversation.

SF_BHT · 07-09-2008, 07:58

Good one... The locals down here have been converting their Taxis over to gas for the past 2-3 years. It is easy and very cheap. Hell if a Peruvian can do it why can't the Great American Motor Industry?

**The Reaper** · 07-09-2008, 08:00

I am not sure that we would derive sufficient power from windmills to justify covering 30 states with fields of them, but he is a bonafied oil expert. Five years ago, ethanol seemed like a good idea as well.

Personally, I think the long term answer is nuclear power (fusion reseach should be accelerated immendiately) and fuel cell technology, but clearly, we are going to need to have several interim solutions.

IMHO, he should have hit immediate exploration and accelerated drilling ASAP much harder as an interim fix.

IIRC, LNG produces less energy per pound than gasoline, but it does burn slightly cleaner. This swap would have a secondary effect of running already elevated LNG prices further through the roof.

As an aside, Toyota just announced that they would be offering an option to put solar panels on the roof of the Prius. Net energy produced is barely enough to run the air conditioner.

TR

Mike792 · 07-09-2008, 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by SF_BHT

Good one... The locals down here have been converting their Taxis over to gas for the past 2-3 years. It is easy and very cheap. Hell if a Peruvian can do it why can't the Great American Motor Industry?

Yeah, but it does cut back on trunk space for the taxis to the airport.

**Razor** · 07-09-2008, 08:39

The power cycles created by windmills require conditioning before hitting the grid, and its not an easily regulated and controlled source. What does that mean? Once again, we need an improved, high capacity battery to truly take advantage of wind (and many other alternative source) energy.

I'm with TR...the sooner we get serious about nuclear power, the better.

**The Reaper** · 07-09-2008, 08:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor

The power cycles created by windmills require conditioning before hitting the grid, and its not an easily regulated and controlled source. What does that mean? Once again, we need an improved, high capacity battery to truly take advantage of wind (and many other alternative source) energy.

I'm with TR...the sooner we get serious about nuclear power, the better.

Roger all. Furthermore, you either have to have sufficient reserve capacity in the grid to provide 100% of the power needs for low or no wind days, or storage for the windmill power to cover needs during reduced wind power production. How do you store terawatts of power?

This would lead to a very spotty availability, with California type rolling brownouts or blackouts to reduce demand to actual real time generating capacity.

The winds drops, and you lose power periodically. You want to live in the Southern or Southwestern summer with intermittent AC?

TR

SF_BHT · 07-09-2008, 09:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike792

Yeah, but it does cut back on trunk space for the taxis to the airport.

Yes it does....... When I am driving I look at those yellow tanks and just think when i hit them how hot it will get.

For them....

nmap · 07-09-2008, 09:24

The researchers used hourly wind data, collected and quality-controlled by the National Weather Service, for the entire year of 2000 from the 19 sites in the Midwestern United States. They found that an average of 33 percent and a maximum of 47 percent of yearly-averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric power. These percentages would hold true for any array of 10 or more wind farms, provided it met the minimum wind speed and turbine height criteria used in the study.

LINK

As for fusion...+1.

SF_BHT · 07-09-2008, 09:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Reaper

I am not sure that we would derive sufficient power from windmills to justify covering 30 states with fields of them, but he is a bonafied oil expert. Five years ago, ethanol seemed like a good idea as well.
TR

Just put them on Capital Hill, plenty of Hot Air there and it never stops

**Razor** · 07-09-2008, 12:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by nmap

These percentages would hold true for any array of 10 or more wind farms, provided it met the minimum wind speed and turbine height criteria used in the study.

Interesting, as long as you understand:

1) This requires a minimum of 10 fields (in reality, at least double that to meet growing generation requirements) of 330 ft tall wind turbines scattered through the Midwest, taking up to 40 acres per MW of production. To put that into perspective, a small biomass electric plant produces around 35MWh.

2) This requires thousands of additional miles of high voltage transmission lines and towers to connect all these farms, as suggested in the study

3) This assumes a minimum windspeed of 15.4 mph at any given time at more than 1 location, and was based off annual averages from the NWS

4) The proposed and studied locations are in the Midwest; the power requirement to send that electricity through lines to distant grids (northeast, northwest, southeast US) will significantly reduce the efficiency of the farms

So, while the plan sounds good on paper, implementation is another matter entirely.

**The Reaper** · 07-09-2008, 12:45

And you will still have occasional days of peak demand in the winter and summer where the wind just isn't blowing on a day when people need electricity for air conditioning or heat.

Trust me, if it can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible moment.

TR

nmap · 07-09-2008, 12:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Razor

So, while the plan sounds good on paper, implementation is another matter entirely.

Yes, Sir, I agree completely. In addition, there is a cost, in terms of crude oil, to build and maintain the wind generators - as well as the associated infrastructure you mention. The actual net energy return, over the life of the wind generation facility, has not (so far as I know) been determined. This is precisely the same sort of pattern we saw with corn ethanol - large-scale implementation of a new idea before considering the consequences.

And yet...in my opinion, we as a nation need to begin serious contemplation of the problem. If we don't, the outcome may be unpleasant.

**The Reaper** · 07-09-2008, 13:29

Speaking of second order effects, even electric cars require a power source to recharge from.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

One of you smart math or engineering majors figure this out.

Number of cars in the US, times

Miles driven per year, times

Horsepower per car (assume 200 bhp is the average, it is probably higher), converted to KW, equals:

How many gigawatts (or likely terawatts) of electric generating capacity would be required to recharge and operate a 100% replacement of gasoline powered vehicles with battery powered electric versions?

How many do we generate here now?

How much is excess recharging capacity is currently available in the US grid?

How many additional generating plants will this then require?

What would the annual consumption of fuel per year be for the supplemental plants, in tons of coal, gallons of fuel oil, gallons of LNG, tons of uranium, etc.?

We will ignore, for now, new battery material commodity requirements, replacement needs, disposal issues, charging stations for trips outside the very limited range of the electric car, charging times (a battery is not a gas tank, and fuel stops will be measured in hours, not minutes), additional transmission line upgrades, grid improvements, home charging stations, upgraded home wiring to feed those stations, infrastructure, etc.

I think this answer will shock some people.

TR

morolen · 07-09-2008, 14:39

At least this article mentions the need for energy diversity, there will be no one magic thing that will fix the energy problem. We will need to combine all these technologies to continue as a species. This of course brings the population crunch issue to light as well but that’s getting OT. Nuclear power (fission and fusion),wind, hydro, geothermal, biofuels/biomass and even the much maligned solar (assuming a greater then 40% efficiency and less need for rare earth metals like iridium and gallium) will all need to play nice with each other in the coming years.

Some of the ideas that my more educated friends have been talking about are very exciting. For example my friend Robert is working with a team that is trying to find a metal salt that when covered with water and stuck with sunlight will produce hydrogen(and oxygen of course). The idea sounds kind of…fishy but its sound enough for the DOE to give them a substantial grant.(I email him and will post the link to the site and research documents for the more technically inclined, I do know they are way over my head.) http://www.thesharkproject.org/ is the link to the site.

The engineering challenges for fusion also loom rather large on the proverbial horizon, the intense neutron flux of the reaction damaging the containment magnets as well as making the reactor itself radioactive. Something ITER is going to be trying to solve when it comes online sometime in the next 7 years.

MIT recently has shown some rather impressive things they have done with parabolic mirrors in the interest of solar energy. I don’t have the article on hand but I think they were intending to use it in a liquid sodium storage plant (like the Solar Two plant in Barstow).