nerfer

Want to Cash In on Future Transport Trends? Consider These Alternative Energy Plays

Aces003 - We definitely don't have more oil than the Saudi's, unless you're talking about the Colorado oil shale. However, nobody has come up with a cost-effective way to produce that oil yet. And the EROEI on that is close to 1:1, about the same as corn-based ethanol.
North Dakota has a lot of oil and it's cost effective at today's prices ($70+/barrel). It's by no means more than the Saudi's though. And the Saudi's may not have as much as they let on. If that's the case, it's a scary world tomorrow.
It's best if we get ready to use natural gas now, rather than wait for the pain.

Pickens: World’s Biggest Wind Farm No Longer on Drawing Board

It's not that simple. The transmission grid can't handle changes in supply and demand (wind dies down in one part of the state but picks up in another), or for moving from one section of the country to another. Converting plants is very expensive, basically you need to build new plants. Doesn't come out to a generation cost of zero in my book.


On Jul 09 12:21 AM nakedjaybird wrote:

> Someone should check to see how many counties in the US DO NOT already
> have transmission lines running across them already...DUH!!!!!
> Hey, convert the gas and coal plants to wind and solar and all the
> transmission stuff is already there.......DUH AGAIN!
> And the generation cost will be almost ZERO...... HAT TRICK DUH!!!!!

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

F. Banks:
For claiming to be a Picken's expert, it's apparent you haven't read his website for awhile. Windmills are not out, they are there to replace/supplement the national electric grid. This frees up natural gas for trucks and long-haul vehicles (in-city and commuting cars can be electric powered). Wind and gas have both been part of his plan for a couple years now and that hasn't changed (I read about it well before his commercials were aired).

What is your proposal for not keeping our economy under the reins of unstable and unfriendly countries? We can't drill our way out of this problem, and we can't take over another oil-producing country.

On Jul 10 10:12 AM Ferdinand E. Banks wrote:

> in the world cap on at the time, and declared this a loser. Ditto
> on his wind corridor from the Rio Grande to the Canadian border,
> which it seems that he has now decided against. Now its talk about
> large amounts of natural gas being used as motor fuel. According
> to some people on this site, this should be a major component in
> a national energy policy.
>

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Red Raider,
I agree with most of your post, but nuclear is not at all obvious. Uranium is a limited resource, and what do we do with the waste? Nuclear has never been cost-effective unless the government pays for building the plant.
There is no one solution, and limited nuclear may be useful, but we need to do what is practical for each location. I think geothermal is a vastly underestimated resource, particularly for all of the mountain/west states. Unlike solar and wind, it operates 24/7.

On Jul 10 10:27 AM Red Raider wrote:
>
> The obvious answer is nuclear in the long term, natural gas in the
> near term.

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Fuel cells are not zero CO2. Their operation is, but not generation of hydrogen (most of which comes from natural gas today). The fuel cells are expensive (6 figures is standard for something that could power a car), the storage and transportation of H2 is still problematic. We'd need multiple practical breakthroughs before we could start making a manufacturable car. We can't wait 10-20 years for that to happen.
Plus, on an EROEI perspective, it makes more sense to store electricity in a battery than to turn the electricity into hydrogen, transport the hydrogen, put it thru a fuel cell and get back some of the original electricity to power the car.
I was once a fuel cell believer, but became educated and realized there are better alternatives.

On Jul 10 09:45 AM Longinvestor wrote:
>
> Letting cars alone use gasoline and converting semi's and trains
> to hydrogen makes more technical sense to me. The little drop in
> CO2 emissions with natural gas is not going to get any of my investment
> money. I would prefer to use wind and solar power to make hydrogen
> & oxygen gases. These stored gases would then run zero CO2
> emission fuel cells 24/7 per the recent MIT invention.
> web.mit.edu/newsoffice...
>