Andy1234

The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008

sorry....corrections for above.

40 quads

80-120 quads

2-3,000 wind turbines installed every week forever

The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008

My brother is also an engineer putting up tranmission lines....and he says that integrating alternative energy will be very tough because of its intermittant nature....they usually like coal and NG power plants because of its power delivery....consistent and predictable.

The problem with alternatives.....is you might need to factor in a large cushion margin of safety.......and need to invest in storage of the energy. While storing energy is smart regardless of where that energy comes from....conventional sources are much more predictable.

So you can build 2MW worth of coal power plants.....and know 2MW worth of energy will be available so long you have the fuel to burn.

With wind.....given its on/off or partial power....if you require 2MW of power.....you will NEED storage....and you might need to build 20MW worth or more....given the terrian to supply a constant 2MW of power.

Now this is a peer example......and did not use any real life numbers....but I think you get the idea.


So if you take 40 quds worth of energy....and want to displace all new energy growth....and displace some energy coming from conventional sources.....you might need to build a capacity of 80-120 quds worth.....I don't know the exact number.

This could equate to building 2,000-3,000 wind turbines with todays technology every week forever and never hit the power desired.

The Five Most Important Energy Forecasts of 2008

I agree with the hand's comment above.

I am also an engineer.....and people talk like alternative energy is the answer.......I think some of these economists and others need to sit down and start crunching numbers....figuring out how much energy can be provided using these technologies....what kind of baseload power is required....what kind of plants need to be running in case the wind or sun isn't shining or blowing......What are the costs to transfer to these power sources? Are there any material constraints if we massively switched to a certain storage source? etc etc etc.

The scope of such a change is enormous......and we would be moving from an era of extracting energy that is already stored......to an era of harnessing/transmittin... and storing then transmitting and storing again.