How Many Windmills EQUALS One Nuke Plant

Well storage can be done several ways.. Most notably by using system that just focuses mirrors like a magnifying glass on an ant. Except the concentrated sunlight at several thousand degrees is heating molten sodium, which in turn heats steam boilers which drive steam generators..

The molten sodium retains enough heat to provide steam through the entire night until it gets heat replenished the next day.

We could literally produce enough reliable power in our deserts for the whole country this way, but we cannot built due to environmentalists, nor transport the electricity if we did build it due to lack of sufficient grid capacity.

Here is such a system, this is 11MW..



a 10 and a 20MW tower... enough for 15k homes..


All in all we would have to start a new grid infrastructure project the likes of which hasn't been seen since we started the interstate highway system, and we would have to get past environmentalists who don't want the Mohave desert, Death valley, and other prime solar areas developed at all.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/20...achenbach-text

Here's a good article on the electric grid.

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Thank you Jena for those answers
The grid has to be upkept and upgraded anyway so why not start now on the future and start changing things slowly.
The environmentalists will hopefully get smart and realize that there have to be tradeoffs and compromises....or freeze in the dark! Or maybe they should be packed up to live in those desserts....see how long they last!
Barelahh I was just thinking about utilizing the dessert for the west, and I'm sure the east can have their own solar system set up somewhere.(even if it's on the tops of the highrises or floating ones on the ocean or great lakes...wherever) With the solar panels they (developers) only need to fine tune the mechanics of it and the distribution.
The chance of a plane crashing into a solar field is like winning a lottery.

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Not of the type and capacity to carry gigawatts of power to places like the NE of the country.

Currently our power is distributed pretty evenly in plants dotted around the country. If we were to shift to centralized power source for the nation that is all in the desert southwest we would have to remake the grid to properly handle so much from one area and distribute it nationwide.

Same reason that we can't even get all the wind power we've built in Texas to the cities that need it, not enough grid capacity, even after spending billions on grid construction, and we have approved spending billions more.. Not that we would send it anywhere but Texas, as Texas has it's own grid that is not very interconnected with the big east and west U.S. grids.

I wonder how many windmills or solar set ups would have had to fail in Japan before state departments around the world called their citizens home.

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III

Dunno if they get enough wind or sun to even make putting up such things worthwhile..

Understood. I'm just in a mood this a.m.

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III

We are spending billions to upgrade and build new grid into the windy areas of west Texas, have been for years now.. It'll be a decade to get get it all done though. We have already put up more windmills that the grid can take.

That's one of the reasons you haven't heard much out of T. Boone Pickens lately.. He had to scrap his massive wind farm plan as the land he bought up wind rights for isn't close enough to large enough grid capacity and the latest multi billion dollar grid build out plan that was approved doesn't go close enough to his land.. He didn't grease enough of the right palms I guess.

If you look at the wind data and solarity data there's more than enough wind and solar between west Texas through NM, AZ, NV to California to power the entire nation easily. It would just a be massive undertaking requiring trillions of dollars and putting thousands of power plants out of business and thousands of people out of jobs..

Between the Sierra club fighting against using their sacred deserts, and power companies lobbying against any change, it'll never happen though.

I wonder how many solar power plants 20 Billion dollar’s buy, isn’t that what nuclear plant costs.

D

It is probably possible to generate all the energy we need from one huge plant in the desert - but why? It isn't necessary. Why not work toward equipping each home/building with it's own system. Certainly, there would be need for some commercially generated power, but there is no reason to assume it must ALL be from one huge plant and then transported.

I was in AZ and Nevada some during the building boom. As I watched those houses, apartments, and office buildings going up, I thought how great it would be if each of those new buildings were equipped with it's own solar system as it was constructed.
This would make the need for commercially generated energy much less.

The idea for one huge plant supplying all is probably possible and there is probably a way to transport it - but it just wouldn't be necessary if we had as many buildings as possible with their own systems - be it wind, solar, or whathaveyou.

I read about a city that uses their garbage to create a large amount of electricity.

Environmentalists may be objecting to some of these plans, but somehow I don't think they could stop it. I think rather the oil and gas people are not quite ready to turn loose of the hold they have on this country.

Think how far along we could be toward helping individuals have solar if all that money given to develop ethanol had been put into developing reasonably priced individual solar/wind?

Because much if not most of the populated areas of country are not suitable for wind and solar power.

It would still be necessary, as the type of solar plants that can still produce power at night are not powered by panels..

There are many cities doing this now.

Txrider Now really, you do know that I'm aware solar/wind is not feasible everywhere.

I'm wondering why, though, when alternative energy is discussed, it is always with the idea of one or several huge generating systems, I don't believe that is necessary.

Why not use what is available/possible/feasible where it is feasible?

Yes, some places will have need to be supplied with commercially produced energy, but why not reduce that demand as much as possible.

We can sit around and talk about why it can't be done, and 30 years down the road we are in worse shape than we are now. We can, though, begin to discuss/develop/utilize all the many ways we can produce/save energy - where and how it is feasible - and get something done.

As for Mr. Pickens abandoning his wind farm - I was in in another state last fall and read an article on this. The article proposed Mr. Pickens' idea for that land had little to do with wind generation and a lot to do with having access to the water aquifer underneath. The wind idea was a bit of a smokescreen, the article suggested. True or not, I don't know - but it is not an outlandish thought, water is a hot topic in Texas right now.

Because that's the way we've always done it and common sense is no reason to try something different now.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............1973 -2011...........38 years.

No I agree we can't just sit around for the next 30 years to wait for the alternatives to get on line.
That is why we must fast track new nuclear plants now, get to drilling more now and in this country. We are in trouble now, can't wait for 30 years I agree.

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many hundreds or thousands I'd guess... and the land requirements would be vast as well. If you wanted to avoid nuke plants, I'd guess a better method would be spaceborne mirrors and a satellite platform (particle beam or similar) to beam directly to an Earth station.

Of course, then you have that wacko that "invented the internet" who will run around with his fake hair on fire yelling about the particle beam heating the atmosphere, humans are evil, blah blah....

R

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the earth wobbles and just shifted 4 inches cause of the japanese earthquake

Not really. The issue is transmitting power between regions. Depending on where you live your electricity comes from a regional grid. There is limited transmission capacity between regions. That also means problems in some regions, like the Northeast, don't affect other regions to the same extent.

During the big blackouts in the Northeast, WV was never affected. That's also the reason recent rolling blackouts in Texas did not affect other regions. Here's a map of the regional grids in the US.

But storm damage isn't.

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Why not get busy making alternative energy sources more affordable and helping to put it in place?

Why must it only be nuclear with safety being a factor or with oil and coal you still have the pollution factor we are going to have to come to terms with at some point in time.

Just a cynical thought about our 'rolling blackouts' here in Texas. There is quite a bit of negative feeling regarding coal plants and even some lawsuits in the making. Also, there was a lot of resistant to the number of coal plants that were announced some years ago. I believe some of the problems had to do with human error and just plan breakdowns, not overloading. At least that was what was announced here.

So, is it possible, they wanted to make us hurt a little so we would just be so happy to have all that nasty coal generated power and all the problems that come with getting it out of the earth??

Storm damage is possible for whatever power we have -