Green New Deal? Wind power ‘dropped off’ the grid during Polar Vortex. Solar works wonders when it has feet of snow on top of it, too. Perhaps Occassional-Cortex can buy her an exercise bike with a generator on it to power us up.
Wind turbines are shut off when temperatures dip below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, as happened in the upper Midwest and Great Plains — an area often dubbed the “Saudi Arabia” of wind energy. On top of that, when it gets, say, minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit, there’s not much wind.
This post was last modified on October 26, 2022
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And when you get a really really hot sweltering day, with no wind, and everybody is desperate for air conditioning, the wind turbines don't work then, either. But on a moderate breezy day when everybody is outside enjoying the glorious weather and nobody really needs much electricity, those wind turbines work perfectly.
Not to mention that they haven't figured a reliable and economical way to store energy for when these things break down!
Here in Michigan Consumers Energy has a giant battery. Takes you at least five minutes to drive past it on the expressway at 75 mph, so pretty damn big. It's a man-made lake along the Lake Michigan shoreline, about a hundred feet higher than the big lake. When they have excess power they pump water from Lake Michigan up into the man-made lake. When they have a shortage of power they let it run back out through power-generating turbines, like a hydroelectric dam. I don't think they have ever released the cost of that power, or how much they lose during the process. I'm guessing it's a pretty inefficient way to store power. And the doggone cost of building the stupid thing must have been enormous... and I'm not just talking about building the lake on hugely valuable real estate: you should see the hundreds of miles of high-power transmission lines they had to build to bring power to and from this rural northern area to areas that actually produce and use lots of power. I think the whole thing is ridiculous.
JP, that sounds like the dumbest thing ever.
Well, no, because Joe Biden is the dumbest thing ever. And then comes Al Gore. And then AOC.
The amount of land required for hydro is huge.
Specifically, this report finds that coal, natural gas, and nuclear power all feature the smallest physical footprint of about 12 acres per megawatt produced. Solar and wind are much more land intensive technologies using 43.5 and 70.6 acres per megawatt, respectively. Hydroelectricity generated by large dams has a significantly larger footprint than any other generation technology using 315.2 acres per megawatt.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/09/the-footprint-of-energy-land-use-of-u-s-electricity-production/
Wind turbines also don't work when the wind is blowing too hard; they only function properly when there are are members of endangered bird species within killing distance.
If I had wind power today, it would help. Sadly, the only green energy I own is a solar charger for my electric gate. The battery is getting killed with the hot- cold weather cycle and no sun means it isn't getting charged. I'm about to have to disconnect it and bring the battery in the garage and charge it up.
Yeah, nothing I buy that sits outside and requires charging by the sun ever makes it through the winter. Pisses me off because the outside of the packaging always says the crap is made for all weather.