Re: Re: Midterms
  By: Rob Mccart to ARELOR on Thu Aug 11 2022 12:54 am

 > I've heard that a lot of places that went nuts putting up wind turbines have
 > regretted it ever since. One area I recall built enough of them to supply 26
 > of their power needs, and had plans to build more, but once up and running t
 > actual power generated was more like 10% and the cost of maintaining the
 > system was so high they are basically waiting for them to wear out so they c
 > tear them down.
 > 
 > Solar could, in theory, be reliable with little ongoing costs once up and
 > running but the variations in sunlight and problems storing the power means
 > you can't rely on it 100%. You have to have another source of power when
 > conditionss are not the best, so it doesn't eliminate existing power station
 > really, just lets them run at lower capacity more of the time. This, of
 > course, ignores the pollution and materials supply problems in making the
 > solar panels and batteries required to run the systems.
 > 

When you place wind turbines, you have to do it somewhere you have reliable
wind data about. In College I was told to have the wind data of a whole year
for whatever hill I wanted to place a wind generator on, at the very least, or
not bother doing it.

Then you place your sensors on the hill and have them running for 9 months, and
wild animals (most often of the homo sapiens variety) vandalize it :-)

Fotovoltaic used to be total trash. With the current price of electricity it is
starting to make some sense to install it at home. Still, I have given the
numbers elsewhere and they weren't pretty. Think of a 18k USD or so for a
deployment that grants power for a big rural house 92% of the year. Lifespan of
the weakest component (battery) would be 5 to 10 years, most likely the former.

Countries pushing solar should push heliostates instead of fotovoltaic. They
don't because there is so much money in fotovoltaic electricity comming from
small home owners who pour it into smart grids. This is: you set solar at home,
and "sell" power to the grid when you have excedents. If you have deficit, you
buy it from the grid. The scam comes from the fact that the sell price and the
buy price have a ridiculously big gap and that they may not pay you for all
your production anyway. Effectively, the small home owner has built a generator
that does not cost the power companies a dime to maintain and is offering them
cheap energy they can sell at astronomic prices.


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