And the Saudi Arabia in the category ” turning Alt Energy into a JOKE is ... “

Mike Kanellos

Enjoyed it. Do keep it up.

Thanks. Interesting points. A lot of times you see human behavior left out of the equation. Never a good idea. If the world ran on good will, we’d have 100 percent recycling and mass transportation for everyone.

Wind is unreliable, but if you get enough turbines the law of averages means you can harvest a big hunk of your power budget from wind. Denmark and Ireland have a lot of wind, and they don’t plunge into darkness that much. Some kind of storage, though, will be needed.

Nuclear is cheap in the U.S., but it’s cheap in large part because the 30 year old plants got paid off a while ago. Personally, I think we need more nuclear, even with all of the issues, but the cost question at the moment it a bit up in the air.

My compliments for an article that actually takes account of reality. Som university professor a few years agocame up with the idea of having the utiities “borrow” (at a cost) the battery
capacity of coming plug-in electrics to help smooth out the power fluctuations from the rather unreliable and crappy alternative energy sources that have infected the grid (if you want to see a lot of white knuckles, watch the grid operators when word of a big mass of clouds is headed for
all those valley solar rooftops).  There are several logical problems with this professor’s big idea :
1) why would any plug-in owner allow his very expensive battery pack be degraded, even if compensated?
2) how would a utility find it practical to “borrow/lease”  these battery packs, which would require a masssive infrstructure , and still not give them total control, when they could simply buy the batteries themselves?  Leasing simply looks like a really dumb path to take.
There are many, many problems with wind power, (even assuming that the next generation doesn’t immediately rip them up in a Ladybird Johnson style beautification campaign) and simply
finding some method of not throwing the power away because it occurs when no one needs it
is NOT a viable solution. Even if some use can be made of windpower, the fact remains that wind
is totally unreliable and cannot meet peak demand requiremenst, which increase every single year
Any wind installed has zero effect to either replace existing power generative capacity or prevent the need for new capacity next year. It already costs 6 to 8 times more to build wind pwoer than nuclear - this additional inability makes it now 7 to 9 times more expensive. And the lack of need for fuel is a big nothing - nuclear power requires less than half a cent per kilowatthour for fuel, while the govt is paying wind operators subsidies of 2 cents per kilowatthour.

Thanks. It’s a good day if I can give someone a laugh during an otherwise dull workday.

Part of the problem with vehicle-to-grid is that people misunderstand its application, and thus misunderstand its benefits and problems.

Using car batteries to provide sustained peaker power over a period of hours does not make any sense.  Even if the battery capacity was there, and the grid could handle it, it would not make economic or environmental sense because of the wear and tear on the batteries.

On the other hand, a large distributed network of batteries could do a great deal to smooth out transients and surges on a timescale of seconds to minutes.  For this, you need high power (i.e. lots of kW) but relatively little net energy (i.e. low kWh total), which is exactly perfect for a large number of small batteries to supply.  The low net energy use would mean that the impact on battery life would be small, but the batteries’ input would help stabilize the grid against short-term transients (e.g. when a wind farm cuts out suddenly because the wind died).

I’m late to this…

@kerry bradshaw: I’m interested in your comment… “Any wind installed has zero effect to either replace existing power generative capacity or prevent the need for new capacity next year. It already costs 6 to 8 times more to build wind pwoer than nuclear - this additional inability makes it now 7 to 9 times more expensive.”

Could you provide some references/links? This is the first time I’ve heard anyone suggest wind is more expensive than nuclear. It’s far faster to install — 1 year for a typical wind farm vs 10 years for a nuclear plant — which needs to be factored into the cost. A wind farm will have nine years of revenue by the time the nuclear plant, which has racked up 10 years of costs, has made a dime.

As for the ability to prevent the need for new capacity… no energy producer can do that. And why would they want to?