Comments dhsu800 has made
- Hi Bob, I agree with you in that we should pursue the fastest, least expensive, and safest route. Mainly, I'd say that both realism and research is going to be necessary before we can rule out any technologies. Nuclear is certainly hard to justify right now because of the costs and waste, no argument there. But given that it's carbon-free, I don't think it makes sense to rule it out, either. For example, according to this interesting report modeling the implications of energy storage, it could actually increase use of "baseload" plants because it allows easier shaping of that load to peak demand. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/43510.pdf P.S. I'm curious about where your estimate of cost for Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) comes from, simply because I am not familiar with many working facilities.On Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago 164 Responses
- I think that you are overestimating the ability of wind engineers to predict (or at least average out) when the wind is going to blow. Despite Amory Lovins' assertion that balancing the intermittentcy of wind power does not represent "a significant problem or cost", actual experiences doesn't seem to show this to be the case. Previously, it was thought in Texas that the intermittency of wind would be balanced or averaged out over a sufficiently large area (i.e., the whole state). In 2008, a rather ordinary cold front showed that it was possible for wind to die in a correlated fashion over the entire state, causing brownouts: http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/02/28/no-breeze-the-day-the-wind-died-in-texas/ In another very different region, here in the Northwest, a significant amount of hydropower has to be allocated in order to back up intermittent wind resources. As Sean Casten pointed out (in his first comment), the BPA link and graph is pretty telling, and we will be dialing back one renewable just to use another. http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx Finally, there is the issue of actually matching intermittent renewable supplies and demand. Not only do wind power supplies have significant temporal and geographic correlation, but so do end-use demands. For example, when everyone comes home, they turn on their lights and appliances and heat (or air conditioners) at around the same time. There is no reason to think that the intermittency of wind power can be "easily" shaped to this load without significant investments in distributed storage, demand response, or spinning reserves like combustion turbines. Even though this is also a problem for "baseload" plants of any kind, to finish where I started, there's no reason to think that the answer is going to be any easier or more predictable with a statistically fluctuating, aggregated wind resource.On Do we need nuclear and coal plants for baseload power? posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago 164 Responses
Noonan's Sadness and Frustration
Peggy Noonan's column is sad and frustrating because of either her shocking ignorance or pure sophistry.
She hits an absolute highpoint of smarminess and moralizing -- and a genuinely false note -- when invokes the trust of "The People", the same public which consistently finds scientists to be more trustworthy than her own profession of journalism.
David Hsu Seattle, WA
On I'm goin' back to Noonan, Noonan, Noonan posted 3 years, 4 months ago 8 Responses