The future of energy

[valryte]

or is it just media hype...

I had a somewhat heated discussion the other day with a friend of mine where basically he is pissed at how much the price of gas has gone up and I basically told him I am happy about it. He said, of course you are, you work from home to which I responded, actually you are wrong. If me working from home had any affect on what I felt regarding the price of gas, it would be that I wouldn't feel anything as it has no effect on me if the fact of not driving to work was the only impact the price of gas had. I tried to explain that whether or not I work from home, the price of gas affects everything. While I might not get hit by it at the pump (wow another 15 dollars a week), it affects everything from the price of food to the price of services where gasoline plays a factor. The reason I was happy is because it seems there's a bigger push for alternative energy sources. Granted, the push could be exactly the same and it's just getting more air time, but at least it seems like there is a bigger push. I mean, auto makers are stopping/dumping their lines of large SUVs and are spending more R&D on greener vehicles. Just hope they can survive all the losses from the price drops, hell they just took a huge hit with leases, where now the trucks/suvs are worth something like 25% less.

BTW, I'm interested to see which direction you believe will be successful or your thoughts are on alternative fuels (Solar, Wind, Ethenol, Hydrogen, etc...).

[miir]

Do you like Apples or do you hate them?

Is not a yes/no question

[cadalano]

we've completely been through it before in 1973, albeit more gradually, and for different reasons that eventually passed. look at car commercials these days- MPG is the new Horsepower. Look back at 1973- mileage mattered after that crisis.. death of the muscle car, etc. the reason for the price increasing doesnt mean shit, the consumers will respond anyway.

as for the long term.. necessity is the mother of invention, and in this case the irresponsibility of the human race is it's grandmother. one day our compulsion to progress, driven by the magnitude of the problem, will overcome our reluctance to... and not a single moment before.

my concern would be that we have plenty of other ways to cheat our energy even without crude oil, when the going really gets tough I hope we find a better solution than to switch to a different limited resource and call it a day.

ultimately we will obtain most or all motive power from the sun or other stars, as it is virtually limitless in availability and scalability. It is a nice rack of milk bottles delivered at our doorstep every morning which rots because, hey, somebody left a cold gallon of milk in the fridge. Its just a matter of that gallon running dry so we'll get off the couch and go answer the door. shitty analogies aside, there really doesnt necessarily need to be a dominant method of obtaining it.. just as today we collect it from wind, water, solar arrays, etc.. whatever is efficient.

[Bubba Grizz]

I went to visit my mother not long ago and on the way I have to drive through this county that had two huge windmills just off the highway. They towered over everything and looked awesome. This trip driving through that county there were windmills scattered as far as I could see. When talking with my mother she said that they are planning on having close to 500 of these things set up before the end of August. It was kind of frightening in a sense that they reminded me of the ships from War of the Worlds the way they towered over everything.

[valryte]

Do you like Apples or do you hate them?

Changed, happy? pretty sure most people will understand that the question was if they believe that there is more of a push now for alternative fuels and the 2nd part just lead into the discussion. Anyways, its fixed I guess

[miir]

[Spang]

I'm not a big fan of apples.

[valryte]

Now contribute to the thread bitch!

[Spang]

If apples started my car, it would change my views about apples.

[Kaldaur]

I hope it isn't hype. I've heard the comparisons to the 1970s, and everyone has a different take on whether or not these changes will also stick. I don't think we'll go back down, whereas in the 70s the prices eventually returned to tolerable levels. The higher gas goes, the more angry people get, and that anger turns into changes at some level of the consumer pyramid. Sooner or later, we're going to see the changes being made to our energy. Today it's windmills, tomorrow it's orbital stations around the sun that transfer power to Earth.

[valryte]

whoops, adding an option reset the poll

[Wulfran]

I don't think there is that big a push: we whine about it and some wring our hands about global warming and climate change but when it comes to pushing alternatives with gov't (who ultimately control it through regulations/legislation from taxation to environmental regulations to trade policy on energy products) in North America at least, we do next to diddly squat. In Canada we have opposition parties talking about shit like "carbon taxes" without saying where any money raised would really go and a gov't thats sitting there saying "hey we're making a ton of cash so why should we change anything?". In the US from what I see, environmental issues don't crack the top 10 in your election campaign. We still take a NIMBY attitude to things like nuclear power generation and any other projects that might affect even our fucking view of the landscape. As consumers our patterns are slowly changing but not enough to stop oil companies from ringing in record profits quarter after quarter. Some people do the solar thing or a windmill but its very small percentage: as a whole we just don't care enough to push it for whatever reason.

[Forthe]

I would say yes. I see tech advances reported frequently, there is a lot of R&D going into this.

One difference between the 70s and now is the 70s was the result of an embargo and a revolution while our current issue is demand increasing in developing nations. The embargo and the Iranian revolution were short term issues while the current demand situation is long term and expected to accelerate due to China and India's crazy growth rates.

[valryte]

So should I add another option for "Nuke China and India and rid the world of this extra demand." ?

[Siji]

Not as strong of a push as there needs to be. Big oil money controls too much of the world.

Air power is not the solution.

[Tyek]

I went to visit my mother not long ago and on the way I have to drive through this county that had two huge windmills just off the highway. They towered over everything and looked awesome. This trip driving through that county there were windmills scattered as far as I could see. When talking with my mother she said that they are planning on having close to 500 of these things set up before the end of August. It was kind of frightening in a sense that they reminded me of the ships from War of the Worlds the way they towered over everything.

Some of the wind towers you are talking about have blades that measure 100 ft. They have to be mounted over 150 ft. As big as they look from the road, they are massive when standing next to them. We have the worlds largest windfarm being built in So Cal. (Tehachapi) and hopefully after my meetings today I will be providing a lot of material on the 1.8 billion dollar project.

[Tyek]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/busin ... ref=slogin

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
Articles in this series are examining the ways in which the world is, and is not, moving toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down — or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.
“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures.
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.
Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
The cost would be high, $60 billion or more, but in theory could be spread across many years and tens of millions of electrical customers. However, in most states, rules used by public service commissions to evaluate transmission investments discourage multistate projects of this sort. In some states with low electric rates, elected officials fear that new lines will simply export their cheap power and drive rates up.
Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built.
Texas and California have recently made some progress in building transmission lines for wind power, but nationally, the problem seems likely to get worse. Today, New York State has about 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity. A megawatt is an instantaneous measure of power. A large Wal-Mart draws about one megawatt. The state is planning for an additional 8,000 megawatts of capacity.
But those turbines will need to go in remote, windy areas that are far off the beaten path, electrically speaking, and it is not clear enough transmission capacity will be developed. Save for two underwater connections to Long Island, New York State has not built a major new power line in 20 years.
A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.
But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”

Pretty much what I was saying. We have an aging, antiquated infrastructure which is the first thing that needs to be upgraded. Wind power is still expensive without the added cost of adding transmission lines, hopefully they will get cheaper as the technology becomes more prominent.

Just thought this was interesting considering the topic of this thread.

[Forthe]

The US has been profiting on the backs of the FDR\Eisenhower generations infrastructure investments.

I think that is the problem with the US and Canada (don't know enough about Mexico), we are short sighted. Our businesses hardly look past the next quarter's result, the government doesn't look past the next election (I'll note Cdn debt reduction as the exception).

I would like to see Canada join with the US in a long range transmission backbone. Our hodgepodge systems are already interconnected and we have plenty of energy up here we can sell once we have the means to deliver it to market. Until we have that delivery system many energy projects will be much less feasible and we are not going to be able to use economics of scale to bring the costs down.

[Sirton]

Do everything...Make major competition among all the major alternatives and the current energy. Build a base of wind and nuclear power plants. Build up on our on natural gas and oil. Push tax exemptions and awards for hydrogen and electrical breakthroughs. Get paid back from Iraq through Iraqi Oil(example: so many free barrels with a purchase for so many years). And glass the middle east while were at it and steal there oil