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I think AF is getting wind generators mixed up with photovoltaic cells. There is a carbon footprint to producing nearly anything, but you can construct wind generators primarily of ceramic or hemp if you're really concerned. Just because a technology is applied incorrectly or inefficiently doesn't mean it is intrinsically so.

An all wind system is not a viable option, it is not reliable even if we could theoretically generate many times as much electricity as we use globally at this point. There simply is no way to reliably store the electricity from peak hours over time in the quantities necessary. Small scale wind power installations tend to pay for themselves in a matter of years if not months, require minimal maintenance, and have a negligible carbon footprint compared to alternatives.

As far as I know it depends where you're building it. Windmills are pretty slow to build, but the material cost is not very big. So if you're low on resources, but have the construction power required available, windmills are an excellent choice as long as the area is somewhat windy.

Compare to the alternatives... Well some areas have trees, but they won't last for very long if harvested for energy, its not a lasting solution.
Solar power is nice and stable, but chooseing what type of panel technology to use makes a big difference. The more common type is very easy to build and recyclabe, but not that efficient when comparing to the raw materials used. More high tech types have the problem of needing a lot of energy to start the production in the first place.
Nuclear power can be good but has many issues too - its a huge investment and the construction takes so much before it will start paying its cost back. Not everyone has the technology required to build that either... And its a security threat too, a single target that will do so much damage to the surrounding economy and environment if it's attacked for whatever reason.

Its not a simple question at all, how to build your economy...

Neddie wrote:I think AF is getting wind generators mixed up with photovoltaic cells. There is a carbon footprint to producing nearly anything, but you can construct wind generators primarily of ceramic or hemp if you're really concerned. Just because a technology is applied incorrectly or inefficiently doesn't mean it is intrinsically so.

No, I meant wind farms, the carbon foot print of producing them - the carbon they save, is greater than simply using conventional fuels. Wind farms take longer to pay for themselves than their actual running lifetimes.

They do however generate more money in their lifetimes than it cost to build them, which is why we have any wind farms at all cropping up.

The problem with windfarms as well is that their power rating is based on them running at a desirable yield. A wind generator can be spinning around and look fine, but you realise that its generating barely a percentile of its maximum output, as the wind speed to output correlation is nonlinear.

This with the fact that there are regular times when windspeed is too great and the wind generators are locked into place.

What I dont understand is why the makers of these cheap solar cells that can be printed arent doing so right now. Sure it isnt more efficient than the expensive top of the range ones we have right now, but theres nothing stopping you from coating buildings and even wind turbines in this dye and generating extra power for a small amount, than plastering the surrounding field in expensive solar cells.

if you guys talk about photovoltaic cells ... forget about them, the energy required for production is more than they can produce in their average lifespan, they are only handy as a a mean to avoid power transmission losses ( current market is alive only because of state funds according to my optical technologies professor ), altho one could argue the energy balance could lean toward positive as technology develops, there's still several concerns

the more expensive solar cells are never used except in places where space matters ( eg a satellite or after a huge parabolic concentrator ), the cost to produce them is a lot superior to cover a larger surface with lower quality ( and efficiency ) tech at same power level, so always the cheapest stuff is used ( this will hardly change as relative costs will remain almost always fixed, the most expensive will have to become very cheap in absolute terms )

not to mention, the solar radiation density is 1KW/m^2 on average ( and usually well below in the western countries ) which means that even if you'd have magical cells whom would have 1 efficiency, you'd still need to fill a 300000 m^2 field just to match a medium gas plant output, also night production is a problem ( the popular claims that they work good on the infrared spectrum is bullshit since the semiconductor materials have the physical limitation of the energy gap to set the minimum frequency to absorb which blocks in the near infrared unless you go with very expensive and yet overall inefficient ternary compounds, yes, there's physical limitations to efficiency too according to the material type )

placing them far off the civilization would create another absurdity, on average the electric grid loss settle on 30% on the mid-range links that current countries have, you'd end up wasting a large amount of power along the route, therefore increasing further the ROI time and making other technologies more cost efficient

I read that flywheels are being considered as a means of storing excess energy. Most particularly, when a train makes a stop at a station its mechanical energy is transferred to an on-board flywheel to be used when it needs to start up again. I assume it's better than converting the motion to potential electrical energy, as is done in regenerative breaking on some hybrid drive vehicles.

This method has been suggested for storing excess power during peak output of electrical systems as well, so it could prove useful for the wind and solar generators.

Windmills are great for when you have no E but some M to spare. Whoever originally made windmills cost E was a sadist.

Fly wheels are useful but they loose power over time due to friction etc, and although Im unsure of the efficiency of regenerative braking, it could be used in a wider variety of situations, and the power generated used elsewhere.

The problem with "Saving the planet" currently, is the sad fact that the pollution for making alternatives is every bit as bad as the fossil fuels themselves resulting in a net loss of power output in the end (None of the alternatives are as effecient as fossil fuels).

As an example, a powerplant in canada that produces hybrid batteries has a 1 mile radius dead zone around it.

The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ├óÔé¼╦£dead zone├óÔé¼Ôäó around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius├óÔé¼Ôäó battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist├óÔé¼Ôäós nightmare.

├óÔé¼┼ôThe acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,├óÔé¼┬Ø said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn├óÔé¼Ôäót end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ├óÔé¼╦£nickel foam.├óÔé¼Ôäó From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery.

Windmills are fun to look at, but other than that, they don't really do much

Edit: wow, I was wrong. Apparently it's 40 miles.

Well, the point of DSSC and other low cost green energy research is to lighten the manufacturing load on environment. Silicon solar cells have been researched for 30 years, and already DSSC gives ~11% efficiency vs 13-20% with usual silicon cells.

You don't need a huge factory either, just some school chemistry lab equipment and relatively common materials (ethanol, TiO2, conductive transparent plates, iodide electrolyte, berry juice and carbon... Afaik.). You'd be lucky to get 5% efficiency with a homemade solar cell though.

Well there was a gastracion of whatever the fuck it's called process developed which turns trash and waste into natural gas and an opaque substance (as well as some other lesser substances that would be useful) that would have a lot of commercial uses. It also operates under its own power and requires no outside energy to keep it running.

Where are the greenpeace assholes on something liek this? I would LOVE to see things like this get implemented, to me it seems like a no brainer. Long story short, things like this exposes the green movement for the hypocrites they are.

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

Where's my algae fuel dammit?

I think your referrring to plasmification or something like that, namely that so long as the inflow of fuel is large enough, enough plasma is produced to replenish that already used.

Microwave grapefruit plasma

Plasma Arc Waste Disposal/Plasma Gasification

Photo voltaic cells arent that expensive anymore, a new tecnology invented part in my country, made it ligther and cheaper to make.
And this tecnology alows electricity to flow in special paper, so this means paper semi-conductors.

Also http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131312.htm
New Technology For Manufacturing Flexible Solar Cells

ScienceDaily (Apr. 3, 2007) ÔÇö The University of Delaware's Institute of Energy Conversion (IEC) has developed new technology for the manufacture of flexible solar cells, which could reduce the costs associated with the use of photovoltaic energy while at the same time expanding possible applications.

imagine every house in the world with a solar panel on its top, or every car.

If goverments passed a law that every new house to be built would require a solar panel to be instaled that would do the trick.It isnt as expensive as you migth think, the panels pays the inicial investement to the owner in 4 to 5 years of usage. Also private constructors making this solar panel instalation isnt that big a deal for them........

also more recent http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 083044.htm

to be fair, sudbury was a shithole even before the prius thing

But what happens when the solar panels get broken to shit by rain/hail/gale force winds/etc?

Considering that where I like (In the middle of the US) it's not uncommon to have at least 1 or 2 hailstorms a year shit like that would get really effing expensive really quickly.

Personally I like Vestas-V90, because I have few nearby 3MW pieces nearby. They are pretty big and still silent.

AF wrote:No, I meant wind farms, the carbon foot print of producing them - the carbon they save, is greater than simply using conventional fuels. Wind farms take longer to pay for themselves than their actual running lifetimes.

This is largely a function of scale. In more recent times windmills have been getting larger and larger. From what I've read the really large windmills do pay for themselves (carbon wise) over their lifetime; thanks in part to technological improvements in recent years.

AF wrote:The problem with windfarms as well is that their power rating is based on them running at a desirable yield. A wind generator can be spinning around and look fine, but you realise that its generating barely a percentile of its maximum output, as the wind speed to output correlation is nonlinear.

This hasn't been true for a long time now. At least not with the big, modern generators. Most have variable pitch blades which allow them to target their ideal generating RPM so long as a minimum wind speed is available. And generally speaking, they are not built in places where the minimum speed is not generally met the vast majority of the time.

AF wrote:This with the fact that there are regular times when windspeed is too great and the wind generators are locked into place.

This is largely not the case with newer designs. The noteworthy exception being something like tornadoes and hurricanes. Otherwise, wind which would otherwise cause them to brake and lock now use regenerative braking. Which means excess wind is now harvested rather than turned into heat. Furthermore, these setups have replaced their transmissions (a cause of frictional losses resulting in lower overall efficiencies and a higher carbon footprint) with regenerative braking. Meaning the RPM band at which they generate peak power has been drastically increased without mechanical loss. This is also one of the reasons why they have reached carbon break even.

AF wrote:What I dont understand is why the makers of these cheap solar cells that can be printed arent doing so right now.

From what I've read, they are literally at maximum capacity and are continuously adding new capacity. Again, from what I've read, they are generally not available because they are serving their primary customers who can afford to pay top dollar. Those customers largely being corporate warehouses and whatnot.

As for flywheels, they tend not to scale vary well and pose significant risk to anyone in the area in the event of a catastrophic failure. Which is in fact, one of the reasons they don't tend to scale well. That's why, where available, elevated lakes are a preferred energy storage method. It may be surprising, but lead-acid batteries are still in vogue for storage too. Well, it surprised the hell out of me.

Also, something to think about for recycling. With a few exceptions, recycling is actually bad for the environment. Aluminum cans is one such exception. Most other areas of recycling (also varies with location), recycling is nothing but a jobs program. The only reason recycling successfully kicked off in the US is because of a report put out by the EPA encouraged it. Since that time, all "facts" published within the report has been demonstratively proven to be false. In other words, recycling in the US is built on lies. Recycling in the US is now a 4 billion dollar a year government work program and growing; paid for by US tax payers.

And for solar panels. It used to be panels hit a reduced efficiency, typically by 50%, at their 5-10 year mark. These days that number has been pushed out to 10-15 years. This is yet one of many reasons why solar panels have serious problems on return. Likely this number will continue to improve with newer innovations but for now, expect all panels installed today to require replacement within fifteen years from now. All manufacturers are banking on the fact innovation will require they only need to replace those panels once within the warranty period. And if that assumption fails, a lot of manufacturers will go out of business or had a warranty shorter than that period.

AF wrote:Fly wheels are useful but they loose power over time due to friction etc,

They aren't intended for long term storage of course. They can be used in systems where there are many small peaks and valleys in generation and act as a buffer for these short time periods. Modern ones use magnets and vacuums and are almost frictionless.

echoone wrote:As for flywheels, they tend not to scale vary well and pose significant risk to anyone in the area in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Yeah, the danger.

echoone wrote:

JohannesH wrote:This with the fact that there are regular times when windspeed is too great and the wind generators are locked into place.

Thats what AF said