[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat happens as coal regualtions push price up and renewables continue to become cheaper?

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', 'T')he article stats that it costs less than 1 euro to travel 100 kilometers.

1 euro = 1.33 dollars
100km=62.14 miles

So you are looking at $0.02 per mile.

[KevO]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', '
')
What happens when it crashes ?

[americandream]

It's an improvement on the filthy boxes we drive around in at present. Fingers crossed.

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', '"')Cheaper" is a realitive term. Chepaer means nothing, nothing ever really gets cheaper. Wind Turbines require huge capital investment that will never be recouped by the company building them.

[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')ot according to the NRDC

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', 'I') am speaking to people running projects for power companies who are buying and operating them.

[clueless]

I will ask him to come over and post.

If it is so "cost effective" than why are there only two companies building them ???


When something is on the internet does that make it true ???

Here is a quote from your source:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow Much It Costs

The cost of wind energy has come down 85 percent in the last 20 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In 2002, wind power cost 4 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants.

[yesplease]

Two companies building what? Wind turbines, or wind farms? And of course, everything should be taken with a grain of salt. I tend to trust peer reviewed papers because the reviewers are generally vicious, but internet blurbs, as well as personal anecdotes are both suspect.

[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')wo companies building what? Wind turbines, or wind farms?

[yesplease]

This site claims there are more than two, but who knows? Here in CA, we supposedly have turbines from U.S. Windpower, Kenetech & Vestas, GE, etc. I'm not sure who is American and who isn't, but I'm guessing there are at least three different wind turbine co's on that list? Besides, specialized construction isn't usually a business where there are going to be companies jumping in left and right. But that also doesn't mean the business isn't profitable either.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', 'T')he US dept of Wind Energy ? What do they know about running an engineering company and fielding an operation like a wind farm. These are the same guys that have run the US into a 10 trillion dollar deficit.

[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his site claims there are more than two, but who knows? Here in CA, we supposedly have turbines from U.S. Windpower, Kenetech & Vestas, and probably GE. May even be more...

[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')'m curious, how did the US dept of Wind Energy run us into a 10 trillion dollar deficit?

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', 'T')heir they are part of the US Dept of Energy aren't they ? Which is a part of the US govt. Correct ? Do you trust the US governments fiscal management or monetary policy ? For them to make a blanket statment like $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he cost of wind energy has come down 85 percent in the last 20 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

[clueless]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t must be the cost of selling it, since wind turbines seem to be rated in power, not energy. Were wind farms so heavily subsidized in the early 80s that they could sell electricity for ~30 cents per kwh? The downsizing of the industry I think you're alluding to is probably a byproduct of our current administration's policy towards business. Big companies making bigger profits.

[malcomatic_51]

I only skimmed through the first page of responses so what follows may be repetition. This idea is such a hopeless non-starter. Not even submarines driven by compressed air have ever been successful, it was still more efficient to store the energy for submerged propulsion in batteries.

It takes WORK to compress air, and that WORK has to come from somewhere, probably from electric power from the grid. Is this a PO solution or is it a feeble effort to disguise a very poor store of energy as a solution? Well obviously it is the latter. When you compress air you lose energy due to adiabatic heating. This heat will not be recovered in practice, because the air will almost certainly have cooled by the time you get around to using it.

The only applications I am aware of where compressed air has proved useful has been in torpedoes and model aircraft (and balloons going phrooow! at parties...). That is, very short duration applications. Think about it, if you have to put a pressure vessel in a car, do you fill it with air or nat gas?

Answer... duh!

I'd be more enthusiatic about rubber bands!

[Heineken]

Like I said at the beginning, this thing is dead in the water.

Any notion published in a rag with a name like "Gizmag" is likely to share a similar fate.

Gizmos are not going to save the world. Not even gizmos that actually work but in so doing preserve the same stupid infrastructure that is killing the world. Powered personal chariots are most especially in that category.

And BTW, whatever happened to those thousand-foot-tall solar-powered wind tunnels they were going to build in Australia, that were going to save the world?

The only thing that is going to save the world is massive sacrifice producing massive change in how we live, but that's at the bottom of everybody's list.

[onequestionwonder]

And yet none of you geniuses has answered with a single equation, why it is impractical.

Answer a question, or be silent.

Why is it impractical?

[jbeckton]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('clueless', '
')
And besides you cannot run an industrial automated factory on photvoltaics, Wind turbines or anything else other than a combustion or steam turbine.

[fluffy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onequestionwonder', 'A')nd yet none of you geniuses has answered with a single equation, why it is impractical.

Answer a question, or be silent.

Why is it impractical?