by VMarcHart » Sat 30 Aug 2008, 12:18:43
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('isgota', 'W')hat unit size (MW/turbine) are both using in your estimations?
The GE1.5sle is the industry's standard. 1.5 MWs. Gamesa has the G80/87 2.0MW, but with problems. Vestas' V90 also comes in 2.0 MWs, is of relative good quality, but not yet widely used. Acciona has the AWP1.5, a great machine, but not yet produced in large scale like the GE1.5sle. Suzlon is not a contender. Everything else is either too small of a production scale or in prototype stages, ie, the GE2.X, AWP3.0, Liberty 2.5, etc. By the time these are reliable and well received by the developers, operators and finance community, we'll be importing 25mbpd.
Granted, you don't use the whole barrel for transportation, but when you stop importing one barrel, the non-transportation piece in that barrel needs to come from elsewhere. So you stop importing 20mbpd of on-demand and reliable energy, and the domestic 10mbpd will most certainly have to be exclusively used for non-transportation needs. So now you have zero oil for transportation and 300 million ICEVs. You then convert all those 300 million ICEVs into EVs --which I really think it's the way to go. Now try to power them with wind alone, and please remember, the US average net capacity factor is 32%, wind is predictable at best, and developers, operators and financiers don't like prototypes. It will take hundreds, thousands, perhaps 2, 3, 4 million GE1.5sle's (or equivalent) to reliabily power 300 million EVs, trains, ships, aircraft, etc. Even if you double the nameplate to 3 MWs, and thus cutting the number of installed wind mills by half, you are then faced with other problems, just to name a few, crane availability, siting issues, turbine casualty, road restrictions, reactive power, etc, etc, etc.
I think EVs are the way to go, and wind energy will play a big role in mutating our energy sources, but to think of wind as the silver bullet, and this from an industry veteran, is fool-hearted.
BTW, the solution to peak oil, overshoot, carrying capacity, etc, is powerdown.