Green energy turns black!

[Irvrobinson]

I really dislike wind power:

1. It messes up the landscape. Miles and miles of it.

2. It kills birds.

3. But by far the biggest reason I dislike wind power is that you can't depend on it. So if you want to depend on it you have to build an equal amount of dependable generation capability, like gas turbine. The gas turbines are probably not in the same place as the wind turbines, so you need additional transmission lines. Then you also need a bunch of infrastructure to mix and manage both sources, and of course you have about twice the maintenance cost.

Wind power makes about as much sense as Ethanol in gasoline. IMHO, that means wind power makes very little sense, except to enrich investors and make some naive folks think they're being "green". Dumb.

 

[Irvrobinson]

How do we generate lots of clean power? I'd say hydroelectric and nuclear. Some would argue that hydro isn't really "green", but there's no arguing that it's a lot greener than oil/coal generated power

Agree about hydro. The tree huggers need to get the big picture. Grand Coulee Dam generates about 7 gigawatts of power. The biggest turbines are 800MW each. The San Onofre nuclear plant (the boobs on I-5) generates only 2200MW between the two currently operating reactors, when nothing is screwed up.

For the US I think hydro is mostly over. I can't see any big projects getting past the environmentalists.

Nuclear seems to be the next best bet.

 

[jinjuku]

Funny thing about fossil fuel: They aren't making any more of it.

If we build out next house I plan on reserving funds for a Solar / Wind mix.

 

[jinjuku]

I really dislike wind power:

1. It messes up the landscape. Miles and miles of it.

2. It kills birds.

I doubt we will ever raid a country for their vast reserves of solar or wind farms. A lot more than birds get killed that way

 

[Adam]

Funny thing about fossil fuel: They aren't making any more of it.

Sure they are - we're it. It'll just take a little while before the next batch is ready.

 

[Stutz320]

The forces that those wind turbines have to deal with are amzing.
If the little one in your backyard puts out 1000 w in a 15 mph wind
it will put out 8000 w in a 30 mph wind.

 

[dkane360]

If we build out next house I plan on reserving funds for a Solar / Wind mix.

I'm still a long ways off from owning a house, but that's definitely what I had in mind. Here at tech we have the Lumenhaus, so the whole idea of an off the grid house seems very doable. Especially in the future with more efficient solar cells and batteries.

 

[psbfan9]

To me, it seems that nuclear power is a 'cart before the horse' situation. What to do with spent fuel, how to safely contain the radiation within the the plant, etc,... Maybe I'm being naive, but a few dead birds and the Kennedy's seeing wind turbines 3 miles off the coast is much better than burying barrels of spent fuel in the desert.

I live 40 miles from a nuclear plant and they are consistently being fined or shut down by regulating agencies. Remember Three Mile Island?

There is local company here that's doing some great things with hydro. They developed a new turbine that is efficient.
Here's a link:

Lucid Energy

I would write more, but I have several trees that are in need hugging.

 

[STRONGBADF1]

As with most things, we shouldn't put all our eggs in any one basket and I feel we should continue to develop all kinds of energy technologies until they are proven to be not efficient enough.

The greenest thing we as a race can do is stop having so many kids. We are infesting this planet. Too many people need too much stuff and use too much resources. If we were deer there would be massive hunt going on to thin the herd.

 

[avnetguy]

Well, since we're on an audio discussion site, if you really feel the need to be green maybe the following would be a start.

> Don't buy, make or use speakers with less than 100 db anechoic sensitivity.
> Limit all of your amp's input power consumption to 10 watts maximum.
> Always unplug all of your audio equipment when not in use.
> Reduce all HT/music systems to 5.1, isn't that really enough?
> Dim all displays when possible.

Steve

P.S. And bring back the Yamaha orange display, I "believe" it was a more energy friendly color.

 

[Rickster71]

The greenest thing we as a race can do is stop having so many kids. We are infesting this planet. Too many people need too much stuff and use too much resources. If we were deer there would be massive hunt going on to thin the herd.

Well done!
I realize now... with all that beer comes great wisdom.
All kidding aside, that was a great post. IMHO

 

[darien87]

The greenest thing we as a race can do is stop having so many kids. We are infesting this planet. Too many people need too much stuff and use too much resources. If we were deer there would be massive hunt going on to thin the herd.

I don't have any kids nor do I plan to have any. Not my thing.

 

[darien87]

I had a 2nd story apartment in Texas with a new unit, my wife had an old unit in a similar style apartment and her electricity bill was twice the cost of my bill.

The real question is, how did you get the wife to agree to let you have your own place????

 

[lsiberian]

The real question is, how did you get the wife to agree to let you have your own place????

We weren't married at the time. Besides every married man knows they let us stay at their place.

 

[GranteedEV]

last week I was talking with a Environmental expert who just signed a 20mil contract with suncor. Long story short, it's not a perfect world any time soon. Invest in oilsands and natural gas if you can... they're not being Green'd out in the near future.

 

[STRONGBADF1]

Well done!
I realize now... with all that beer comes great wisdom.
All kidding aside, that was a great post. IMHO

I don't like to get preachy and I wouldn't tell anyone not to have kids but I would hope future generations would try and keep it to two.

I don't have any kids nor do I plan to have any. Not my thing.

We have only one.... Now you have me wondering what a Lil' darien87 would look like. Probably crusin' in his Mustang pedal car with his MP3 player all loaded up with FLAC in a ninja outfit.

 

[darien87]

We have only one.... Now you have me wondering what a Lil' darien87 would look like. Probably crusin' in his Mustang pedal car with his MP3 player all loaded up with FLAC in a ninja outfit.

LOL Probably not too far off.

Every once in a while I wonder what it would be like to have a kid or think, "Who's going to take care of me when I'm old." But I see kids out and about being obnoxious, screaming and crying and it just seems like so much work. I enjoy my freedom and I'm too selfish to want to be tied to home because of a kid.

 

[lsiberian]

"Who's going to take care of me when I'm old."

That's actually the real green solution.

 

[Rippyman]

The only thing humans are destroying is themselves.

The Earth will be around for another 4.5 billion years after we destroy ourselves.

Humans are greedy and greed lives beyond its means.

Plants and animals will continue to flourish long after humans are wiped out.

 

[lsiberian]

The only thing humans are destroying is themselves.

The Earth will be around for another 4.5 billion years after we destroy ourselves.

Humans are greedy and greed lives beyond its means.

Plants and animals will continue to flourish long after humans are wiped out.

Such doom and gloom. Why would we be wiped out? Maybe the numbers might go down, but wiped out seems unlikely.