Renewable energy stance wishful thinking
Your editorial of Nov. 7 touching on renewable energy needs clarity. Technology and physics unfortunately do not bend to political wishful thinking.
The distributive energy systems (wind and solar power) proposed to replace our conventional power plants will require enormous energy storage mechanisms yet to be invented to succeed. The grid is not a storage device. It is like a highway for electrons and not for storing electrical energy. When you turn on your light bulb, the electrical energy is produced just a fraction of a second or so at a power plant connected to the grid. We need to understand this clearly to accept the limitations of solar and wind power. So, the conventional power plants cannot be shut down as wind and solar power come on line. On the other hand, we need to install equivalent conventional production capacity for every MW capacity of solar and wind power plant.
The second problem with the solar and wind power plants is that their production rate is not controllable. Solar power is dependent on availability of solar energy during clear days and latitude; wind power dependent on a band of wind speed, between minimum and maximum values. That means conventional power plants must be held on spinning reserves all the time, as they must be ready to be on line with power when the renewable power production goes down due to poor conditions.
The distributive power plant will require large surface area to produce power for part of the time. Arizona Power is installing a solar collector based, 260MW power plant in Arizona. It will require 3 square miles of collectors to produce that power most of the day time. Rancho Seco nuclear power plant of 900MW capacity in California was shut down and converted into a solar power plant of 4MW, illustrating the futility of converting our power needs to a distributive system.
Germany, who is pioneering wind power plants, is now looking to install a large number of coal fired plants because it is approaching power shortage in Germany. Wind and solar may have a place but cannot compete with the concentrated sources of power of fossil and nuclear.
Art Gopalan
Hampton
11 November 2008
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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