Living through the transition from the Petroleum Age to a Sustainable Future.
Wholistic Workshops, Evening events, and Web portal supporting your transition through Information, Education, and Understanding
FAQ: What about Wind power, can't we replace the energy we get from oil with more windmills? It is undoubted that wind will play some part in the equation. However, it can't do it alone. If we, (the USA ) for instance, try to replace oil energy by building wind turbines that have a capacity factor of 30% (ie operating 24*365*0.3 = 2600 hr/yr) then we need to build power generating capacity of about 10T Kwh/2600 hr = 3.8e6 MWe of wind generating capacity. If these wind turbines are 1.5MWe turbines we need to construct 3.8e6/1.5 = 2.5 million 1.5 MWe wind turbines. (If we replace all fossil fuels with 1.5 MWe wind turbines we would need about 5.3 million wind turbines) Where could we put all these turbines? Well, N. and S. Dakota (of course I realize that this is not how we would do it) together have a total area of about 145,000 mi^2. So the turbines needed to replace just oil could fit in N and S Dakota if we put about 2.5e6/145,000 = about 17 turbines/mi^2/. Since one sq mi is 640 acres this allows about 640/17 = 38 acres per turbine. If we put all the turbines to replace all of the fossil fuels in N and S Dakota each turbine would have about 17 acres to itself. If capital costs for wind energy are about $1 per installed watt, then capital costs for wind turbine installations need to replace just oil could run to something like $3.75 trillion – a third higher than nuclear!. While we probably don't have to replace all of the fossil fuels we use with nuclear or wind (or something else), these calculations show that replacing any significant fraction of fossil fuels with alternatives will be a daunting task – but, perhaps, not impossible. Small micro generation schemes would be part of the answer. These are small generators that would generate a families' electricity or at least a proportion of it. You then have no losses due to transmission of power long distances. Part of our problem has been searching for large scale industrial solutions, ie large wind farms producing Mega watts, instead of small local solutions producing kilowatts, and local micro grids. Cuba has produced some interesting results in this respect. End
|
|
Living through the transition from the Petroleum Age to a Sustainable Future. Copyright© 2005 Living on the Cusp, all rights reserved. Articles may be copied and reproduced freely provided the authorship is acknowledged, the article is reproduced in full, and a link provided to Living on the Cusp.
Wholistic Workshops, Evening events, and Web portal supporting your transition through Information, Education, and Understanding. Our workshops and events in the UK,and this web site will tell you all you need to know, in simple, non-technical language, about, energy, ecology, ‘Peak oil', climate change, food supplies, the politics of oil and energy, economics, renewable energy, bio-fuels, population growth, sustainable economics, no growth economies, energy conservation, wind power, solar power, permaculture, and more.
