SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Nine gigawatts of wind turbines were added last year in the US:
Earlier this year in the US, energy generation from wind, solar, and hydroelectric dams combined to top coal generation for over two months straight. This was the product of spring peaks in renewable generation and reduced electrical demand during lockdowns, but those events were layered on top of coal's continuing decline and the long-term growth of renewables. A new report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory looks back at 2019—what is now known as the Before Times—to tally up year-end totals for the wind industry.
[...] a little over nine gigawatts of wind capacity was added last year—slightly more than in each of the four previous years. Wind accounts for about one-third of all new generation added in 2019, and it ticked up to seven percent of all electricity generated in the US.
[...] The trend toward bigger wind turbines continued, with the average capacity of a turbine built last year reaching 2.55 megawatts. The height of the tower on which the turbine sits has risen over time—now averaging 90 meters—but the bigger factor is longer blades. Average rotor diameter was 120 meters, up from closer to 80 meters a decade ago.
[...] Costs, meanwhile, continue to tick down from a 2010 peak, reaching about $850 per kilowatt for turbines and $1,400 per kilowatt on the project scale. That brings the average cost of electricity produced from wind to $36 per megawatt-hour. Wind has maintained its cost lead over natural gas electricity, although solar electricity has caught up in the last few years.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @10:09AM (3 children)
50 US coal power plants shut under Trump
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-coal-power-trump.html [phys.org]
False promises and no understanding of economy. Trump!
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:10PM (2 children)
Maybe he isn't as dumb as he seems.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:47PM
....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGbZ84PqHgI [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Monday August 31 2020, @05:15PM
He thinks windmills (or the sound from them) causes cancer.
He may not seem as dumb as he actually is because he has people helping him to not look as dumb as he is.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:16PM
That's enough to power 7.438 delorians !
(Score: 1, Informative) by HammeredGlass on Monday August 31 2020, @01:20PM (1 child)
for being out of service life and they can't be recycled or easily reduced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:30PM
Oh noes. Better dig up some coal.
(Score: 4, Informative) by looorg on Monday August 31 2020, @01:38PM (4 children)
Trying to gather how much adding 9GW of power would be compared to the total generation and usage. I was actually expecting to see Nuclear being higher, somewhat surprised that the country still seems to be highly depending on Coal and Gas, also I was expecting a lot more hydro-electrical power. Non-hydro-electric renewable energy sources are just about 10% of the total generation. Natural gas in the top with 38% - coal 23% - nuclear 20% - renewable 17% (7% hydro, 10% all non-hydro) - petroleum 1% (2019)
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php [eia.gov]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Monday August 31 2020, @04:20PM (3 children)
Nuclear is a workhorse. NYC gets 1/3 of its power from Indian Point up the Hudson. I am not a nuclear booster per se, but they have made major strides with recycling fuel rods so it seems like it should be a greater part of the mix. Coal and gas should be phased out as quickly as possible. For residential use, solar panels and other renewables like micro-hydro and wind are what I prefer because it removes dependence on the grid, but factories and commercial usage will probably always need grid ties.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @05:17PM
yes. i want a small solar+hydrogen power plant for my house that costs $5-10k.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @06:57PM (1 child)
Nukes generate gigawatts of electricity day in, day out, night or day, while emitting ZERO carbon dioxide.
Why hell aren't we building MORE?
The waste issue is a non-issue with fuel reprocessing.
If you truly care about global warming, nukes have to be one of the cornerstones.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 02 2020, @03:19PM
Popular misconception, and a great example of why the news media bothers me- they NEVER tell the whole story. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” ― Mark Twain
The Three Mile Island accident of 1979 forever changed the public's perception of nuclear power. NEVER have I seen an article about how nuclear power was made safer after that.
You know how I know? I work for a company that made safety monitoring systems and sensors. When I met him a few years ago, the company owner's comment to me was "if they had used our systems, you would never have heard of Three Mile Island."
And it isn't technology that was developed after the fact- it just wasn't required at the time.
All that said, there are many problems. These people make very good points: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/nuclear-delusions/ [greenpeace.org]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @01:54PM
Wind in a particularly good year was 7% of power generation. Not impressed. I am also not that impressed by the percentage growth figures because any increase from a small starting point can look impressive when measured that way. The catch is: can it continue to grow at that pace? The factors limiting wind's ultimate potential are: 1/ Not enough suitable sites to power more than a small fraction of the country's needs. In this sense, it is limited in the same way hydroelectric power is. 2/ Wind power is inherently intermittent and not reliable. Without reliable sources like gas or coal or nuclear to back up the power demand when the wind doesn't blow, wind power cannot exist in practicality.
(Score: 2) by bart on Monday August 31 2020, @04:23PM (8 children)
And it becomes ca 2GW, or about 2 nuclear plants. On top of that, we still need the conventional plants in case the wind doesn't blow (or blows too hard). And for that we mess up the landscape on a massive scale.
No, I don't like wind energy. It's a 17th century solution to a 21st century problem.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Monday August 31 2020, @04:32PM (6 children)
As for the century, what do you make of the wheel as an invention?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @05:28PM (5 children)
You are bad at arithmetic. As a matter of fact, I'll bet you have never even DONE the arithmetic.
Wind power is but a mousefart compared to what nuclear, gas, or coal can produce. You need vast areas covered by windmills to still not equal what one good traditional power plant provides. Even then, you still have the issue that sometimes the wind doesn't blow. What then? Either people are without power, or else they rely on gas, nuke, or coal plants to take up the slack.
You don't have to take my word for it: look at California and their rolling blackouts. You might bring up Germany as a counterexample, but when their green power quits on them, they buy power from the neighboring countries who are generating with traditional power sources. We can't be completely solar and wind. Traditional power sources are dependable and necessary to do the job when green quits.
(Score: 3, Touché) by jimtheowl on Monday August 31 2020, @09:03PM (4 children)
You are arguing statements that I did not make, so you are bad at honesty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2020, @11:25PM (3 children)
OK, so we agree on the point that we will need some non-renewable energy sources in the mix. On to your other point then about established energy producers not liking lowered profits from the new renewable sources. Are you going to deny that renewables got their start (profitability) because of govt subsidies compared to the incumbents? I hear now that some renewables may be cheap enough that they no longer need the subsudies that have kept them competitive. Well, there would still be the laws that require X percentage of electricity be generated by renewables, and also the lack of reliability guarantees on renewable electrical generation because it is impossible for renewables to meet them. No, I don't think liberal economics is responsible for the success of renewables *generally speaking.*
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:39AM (1 child)
The oil industry receives about $20 billion in subsidies per year. Subsidies are not what is making renewables competitive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @02:07AM
$1,020B more like when you factor in geopolitical overheads.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday September 01 2020, @01:06PM
You are arguing with yourself about a bunch of bullshit. No one cares about the role of "liberal economics" in the success of renewable... *generally speaking*.
(Score: 1) by chr on Monday August 31 2020, @08:45PM
Do you have a reference for the 20% capacity factor?
For US wind in 2019, it's more like 34.8% according to [1]. A wind farm can certainly have a higher capacity factor than that, e.g. 48% for the danish wind farm Horns Rev 2 (measured over seven years).
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b, [eia.gov] accessed 2020-08-31
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Wind_farm, [wikipedia.org] accessed 2020-08-31
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday August 31 2020, @05:13PM
Trump's war on windmills continues [cnn.com]
We need to save Clean Coal.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday August 31 2020, @09:38PM (1 child)
Well, did a wind powered boat bring these turbines from china? Did a wind powered truck haul it down the road? Did a wind powered crane put it together? Doesn't really seem sustainable without a petroleum based backend. It's not a long term solution to our energy needs either. We would have to go backwards with this technology. No more cargo ships, no more cargo/passenger planes, no more exploration of space. We just need an alternative fuel for our combustion engines. Or something compact like nuclear.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2020, @02:08AM
I'm pretty sure the first oil well wasn't drilled using a oil generator. So... oil, meh. Can't sustain itself.