Ron Clark <[email protected]> wrote: Placing the wind systems in the ocean will substantially increase total cost > and maintenance. >
On the other hand, in most locations it greatly improves actual output. As I recall, in Northern Europe prime land land locations produce ~30% of nameplate, where North Sea installations are ~40%. The wind at sea encounters no obstructions. On trade routes it blows with remarkable consistency. That is why sailing ships by the 19th century were able to stick to schedules. Not as well as steamships, but more than you might think. We have forgotten how potent wind power was in the past. Up until 1850, every person crossing the Atlantic and every ton of freight came by wind power. That was millions of tons a year. Before the railroad, it was cheaper to ship goods from London, England to New York City than it was to ship them ~40 miles inland into the North American wilderness, with its rotten roads. Extracting oil from the North Sea takes tremendously expensive equipment. Giant drilling platforms in hazardous places. Yet they are economical. They are worth the expense. Wind farms are a lot closer to shore, and they do not require any people on board during storms. North Sea wind energy, "in the most economically accessible sites could be larger than all of Europe’s current oil and gas production put together." http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5424/ If it is worth extracting oil and gas from the sea bed, it is probably worth extracting electricity. The cost is still falling rapidly. The technology has a lot of room to improve. I recall about a decade ago estimates were that North Sea wind power could supply 4 times more electricity than Europe consumes. Since the turbine blades are now longer, that is probably more like 5 times. As I have pointed out before, if the price falls enough the electricity could be used to make synthetic liquid fuel, replacing gasoline. As I pointed out yesterday, in the U.S., North Dakota alone can produce 700 GW of electricity, which is 70% of our present capacity. ND and SD could supply all the energy we consume in North America, including liquid fuel. That's only the prime wind sites, excluding national parks, sites considered fragile, bird migration routes and so on. Those two states alone can pump out more energy than the entire Middle East does! Ditto the solar energy in Arizona. We are sitting on enormous resources, doing nothing. We forgo enormous profits. We hand over billions of dollars to our worst enemies. We complain about high costs, and we endanger thewhole planet with global warming! And for what?!? Why? Because we are stupid and we lack imagination and guts. There is no excuse! As Arthur Clarke said in 1963: "If, as is perfectly possible, we are short of energy two generations from now, it will be through our own incompetence. We will be like Stone Age men freezing to death on top of a coal bed." - Jed
