Arkansas Blog

I don't know where the payoff is for NYT but the article is bullshit. If my day were not full enough I would rebutt that foolishness point by point. One thing about oil, when it spills it keeps on giving for decades and when it is burned for energy it keeps building and building in our atmosphere. Wind generation is not a REPLACEMENT for traditional sources but part of an integrated approach to wean us from fossil fuels.

I wish you or someone would, eLwood. The "long distances on high voltage lines" alone is a specious comment. For example, much of the wind energy generated in Texas originates on ridges in the back of beyond, down toward Big Bend, and honey, they ain't nobody to speak of down there for hundreds of miles. Tell me those few folks consume all the energy those wind farms generate. Then tell me that the population centers in northern Europe and Scandinavia are are even more scattered than in southwest Texas.
No doubt there are drawbacks including power not generated on demand -- sure, wind blows when it blows -- but, according to the article, at least one entity is able to surmount that. The drawback that I see in the example given is the use of wind power to pump groundwaterthrough a water generating unit. If they can figure out how to use a source other than groundwater, that might work in a lot of places.

can energy not be stored in batteries and moved to a different location or transmitted over wires to where an electric companied is? movement of power seems to not have been a problem before why has it become a problem now? i am not an engineer so i am way out of my area of expertise so i may be missing something but storing energy should not be so tough.

During the back-to-the-land movement, circa 1971- I knew a few well-off hipsters who built homes in Madison and Newton Counties which operated solely from wind generators. They used a series of storage batteries. The initial investments were expensive but were recaptured within 7-8 years.
Two of them used advanced windmills designed and made in Germany. One used his own design. The German made machines worked flawlessly.

I didn't see a comparison of resistance loss from gas, coal, hydroelectric generation lines to wind-generated transmission. It's the same. Beaver Dam in NWA generates electricity which is transmitted to Tulsa, OK.

There was a UA physicist who was nearing a discovery on "zero resistance" material. I wonder how long we must wait for that one? If one fifth the money pissed away to get Iraq's oil were used for research on zero resistance materials we would save more in a one year than the research cost.
Our leaders are behaving like anti-Christ every day. I don't expect much from them.
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Max's clear vision of renewable, non-polluting energy sources is clouded by his hate of corporate incentives, eveidenced in the last few weeks with his rails against such programs. Enough already.

ARK. BLOG: I'm all for wind energy. But I thought the article raised some interesting points about its limitations. And, as in most things, I don't see why Little Rock taxpayers should pay to build windfarms in Texas.

It's good to see that some people out there are realizing the limitations of these technologies, as I have tried to tell you in threads past over the fulton coal plant episode. Wind and solar energy are poor means of producing electricity.

The coal plant in fulton will produce 600 megawatts of electricity at 500,000 volts.

To get the equivalent MW output of that plant with solar panels and you used G.E.'s
GEPVp-200-MS panels you'd need about a million of them, and it would take about a thousand acres of Arkansas land to hold all of them. And that would still only produce the power one third of the daylight hours at only 26 volts (line voltage is 500KV or 5000,000 volts). And that's if it wasn't cloudy. Then of course there's the batteries, which are pretty bad for the environment themselves.

The wind farms would need 2.5 acres per wind turbine if you used G.E.'s 1.5 MW land wind turbines. That means to get enough MW to cover what the coal burner would produce we'd need about a thousand acres to fit the 400 wind turbines on. Plus the wind turbines are only about 30 percent duty, which means they would only work thirty percent of the time. And that's only if we had prevailing 27 mph winds to sustain them. Which we all know, in Arkansas is a pipe dream.

So are wind and solar energy a viable replacement for current technology ? I would have to say no. People don't understand the limitations of these technologies, it looks good on paper but in real life the best you could hope for is supplementing it.

I wonder what the response from environkooks in Arkansas such as the Arkansas Times and the Sierra Club would say when they saw protected swamp land or some other state park like pinnacle mountain covered in solar panels or wind turbines ? Or what they would say when we started seeing heaps of dead ducks and other birds piled at the base of these wind turbines ?Or when one of these turbine or solar panel farms obstructed their scenic view of the Arkansas river, I bet it wouldn't take long before the NIMBY's kicked in.

Plus don't forget that all these technologies are produced by plants which burn conventional fuels, and also use conventional fuels to recycle with.

More at the link.

Ah, so it's all about "we HAVE to continue poisoning ourselves for energy" instead of alternatives and efficiency, right CJ?

What about innovation? If we invest more in innovation, and less in fossil fuels, we would actually get more happening. We DON'T have to keep on keeping on.

Oh, and by the way, I would MUCH rather see windmills and solar panels that nuclear or coal plants.

The bit about the ducks is silly too. That problem with birds was solved some time ago.

I think the obvious point in all this is that the coal plant gets more megawatts per acre than any other available technology without all the security and environmental problems. That is the point.

I guess Max had rather see another chicken processing plant locate to Central Arkansas rather than a high tech new business. Maybe Max could get the downtown gang to extend the trolly folly out to the new plant.

I guess Max had rather see another chicken processing plant locate to Central Arkansas rather than a high tech new business. Maybe Max could get the downtown gang to extend the trolly folly out to the new plant.