https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar/

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar

Whats Wrong With Wind and Solar

Video from Prager University Onlins

Plenty is wrong. RCW

 

[Meredith Poor + 883]

This video couldn't run for a minute before misstating material facts. Max solar capture right now is 46%. The Max for wind is about 60% - the number is correct, however, this number is what the best turbines produce now. 'Our best' at 45% is a joke.

Keyword search 'Sodium Ion Battery'. These are in production. They are made up of common elements: sodium, iron, carbon, manganese, and nitrogen, for example. They don't explode or burn, they aren't poisonous, and they don't involve exotic mining of hard to extract minerals.

The NREL solar efficiency chart shows the yields on various solar technologies. If someone claiming to be an expert ignores stuff easily found from government and vendor websites, the rest of the story is suspect - or it's bought and paid for by special interests.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

So, you are saying you know more than the Manhattan Institute and/or this professor? Good for you, if you are right. I took it at face value. 

His sources are at the bottom of the page. 

Edited January 16, 2021 by ronwagn
add

[Meredith Poor + 883]

41 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

So, you are saying you know more than the Manhattan Institute and/or this professor? Good for you, if you are right. I took it at face value. 

His sources are at the bottom of the page. 

https://www.nrel.gov/pv/cell-efficiency.html

https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine

https://natron.energy/

For starters.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

Nonrenewable materials? Fusion power destroys hydrogen and makes helium. Everything else simply converts one molecule to some other molecule. All the atoms remain the same. If it is possible to transform it in one direction, it's possible to transform it back. None of this stuff is being launched into space, or fissioned into nuclear waste. This assertion, as presented on the screen, is technically false. Perhaps the term 'materials' means silicon dioxide (sand), silver, copper, aluminum ores, or 'rare earths'.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

2000% means 20x. Of course, this results in reductions in coal mining. Coal gets burned up, so trainloads of it are hauled to power plants daily. Once rare earths are mined and refined, they're more or less retained somewhere 'forever'. The amount of mining required for rare earths extraction is probably 1/100th that needed for coal over the same time period.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

For wind, "efficiency" is not an interesting metric. For solar, "efficiency" is only interesting in exotic situations where cost is driven by area. Everywhere else, the interesting metric is the amount of energy captured per invested dollar. Who cares how much wind is not captured or how much solar is not captured, except as it affects the capital cost?  For other generators, "efficiency" is a critical metric because the fuel is expensive.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

Wind turbines may not last much longer than 20 years. Most solar panels have 25 year warranties. This has little to do with how long they actually last, it simply means their warranties last 25 years. While it's possible they might last 50 years, it's more likely that they would be replaced with more efficient cells, most likely from recycled silicon. Various companies recycle lithium ion batteries and lead acid batteries. Many lead-acid car batteries get made into bullets. When these are shot, they often end up in soil or in water bodies, where they leach into groundwater.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

2 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

For wind, "efficiency" is not an interesting metric. For solar, "efficiency" is only interesting in exotic situations where cost is driven by area. Everywhere else, the interesting metric is the amount of energy captured per invested dollar. Who cares how much wind is not captured or how much solar is not captured, except as it affects the capital cost?  For other generators, "efficiency" is a critical metric because the fuel is expensive.

Agreed. Burning a non-renewable fuel requires considerable conservation effort. Solar panels don't consume anything and don't emit anything, at least on the scale of a hydrocarbon engine or power plant.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

Production of energy from coal, natural gas, and oil require capital equipment in addition to the consumed fuel. as part of the production transport, and consumption of the fuel. The capital equipment includes mining equipment, oil and gas rigs and pipelines, rail cars, and a percentage of the rail infrastructure, trucks and a percentage of the highway infrasturucture, and coal and NG power plants. This capital infrastructure consumes material that must be mined: steel, nickel, cobalt, rock, cement, asphalt, etc. I have not seen a comparison of non-fuel infrastructure costs for the various types of power production.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

The entire presentation is hopelessly simplistic, it contains errors in fact, and it uses propaganda terms like 'magically' and 'fantasy'. There is no doubt that significant amounts of RE mineral extraction are going to be destructive. There is also no doubt that there is a lot of human exploitation, including child labor. Most Americans have no idea just how extensive third world worker exploitation is, and probably even less idea how many children are trafficked and exploited. This is just as true for smart phones, fish, shoes, cotton clothing, coffee, and chocolate. Americans have no idea how well off they are, and how much their prosperity exists on the backs of the disenfranchised in lesser developed countries.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Meredith Poor
Removed references to Koch business interests.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

From Wikipedia:

"PragerU, short for Prager University, is an American media company that creates videos on various political, economic, and philosophical topics from an American conservative perspective. The organization was co-founded by Allen Estrin and talk show host and writer Dennis Prager. The organization relies on donations, and much of its early funding came from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks.^[1][4]

PragerU is a non-profit organization but is not an academic institution and does not offer certifications or diplomas^"

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

9 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

This video couldn't run for a minute before misstating material facts. Max solar capture right now is 46%. The Max for wind is about 60% - the number is correct, however, this number is what the best turbines produce now. 'Our best' at 45% is a joke.

Keyword search 'Sodium Ion Battery'. These are in production. They are made up of common elements: sodium, iron, carbon, manganese, and nitrogen, for example. They don't explode or burn, they aren't poisonous, and they don't involve exotic mining of hard to extract minerals.

The NREL solar efficiency chart shows the yields on various solar technologies. If someone claiming to be an expert ignores stuff easily found from government and vendor websites, the rest of the story is suspect - or it's bought and paid for by special interests.

Ok, BOTH, you and PragerU use numbers which are apples and oranges and do NOT equate to what you think they do.  Nor do said numbers even matter in regards to power generation in reality

Lets start with wind since this one I 100% know.  P says 60% and 45%.  One number is ~correct(60%) and the other is an orange.  They do NOT equate to each other. 

The 60% number is Theoretical max energy you can PULL from the wind using a SINGLE turbine.  Betz limit is actually 59%, but hey, who is counting.  What is NOT said is to achieve this limit% you need a turbine which looks like: https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=ZFToeYfG&id=04A6493214A5863914D71984A00539FF09CFCC55&thid=OIP.ZFToeYfGjnbX3feqJCU0sQHaJ4&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fi.pinimg.com%2foriginals%2f40%2f53%2fdf%2f4053df7dffe16152ddba9e0ccf705388.jpg&exph=4608&expw=3456&q=old+farm+windmill&simid=608039684660005237&ck=FE0DF36622C997B4D0B31E2DA6D2BFE3&selectedIndex=0&FORM=IRPRST&idpp=overlayview&ajaxhist=0

Of course this type has horrific problems due to drag, overspeed, etc etc and at any size over a few meters in diameter is utterly impractical.  Not to mention no one gives a damn about how much theoretical power density you remove from the wind.  What everyone cares about is COST of collecting said energy at some efficiency numbers.  If ultimate power collection per square meter were ever relevant, one would place wind turbines back to back to back.  Sure, each turbine would collect less and less power as the velocity would drop off behind each subsequent turbine, but hey who is counting.  This is actually one reason that the wind boys are actually farting in the wind today as they have found out the HARD way that spacing of their wind turbines is WAY too close so power collected per area(acerage rented)keeps dropping and their ability to power civilization from said area keeps dropping.  One main reason they want the oceans.  Area, no nimby, more consistent winds, no noise limitations, which is frankly BS, as diameter increases and forces go up by RADIUS SQUARED so...🙄.

Speaking of consistent winds...

Lets look at the next number PragerU stated: 45%.... this has absolutely NOTHING to do with the 60% number.  Rather this is capacity factor.  So, for some ARBITRARY set point on some wind turbine generator nameplate, some engineer has decided for example they would ONLY place 4MW of generation capacity on said turbine and any wind velocity below this point maximum power point would attain LESS capacity factor power collection, and anything above this completely arbitrary number the energy capacity factor would be 100% until wind turbine cuts out due to overspeed problems.  Why?  $$$, not technical ability.

So, Meredith claiming 45% is BS, is correct, but also wrong as the Capacity factor is 100% site specific and arbitrarily specific to how one sets the capacity of the wind turbine to begin with. 

If the wind blows at 4MW on our theoretical turbine all the time, we would have a capacity factor of 100%,

If the wind blows for

1. 25% of the time at 4MW and
2. 25% of the time at 2MW and
3. 25% at 0 MW
4. 25% at 6MW wind potential, but only collect 4MW

What is its capacity factor... (Uh, who cares?) It collected 2.5/4 = capacity factor of 62%... Which theoretically is possible in the best wind locations and even some have stated as high as 80% should be doable in some places in the North Sea, Argentina, and the plains of the USA, Kazakstan, W. Sahara, and nowhere else in the world.  Which are VERY few and far between on land and only exist at certain latitudes on the ocean in certain portions of the ocean.

Could we create a higher capacity factor?  Sure, just reduce nameplate capacity to 2MW and its CF would be 75%... woo HOO!  Things are better now right?   No.  Total power collected is 40% lower for same cost.  = OUCH! 

What happens if one installed a 6MW generator in said turbine?  What would its capacity factor be?  (2/3 + 1/3 + 0 + 1)/4 = 50%, but variability of power to the grid massively increases

50% >> 62% right as more power is collected?  Well, not necessarily as the efficiency of said motors changes based on load, so what one actually needs are multiple pancake generators which can be stacked on same spindle which can individually be turned on all the while creating zero drag on said rotor.  No one has been able to design this, but it theoretically could come close to be reached with permanent magnet motors where the magnets are moved on a ram depending on velocity of wind... assuming one could make the motors in the first place economical over that of a gearbox design. 

So, both PragerU and Meredith are talking stupid moronic numbers which mean zilch in reality as without energy storage, or instantaneous backup, there is not much to discuss, and this is the real issue. 

$$$/W of turbine + energy storage for a reliable source of power is what counts and should be discussed as the ONLY number which counts and so far no one in the wind industry or its opponents are brave enough to state this simple truth as this number is VERY messy and fraught with problems.  Force the wind turbine boys to add energy storage and their costs explode, but energy storage for how long? And speaking of which, admitting we could do energy storage with lead acid already SHOULD WE CHOOSE to do so from the opponents perspective would well... upset the apple cart. 

Both perspectives are equally stupid, but hey, that is the world we live in.

As for PragerU/Merediths solar numbers, both are equally stupid and both utterly miss the point.  I would think Meridth normally points this out, but it is $$$/W that counts.  ... of course spread out over how many years and do we had ROI/NPV, cash basis, taxes, subsidies, etc etc.  As for efficiency squabbling, look when this video was done, they were correct then and still pretty much correct today as the theoretical overall efficiency of a SINGLE junction solar cell has not changed.  Remember example of the wind where we can add more and more turbines back to back to collect more of the wind per area?  Same thing is true of multijunction multilayer solar cells. No one GIVES a DAMN about efficiency of conversion, but rather $$$ to convert said energy.  Now if one can create a process where there is little to no cost associated with this additional layering, doping of silicon, as most of the cost is in the glass, sealing against oxygen, inverter, transportation, installation, then we have something, until then bitching about putting 2 in the place of one sounds good, for about 2 seconds and ultimately means little. 

As for batteries and blathering about sodium or sulfur etc, this ship sailed with the invention of the lead acid battery 150 years ago, or 100% with the invention of the carbon foam lead acid battery going on 30 years ago. It is a matter of $$$/W storage.  Batteries are NOT the problem and never have been for land based fixed infrastructure, but rather the cost of doing so as there are far cheaper solutions for supplying power.  Rather it is a cliche new religion that the cheaper solutions(hydrocarbons/nuclear) are evil and therefore batteries are required, but to same religious zealots, lead/arsenic/cadmium/sulfur are all nasty words.... doesn't matter that we have Megatons of the stuff sitting around and we have to do something with the poisonous junk anyways... their religion says it is bad and therefore it will go AWAY with the raising of their voice!

Edited January 16, 2021 by footeab@yahoo.com

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

Well, ^^^ that is a fantastic breakdown of information, even a lay person can understand.  Thanks for sharing.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

9 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

I have not seen a comparison of non-fuel infrastructure costs for the various types of power production.

The problem with "infrastructure costs" is that it is not merely the cost in dollars out of pocket to put in that infrastructure.  There is also the destruction of the natural environment, which has considerable money value and incredible social value.

To illustrate, I point to the experience of Vermont and the wind-machine industry.  Various Federal subsidies, when coupled with purchased-power agreements, led to large-scale installation of wind machines.  The problem is that the "best wind" is at the top of the mountain ridge-lines, which in Vermont run at about 2,500 feet elevation.  the area above 2,000 feet (above sea level) is a fragile and quite ecologically sensitive nature, and gets destroyed in the construction of wind installations.  Those machines have gigantic blades that have to be trucked up to site, and to do that a raodway with a maximum grade of 4% has to be constructed, with quite expanded curves, to handle the long-boom trucks and gigantic cranes needed to get the machinery and blades and towers up the mountain.  So a machine installed at the 2500-ft level first needs a road built effectively to Interstate standards running up the side of that mountain, and that road could be as much as seven miles long.  The excavation entails stripping the soil, blasting away the rock, and then vast amounts of gravel fill, compacted to hold the loads. 

At that point staggering amounts of concrete is trucked up to pour the base, which is typically over fifteen feet thick, sometimes 30 feet thick, and perhaps a hundred feet square.  That is a lot of concrete, and after that wind machine has eclipsed its useful life it is not going to be removed.  Then the big trucks for the cranes are brought in, and the crane assembled on its own concrete pads, including for the outriggers.  Then the tower sections are trucked up, then the generator nacelle, and finally the extra-long blades that get attached to the nacelle. 

There is no effort made to restore the terrain of that road cut, and the fragile soils get washed away to plug up the streams below, ruining the trout fishing of course.  Whatever lives up there in that habitat no longer has any habitat, so it becomes an ecological desert. 

Now the reason the NY developers came to Vermont is because most Vermonters are not educated in either physics or in environmental studies and also because they are stupid.  The stupidity lies with the class of people that end up running for political office, typically local shopkeepers and sometimes farmers.  They invited the New Yorkers in to go  exploit the State with the push of the eco-warriors that demand "green energy," but those messianic warriors are also quite stupid and you cannot tell them anything, it is a religion to them.  The New Yorkers set up syndicates in which they are the General partners and put up no cash, and the investors are the Limited Partners and they put up the cash and take the risk.  When the project is done, the Feds cut them a tax-investment credit of 20% of the project cost, so the General partners walk away with $20 million tax-free cash for themselves and the limited partners get their cash back plus lots of extra cash from the power purchase agreement where they sell that power over the next 20 years under take-or-pay contracts into the grid.  Those guys all get quite rich, the locals get their ridge-lines wrecked, and the poorer classes in Vermont (the "hill people," typically, plus the urban poor) get to pay exorbitant charges for their electricity, which is peachy keen for the eco-warriors because they think that the planet is best served with very expensive electricity so that people will use less of it (preferably, none at all). 

After enough of this folly under the rather ill-informed and uneducated previous Governor, the new Governor has flatly refused to allow any Purpa plant to be built and there are zero wind machines built since his term started.  Good for him.  I like that guy. 

[Guy Daley + 49]

3 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

To illustrate, I point to the experience of Vermont and the wind-machine industry.  Various Federal subsidies, when coupled with purchased-power agreements, led to large-scale installation of wind machines.  The problem is that the "best wind" is at the top of the mountain ridge-lines, which in Vermont run at about 2,500 feet elevation.  the area above 2,000 feet (above sea level) is a fragile and quite ecologically sensitive nature, and gets destroyed in the construction of wind installations.  Those machines have gigantic blades that have to be trucked up to site, and to do that a raodway with a maximum grade of 4% has to be constructed, with quite expanded curves, to handle the long-boom trucks and gigantic cranes needed to get the machinery and blades and towers up the mountain.  So a machine installed at the 2500-ft level first needs a road built effectively to Interstate standards running up the side of that mountain, and that road could be as much as seven miles long.  The excavation entails stripping the soil, blasting away the rock, and then vast amounts of gravel fill, compacted to hold the loads. 

 

I agree wholeheartedly.  Wind turbines are ideal for a lot of places but on a forested ridgeline - that's idiotic.  Here in Kansas they plant them in the middle of ag fields, grow crops underneath and have cows grazing.  Perfect multiuse.  Sidebar - It is a total myth and lie that wind turbines are killing birds.  How do I know?  Because I've walked beneath enough wind turbines and never found a single dead bird.  Of course you can figure that out without looking for bird corpses underneath the turbines.  If birds can take flight and avoid a car traveling 70 mph, they would have absolutely no difficulty avoiding a turbine blade.  Birds do not become blind just because they fly near a turbine and of course, most bird flight is either above or below the turbines.  Migrating birds fly much higher than the turbine. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 minute ago, Guy Daley said:

Migrating birds fly much higher than the turbine. 

Mostly true, Guy.   The issue in Vermont is that those infernal machines are on the ridgelines.  So you have large birds, typically bald eagles, that ride the pressure waves up over the ridge and smack into the blades, which at the tips are travelling just about at the speed of sound - much faster than a bird can sense and detour around.   The machines also kill an extraordinary number of bats.  That seems to be a big problem in Pennsylvania. 

Just guessing, much smaller machines that have much lower tip speeds are likely to be less of a problem for birds.  You would likely need to get down to the 150 KW range with blades down to 40 feet or so.  Nobody is considering such small machines these days.  Those gigantic machines with 160-foot blades seem to be the problem.  Plus, common sense says don't put them up  where the eagles nest!

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

smack into the blades, which at the tips are travelling just about at the speed of sound - much faster than a bird can sense and detour around.

🙄  Radial force on a whirling object is what again?  Oh yea, velocity squared. 

What mach number does compression start becoming dominant and erosion due to rain, ice, dust?  Oh yea, 0.2. So, no one goes above 0.3 or so for drag reasons and cruise is not a consideration here.  Sure, you might find a turbine hit 0.35 as it is shutting down, but since these operate down where it rains all the time, no one will go higher as 1) destroy the blades and 2) the faster RPM requires an ever THINNER airfoil with ever LOWER CL, and since bending moment and rigidity are a problem on long blades, this is just a big NO. 

So, why do large turbines spin lower RPM... the above reasons.  End result Tip speed of the VERY large turbines for all practical purposes is the exact same as the medium sized turbines and the small turbines and they do not go above Mach 0.3.  Or ~200knots.  Where is the center of lift on said blade?  2/3 out which just happens to hit the sweet spot of Mach 0.2.... EDIT: Actual center of lift is roughly 0.73 of blade length due to hub loses.  A blade lift diagram looks like a triangle if you graph it out.  Center of a triangle is 1/3 its base/height as seen from its 90 degree corner.

Edited January 16, 2021 by footeab@yahoo.com

[NickW + 2,714]

14 hours ago, ronwagn said:

So, you are saying you know more than the Manhattan Institute and/or this professor? Good for you, if you are right. I took it at face value. 

His sources are at the bottom of the page. 

Its a nonsense article designed for people with no ability to critic what they hear

All the metals on a wind turbine are recyclable

The fibre glass  blades have potential reuses but in most cases have utility as a fuel (brick, cement plants). There is someone repurposing them as potential bridge spans. 

Theoretically you can dig up the concrete but its probably not worth the effort. Calcium Carbonate is hardly a supply limited resource. 

Most of a solar panel can be recycled and the predominant materials are Aluminium (the most common metal on earth) and glass which is made from sand. The glass can be recycled or used as road base. 

Wind turbines generally last longer than 20 years. Likewise for solar. 

The 60% max efficiency is just a nonsense red herring statement. The available resource is many times that of the entire planets energy needs. The global resource is something like 11 million TWH Likewise similar arguments for solar. 

Edited January 16, 2021 by NickW

[NickW + 2,714]

14 hours ago, ronwagn said:

So, you are saying you know more than the Manhattan Institute and/or this professor? Good for you, if you are right. I took it at face value. 

His sources are at the bottom of the page. 

You say you know more than the 97% consensus of scientists that accept AGW theory. 

[NickW + 2,714]

16 hours ago, ronwagn said:

https://www.prageru.com/video/whats-wrong-with-wind-and-solar

Whats Wrong With Wind and Solar

Video from Prager University Onlins

Plenty is wrong. RCW

 

The article starts with a strawman statement that environmentalists are arguing for a society run completely on solar / wind & batteries. 

Where is such an argument made? 

For sure solar and wind would be a major part of a fully renewables based economy but would also include

• Biogas
• Biomass
• Waste to energy
• Geothermal
• Hydro
• Tidal
• Wave (if its developed)

In terms of storage Lithium batteries are not really appropriate and are better purposed as vehicle batteries where weigh is an issue. I know Musk has built several demo plants. Lithium will be used but in most cases in the form of repurposed vehicle batteries

As Meredith points out Sodium Ion batteries are available. No shortage of Sodium. There is 10Kg in every m3 of seawater. There are other options such as Vanadium flow

In any case Hydro and pump storage will be the main energy store mechanisms

Other possibilities include compressed air, weights on cables in mine shafts, rail on hills type mechanisms. 

Interconnectors help address intermittency

Plus chemical energy - H2 and Ammonia

Many pragmatic environmentalists accept nuclear will play a part along with some natural gas. 

 

[NickW + 2,714]

15 hours ago, ronwagn said:

So, you are saying you know more than the Manhattan Institute and/or this professor? Good for you, if you are right. I took it at face value. 

His sources are at the bottom of the page. 

The Manhattan Institute is not a University - its a think tank

PragerU is not a University, let alone a research Uni. Its an online Media Organisation

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

54 minutes ago, NickW said:

In terms of storage Lithium batteries are not really appropriate and are better purposed as vehicle batteries where weigh is an issue. I know Musk has built several demo plants. Lithium will be used but in most cases in the form of repurposed vehicle batteries

Li-ion is currently dominates for home-scale and utility-scale fixed batteries, but this is because Tesla/Panasonic (and then others) built huge battery factories for car batteries in anticipation of future EV demand. They needed an outlet for the extra batteries, so they developed the fixed batteries employing the same Li-ion cells used for EVs. So "repurposed" in the broad sense, not so much "repurposed" second-hand EV batteries. The economies of scale driven by EVs make the li-ion batteries cost-effective. Now that there are validated large markets for fixed utility-scale and home batteries, it is worth the investment in R&D and factory build-out to pursue a battery that is more cost-effective for fixed applications, but it will have to be clearly superior to displace the entrenched Li-ion, much as "superior" technologies like turbines and Wankels failed to displace the piston ICE.

If a non-lithium battery (e.g., Na-ion) displaces Li-ion, then all of those current li-ion fixed batteries can be recycled to extract their lithium to make EV batteries when they reach end-of-life.

[Meredith Poor + 883]

11 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Ok, BOTH, you and PragerU use numbers which are apples and oranges and do NOT equate to what you think they do.  Nor do said numbers even matter in regards to power generation in reality

Your analysis makes a perfect illustration of the stretchability in all these numbers. Technical people understand this stuff. Politicians and soccer moms might not quite get it.

[Richard D + 86]

An anemometer could be adapted as the design of a vertical-axis wind turbine. They would not have to turn into the wind and would not not be so visually intrusive. Also,the generator could be at ground level,allowing the machine to be larger. The economies of scale would allow less copper to be used,per unit of generating capacity. The increasing need for copper in the coming decade has seen few plans for new mines,whereas the demand for cobalt and nickel has produced much exploration of laterite deposits in Australia.