Arlo1 said:
Punx0r said:
Arlo1 said:
I you take the amount of surface area of land a nuclear power plant takes and cover it with solar you can produce more energy.
I hadn't heard this claim before and it sounded counter-intuitive. A quick google search suggests it is, indeed, wrong: https://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2015/07/13/a-book-recommendation-for-elon-musk/
Carbon counter is printing misleading info sorry any person can try to say what ever they want when they use 5% efficient panels to get their data
Carbon counter is printing misleading info sorry any person can try to say what ever they want when they use 5% efficient panels to get their data
You don't need to theorize as truth of real world examples of comparable power are very easy to bring up again thanks to wikipedia.
Just look at one of the biggest modern solar panel farms in the USA its 25km2 and only creates 125 MW average power because the sun only shines so bright and for so many hours per day.. This will be the most common style of mega solar farm in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topaz_Solar_Farm
Quote from Wikipedia "
Site area 9.5 sq mi (25 km2)
Average generation 1,100 GWh(125 MW avg. power)"
Compare that massive 25km2 size that only creates 125MW of power to a nuclear power plant.. I chose this 5,448 MW one in France right on the boarder of Germany who buy a lot of its power so that Germany can claim its all green and at the same time help prove that those easily absorbable mass media facebook memes people like to share that are rubbish.
While wikipedia doesn't list its land size it takes you you can see the google maps scale line that the side of the plant is about a mere 500meters wide (on its shortest side).
This power plant can generate 5,448 MW at anytime it wants.. (nukepower_mw / solar_farm_power_mw) so 5448mw / 125mw = 43.584
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattenom_Nuclear_Power_Plant
https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Cattenom+Nuclear+Power+Plant/@49.4175028,6.217156,4473m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47953b8f018a91b7:0x617cb301f428773a!8m2!3d49.4157857!4d6.2182709
So just comparing one of the most modern solar farms with an old nuclear power station blows the solar farm out of the water in terms of energy created by 43.5 times in a comparatively tiny foot print of land area, I guess by rough estimate its more like 100's of times more power if we accurately compare land area size? How could you possibly believe a solar farm of same size is producing more energy unless you want to believe complete utter rubbish.
On some of these wikipedia power stations they list construction costs and green power stations get murdered on these overall metrics as well.
If you look at future electric truck vehicles or Electric buses that exist today.. they have battery packs closer to the 1MWh on the horizon..
For example on the partially owned by Warren Buffet BYD ebuses they have a
547.5 kWh lithium battery pack.. http://www.byd.com/na/old/auto/60feet.html
Realistically they need to be 1,000kWh (1MWh) and that's probably only a few years or so away.. To compare to a diesel bus it needs 1MWh bus to completely crush range anxiety and that will happen eventually I am sure.
When you hit 1MW per bus its easy to see you don't get many electric buses out there charging it off a 25km2 sized solar farm before you have problems.. The Topaz Solar Farm cost $2.5 billion to build..
If you look at the list of major solar farms in the entire world about 90% don't list the actual amount of power they generate it instead has a notably empty "NA" instead, I can only assume because its embarrassingly small, way below what was originally spec'd on paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_stations
You can pick any solar farm you want.. I am trying to picking the biggest most advanced ones to help give you the best argument possible.
How about the "Solar Star" farm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star ) size quote from Wikipedia "
Site area 13 square kilometres ", this is Rolls-Royce of a solar farm as it has 1.7 million of high efficiency arrays, mounted on axis trackers to track the sun and get as much energy possible.
2015 was its best year.. Total power generated for the entire year was 1,663,593MWh or 1,663Ghw.
So 1,663,593 / 8760 = 189.9 for average MW true generation capacity of its best year on record. Give it a bit extra help and just say 190MW
So 190MW for 13 square kilometers? Any nuclear power plant starts only in GW/gigawatt generation capacity or termed 1000's of MW.
When it comes to these silly energy claims I see such memes on facebook etc and the thing I don't get about people is where is their basic smell test? Solar panels and Wind are technologies anyone can have on the roof/house yet there so great they can't afford to go off grid without spending an impractically huge amount of money.. Some how folks want to believe if its handled by the government the cost some how goes away, well it doesn't.
If you can't scale it to be cheap on your own land with subsidies and cheap subcontract labor or full DIY then it doesn't magically some how get cheaper if you put it on some one elses land by the government, this is where peoples basic skull abilities fail to function correctly.. Its just the same old Chewbacca Defense strategy again. Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clKi92j6eLE
The other basic smell test is if its all so easy why haven't private electricity companies/governments jumped all over it, in Victoria all power is delivered by multiple retail electricity providers and householders can choose to buy %100 green electricity at a premium if they want but the power companies still wont build wind mills etc without the government practically giving them the money.
We have the biggest wind farm in southern hemisphere cost $1 billion and only generates 111mw of power on average per year.. Quote "
The actual wind speed varies year-to-year, and during FY2015 the farm produced 977.9 GWh."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macarthur_Wind_Farm
This site takes up 55km2 or 5,500 ha.
You can watch this ABC video report where farmers were happy to be next to the wind farm when it was proposed but then ended up moving out when it came operational because the noise they made drove them crazy.
I am just pointing this stuff out because for the sake that not everything is as simple or as rosy as it seems.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20110725/wind/
Then you got countries like Germany quietly slowing down in their green energy goals as its getting too expensive and wasteful for them and like I said its all baloney if your just buying nuclear power from France just over the border.
http://www.dw.com/en/german-cabinet-puts-brakes-on-clean-energy-transition/a-19318942
Quote from article --->"
Last year, grid operators had to pay a billion euros for wind power capacity that went unused," Gabriel said.
...This is meant to stabilize the retail price of electricity by allowing utilities to continue to burn large quantities of cheap coal.<---
Then you got the 100,000s of birds/bats that die each year on Germany windfarms.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160708081912.htm
http://phys.org/news/2016-07-dangerous-flight-farm.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4931514/
Quote from article --->"
According to expert estimates, about 250,000 of bats sailing through the night sky are currently dying at wind turbines every year<---
Some of the biggest green energy companies that build these huge solar farms have gone bust like SunEdison, these solar farms were built as cheap as possible and had as much help as possible.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-19/sunedison-solar-smorgasbord-lures-bidders-but-none-want-it-all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunEdison
I often think about people and companies who help start the more recent green revolution like Al Gore who has been up to his neck in investments in green energy companies and find that they have had a lot of solid grounds for their motivations for movies like The Inconvenient Truth is to create uneven alarm.
I couldn't help but think that the Copenhagen Summit was more about the Vestas group based in Copenhagen trying to sell more wind turbines then actually care about changing the environment.. It worked out great for them they sold wind turbines all over the world, it looks like all wind farms in Australia use Vestas turbines.
I can say good for them but it's not so pleasant to have to pay for such stuff in electricity bills for such tiny amounts of power produced.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-29/vestas-wind-profit-beats-estimate-as-orders-surge-to-record
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference
I have read the Vestas brochures and they make for interesting reading, they aren't really accurate for amount of real power you end up with.
http://nozebra.ipapercms.dk/Vestas/Communication/Productbrochure/3MWbrochure/3MWProductBrochure/
Bill Gates is designing/funding/building advanced modern nuclear power stations for no other reason but just for you, hes got all the money he ever needs.. with his 40 billion worth of philanthropy.. but your clearly too selfish and silly to understand that.
http://terrapower.com/ <- look and read please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation
https://youtu.be/IsRlN1oDm60?t=30m37s
https://youtu.be/IsRlN1oDm60?t=34m43s
https://youtu.be/JaF-fq2Zn7I?t=12m5s
As I said before the off grid technology is there for anyone.. If you can afford to go off grid your self then that's great but I don't like seeing it being forced on people who can't afford it. The technology is here for anyone to put their money where their mouth is but mysteriously +99% don't and would rather share baloney facebook memes on energy or vote/put pressure on governments to mystically solve the problem for them which of course the fail to do.
Locally for me it's kind of sad for me to witness most folks who I visit sit inside in the cold with a hood or beanie on and be cranky and afraid about driving up their electricity bills by turning their heater on etc, when you see people sit in the cold you begin to see how less productive they are, they just kind of huddle down and don't do much, bit like how people probably live when they live in a cave.
And if your trying to produce products and compete with the rest of the world it's not going to help you this way either.. If %20 of your input costs is to produce white goods or say food produce like creating dairy milk powder, if its going to have a %20 extra energy input cost to compete then your final product prices are too expensive to compete on the global market because your competitors did it all on cheaper power.
If China has to buy 10 billion dollars worth of powered milk each year and its the exact same quality milk as a cheaper competitor I am pretty sure they going to pay just $8 billion to the cheapest producer and keep that extra $2billion for its self.. Just like anyone else there not going to care about good will that was put into the more expensive brand with green energy.
Another example was South Australia went big on Solar and Wind farms.. High priced electricity contributed to local major car manufacturers becoming unviable and their overseas owners General Motors and Mitsubishi ceased local car manufacture in South Australia after many decades of establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_South_Australia#Wind_farm_overview
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_South_Australia#Impacts
Quote from Wikipedia "
SA 2012 report by The Energy Users Association of Australia claimed that retail electricity prices in South Australia were then the third highest in the developed world behind Germany and Denmark, with prices likely to rise to become the most expensive in the near future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Motors_Australia#Cessation_of_local_production_and_corporate_restructure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden
Quote from Wikipedia "
On 11 December 2013, Holden announced that it will cease vehicle and engine production by the end of 2017
That's why I like the wikipedia site as you don't have to dig through articles you can quickly bring up and compare real world data like a massive solar farm that puts out crap all power next to a nuclear plant and see the green claims are complete fantasy baloney.. You can quickly bring up and compare real world examples of energy technologies and see how many lies there are out there..
Topaz Solar Farm 125 MW avg 25km2 size
Cattenom Nuclear Power Plant 5,448 MW