On Jul 23, 9:21*am, dpb wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:51:06 -0500, dpb wrote:

ransley wrote:
...
* *Did you know Germany has a *plan to be 30% solar by 2030 and will
beat that time frame, its plan IS working. We have NO PLAN.
I've seen nothing on anything other than installed capacity, nothing
about what actual consumption percentages are. *Assuming a summer day of
(say) 15 daylight hours, 30% capacity if all online would translate to
20% maximum on average and, of course, essentially 0% for the other
9hrs. *This only gets worse in winter. *Meanwhile, standby generation of
some other form has to be there for the load.

And, while making some pacification of the Greens, the installation of
the solar they have is made possible only by very heavily subsidizing same.

Solar power does not have to be a total solution to the entire problem in order
to be a huge help. ...

The point was that it isn't as much a major solution as the other poster
seems to think...and the need for maintaining alternate generation
capacity when either solar or wind _aren't_ available as they simply are
not reliable sources makes them expensive. *They're a piece, yes, but
not nearly the panacea many wish them to be.


It seems it's T Boone Pickens major solution. He wants to install
what he estimates to cost $1 trillion in wind power, plus billions
more in distribution infrastructure to replace natural gas used for
electricity production. That would then allow the natural gas to be
used to power cars. And after all that, if you read far enough, it
eliminates 1/3 of our oil imports?

IMO, it's a pretty hair brained scheme, even assuming the facts and
costs as Pickens states them.







BTW - I'm currently looking into coverting my home heating to Geo-Thermal.

...
Did that almost 15 years ago. *As compared to solar/wind, it's a very
effective solution as it doesn't suffer the vagaries of wind nor does it
go away at night when the sun goes down.

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