Quote from Zephir_AWT

Where wind plants should generate money for their construction and recycling under such a situation? They're loss making project from their very beginning.

I would delete some of your outdated information. In the worst case blades are land filled and the tower is reused for the next blades. I hope you know the costs for land filling... But today they are recycles as we did post some weeks ago and you obviously did not read.

It is obvious that generation 1,2 of the wind mills were not the best solutions and the towers are not high enough and now will be scrapped. The energy to be harvested strongly depends on height of a tower. Today's towers do harvest a factor of two more energy by blade area covered. The biggest mills are now > 10MW compared to the old 1 ..1.5 MW.

The next step is to convert excess wind current into fuel cell Hydrogen or Methanol to avoid the negative current prices during stormy weather. I hope you do understand that the next step of grid stabilization is deploying fuel cells as already has been done by Japan. There is absolutely no need for old coal burners.

I hope you can change your mind into a prospective thinking mode and in future do avoid to bore us with outdated information.

Quote from rubycarat

Thank you LeBob. The money rant is filled with options, all for transistional living arrangements. I guess I am always thinking what's the "ultimate"? Ultimately, with nearly-free energy, many of us will not need money at all. A couple hundred years (if we make it that long), with replicator technology, we have an option to be really free. An extreme view, but the extreme future is usually where my head is at.

The loss of natural systems and wildlife is a tragedy that humans have yet realize is our greatest crime. New energy shouldn't have any part of that destruction but should seek to end it.

I tend to believe perpose, goal achievement and communal belonging are what motivate individual humans in society. It wouldn't work like we think of money now, wouldn't be like a debt driven centralized fiat currency. Contrarily it would function like a universal stable trading commodity with digital/online equivalency and practical energetic/technological value as well. I think on a global scale while respecting freewill, stable metal based international blockchains could help level the playing field. Scarcity will exist just way less with cheap clean decentralised energy and RT superconductors. The main point was no more centralised money printing behemoths. Let's say we peg the value to pressious metals including nickel, if industries want a stimulus package you would need to go mining NE asteroids and the moon or operate metal recycling plants.

True value comes from three categories: materials percieved/technical value, informational value, and usable energetic/power density value.

Freedom doesn't mean we can have whatever we want with zero effort, it simply is lowering and simplifying boundaries so people can live comfortably semi-independant, doing what gives them purpose. We will always have careers and life works that motivate us and have some sustaining reward. Maybe I'm just green, but retirement or a jobless society with zero personal possessions or tradeable value creeps me out. With very cheap (not free) energy and a decentralised metal stabilized cryptocurrency you could have even a psuedo-libertarian republic where every citizen gets food, shelter, and open access to foundational knowledge. Still with a lively free market, a flexible corporate world and people profiting fairly.

https://cointelegraph.com/news…s-metals-how-do-they-work

https://www.coindesk.com/meet-…metal-backed-crypto-token

Something like that but decentralised and backed by all the prescious metals, nickel cause it's energetic potencial along with being relatively common is valuable.

Quote from rubycarat

If and when zero point energy is available, there will be no need for a power grid. The effort will be devoted to engineering devices. However, it is unlikely that any company could have a monopoly. Also, with that almost free Entergy, the cost would seem negligible. Breakthrough energy is revolutionary because it will destroy the current (old) systems between energy and economy. The Internet didn't "evolve" from Bell Telephone, it subsumed it, and is all but unrecognizable to what it was.

Doubt that will be a thing, but if we start fully utilising hydrogen electromagnetically... Similar effect but realistic.

Quote from rubycarat

If and when zero point energy is available, there will be no need for a power grid.

The "if" is key as dreams will not save our planet! 40 years ago all energy managers I talked with had the dream that today we will have clean fusion energy...These folks did not take any action to reduce fossil fuel spending with this excuse in hands!

Now where the planet is almost destroyed sea level is raising 1cm/year almost the same people will say you: I won't help anyway why doing something positive? Can you think that one angry scientist in a bio lab today is enough to end such dreams? It, just by "bad" luck, did not work out, because up to 60% already had immunity. But next time?

The largest Chinese battery maker announced 90$/kwh available soon. This will make many houses completely independent and will allow to build much smaller local grids as today the grid in total wastes 20% of all electric energy. For electric cars it's even better. They will be much cheaper than carbon fuel cars.

In the mean time I suggest that everybody should try to reduce its power consumption. But fat man buy fat cars and cool big houses even if just the dogs are at home...

As a US citizen I would ask all Senators, congress man. What do you drive/fly? How do you heat/cool your house/apartment? Not only black lives do matter our all live is far more important and it matters how much energy you spoil. How much rain-forest we allow the Black-rock and other investors to cash in!

These folks sell the destruction of our planet as green investment! Bio-fuel!

Quote from Wyttenbach

The next step is to convert excess wind current into fuel cell Hydrogen or Methanol to avoid the negative current prices during stormy weather.

Or store the energy with batteries. They are getting much cheaper, partly because of the electric car market.

If cheaper denser batteries like what Tesla is rumored to be revealing this year become mainstream does conventional hydrogen valence chemistry make cost/efficiency sense for energy storage and transport? Only as preparation for a hole different cool level of hydrogen mediated energy density. An energy source and energy storage are different. Some approaches can put either on the table.

Quote from JedRothwell

Or store the energy with batteries. They are getting much cheaper, partly because of the electric car market.

I haven't weighed in much on this thread, but I do think that the combination of solar/wind generation with battery storage is the most exciting (or at least hyped) thing going on in the world of solar and wind energy these days.

Either this will take off and become the next big thing or it will be a typical overhyped green energy solution and everyone will lose their shirts in a couple of years. The key is for a battery system to store 1MW for 150 hours. That's the holy grail benchmark-wise. Form Energy, backed by Bill Gates (which everyone here loves) claims they may have done it much sooner than expected with their aqueous air battery system - link below. They are planning to have their first project on-line in 2023. If they pull this off it will be a huge deal for solar/wind.

Just Google Utility Battery Storage Projects and you will see dozens of them going up all over the world.

https://www.greentechmedia.com…heights-150-hour-duration

Here is an article comparing Form and Tesla with their lithium ion batteries

https://cleantechnica.com/2020…r-grid-storage-dominance/

Quote from Deleo

I haven't weighed in much on this thread, but I do think that the combination of solar/wind generation with battery storage is the most exciting (or at least hyped) thing going on in the world of solar and wind energy these days.

Either this will take off and become the next big thing or it will be a typical overhyped green energy solution and everyone will lose their shirts in a couple of years. The key is for a battery system to store 1MW for 150 hours. That's the holy grail benchmark-wise. Form Energy, backed by Bill Gates (which everyone here loves) claims they may have done it much sooner than expected with their aqueous air battery system - link below. They are planning to have their first project on-line in 2023. If they pull this off it will be a huge deal for solar/wind.

Just Google Utility Battery Storage Projects and you will see dozens of them going up all over the world.

https://www.greentechmedia.com…heights-150-hour-duration

Here is an article comparing Form and Tesla with their lithium ion batteries

https://cleantechnica.com/2020…r-grid-storage-dominance/

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The technology/elements available in current, lab confined, integrated microchips and/or batteries could easily turn battery/fuelcell/chip like devices into a pico-chemical power source. The reason why a new stage of atomic inner chemistry is more exiting than regular fusion is it is reversible in specific settings and has exothermic and endothermic pathways. It isn't just about raw energy density but productive human manipulation of said energy. So using molten salt reactors, geothermal, hydro and solar thermal/electric generation in intense energy concentrations you could have rechargable metals releasing hydrogen and cooling things where it's hard to mine/trade satisfactory elements. keep in mind these compounds would be quite useful themselves as "waste". Most practical if what Mills and others are saying about water/hydrogen plasma based systems with mono-elemental dense hydrides pans out. You could have systems in turbojets, rockets and furnaces that have thermal properties currently unheard of, dorm room sized flashfreezing wireless deep freezers?!

And theoretically an energy source, due to the environmental virgin metal/hydrogen sources, is also a reversible uber high density energy storage medium on the heV - keV scale. Haven't there been LENR experiments when parts of the apparatus frost over or are extremely cold after the experiment? It's possible that would be due to hydrino hydrides and metal pico-hydrides endothermically absorbing ambient energy due to whatever conditions are there. Have heard whispering of endothermic low energy nuclear reactions. Scientifically this sounds most likely and realistic if the phenomina is mainly electromagnetic with original nuclei remaining intact like chemical phenomina, but a much closer equilibrium.

This is a great way to look at U.S. electric power generation data:

EIA Electricity data browser

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/

Quote from JedRothwell

This is a great way to look at U.S. electric power generation data:

EIA Electricity data browser

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/

Nice,

So, in March 2020, solar+wind delivered 13% of US consumption.

And offshore wind will take this to another level next decade.

https://www.renewableenergywor…ag-9-trillion-investment/

Bloomberg predicts wind and solar will power half the world and bag $9 trillion investment

Wind or solar now represent the least expensive option for adding new power generation capacity in approximately two-thirds of the world.

And further falls in technology will see the two leading forms of renewable energy powering nearly half of the global grid by 2050 and attracting $9.5 trillion in new investment between now and then. . . .

See: https://about.bnef.com/new-energy-outlook/

Why Tesla is the best.
Can be watched easily at 1.5 speed.

Quote from Alan Smith

Once operational, the plant located in Piolenc (Vaucluse) will produce 100% renewable energy

This appears to be smack in the middle of France, floating on the Rhone river. It seems like a nutty place to put a solar array!

Solar arrays can be located on farmland, with crops grown under them. Some crops grow better in the partial shade of the array.

Quote from JedRothwell

, floating on the Rhone river.

its an old quarry turned into a lake. In Japan many solar arrays are on lakes

typhoons are a hazard

https://www.weforum.org/agenda…-in-floating-solar-power/