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You have onshore wind farms which are larger than that in the US, so if you're not hearing about it, it means you're not paying attention! Offshore wind is not yet happening in the US, because it is more expensive than onshore, making it difficult for politicians to put in place the necessary regulatory framework, and NIMBY seems even worse than onshore (cf Cape Wind). Wind power
Read these interesting stats:
"California produced 4,258 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, about 1.5 percent of the state's total electricity. That's more than enough to light a city the size of San Francisco.
More than 13,000 of California's wind turbines, or 95 percent of all of California's wind generating capacity and output, are located in three primary regions."
Does make you wonder. In order to generate 10% of California's electricity needs, about 100,000 wind turbines would be needed.
U.S. winds can supply 9 times electricity demand Estimates of the U.S. wind resource have consistently found it to be abundant. That conclusion was underlined in early 2010 when the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a new assessment finding that U.S. winds could generate 37 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, or nearly nine times the nation's total electricity use (see map). NREL's findings revealed sharp increases in several Midwestern states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri in particular), owing to the wind speeds at higher elevations in those states that can be tapped with taller turbines.
Indeed if you check this document, which indicates a wind potential twice the current US consumption, you'll see it is based on 1991 data for wind speeds at 50 m hub height. But typical hub heights today are more like twice of that, and turbines can be supplied with blades and gear ratios optimised for lower wind speeds. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The oil lobby?
At last year's rate of expansion, it would take something like 75 years for wind to give half of consumption
In other words, if in 2009 the installation was 10GW, in 2010 one should expect 15GW, in 2011 22.5GW, and so on, and the rate should slow down only when penetration is a substantial fraction of the total... By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
I guess you can always do a moving average. By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
Regarding real long-term trends, I would agree that a logistic curve fits both emergence/maturing and phaseout best, but Marchetti curves seem too simplicistic. In Luís's diary, the oil shocks are named as explanation for deviation; on one hand, methinks a lot more reasons can throw development off the Marchetti track (rule changes being one, see wind power in Denmark), on the other hand, I rather doubt that all significant energy modes will peak at the same market penetration level (50%). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
*Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Huh, vested interests with massively lucrative cash flows in dead-end industries holding a nation back from moving into the future. So this is what it was like to be Hapsburg Spain. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
I was referring to the other side, the lucrative but ultimately unsustainable mining of the mountain of silver in Mexico and the mountain of silver in Peru ... but the analogies keep spinning on for a while. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
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