{"id":2479,"date":"2012-04-27T08:09:22","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T15:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=2479"},"modified":"2012-04-30T01:24:13","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T08:24:13","slug":"2012-04-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/?p=2479","title":{"rendered":"2012-04-27 Renewable Energy: Where Are They Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m reading a timeline or chronology of the electricity in the U.K.\u00a0 It has a listing with a few U.S. items under the years 1980 and later.\u00a0 Indented text is from the chronology, my comments follow.<\/p>\n

U.S. legislation —<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Power plant Fuels Conservation Act<\/em>\u00a0 provided for converting 80 U.S. power stations from oil-firing to coal-firing<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1.\u00a0 During the 1970s the two oil and gas crises, the last in 1979, drove everyone to attempt to wean the U.S from ‘foreign oil’.\u00a0 This explains why we went from oil burning to coal burning power plants, with all their pollution.\u00a0 It was better to have electricity with pollution than no electricity at all.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 Magnetic Fusion Energy Engineering Act<\/em>\u00a0 increased national research on fusion power.\u00a0 New installations were a Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princeton N.J.; the Mirror Fusion Test Facility at Livermore, CA; the Elmo Bumpy Torus Proof of Principle Experiment at Oakridge, TN; and Materials Fusion Irradiation Test Facility at Hanford, WA.\u00a0 Act sought to commission a demonstration fusion power station by 2000.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

2.\u00a0 Magnetic fusion was supposed to make clean, pollution free energy with no radioactive byproducts, and save the world.\u00a0 Here it is, 2012, and we still haven’t seen a single watt of commercial electricity made by fusion, after spending tens of billions of dollars trying to develop the technology.\u00a0 What a waste.\u00a0 If that money had been used to harness thermonuclear fusion by building solar power plants, we would have been much better off.\u00a0 More on fusion power in this Wikipedia article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Wind Energy Systems Act<\/em>\u00a0 set a target for installing 800 MW of wind generation capacity in the U.S.A. by 1988<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3.\u00a0 I don’t know if that 800 MW target was met by that date, but today there is much more than that of installed wind generating capacity in the U.S.A. and it continues to grow.\u00a0 The U.S. nameplate capacity was 47,000 MW at the end of 2011 (see Wikipedia article<\/a>).<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Research, Development and Demonstration Act<\/em>\u00a0 established a national U.S. target of 10,000 MW of O.T.E.C generating capacity by 1999.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4.\u00a0 There is an OTEC system in Hawaii, but I’ve never heard of any OTEC power at 10,000 MW.\u00a0 Another dead end?<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 In 1981 a 3 MW wind generator was commissioned by Southern California Edison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No doubt it was in the Altamont Pass, Calif.\u00a0 Nowadays, one can drive through the pass and see thousands of wind turbines – they’re as thick as ants on an anthill!\u00a0 Another wind farm is Banning Pass, on the way to Palm Springs, Calif.<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0 World’s first electric utility fuel cell power plant<\/em> was commissioned in New York.\u00a0 The 4.8 MW\u00a0 prototype comprised 14 modules.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6.\u00a0 We seldom hear of fuel cell electric generation.\u00a0 I’ve heard of vehicular fuel cells that burn hydrogen, and give off zero pollution.<\/p>\n

7. 1982\u00a0 Wind Turbines – USA — between 1982 and 1984 over 2,000 wind turbines of 50 kW to 100 kW were installed at a wind farm at Altamont Pass, California.\u00a0 Another 550 were planned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

7.\u00a0 Looks like the 1980s were the years when wind turbines sprouted up like crazy over the landscape.\u00a0 But they’re still installing them like crazy, as can be seen in this Wikipedia article<\/a>.\u00a0 The older, less powerful ones are being replaced by much more powerful wind turbines.\u00a0 The picture in this article was so bad it was difficult to see the WTs, so I increased the brightness and contrast and attached it above – they are much easier to see.\u00a0 In the Wikipedia article, the problem of wind variability is brought up, and one solution used in the U.K. is the Dinorwig pumping station<\/a>.\u00a0 When demand is low, the excess electricity is used to pump water up to a higher reservoir.\u00a0 During peak demand, the water is let out and on the way down generates electricity from the same pumps.\u00a0 It is also used to stabilize the variable wind output.<\/p>\n

\u00a08.\u00a0 Solar energy- U.S.A. — two plants commissioned – “Solar One” near Barstow, California, a 10 MW central receiver pilot plant, and “Solar Total Energy Project” at Shenandoah, Georgia, the world’s first complete dish system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

8.\u00a0 More about Solar One can be read in this Wikipedia article<\/a>.\u00a0 It has now been removed.\u00a0 There is a new Solar One in Nevada<\/a> that was built outside Boulder City.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m reading a timeline or chronology of the electricity in the U.K.\u00a0 It has a listing with a few U.S. items under the years 1980 and later.\u00a0 Indented text is from the chronology, my comments follow. U.S. legislation — 1.\u00a0 Power plant Fuels Conservation Act\u00a0 provided for converting 80 U.S. power stations from oil-firing to <\/p>\n

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