Prowess of US military indeed, but then, it doesn't take too much training to shoot civilians, link to video here

I was attending the AWEA Wind Energy conference in Los Angeles the last couple days (anybody else there ?) in behalf of a Wind Turbine manufacturer.

At one point we were approached by DOD employee asking various questions about wind turbines, dates of delivery, transportablity etc. The marketing person asked him what locations he was thinking of and to both our surprise he said Oman, Quatar, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Which struck me as quite odd given the fact that is the most energy rich region in the world, and the most heavily occuppied.

Does the US Military actually believe we will be fighting a war in which windmills will be a factor ?

I was told some very interesting thing about windmills at this show. Windmills do nothing for "base loading" and when it is hot and top loading is needed the wind is not blowing.

He also said California is in deep deep trouble with no coal plants in the planning stages, and a state mandate to buy no coal fired electricity.

Is Arnie really that stupid ?

The only reason wind mills do not affect peak lading in america and other western nations is because of air conditioning. This is a perfect example of low hanging fruit. Frankly i couldnt care less if people tank the electrical grid because they want to keep their house colder in summer than it is in winter, it will display the ridiculous opulence with which we use energy. Solar panels do however have an output profile that almost mimics the load profile of the modern grid and with substantially reduced consumption solar could easily play a big part in supplying the peak load generation currently supplied predominantly by gas turbine generation (however it is hydro in many locations)

Storage technology is often discussed in relation to renewable penetrance into the grid, i think the more critical paradigm shift that needs to occur and most likely will, all be it with some resistance, is a shift in the way in which we demand electricity. I spend a chunk of every year on a sailing cat which has 160 watts of solar and a small wind turbine that outputs 400 watts at 12.5 m/s and the most important aspect of energy management is timing load and consumption. If you need to run the desalinator for water or use some other high power consumer you time it so your not doing it on a windless night when there's no input, when there's sun and wind out we can chew through as much as we want with a laptop and chartplotter/radar purring away when its dark and windless we become much more frugal and it works well. Its not that big a sacrifice to make and the kinds of appliances I envision for the future will be smart grid linked appliances that you can fill up and set to start a cycle when they get a signal from the grid that power is available, so youd fill your washing machine whenever and when the grid had surplus supply the machine would run the load, there could be an override if you need it right now but you could be charged a significant "immediate demand" power surplus to discourage that sort of consumption. likewise a large numer of the appliances in the home could run like this. The other thing you could do is have simple consumer indicators of power availability, like a bar of leds red through green, that display how much surplus is available when power is in the green, ie we have surplus on the grid it is cheap and people can use their more power hungry practices, when red it means that power is in short supply and expensive and will trigger more frugal behavior (or pay the cost of it which can fund greater renwables on the grid)

just a few thoughts cheers Doc

Currently power is generated using diesel generators. Wind power could significantly lower diesel consumption. Purchase and transport of diesel is a major cost factor for the US military.

Wind Turbines are no small expense.

That's a sobering sign that there is some realism in our military: The way CCC (Command-Control-Communication) works, they better have enough electricity to power their laptop computers at all times.

The motivation for installing renewable energy at military installations is to reduce the need to ship diesel through hazardous areas. In addition to wind turbines, the military is also purchasing large quantities of solar panels and reconfiguring bases to be more energy efficient.

US military installations are starting to look more like fortified eco-villages. What's next? Most of the supply tonnage is food, so maybe they will start organic gardening and raising chickens like a bunch of granola-crunching hippies.

Considering that the coal outlook is appearing much grimmer than previously thought -- perhaps not so stupid after all.

You mean Californians may lead the coming years forced conservation movement ?

Now that will be something to behold.....

California is already the fourth-lowest per capita energy consumer in the United States.

Energy consumption isn't our main problem (though our grid is certainly screwed, and in the south the public transportation is dismal).

Our main problems are population -- and water.

What difference does "per-capita" make ??? And per-capita in what ? Gas, Electricity etc...

You have alot of people in a small, unresource rich area. And when you figure in all the consumption that occurs in California that is produced and shipped from other places you may find the per-captia number doesn't mean a whole lot.

I lived there for 20 years and now live in a place with half million people - We can live with alot less here much easier than Californians can can live with less. When all the migrant/transient workers can't find work it isn;t going to be pretty.

Want to see something funny - Try running California on less fuel.

What difference does per capita make? Mmm, probably not much. I fully expect southern California, at least, to collapse big time -- but not for lack of coal-fired power plants. As we've both said, it's the population -- plus some other troubling facets, like no drinking water, a grid not designed for deregulated competition and a severe lack of public transportation. And our suburban sprawl has got to be some of the worst anywhere. What will happen to this place when gasoline goes to $20 a gallon -- and beyond? Shudder!

But, as far as the coal-fired power plants are concerned: why in the world would we want to invest a crapload of money into them, so they can be ready just as energy prices are spiraling through the roof? As you noted, we are resource-thin, and that means we'd have to import our energy source from out of state at sky-high prices. It would make a hell of a lot more sense to build new wind farms, so our energy source is here in-state. Limited, yes -- but ours.

But in the end, likely none of it matters anyway. Which, I believe, was probably your point.

Have you heard the 15% by 2015 slogan (or whatever jingle they are using) ?

I kept saying at the show, we most likely, will be producing a substantially less amount of energy by 2015 so 15% by 2015 is very doable, but certainly not what one would think of as "good" news.

I guess this thing is really going to unfold, when follow the money you can see what things are going ot really look like in 5 years. California will be using wind farms and solar instead of steam and gas turbines.....Interesting.

Well.. Wind may be intermittent, but at least it is a bit hard to cut into the supply lines of this kind of power generation. Also, at least Afghanistan is not known to me to be very energy rich, those countries have very heterogenous infrastructure, and anyway, they might want or have to set up small autonomous energy nets, maybe Wind/Diesel switch. It might actually save money on smaller scales where power outages of some minutes can be tolerated.



I do not want ot be rude, but what I find interesting is that people find this obvious information interesting when told. (By the way, offshore is better balanced re power continuity and "do nothing" is a great exaggeration at least for mid europe, but by and large, wind follows a rather different pattern than energy demand, which is its main deficiency.)



For once, California might regret not being a neighbour of Russia..



Mr. Schwarzenegger neither has a degree as an engineer nor as an economist, he was a body-builder and kindasorta "actor" and, as far as I know, never was reknown for taking long hours listening to technical explanations filled with long, complicated polysyllables. Does it really come as a surprise when such a guy, once elected, sports ideas he'd like to see working out rather than ideas engineers would find feasible? Anyway, lifting the ban on coal-power purchase can be done very quickly, though California might lose quite some money on hastily negotiated contracts.

[In the afterthought, it might be a clever political strategy: The government wanted the power companies to produce green power, but was forced in the interest of the people to redraw the ban on coal, since the stupid/evil/housemaid-eating power companies failed to do their job properly.. ]

I'm not sure where I read this (probably on here), but wasn't Saudi Arabia, at least at one time a couple of years ago, the largest consumer of solar panels? It makes a great way to get electricity out to the rural parts of the kingdom (although it seems as though everyone lives in Mecca, Medina, Jeddah or Riyadh these days) rather than having to build pipelines for natural gas or long power lines that will decipate vast amounts of electricity.

But this is interesting for these nations since Oman, Qatar, and 'etc' are very small nations and you can't stretch without hitting a pipeline. Iraq and Afghanistan are completely different monsters due to the wars. Are they expecting things to get nasty in Shi'a Oman, Qatar and 'etc'?