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And forget the percentage bullshit. CA, the #1 solar energy producer, generates more then 1,400X the #2 Arizona. And Texas, #1 wind power energy producer, generates more then 2X the #2 Oregon. And Texas produces almost 3X as much wind electricity as CA does solar power. The goal of the wind and solar alts is to reduce the total amount of GHG produced by electricity generation. In that regards Texas and CA beat the sh*t out of all you slackers. LOL.

BTW my dog beats all of you: the panels on his dog house supply him with 100% of his consumption. LOL.

ROCKMAN wrote:And forget the percentage bullshit. CA, the #1 solar energy producer, generates more then 1,400X the #2 Arizona. And Texas, #1 wind power energy producer, generates more then 2X the #2 Oregon. And Texas produces almost 3X as much wind electricity as CA does solar power.

Texas also has alot bigger budget than Oregon. Texas's budget was more than triple Oregon's budget. Yet Oregon nearly equaled Texas in renewable energy generation: 40,274 Gwh for Oregon vs 47,956 Gwh for Texas. The $7 billion Texas spent on it's grid upgrade is more than Vermont's entire state budget! And Texas is still below the US average on renewable energy generation.

ROCKMAN wrote:The goal of the wind and solar alts is to reduce the total amount of GHG produced by electricity generation. In that regards Texas and CA beat the sh*t out of all you slackers. LOL.

Ha! Nice try but if that is your yardstick Illinois smacks the crap out of both of you with our nuclear generation! We genererated 1,024 trillion BTU(300,105 GWh) in 2014 from nuclear. That's more than the total renewable generation of Texas and California combined. Hell, it's more than the total wind and solar generation for the NATION combined. US non hydro renewable generation was only 298,358 GWh in 2015. Get it in gear slackers!

Alts as in alternatives to fossil fuels that generate GHG emissions. Nuclear certainly qualifies:
Carbon emissions for electricity Generation

@pstarr...I would have to agree with you about the current nuclear plants not being renewable .....due to the fact that Uranium has to mined and also due to the decommissioning costs

but the others are all definitely renewable.....and as efficiency of solar panels , wind turbines , geothermal systems etc, improve and the increase of the % of power generated by renewables increases , they become increasingly more renewable

kiwichick wrote:@pstarr...I would have to agree with you about the current nuclear plants not being renewable .....due to the fact that Uranium has to mined and also due to the decommissioning costs

but the others are all definitely renewable.....and as efficiency of solar panels , wind turbines , geothermal systems etc, improve and the increase of the % of power generated by renewables increases , they become increasingly more renewable

The problem with the theory you are aspousing is all those renewable methodologies also require mining and processing and maintenence.

The EROEI on nuclear fission is so high it easily compensates for all those real world expenses, the same is debateable for wind and very problematic for solar PV.

onlooker wrote:6: The Best Places For Solar And Wind Are Usually Far Away From Consumers

That reminds me of an older post on Tom Murphy's blog:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ure-trove/

It's a long and nerdy post about how surprisingly small the differences in PV output between the best and the worst US locations are - Alaska and S. California differ by a factor of merely two.

And here's the National Renewable Energy Lab's online PV calculator:
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php

Very nice and simple tool. Just enter a city name, leave everything on the next page on default settings (a standard single-family rooftop installation) and here's the results in kwh/a:

Anchorage 3,454
NYC 5,097
Fargo 5,308
Houston 5,356
St. Louis 5,462
San Diego 6,438

So the best place for solar is probably pretty much wherever you happen to live. OK, if you live in Alaska you're screwed, but then if you live in Alaska you already know that.

(edit: Houston gets as much output as Fargo, North Dakota? What is it, your ten-gallon hats shading the roofs or what?)

Zarquon wrote:

onlooker wrote:6: The Best Places For Solar And Wind Are Usually Far Away From Consumers

That reminds me of an older post on Tom Murphy's blog:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ure-trove/

It's a long and nerdy post about how surprisingly small the differences in PV output between the best and the worst US locations are - Alaska and S. California differ by a factor of merely two.

And here's the National Renewable Energy Lab's online PV calculator:
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php

Very nice and simple tool. Just enter a city name, leave everything on the next page on default settings (a standard single-family rooftop installation) and here's the results in kwh/a:

Anchorage 3,454
NYC 5,097
Fargo 5,308
Houston 5,356
St. Louis 5,462
San Diego 6,438

So the best place for solar is probably pretty much wherever you happen to live. OK, if you live in Alaska you're screwed, but then if you live in Alaska you already know that.

(edit: Houston gets as much output as Fargo, North Dakota? What is it, your ten-gallon hats shading the roofs or what?)

Annual production is one thing. What you can get on a winter day quite another. Unless an Alaskan resident has batteries to store a six month supply they are out of luck. On the other hand Texas will still produce a good amount mid winter, Fargo not so much.

vtsnowedin wrote:

Zarquon wrote:

onlooker wrote:6: The Best Places For Solar And Wind Are Usually Far Away From Consumers

That reminds me of an older post on Tom Murphy's blog:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... ure-trove/

It's a long and nerdy post about how surprisingly small the differences in PV output between the best and the worst US locations are - Alaska and S. California differ by a factor of merely two.

And here's the National Renewable Energy Lab's online PV calculator:
http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/pvwatts.php

Very nice and simple tool. Just enter a city name, leave everything on the next page on default settings (a standard single-family rooftop installation) and here's the results in kwh/a:

Anchorage 3,454
NYC 5,097
Fargo 5,308
Houston 5,356
St. Louis 5,462
San Diego 6,438

So the best place for solar is probably pretty much wherever you happen to live. OK, if you live in Alaska you're screwed, but then if you live in Alaska you already know that.

(edit: Houston gets as much output as Fargo, North Dakota? What is it, your ten-gallon hats shading the roofs or what?)

Annual production is one thing. What you can get on a winter day quite another. Unless an Alaskan resident has batteries to store a six month supply they are out of luck. On the other hand Texas will still produce a good amount mid winter, Fargo not so much.

Yup, Anchorage is north of the 60th latitude line so in the summer it doesn't get true darkness for weeks and in mid winter the day is about 6 hours and most of that is at low angles to the horizon. Houston is a heck of a lot closer to the Tropic line so in mid summer the day is about 13.5 hours long and in mid winter the day is about 11.5 hours long. Not at all the same in Fargo where summer can be 16.5 hours and winter 7.5 hours.

pstarr - I'll have to side with k on his point. We can split hairs on how to lump different energy sources: wind, hydro, solar, nuke, fossil fuels, etc. But we can also lump them into just two categories: GHG emitting and non- emitting. I see 3 general reasons to swing towards different sources. Less GHG emissions, energy security and less expensive...at least in the long term.

Oh, I forgot a 4th one: making the greenie weinies fell less guilty about being part of the collective DIRECTLY generating the great majority of GHG.

Just teasing, kiwi.

some estimates for decommissioning nuclear power plants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning


have a guess at the estimate for 3 mile island....it's a lot more scary than any movie!!

or check out the estimate for Fukushima.......wow!!

kiwichick wrote:some estimates for decommissioning nuclear power plants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning


have a guess at the estimate for 3 mile island....it's a lot more scary than any movie!!

Reallity check, in America decomissioning is pre paid for with a 1 percent surcharge on electricity bills.

Subjectivist wrote:-snip-
Reallity check, in America decomissioning is pre paid for with a 1 percent surcharge on electricity bills.

...and nuclear power, even after decommissioning costs, is often second cheapest after natural gas fuelled steam turbines.

Kiwi/Sub - Along that same line heard an interesting fact last week. It was related to the question of Governor Perry understanding that the US Energy Dept has little to do with fossil fuels and everything to do with nuclear plants. Especially dealing with the spent fuel problem. A problem kicked down the road by one administration after another. We have spent $billioons on Yucca Mnt but nothing shipped there yet. But the cost of doing so: according to that report the govt has already collected $10 BILLION (might actually be $20 billion) from the utilities and those funds are just sitting there.

Supposedly the reason YM has been used was Senator Harry Reed blocking any effort to ship the materials to his state. Of course he didn't have any problem with the govt spending $billions in his state to build the site. But now with him gone and a new sheriff in town that may change.

RM, if one is going to be shipping enormous casks of spent fuel rods to Yucca Mountain anyway, an then paying to deadhead those huge FF-powered trucks and armed escorts to another reactor site, that makes it the obvious place to build and operate a Mox plant. But like I said before, there simply is no logic in the way that the Feds spend dollars.

I happen to think that if the French can do it, so can we. We could learn from them the benefits of standardized and modularized reactor designs, the obvious process details for fuel re-processing, and numerous other details. All it takes is somebody willing to spend money for expertise that doesn't yet exist in this country, and maybe Trump is that person - except that this message may not jive well with "making America great again".

KJ - Exactly. This is an opportunity for Gov. Perry to build a truly worthy legacy beyond what happened here while being the longest serving govenor of Texas in history. Or confirm to many who think he was just some goofball that happened to be in the right place at the right time.