The conversation never ends.
There definitely are some wind skeptics over at fact check but I guess they are always 100% skeptical about everything, thus their job. Thus the no two sides about it.
To just respond to a few things, the offshore production wouldn't be the bulk of wind power produced in the US. Current actual factual construction projects today puts our wind production at 6% by 2013.
Also on the Road Island bit, wind turbines are a few feet wide at the base and have rotor diameters up to 50m. 250,000 wind turbines is a 500 by 500 square. Physically thats 25 km by 5 km. That is 125 square km. Road Island is 3,140 square km. So no, it wouldn't take up Road Island.
If they were referring to the size of a wind farm, they require 5 diameter spacing row to row and end to end. Thats a 150km by 125km square which is 18,825 square km (between NJ and Conn. in area) Therefore "size of Road Island" is a bit of bull on both ends.
However lets look at this magical 250k number. Is correct? Is that a lot? Is a wind farm the size of NJ undoable? Well a single wind turbine produces 2-4.5 MW depending on the model with sizes getting bigger each product cycle. The US has an overall capacity factor average of near 40% so we can assume 1.4 MW of continuous power per turbine on average. It would take some doing to find, but that means that there are currently somewhere around 30-50,000 commercial scale turbines in the US today and we've barely scratched the surface. South Dakota alone could provide 50% of the US electricity demand.
Lets keep in mind a few things here. Wind power is something that only came into force since 2007. It is new and often ignored and most of the general public sees it as some kind of dreamy proposition without realizing that a great deal of Dallas is powered by it. If in that environment wind could, without any infrastructure changes, achieve as much as it has and considering that it is cost effective in dozens of states, there is no reason to think that it couldn't achieve 20%.
I dunno, I guess I don't get why big numbers scare people. The current plan is for wind at 20%, solar at 20%, nuclear at 25%, natgas at 20%, hydro/geo/bio at 10% and clean(er) coal at 15% by 2030. The only laggard in that plan is solar.
I am curious what 20% solar would take. 20% wind is easy.
__________________
Where is the love? We've only got one world. Time that we share it.
|