| scottie said: Again, the only reason I was doing calculations for creating all the world's power in Algeria is because I was pointing out the flaws in the OP's link's version of such a scheme. Powering the entirety of Europe from a single plant is not my plan, the only person I have seen proposing such a plan is the guy in the OP. Therefore the 'non partisan' book is strawmanning, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.
As I have already said, actual plans for widespread uptake of renewables mean that there will be much less centralised power generation than the current situation. Currently, all the power for a country comes from a handful of power plants. Under a scheme with significant amounts of renewable energy generation, the power generation will be much more spread out - there will be a very significant amount from roof mounted systems, which are about as spread out as it is possible to be. There will be some hydro plants, which are small by comparison to coal plants. There will be some wind farms, most of the existing ones are smaller than existing coal plants. You are right that there would likely end up being a significant amount of electricity being transported from Africa to Europe, most likely along the lines of Morocco -> Gibraltar -> Spain and Tunisia -> Italy, but that is no more vulnerable than our current electricity transmission network.
As for convincing the nations with the sun that huge injections of foreign development are worth the small amount of desert that they will take up. "Last week Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan presented details of the scheme - named Desertec - to the European Parliament. 'Countries with deserts, countries with high energy demand, and countries with technology competence must co-operate,' he told MEPs.
The project has been developed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation and is supported by engineers and politicians in Europe as well as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and other nations in the Middle East and Africa." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/02/renewableenergy.solarpower Done.
I don't honestly expect you to read any of this. Everything I have said in this response has been posted above, and you did not read it then. I have put a lot of effort into providing sources for everything I have said, whereas you are merely posting off your opinion, and I get the feeling you aren't even taking the time to read what I write. If you do actually get around to reading this sentance, please start your next reply with. 'Yes, I have actually been reading what you are writing.' If you do not do this, I shall not be wasting any more time attempting to talk to you.
And with regards the 'expensive gears and blades, that are full of high failure rates' again, this has already been answered, but I shall answer it again. The graph in my previous post, that compares the costs of different means of energy generation. The way these are calculated is by finding the total cost of the system (well, the Net Present Value of the costs), and finding the total amount of energy it produces over its lifetime. Then, the former is divided by the latter. Expensive gears/blades are taken into account in that graph above. The high failure rate, if true, is taken into account in that graph above.
I also love that i asked what RARE components there are in wind turbines and you responded by listing two EXPENSIVE components there are in wind turbines. I repeat, what parts of a wind turbine are RARE? What parts of a wind turbine would be difficult to find the materials to make if adoption of wind energy were dramatically increased? |
Wind turbines require 700 pounds of neodymium. We have proven reserves of 8 million tonnes.
Can you build a wind turbine without neodymium? Yes, but its more expensive, as neodymium allows for a much smaller generator to be placed on the turbine, which lowers costs.
Also, your logarithmic solar price chart is disengenous.Costs are projected past 2009, but if you notice, prices stagnated and went up for a 4 year period - 2006 through 2009, before the estimates had them plummet again based on their estimates. It'd take a few more years of getting data in the system to make a more reliable estimate, given the uptick in recent cost per watt.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
