Clean Coal, like Non Sticky Super Glue!!! Also, a Pickens Plan Followup.

Well, I'm sitting here at the U of A typing this up on a Mac, listening to dcTalk and Spoken Groove on my iPhone, I look like an Apple commercial.  Honestly, this is the first time I've ever used a Mac, and yes, I'm 25 years old.  The only two problems I'm seeing right now is that this thing doesn't have a wave keyboard and the screen is so huge, I .... wait, there's only one problem after all, seriously, the screen is bigger than my living room TV.  I'd by a Mac, if they didn't cost more than my truck... zing! 

Anyway, as you have, I've been hearing stuff about clean coal on TV and in the debates, and in the non-official debates, and spewed by the Republicans.  I'd just like to go ahead and say that clean coal sits right down there with hydrogen technology as far as feasibility and the possibility of actually coming to fruition.

I'll tell ya why.  Just like hydrogen, if the technology did suddenly and magically appear to make the idea even possible, there's boatloads of other problems that still don't follow the dot to dot.  If the technology did suddenly show up to capture carbon (which I could care less about) there's still all the other stuff I do care about, and you should too, sulphur, NOx's, mercury, lead, cadmium, and fly ash which under continuingly restrictive restrictions, is gonna be toxic waste soon.  There's still the problem of mining, mountaintop removal mining, processing and transportation of all that coal.  Just like hydrogen, if you can figure out how to make hydrogen economically, you still have to figure out how to transport and store it which so far still has big problems since hydrogen can LEAK THROUGH SOLID METAL.  Then of course, you have to use it again which is equally or more inefficient that making it in the first place.

These technologies have been 40 years from economic feasibility for 50 years now.

And that's the simple facts.

Addendum to the Pickens Plan, I've recently learned that the US already imports nearly a quarter of its natural gas.  So, Mr. Pickens, I really like the wind turbine idea, but I'm still coming up with the conclusion that you'd like to trade an oil addiction for a NG addiction.  Trading one import for another now.  NG like oil gets traded on the open market, which means as other countries use more of it, our price goes up.

Electricity on the other hand can't easily be exported to other countries, and can be used in infinite ways.  We make it here, we use it here, and other countries can't easily buy it from us.  Plus there's always the fact that I can make it in my back yard, which I can't do with oil, NG, or hydrogen.  Concerned about the limited range of electric cars?  I live 6 miles from town, how far away do you live?

I did think of one other bad thing about this Mac, the screen's so big, I can only use about a quarter of it to write this post because of the size of Blogger's typing window.  All this wasted space and electricity.  But I guess if I bought one and used it as my TV it could be economical.  Of course, for the same price, I could have a rockin' awesome PC and a big screen HDTV.  Plus, I wouldn't look like so much of an elitist. ;-)

Go with what works.

WiredForStereo

Skystream 3.7 at Wal Mart in Lowell Arkansas

I just discovered the other week that for some reason, Wal Mart has put up a Skystream 3.7 wind turbine in the parking lot of their Lowell Arkansas store. This makes two wind turbines that I know of in Arkansas now.

The Skystream is a pretty decent machine, it is a direct to grid style turbine, with the inverter actually built into the nacelle. It is rated for 1.8 kw and peaks at 2.3 kw. Being a small direct to grid style turbine, it will not make any power when the power is out, it will stop. Notice there is no tail, the blades actually trail the nacelle instead of being in front of it. This does reduce the efficiency a smidge, but it eliminates a few parts. Southwest Wind Power advertises that this turbine can make power for cheaper than you can pay for it which is a good thing, especially as energy prices rise.

Interestingly enough, they actually installed it on top of a light pole.

Now, if they'd just finish off the rest of the parking lot, they'd have something going.

WiredForStereo

ENERCON's Really Big Wind Turbine

What you see to the right is ENERCON’s new (ish) E-126 wind turbine. Its capacity is rated at 6 MW, and 20 million kilowatt hours per year, that’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe. Lets to a quick US calculation. 938 kwh per home per month, 12 months, that’s 11,256 kwh per year per house. That’s 1776 American homes on one wind turbine.

I like these.

This one, like the rest of the E’s is direct drive, like most small home power style wind turbines. That means there is no gearbox attaching the turbine blades to the generator, in fact, the generator is housed just at the widest part of the nose cone, it takes up the entire width of the nacelle to generate power more efficiently, and provide longer service life with less wear.

Also like small turbines, these have inverters instead of synchronous generators, that is to say, a separate controller that converts the wild AC generated into something the grid can use. This means the rotor can run at more optimum and varied speeds.

Again like small turbines, this one does not shut right off at a predetermined speed due to gusts or just very high wind speeds. It simply throttles down by turning the blades slightly away from the wind so as to continue to generate power though at a lower production rate. Then the instant the wind is more favorable, it starts back up again. Many smaller wind turbines do something similar except have no blade pitch control, they use a technique called something like “side furling” where the whole machine, excepting the tail, turns “sideways” to catch less wind but continue operating.

The 126 in E-126 stands for the width of the rotor blades. That’s a bit over 413 feet for those non metric humans out there. The RePower 5M is about the same size, but produces 5 MW and is more of the standard hardware configuration.

Why such huge wind turbines?

Money, why else? Big things are cheaper per unit production. If you have 3 2 MW generators, you have to have three (at least) cranes to put them up, build three foundations, have to maintain three machines, and have three times the parts to fail. If you have one, it is larger and more expensive in itself to move, but not as expensive as having to move three smaller ones.

Birds

I don’t understand how people can be so concerned about birds becoming mush with modern wind turbines, especially ones this big. It only turns at 12 rpms. That means it takes five seconds to complete one revolution. That is slow but this is much bigger and easy to see compared to the whirring blades of old. The Altamont Pass turbines gave wind turbines such a bad name because they were built in the middle of the natural habitat of rare birds, the turbines were the small fast spinning type, and they were built using lattice towers, the kind birds love to nest in. These are slowly being replaced and all of the new ones are of the slower rotating kind. In the end, it comes down to this. Stationary buildings and moving cars kill literally millions of times more birds than wind turbines. And things like the Exxon Valdez spill kill millions of everything. So let’s go with the best option.

WiredForStereo

Wind farms Now and Future in Arkansas.

I was looking at the AWEA website at the wind energy characteristics of Arkansas. It has a neat little page here that shows the current and planned wind developments.

Guess how much Arkansas has.

0.1 Megawatts. One single small wind turbine in Prairie Grove. And I know that one can't do 100,000 watts, I just think that's the smallest number they had. I think it may be capable of 20,000w in a hurricane.

Here's a pic of that one lonely wind turbine.

The real sad part is that Arkansas ranks 27th in wind resources in the nation. That means we've got more wind resources than half the states. And all we have is a single puny wind turbine. And it's not even in a class 4 area. Arkansas has two good sized class 4 areas.

So, anyone in Arkansas, or anywhere else for that matter, push for wind power.
WiredForStereo

Oklahoma Energy Video

Here is a great video I've found dealing with renewable energy. One of the featured guys is Mike Bergey of Bergey Windpower in Norman, OK. Also featured is a guy who works with biodiesel at a university.

Yes, I know they misspelled "Oklahoma."

They also have a natural gas guy, but as you know, natural gas is a limited resource fossil fuel, and therefore I believe should be left in the ground or done something with besides burnt. Fortunately for the time being, natural gas is a relatively clean resource, and makes for good emergency style power plants that are good to back up wind and solar installations. It is a dwindling resource with increasing cost and usage, and therefore, I cannot recommend it in a renewable fiscally minded home.

I wish there were more videos that featured presentations and Q&A sessions like this one, but I guess for now I'll have to settle for reading.

WiredForStereo