BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

Richard Casady

On Fri, 15 May 2009 12:56:46 -0400, wrote:

On Fri, 15 May 2009 11:18:17 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

On Fri, 15 May 2009 11:30:59 -0400, BAR wrote:

Richard Casady wrote:
On Fri, 15 May 2009 09:10:12 -0400, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

Windmills have been tried and were rejected several hundreds of years
ago, because they are dependent on the weather

What utter bull****. Windmills have been in constant use ever since
they were invented. The state of Iowa gets 5% of its juice from wind,
BTW.
Now tell us farming was rejected because it is dependent on the
weather.

How do you increase the power output of a windmill, right now?

How do you generate power from a windmill on a dead calm day?

Windmill's are unreliable for on-demand and controllable power.

I don't know the details, but I've read that one solution to the
"storage" problem that is being used - maybe in Australia - is pumping
water uphill when demand is low then releasing through generators when
needed.
Doesn't seem very scalable.

--Vic

They have hills in Iowa? ;-)

If you ask the 10 000 or so who ride bikes across Iowa from river to
river every August, they will tell you there are hills. You don't
store that Iowa breeze. You turn down the stokers on the coal plants
when the wind blows, which is most of the time. They call Chicago the
Windy City, but Des Moines is windier.

Casady