# Mass bozos limiting the amount of green energy



## Dune (Nov 1, 2009)

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091101/NEWS/911010332/-1/NEWS11

Read this this morning and got very upset. The energy companies have got to be stopped from writing public policy. If you live in Mass, please contact your state reps and senators and let them know that you strongly disagree with this law. There should be no limits whatsoever,IMO.

This law has already caused at least three large turbines to not be built, and possibly more.


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## Gooserider (Nov 2, 2009)

Arguably, the case can be made that there is a legitimate technical reason for the cap...  The utilities at least claim that there are problems caused when an overly high percentage of the grid power is from wind or other such "intermittent" power sources.  The issue is that because the wind supplied electric is inherently erratic, the amount supplied changes as the wind does, the utility has to keep a lot of conventional turbines spun up and ready to kick in any differences, or you risk having excessive sags or surges in the power delivered to customers...

Makes a certain level of sense, though I don't know how legit it is to put the cap at 1% rather than some other number...

Gooserider


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## andybaker (Nov 2, 2009)

I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can't rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they're running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You'll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.


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## Dune (Nov 2, 2009)

Gooserider said:
			
		

> Makes a certain level of sense, though I don't know how legit it is to put the cap at 1% rather than some other number...
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> Gooserider



Exactly. 1%? How about ten percent? To start with. 

With laws like this energy independance as a nation is impossible.


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## Dune (Nov 2, 2009)

andybaker said:
			
		

> I hear you on your concerns but I think Gooserider has a most important point. Public Utilities can't rely on the wind. The cost of a backup for lag times would cost as much as they're running now. I think the answer is for you and everybody else to do it yourself. You'll have your own power to do what you want when you want at your cost and most importantly, no government. Get rid of big business and big government and we all win, imho.



Many people in my town have applied for permits for home windmills, none have been approved.


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## rowerwet (Nov 2, 2009)

the reason I left that state as soon as I had to pay for my own shelter.


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## andybaker (Nov 2, 2009)

That's the fault of the people in that state.  They need to run those in charge out.  I understand not wanting your neighbor to put up a big noisy wind mill, but some of these new ones - no excuse.  I think the government people see how much control they could lose if people could start fending for themselves.  Imagine what it would be like if you didn't need them for darn near everything.


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## SE Iowa (Nov 2, 2009)

Dune said:
			
		

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Exactly his last point.  IMHO I think we need to just get rid of big government.  A lot of big businesses will not survive in a TRUELY capitalistic society.  It would look more like a bell curve.


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## andybaker (Nov 2, 2009)

SE Iowa said:
			
		

> Dune said:
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I agree with you. I'm getting a little lost who saying what to whom. What I think is people should be allowed to become as self reliant as they choose, as long as they aren't violating someone else's rights, and not be punished for it. I say go after big gov. like they've been coming after us. I could care less about the concerns of big business, they screw people over almost as much as big gov.


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## webbie (Nov 2, 2009)

SE Iowa said:
			
		

> .  IMHO I think we need to just get rid of big government.  A lot of big businesses will not survive in a TRUELY capitalistic society.  It would look more like a bell curve.



If the tooth fairly put energy under our pillows, it would solve a lot of problems too!

Sorry, but there is no tooth fairy and no "pure" capitalistic society on the planet earth. There never will be. What is benign to one person (a couple wind machines) is the end of the world to another (perhaps the oil man, or coal salesman, etc.). 

In order to settle those disputes, we organize into committees called governments. 

You can't put 3 people in a room without disagreements...so imagine when millions are involved.

Anything we do involves risk. Wellfleet wants someone to guarantee their payback, and that is not always possible! Heck, electricity prices may double in five years, right? Then they would make money even without net metering.

The powers that be are not dumb....they may be inefficient, but not dumb. 

In terms of Ma, we are on the right path when it comes to many areas of energy and conservation. As it stands, we use less energy per capita than virtually any state in the union. Lots of plans and efforts are underway right now to reduce that further. The energy profile of Ma. is more like Europe (they use 1/2 the energy as average US for same standard of living).

Our building codes are getting stricter, money is going toward renewables and a lot of citizens are making smart decisions about their food, vehicles, housing, etc. 

It's not perfect, for sure, but the direction it is headed is positive. 

I look forward to vast wind farms off the Ma. and RI coasts.....but at the same time, I think any subsidies should be designed to taper off as the price of wind generation comes down.


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## Gooserider (Nov 2, 2009)

Yup, Mass. is so concerned about energy savings, they won't allow you to put in a good quality Wood Boiler in a safe closed installation, unless you pay around $1,000 extra for a totally worthless ASME stamp that arguably gets you a LOWER quality boiler...  (Sorry, Euroboilers need not apply...)

Gooserider


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## webbie (Nov 3, 2009)

That sucks, but it is mostly an insurance issue. After all the boilers blew up (way back when), the Hartford Steam Boiler insurance company set standards which became ASME.

There are ways around it including regular UL and other lab tests which can test to "ASME Equiv".

Frankly, wood boilers have been off the radar for many years due to almost no sales. If things continue as they are, I expect codes will catch up......


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## Dune (Nov 3, 2009)

http://www.awea.org/faq/netbdef.html#Whatisnetmetering

This link explains net metering. Net metering is not a "subsidy". 

Acording to this month's Scientific American, by 2030, wind, water and solar technologies can provide 100% of the worlds energy, eliminating all fossil fuel use. This would be acomplished by the construction of the following: 490,000 tidal turbines -1% currently in place
              5350   geothermal plants-2% currently in place
              900  hydroelectric plants-70% currently in place
              3,800,000 windmills-1% currently in place
              720,000 wave converters, less than 1% in place
              1,700,000,000 rooftop photovoltiacs less than 1% in place
              49,000 concentrated solar plants less than 1% in place
              40,000 photovoltaic power plants less than 1% in place.
 I realise these numbes sound staggeringly high, but consider that one very small town, in one rather small state in one country wants to install three more turbines! Maybe then you can see the importance of this law being changed. 

In Spain, for many years now, it is mandated that NO building shall be constructed for any purpose which does not have a solar roof. A world free of fossil fuel use is a possibility, but every impediment must be removed, post haste.


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## DBoon (Nov 3, 2009)

I saw that Scientific American - this is the same Scientific American that published a complete issue about four years ago on energy generation in a future "carbon limited" world.  The conclusion in that issue was a much more believable need for some non-renewable base load generation sources.  This could be coal, natural gas, or nuclear (pick you poison) but something 24 hours 7 days a week and predictable.  

However, I don't believe that >1% wind energy is the end of the world for the power grid.  More than 1% may mean that the utility engineers have to learn some new ways of doing business (which they may not want to do).  Most realistic estimates on max wind generation for the grid are about 20%.  So 1% is totally bogus.  And 100% all renewables in my lifetime (i.e. next 40 years) is bogus too.  

It may be possible to have a 100% renewable energy grid if you didn't mind hundreds of thousands of miles of high voltage transmission lines criss-crossing the country.  That would work.  It would also be super expensive and not likely to make the "100% renewable" advocates too happy.   

Everything I said about renewable limits goes away if someone can figure out a way to store renewable energy cheaply for hours when the sun doesn't shine and the wind isn't blowing.


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## Dune (Nov 3, 2009)

Thanks for responding. If we don't go renewable, we will need to build 13,000 coal fired plants by 2030. That will cost a lot of money as well.


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## Hakusan (Nov 3, 2009)

Why would intermittent positive loads (read: solar and wind) would be any more problematic than the intermittent negative loads (read: folks using electricity). Utilities have never liked other people generating their own power. A 2.5k watt wind turbine is hardly a load that is going to cause the utility problems, just as opening up a store does not present problems.


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## Gooserider (Nov 3, 2009)

Hakusan said:
			
		

> Why would intermittent positive loads (read: solar and wind) would be any more problematic than the intermittent negative loads (read: folks using electricity). Utilities have never liked other people generating their own power. A 2.5k watt wind turbine is hardly a load that is going to cause the utility problems, just as opening up a store does not present problems.



Because the negative loads are both very small changes - everything in your house combined is a tiny fraction of a percent of the total, and tend to be predictable in large numbers (i.e. people go to work in the morning, expect to see a ramp-up in power demand in the business areas around 9:00AM, etc.)  Given a large enough experience base, which the utility has, they can predict moment to moment demand with great accuracy.  Major consumers are almost always also quite predictable, and tend to be very steady.  If a major consumer is going to be doing a change they generally alert the power company that it's coming...  

Power production from solar and, to an even greater extent, wind is NOT predictable.  If it were coming from lots and lots of point sources, the way the loads do, it would probably be less of an issue, but when you have a big single turbine it can be a lot harder to adjust for changes in that supply.

Net metered power in small quantities doesn't upset things, but big sources can...

As an analogy, when they first build Foxboro Stadium, the town had a major issue with their water pressure - it would drop to zero at half-time, as every fixture in the place got repeatedly flushed... (Beer MUST be Returned!) They ended up having to put in several hundred thousand gallons of water tanks to supply the half time demand and keep the town pressure steady.  But this was a predictable demand - OTOH a big turbine could be seen as putting an equivalent electrical load / demand on the grid as it ramps up and down, but it would not be predictable so they would have to be ready to deal with it at any time, with no notice...

Gooserider


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## Hakusan (Nov 3, 2009)

Household sized wind/PV systems are not that large--they are after all scaled to the household requirements. I don't see that as a real issue for utilities. If you are talking about large turbines, they are not as unpredictable is all that. They are usually mounted where turbulence from ground-based obstructions is minimized. So all you have is the current weather. I can get that from the weather channel right now. The output from large turbines can also be controlled--they do not have to work at maximum output at max wind speeds. The bottom line (no pun intended) is that utilities don't like others being hooked up to them. Look at Denmark if you want to see the "hazards" of connecting turbines to the grid. They seem to be doing this very well.


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## pybyr (Nov 3, 2009)

I don't even need to read the fine print of this thread to observe-- 

Bozos are the ULTIMATE un-deplete-able resource.  

Especially the people who claim to be "green" but throw a galactically-huge hissy-fit if any piece of infrastructure that would actually contribute to sustainability might be sited somewhere within their oh-so-aesthetically-sensitive-and-sophisticated perceptual orbit.  

They apparently prefer mountaintop-removal mining for coal burning power plants a long way away where they'll never see, or take hugely-fossil-fuel-combusting jet flights to anywhere near seeing, after smugly driving their Prius-es (or is that Priii- where's Stentor, the guy who knows Latin?) to the airport for their newest jaunt to "eco travel" on the other side of the globe.

If only Bozosity could be tapped to yield energy


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## rowerwet (Nov 3, 2009)

never underestimate the power of nimbys in large numbers.
my parents live .25 miles from the big windmill in newburyport, MA, you wouldn't believe the fuss in that "green" new age city, the windmill sits in the industrial park next to rt 1, a wind study said there were at least 14 more sites in the industrial park that would work for wind. So they put an end to any of that foolishness in Newburyport, Newbury, and Rowley. 
I always loved the fact that MA passed a law that they couldn't use the power from Seabrook Nuke Station, so Newburyport had (haven't rowed there recently) three huge diesel generators on the riverbank leaving a huge plume of exhaust that you could see for miles, to cover their A/C loads for the summer. 
I believe the ultimate "green" energy is tidal, it never stops, and in quite a few places you get a ripping current. The lower Merrimac in Newburyport has a 9 kt current during the run, Hull gut, the Piscataqua river, it is like rowing on a treadmill to fight the currents there. you think the "greens" will let that happen?


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## mbcijim (Nov 3, 2009)

Dune said:
			
		

> With laws like this energy independance as a nation is impossible.



Really?

We export coal.  43% of our power
We arguably import minor amounts of natural gas, set to end as the new deposits in Louisiana and Pennsylvania come on line.  We import mainly because some countries produce it for free (as a byproduct).  19%
Nuclear Fuel - I have no idea where that comes from - 20%
Renewable - 15%
Diesel - 3%

I don't really see any need for energy independence for our electric supply.  The only place we can improve is possibly on nuclear and eliminating diesel.  

Now energy independence for our cars is probably a good idea.  But that wasn't what anybody was talking about was it?


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## Delta-T (Nov 3, 2009)

there are limits to how much juice the grid can move at any given time and we hover near the peak for a good portion of the time (yeah for poor infrastructure) leaving littel room for variable input like solar and wind, at this point anyways. You'd think it'd be easier to put up your own little whirlygig, but someone wants to stop you. We just need to set up power consumers (large scale) so that they can take advantage of alt energy when it is available. Its not really different from the mentality many people adopt when they get solar water heaters. Set up you washer and dishwasher and shower time for when you have the most energy being created, then you get the best results.


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## Dune (Nov 3, 2009)

pybyr said:
			
		

> I don't even need to read the fine print of this thread to observe--
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> Bozos are the ULTIMATE un-deplete-able resource.
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> ...



True, the Bozone layer is very thick. It could soon blot out the sun, proving the neocons contention that there is no global warming, and removing so much ammo from Lush Windbag that the turbine planned for just outside his mouth will have to be cancelled.


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## Dune (Nov 3, 2009)

mbcijim said:
			
		

> Dune said:
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It was what I was talking about. See also post #12 in this thread. Not just energy indendance for our cars but for all of our energy needs. Without our oil money, many terrorists would be unfunded, in additon to lowering our trade deficit. Furthermore, whether you believe in global warming or not, you have to agree that burning fossil fuels, especialy coal, causes air polution, or are you denying that too?


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## DBoon (Nov 4, 2009)

Gooserider explained it pretty well in response to the question of intermittent loads.  One key additional point - at every instant in time, the amount of power generated is equal to the amount consumed - excess doesn't go anywhere to be stored (with very few pumped power storage systems as the exceptions).  So the utility is constantly monitoring usage and adjusting generation output, or raising/lowering voltage, to account for shifts in demand.  Since there are a lot of people using power, dips and peaks in demand tend to average out pretty well, and usage usually increases or decreases in predictable ways at certain times of the day. 

So, imagine that you are the guy who is in charge of making sure that there is always the exact correct amount of electricity generated at any given moment in time.  Well, for you, predictability is the most important thing.  You want to know that you have a huge amount of base load generation (read coal and nuclear power plants) that just cranks away at 100% output 24/7 - these plants take hours to bring on-line and can't be turned on with short notice.  Then, you want some additional generating capacity that can be added quickly as needs change - things like hydro or natural gas fired generators.  These can be brought up in minutes.  Your backup is to bring power in on high voltage transmission lines to fill any gaps.  The whole mentality of the power utilities is built around thinking like this, and renewables link wind (when the wind blows it blows) or solar (their worst nightmare - clouds cover the solar arrays) cause problems in large numbers.  If the wind generators and solar arrays are just 1% of the capacity, then no big deal - it's in the "noise" to them - but when it gets very large, it causes real problems with the system they have set up.  

Enter the "Smart Grid" - instead of blithely ignoring demand and trying to match generation with demand instantaneously, you manage the demand when it spikes.  Or take advantage of excess power when it happens to be available.  If you have an electric hot water storage tank, there are a lot of options as to when it gets heated.  It can get turned off when generation capacity is tight, or turned on when there is excess power to be "soaked up" (i.e. the wind is blowing really well on a sunny day).  The problem is that you, as an electricity consumer, have no incentive to care about this at all - you pay a flat rate regardless of time of use.  If the utility knew when excess power was available, told you (or your appliances) that they could get a great rate on this excess power, then it could get used when it was available, and the ability of the grid to consist of more renewables would be greatly increased.  Greatly increased, but not to 100% renewables - you still need some base load generation that can always be counted on UNLESS you accept that your power will be shut off at random times with no recourse (probably ok in the third world, but not in the US) when the wind isn't blowing, the sun isn't shining, etc.   Or, instead of having the base load generation, we can just string thousands and thousands of miles of high capacity high voltage transmission lines to connect the East Coast with North Dakota and New Mexico or whatever and take advantage of their wind, or the sun in New Mexico, or whatever.  Problem is, these cost $1 billion per 100 miles - not very cost effective.  Much more cost effective is to have some base load generation near to where you live.  Most people complain about their electric rates now - imagine if they doubled or tripled - that's what would happen if you try to go 100% renewable.  But 60% renewable is possible without breaking the bank provided you have a Smart Grid.  



> Look at Denmark if you want to see the “hazards” of connecting turbines to the grid. They seem to be doing this very well.


True - Denmark has huge wind capacity, and on paper they generate much more than 20% of their power with wind.  They also have one of the most extensive high voltage transmission line grids in the world that they use to export their wind power when they can't use it all.  Other countries nearby benefit from this, but if every country did this, it would be difficult if not impossible for everyone to have this much wind generation capacity.  There are some practical limits.  I wish there were not, but there are.


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