Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
re Skybird
I do not like those wind turbines, for a lot of reasons, from area consumption to the looks of it, to killing birds flying into the props' paths, but they do work energy-wise. There were already a few days where countries were entirely fed with alternative energy systems for a short time, it is not enough to support all the factories and single households under any but perfect (for turbines) weather conditions; but then wind turbines are not really smart when it comes to providing energy. They are a solution for flat lands, if you have mountains you can use hydrooelectric power, but even then you have long distance wiring with the resulting power loss.
Energy consumption can be reduced by building smarter technology and a change of basic and insular solutions, like using hot water and sun collectors instead of roof tiles, combined heat or other small insular power plants feeding the general electrical net when the single household is idling and so on, but it takes time and the will.
You do not need 220 or 110 Volts, most can be run with 12, but of course you need the power I, the Ampère. A good idea would be to use nuclear energy maybe in very small facilities, or even better switch it all to hydrogen. The latter can be stored or produced in quantities you temporarily need via fuel cells. You could even use your 100-year old Otto engines in cars without major changes, with only warm, water-saturated air leaving the exhaust.
But you need the will, and the human will ist still to exploit everything, to use it up to the last drop, to sell and distribute energy centrally and controlled by companies or lobbied government, casually ruining the environment. They always speak of the "environment" as if it only concerns something around humans are not a part of, but you should know better. You destroy the "environment", you destroy yourself.
Building and maintaining insular solutions is also not cheap, but so is maintenance and feeding of coal plants. You do not need big overland wiring, so not much power loss expected due to electric resistance over short distances. And nuclear energy produced in large reactors is also again the old centralising of energy hat has to be distributed over long distance, being also susceptible to terrorism or strikes in a war. Why all that? The future is the present, you have the solutions.
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Even if we save a little we waste more, becasue we ever bcome mroe and more people, an d becasue every reserves we build we immedoiatelyoicnsume, pushing our dfwemand upwards. Thats why the state biudget never is siffiucient, thats why consummation goes ever upowards, thats why eletcricty demand will groe, not shrink.
Its not good a development, but it seems mankind does never stop without hitting the wall hard first.
Our once world-class powergrid in Germany is just a shadow of its former state. We have become the eiüpicentre of every deepending and ever more often happenign instabilties and frequences fluctuations in the European powergrid. Our idea of how to run an altenrtaive system does nto work so far. And thigns get worse and ever more threatening. Now they want to even bring car batterie s into stabilising the national powergrids.
The Germans and there ever more perfectionist plans... For porpjects... For intentions... l For the future... I would already be satisfied if their plans would just pragmatically work, for a change.
As a matter of fact they canbot even build a road straight and even anymore. Come to my place and see the street where I live, it was redone in the year I moved in, 21 years ago. 2-3 degree camber when it was done. after the fixing, 4-5 degrees camber.
The world does not want to be saved by visionaries fixing things in this fashion. Nor does it need such a visionary's plans.
Even the eu has listed nuclear energy as "green". Maybe not becasue it really is green, it dependfs on how youz look at it. But because it was understood that we cannot run the future without nuclear energy, as the Germans daydream. The Austrians have plenty of mountaneous rivers. The Swedes hav eplenty of forest per head of population. Germany has not the wind of the antarctic, nor the sun of Northern Africa.
We are the epicentre of Europe' new and completely unnecessary energy turnmoils. Last time we almost brought down the contionetal (!) powergrid, was early January this year. Just the last incident in a by now long chain of incidents, each later one having been more threatening than the ones before.
"Eigentlich ein guter Plan - nur funktionieren müßte er." Plans not taking reality into account, cannot work and never will work.