Post a link to your Blog Entries
Get featured by replying to this discussion with a link to your blog entry.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Rick on -
I'm using the widget designed by Pat Jack on the entry page for LibertyIsGreen.com. It looks great and works great. Thanks for this!
-
Permalink Reply by Joe on -
Let's talk details about the Pickens PLam ,
The Plan starts by claiming that the US uses some 21,000,000 barrels of oil per day or 7,665,000,000 barrels per year. Then in the next section which talks about wind power, the claim is that in one year, a 3 megawatt (3,000 kW) wind turbine produces electricity equivalent to that of 12,000 barrels of oil.
Taking this concept further, let’s us assume a 30% capacity factor for wind turbines (very reasonable, possibly even lower in actuality), therefore, a 3MW wind turbine would produce about 7.9 million kWh's of electricity in one year which is equivalent to 12,000 barrels of oil as The Plan claims.
The Plan goes on to state that current wind power accounts for 48 billion kWh of electricity per year and that this accounts for only 1% of total demand. Therefore, total electricity demand must be equal to around 4,800 billion kWh per year.
In order for wind power to make up 20% of this demand as per The Plan, it would have to produce a combined 960 billion kWh per year. A 3MW wind turbine operating at 30% capacity and producing 7.9 million kWh per year of electricity means that it would require approximately 121,520 wind turbines! This seems like a very unrealistic number of wind turbines that would take years to build and install...not to mention the issues of where will all these wind turbines be placed and accepted by surrounding property owners!!!
Furthermore, at 12,000 barrels of oil per year per wind turbine, this would mean that the combined 121,520 wind turbines would use approximately 1,458 million barrels per year.
Using The Plan’s stated numbers that the US consumes some 21 million barrels of oil per day, or 7,665 million barrels per year, and if 20% of our electrical needs were supplied by wind turbines with a total usage of 1,458 million barrels per year, then it's obvious that your initial assumption that the nation uses 7,665 million barrels per year did NOT account for the number of barrels per year used for transportation and other uses. We all know that another large usage of foreign oil goes to power our cars, trucks, buses, boats, trains, etc. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that a mere displacement of 1,458 million barrels of oil per year (from wind power) would be enough to even dent our dependency on foreign oil!
My conclusion is that this plan is unrealistic in its timeline AND in truly having a meaningful impact on our dependency on foreign oil. I also come to the conclusion that the main purpose of this plan is to further enrich Mr. Pickens.
I hope that Americans are smart enough to realize that the wind power option alone is NOT enough to get us out of this foreign oil dependency. Furthermore, John McCain is ABSOLUTELY right when he says that nuclear energy must play the major role in meeting our energy demands. Nuclear power is already used to provide up to 50% or more of energy needs for countries like France, Belgium, Slovakia, and Lithuania. In fact, the US already uses nuclear energy to meet about 20% of its energy needs and so there is no reason this could not be increased to 50% or more.
In summary, I do believe that there is room for using wind power as part of our energy mix but, Mr. Pickens is being a bit dishonest with the American people by claiming that wind power can be used in a timeframe and at a cost that will solve our energy dependency crisis...this just isn't true!
Regards,
Joe
-
Permalink Reply by Rick on
-
Here's my blog entry about a truly iconic American inventor, Doug Selsam, winner of this year's Popular Science Inventor of the Year (May 2008 edition) Award for his SuperTurbine.
Subject:LibertyIsGreen.com Wants You to Know that Doug Selsam's Yankee Ingenuity Secures Blessings that Flow From Liberty
http://push.pickensplan.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2187034%3ABlogPos...
-
Permalink Reply by Paul on -
I'm posting this here with the hope of getting some feedback on the concept rather than the actual content.
I've been cruising the plan for some months now, and like so many other tech forums there seems to be an abundance of ideas. This is the source if my 'problem' or difficulty. Most of the ideas fall into the category of mildly impractical, and deserve no further mention than to be simply ignored and allowed to fade away. There are however a subset of offerings that are so utterly repulsive they inspire me to write negatively about both the ideas and the followers that promote them.
It's not because the ideas are bad, but it's because they are of such a nature that they can draw necessary resources from truly good ideas. They are the fast growing weeds in the garden, and must be destroyed before the thorns harden.
What I'd like to see is the flip side. Where are the good ideas, the ones that deserve praise rather than ridicule. It would be so much more satisfying to comment on what is likely to be a 'good' project than to feel compelled to warn the innocent away from the dangerous edges of the precipice.
I've been around long enough to see that many experts in the fields are content to 'damn with faint praise' certain ideas, certain inventors, and certain stories. No One likes to dash the hopes & dreams of another, but I find it disturbing when hollow endorsements are applied to avoid hurting someones feelings. To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts "Life is pain Highness. Anyone that says otherwise is selling something." -- from The Princess Bride
Link MIT: Solar power storage discovery could mean energy nirvana. -- or -- The Emperor has no clothes.
Thank you for taking the time to read, and hopefully comment.
-
Permalink Reply by Dave Spicer on -
Paul: I'm new to this blog and resonate with your concern about spending our resources on solutions that don't really scale--or in some cases, don't really work. After researching the area of alternative energy for several years, I came to the conclusion that the basis should be Solar Thermal...and I did not start with that assumption. I describe a "Carbonless Energy Economy" in my article here: http://tinyurl.com/CarbonlessElectricEconomy
and would appreciate your feedback.
Dave
-
Permalink Reply by Paul on
-
Hi Dave,
I'd say it goes without saying that I agree with your conclusion on Solar-Thermal ;^)
I hope that you'll take a look at S&T. We've got the "no science project' solution to the CSP challenge and we've optimized to do it at DG scales. I sure would appreciate any input you have on the raising capital issues that've been plaguing me since 2001
-
Permalink Reply by Dave Spicer on
-
Paul: Can you provide a link to your website and any other info about S&T? You can send it to this email if you prefer: GeopoliticsOfEnergy@gmail.com
Dave
-
Permalink Reply by Crystal Hoffman on -
Here is my blog link ---> http://push.pickensplan.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2187034%3ABlogPos...
Thanks :)
-
Permalink Reply by Marie on
-
I DON'T THINK THAT THE PICKENS PLAN IS THE BEST SOLUTION. SORRY
This is the best solution that I've seen, anyone got any other ideas?
http://www.permaculture.com/book_menu/360/518
Why Alcohol Fuel? The Two-Minute Summary
WHY ALCOHOL FUEL?
THE TWO-MINUTE SUMMARY
1. Almost every country can become energy-independent. Anywhere that has sunlight and land can produce alcohol from plants. Brazil, the fifth largest country in the world imports no oil, since half its cars run on alcohol fuel made from sugarcane, grown on 1% of its land.
2. We can reverse global warming. Since alcohol is made from plants, its production takes carbon dioxide out of the air, sequestering it, with the result that it reverses the greenhouse effect (while potentially vastly improving the soil). Recent studies show that in a permaculturally designed mixed-crop alcohol fuel production system, the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere by plants—and then exuded by plant roots into the soil as sugar—can be 13 times what is emitted by processing the crops and burning the alcohol in our cars.
3. We can revitalize the economy instead of suffering through Peak Oil. Oil is running out, and what we replace it with will make a big difference in our environment and economy. Alcohol fuel production and use is clean and environmentally sustainable, and will revitalize families, farms, towns, cities, industries, as well as the environment. A national switch to alcohol fuel would provide many millions of new permanent jobs.
4. No new technological breakthroughs are needed. We can make alcohol fuel out of what we have, where we are. Alcohol fuel can efficiently be made out of many things, from waste products like stale donuts, grass clippings, food processing waste-even ocean kelp. Many crops produce many times more alcohol per acre than corn, using arid, marshy, or even marginal land in addition to farmland. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of the autofuel we get from the Mideast.
5. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, we can easily use alcohol fuel in the vehicles we already own. Unmodified cars can run on 50% alcohol, and converting to 100% alcohol or flexible fueling (both alcohol and gas) costs only a few hundred dollars. Most auto companies already sell new dual-fuel vehicles.
6. Alcohol is a superior fuel to gasoline! It’s 105 octane, burns much cooler with less vibration, is less flammable in case of accident, is 98% pollution-free, has lower evaporative emissions, and deposits no carbon in the engine or oil, resulting in a tripling of engine life. Specialized alcohol engines can get at least 22% better mileage than gasoline or diesel.
7. It’s not just for gasoline cars. We can also easily use alcohol fuel to power diesel engines, trains, aircraft, small utility engines, generators to make electricity, heaters for our homes—and it can even be used to cook our food.
8. Alcohol has a proud history. Gasoline is a refinery’s toxic waste; alcohol fuel is liquid sunshine. Henry Ford’s early cars were all flex-fuel. It wasn’t until gasoline magnate John D. Rockefeller funded Prohibition that alcohol fuel companies were driven out of business.
9. The byproducts of alcohol production are clean, instead of being oil refinery waste, and are worth more than the alcohol itself. In fact, they can make petrochemical fertilizers and herbicides obsolete. The alcohol production process concentrates and makes more digestible all protein and non-starch nutrients in the crop. It’s so nutritious that when used as animal feed, it produces more meat or milk than the corn it comes from. That’s right, fermentation of corn increases the food supply and lowers the cost of food.
10. Locally produced ethanol supercharges regional economies. Instead of fuel expenditures draining capital away to foreign bank accounts, each gallon of alcohol produces local income that gets recirculated many times. Every dollar of tax credit for alcohol generates up to $6 in new tax revenues from the increased local business.
11. Alcohol production brings many new small-scale business opportunities. There is huge potential for profitable local, integrated, small-scale businesses that produce alcohol and related byproducts, whereas when gas was cheap, alcohol plants had to be huge to make a profit.
12. Scale matters—most of the widely publicized potential problems with ethanol are a function of scale. Once production plants get beyond a certain size and are too far away from the crops that supply them, closing the ecological loop becomes problematic. Smaller-scale operations can more efficiently use a wide variety of crops than huge specialized one-crop plants, and diversification of crops would largely eliminate the problems of monoculture.
13. The byproducts of small-scale alcohol plants can be used in profitable, energy-efficient, and environmentally positive ways. For instance, spent mash (the liquid left over after distillation) contains all the nutrients the next fuel crop needs and can return it back to the soil if the fields are close to the operation. Big-scale plants, because they bring in crops from up to 45 miles away, can’t do this, so they have to evaporate all the water and sell the resulting byproduct as low-price animal feed,which accounts for half the energy used in the plant.
-
Permalink Reply by Gerald A. Cain on -
This would be nice. Just cant be used on the scale needed to fulfill our needs
Featured Discussion
Twitter Feed
© 2009 Created by PickensPlan
Badges | Community Guidelines | Report an Issue | Privacy | Terms of Service
