Originally posted by apc
I mean you can't crowd them. On the ground they have a small footprint but you can't stick them within a few inches of eachother without compromising efficiency.
Oh I agree then, on land. But there are new larger floating turbines on the drawing board that could change all that. Reduces the cost of offshore facilities by only having to use an anchor that can be drawn back up when the season dictates it(ie bird migration season, storm season, etc). I forget where the thread is but if you find it I think you'll be impressed at the sheer scale of them as well. Approaching the scale where efficiency starts to max out. Combine that with Onshore flow battery stations(lots of them) and you can provide a fairly large chunk of energy demand. The flow batteries can also be used to store unused nuclear energy as well as all non-scalable/unpredictable sources of energy. Add in tidal into the floating windmill design ..... wow, that's actually a good idea i wonder if it's feasible to actually do with today's technology? A hybrid Floating Tidal-Wind Turbine. Hmm.
They would have to utilize thermal energy as well then, as that is where most of the sun's energy is. As far as practicality I think thermal solar generator stations are more viable than purely electrical solar stations. Less wasted energy.
That brings up so many logistical headaches that I don't even want to get into it in detail right now... but lets just say that the maintenance required by even a relatively new plant is quite burdensome on the bottom line, and thus competitiveness. The "Progress Curve" still favors Solar. It's doubling roughly every 8 years efficiency wise and I expect 40+% efficient panels to be on the market by the end of this decade if not sooner. One of my old profs is playing around with some samples right now, hopefully I'll get to play with them soon hehe. You should check out Google Earth and pay attention to just how much open space there is in the city.
Also I wanted to point out that there are new urban turbines, they aren't that efficient in open spaces but they become really efficient in the chaotic wind environment of downtown in cities everywhere.
we need something in orbit. A lot of something in orbit. I just don't see it being practical to invest the resources needed to establish such a system until we've fully utilized the plentiful energy that is available right here.
No argument from me man, but it could become moot if we ever have a fusion breakthrough. I have a hunch that we are close(within 25 years close lol)
Supplementing the grid sounds a lot like purchasing carbon offsets, and look at how big of a joke that is.
Supplementing the grid is the wrong word for what I see as our pre-fusion energy future. I see us cobbling together a new set of energy sources and I believe that for a while gasoline and water shortages will force us to just make do with what we got. I don't believe we have time to build enough fission plants to stop whats coming. Not trying to sound alarmist or anything, but I just don't see anyway around some sort of hardship due to shortages of essentials.
