Wind turbines gaining power (MA)

[jpak]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/02/24/wind_turbines_gaining_power/

A Lynn waste-water treatment plant could soon get half its power from wind energy. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy is erecting a wind turbine to try to cut its electric bill nearly in half. Hull hopes to save another $500,000 on electric costs, having already powered its streetlights and stoplights for free.

While commercial development of large wind farms continues to stall, Massachusetts municipalities and colleges are increasingly stepping into the void, planning to erect wind turbines one or two at a time to shave their energy costs and take advantage of a state program that rewards green energy producers.

At least a half-dozen Massachusetts cities, towns, or colleges are trying to build wind turbines to temper the rising costs of electricity. Eleven other communities are testing wind conditions to determine whether it would be worthwhile to build wind turbines, and nine more are looking for test tower sites, according to the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, which is helping communities launch the projects. Thirty-six other municipalities have expressed some interest in wind power, according to the collaborative.

''Any one project will make only a small difference," said Warren Leon, director of the Renewable Energy Trust, a division of the collaborative. ''But if five years from now there are community wind projects up in 15 or 20 communities across the state, collectively that will make a meaningful difference. On average, each project will probably generate enough electricity for close to 1,000 people."

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[LiberalEsto]

1. They could put their sludge in a methane digester

and make the rest of their power by burning the methane.

[jpak]

2. Yes - and it would compliment power output from the wind turbine

n/t

[Double T]

3. We need wind turbine farms and new nuclear power generation facilities....

erected and constructed throughout the USA to replace aging existing facilities and provide for continued higher demands on the electric utilities. Once again our damn legislative representatives are not doing their jobs to make these immediate necessities easy. If the rich have been provided with tax cuts, why not the wind turbine energy producers; we need wind turbine energy much more than we need richer rich people.

[LiberalEsto]

4. I'm sorry but I can't agree on nuclear power

For one thing, where would the spent fuel go? They've been trying for years to set up Yucca Mountain as a disposal site.

Wind power, wave power, geothermal heating and cooling, solar power and heating are all safer alternatives to nuclear and fossil energy sources. These sources have barely been tapped.

Putting sewage sludge and animal manure into methane digesters can create methane to run fuel cells or pretty much anything else that now runs on natural gas.

Replacing industrial engines with new highly efficient engines can make a huge dent in the nation's energy use. I wrote an article on this for Energy Decisions Magazine (now no longer published) a few years ago.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Methane's troubles

It's a greenhouse gas, and when it's burned, it gives off other greenhouse gases (generally CO2 and uncombusted methane, or CH4).

Methane would be a good niche and transitional fuel, but I don't think it would be a good idea for large-scale use. Ethanol, vegetable-oil biodiesel, and other biofuels have similar problems -- and strengths.

Nuclear energy shouldn't be counted out. Although the mere mention of it usually starts a firefight, a second-look approach to it would still involve admitting to ourselves that we've utterly bungled its development. In spite of that, I am a little surprised that so few deaths have been caused by it.

I'm starting to think that ALL the problems we face with respect to energy are political. That makes it unlikely that much progress will be made until people start doing some serious suffering -- a situation I do not look forward to. We are going to have to make some unpleasant choices soon, no matter what "fuel mix" we adopt. We might as well look at everything, even the choices that we come to reject or rely on for brief periods only.

If we fail to come up with enough energy fast enough to keep the world economic system functioning, it won't just lead to a nasty depression for the USA, it will lead to mass starvation, forced migration, and death. The closer we get to those contingencies, the less "wiggle room" we will have.

--p!

[jpak]

6. If you don't burn off landfill methane, it's emitted into the atmosphere

anyway.

Same for methane emitted from manure lagoons.

Methane has radiative forcing potential 56 times greater than CO2 (on a 20 year time horizon).

Burning it off to CO2 is the right thing to do, and if you can offset burning coal (or natural gas) so much the better.

Municipalities (and farms) can also use the revenue too...

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Landfill methane (and "superhot combustion" from the 70s)

If the methane comes from garbage, we probably have better uses for the garbage anyway, like converting as much of it as we can to fertilizer. But that's exactly the kind of "niche" use that I was talking about. It would also be a lot easier to capture the methane for local use. Short-term, methane generated from composting ("Ghobar Gas") could get a lot of residences over a natural gas shortfall. And after all, natural gas is just methane, right?

I had also been unaware that methane had that much greater radiative forcing potential than CO2. I had been figuring on about a 20X factor, based on methane being available as a free gas for longer periods of time. Burning excess methane, then, makes a lot of sense, and it might a well be put to good use.

One thing I haven't seen talked about much is so-called "super-hot combustion" methods that were being studied in the 1970s, which leave fine carbon ash as a by-product rather than gases. One such development used a high-powered laser, and the combustion produced considerably more energy than the laser consumed, so I guess it would have had a good EROEI. I remember reading about the process occasionally before Reagan got into office. Has anything been developed along those lines since then?

--p!