Wind could power the entire world

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0622-hance_global_wind.html

by nreece • 17 years ago

14 32 17 years ago

news.mongabay.com

sjs382• 17 years ago

could not should

lionheart• 17 years ago

In theory, yes. And in theory, all we would have to do is pave over a few square kilometers of New Mexico and we can power the entire world with solar.

But these studies completely ignore all of the practical issues with wind power at its current scale, let alone scaling it to power the whole world.

blueben2• 17 years ago

Start now. Continue R&D and funding. In 10 years, the technology will be dramatically advanced and scaling will be far easier.

Just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing anyway. When the Manhattan project started, they had no clue how they would come up with the theoretical quantity of nuclear material they needed. It was impossible. They went forward anyway and in the process invented the methods they needed to make it happen. Now we have nuclear weapons coming out of our ears.

berntb2• 17 years ago

They did a preplanned thing in Sweden when they built warships and planted trees suitable for new warships.

Now those trees are ready to be used -- but those pesky iron ships, from the 1860s onwards, got between. :-)

Check: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion

Will they work? We will know in less than ten years. If they work, the money would be better used in battery research, to run cars on electricity.

dan_the_welder6• 17 years ago

Exactly. Burning stuff is a mature technology and we are plagued with inertia.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

And totally mess up my waves by reducing wind speeds. Stay away from my waves, you scoundrels!

vidarh• 17 years ago

I read that in a "get off my lawn" old mans voice.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

Except with a 'surfer bra wannabe accent?

kevbin• 17 years ago

One of the potential upsides of global warming that gets little attention is the opportunity for great waves over the formerly-urban reefs along the edges of the risen oceans.

patio112• 17 years ago

Lemon/penny batteries could power the entire world, too. Here's the math:

One lemon/penny battery generates 0.0001 W. Thus, one kilowatt requires 10 megalemons. 10 megalemons produces 365 * 24 = 8760 kilowatt hours per year, or 876 KWH per megalemon per year.

The US consumes roughly 4 trillion KWH per year, which would require about 4.5 petalemon to power. Worldwide production last year was on the order of 6.5 gigalemons (13 megatonnes according to Wiki, 200g for the average lemon), so we have a bit to go, but this proves that a significant fraction of the US's electrical needs can be provided by lemon batteries currently. Minor implementation details such as maintenance of the lemon batteries, storage of them, operating lifetime, cost, and trivialities such as "Where do we find 4.5 petapennies?" can be hammered out at a later date.

(P.S. Less sarcastically, if you want to generate the world's electricity needs without being primarily reliant on fossil fuels, you have two options. The first is nuclear power. The second is dividing the world into permanent camps: those that have sufficient access to electricity to enjoy a standard of living comparable to America in the early 1900s, and those who do not. Group #2 will have to vastly outnumber Group #1.)

TriinT• 17 years ago

Dude, that's one of the funniest and wittiest comments I have read in a while. Cheers!

jules• 17 years ago

Or shrink the size of the global population.

torpor3• 17 years ago

Rubbish. We could all, individually, convert to wind power right now and do it quite successfully.

Your problem only exists if we all have to be lumped into a group, together, so someone can sell us shit and control the whole thing.

In short, you clearly wanna sell lemons. There are other ways...

patio112• 17 years ago

We could all, individually, convert to wind power right now and do it quite successfully.

Let us know how it goes.

pygy• 17 years ago

I agree that the best option availlable at the moment is nuclear energy.

But what about the thermic solar plants that are currently being built in the deserts of the US and Africa? Those with parabolic mirrors heating the pipes set at their focal point?

gaius• 17 years ago

I foresee issues around the longevity of mirrors in sandstorms.

luckyland• 17 years ago

i'm riding the thermal drafts of HN comment hot air right now, dude.

joel_feather2• 17 years ago

Wind power is only available in certain parts of the world. Distribution would be a massive problem. Thousands of miles of cables and transformers are not easy to maintain.

dan_the_welder6• 17 years ago

We already have thousand of miles of cables and transformers.

My Aunt and Uncle own a wind power company and they cleverly sited nine turbines next to a coal plant so they would not have to run miles of cables.

These are trivial problems.

joel_feather2• 17 years ago

That must be the most uninformed thing that I've read in my life. How is the map of electricity cables between chad and congo?

Are you aware that wind power needs special sites? And you cannot just move it beside where you want it?

dan_the_welder6• 17 years ago

P.S. They were talking about running an underwater power cable from Yarmouth Nova Scotia to Boston Mass.

Sounds nuts, but they said the economics were doable and provincial utility was their partner.

tybris• 17 years ago

Never thought wind power would destroy the environment.

jasonkester• 17 years ago

It's difficult to take articles like this seriously. This type of "if we covered the entire earth's surface with (wind|solar|biomass|exercise bikes), we could power the entire world" argument is already reduced to absurdity. There's nothing there even to poke fun at.

It's cool that some of these technologies are making progress and all, but really, is there anybody who actually thinks it's a good idea to scale them up to this level? In the name of the environment???

dan_the_welder6• 17 years ago

Let me put that another way.

"Does anybody think it's a good idea to depend entirely on a finite resource that can only be used once and also smells?"

billroberts• 17 years ago

I suggest reading http://www.withouthotair.com for a reasoned discussion of this issue. A couple of quotes:

"if we covered the windiest 10% of the country [the UK] with windmills (delivering 2 W/m2), we would be able to generate 20 kWh/d per person, which is half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 km per day".

"I should emphasize how generous an assumption I’m making. Let’s compare this estimate of British wind potential with current installed wind power worldwide. The windmills that would be required to provide the UK with 20 kWh/d per person amount to 50 times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; 7 times all the wind farms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world."

Wind could power the entire world

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