the cost of wind power

[Oklahomabassin]

Underground homes aren't e

Sister-in-law lives up in the Colorado Springs area. She tells the story of a guy east of Colorado Springs that lives near a commercial wind generator. Supposedly, he now has issues with trying to sleep at night and other health issues that he never had before. She said that he has tried to sell his home and move elsewhere, but no one wants to buy his home.

I have trouble sleeping at night.
Speaking of wind turbines. One of the power heads burned out here the other day.

 

[ICanFixIt]

It was just a pic of a windmill or wind engine as some called them just to show a general representation. What's cool is that you can still buy parts and rebuild any that are broken.
There is even a forum for those that want to build/repair/buy windmill generators.
https://www.vintagewindmillforum.com/viewforum.php?f=7
We have two windmills at the farm that still rotate although the pumps are no longer serviceable.

Yep. Here is my before and after. When I bought it, it was located less than a mile from town and was obviously used for target practice. I had to repair over 90 bullet holes. Three months later, it looked almost new.

 

[MacFromOK]

Lots of the old homesteads used wind with the DC generators built into the windmills that ran their water pumps. Used DC bulbs to light the homes. I hear they are highly sought after by those wanting an alternative to power from a grid.

Those Aermotor windmills were a boon for agriculture (especially cattle operations) in the past.

But though they worked great for that application, I've heard/read that they were woefully inefficient compared to modern wind power designs.

 

[cowadle]

Lots of the old homesteads used wind with the DC generators built into the windmills that ran their water pumps. Used DC bulbs to light the homes. I hear they are highly sought after by those wanting an alternative to power from a grid.

the old Delco windcharger used a wooden two blade propeller that looked like an airplain prop. they had a rude governor that tried to keep them from over speeding the generator. the battery bank was made up of glass battery cases with lead plates that had to be removed from time to time to scrub off the sulfate . if i was going to use windpower i would use a bergey or an old jacobs.

 

[RickN]

This may have been posted before but it is interesting.


Engineers Take on Electric Cars

Interested in what the engineers or others with knowledge and/or experience in this field have to say about this man's comments. I did not write this, it was sent by a friend. Thought you might find it interesting.
As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled for a long time by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure, whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited.
IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car:
Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of
those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things
yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.
If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you
had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires a 75-amp service. The average house is equipped with a 100-amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), The electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead-end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS..!' and a shrug.
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following.
Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine. "Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles
It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip, your average speed (including charging Time) would be 20 mph. According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.
The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs
$46,000 plus. Simply put, pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
My Take:
It’s always “Free Beer Tomorrow” – never “Today”

 

[TwoForFlinching]

This was a worry, but states are now enacting additional road tax and fees for electric vehicles, including Oklahoma.
https://www.consumerreports.org/hyb...tting-electric-vehicle-owners-with-high-fees/

 

[ICanFixIt]

RickN:
I have a VERY hard time believing that an engineer came up with those numbers. Just one example of gross error is the $1.16 per kilowatt hour price for electricity. If he had actually done his homework, he would have known that the USA average for residential electricity was 13.3 cents at the end of 2020(less than 1/10 the cost he quoted). I also question his assertion that the average house has 100 amp service. Even my relatively small 40 year-old house has 200 amp service. There are other problems with his story, but these two examples should be enough to make me doubt anything else he says.
I am certainly not a fan of electric vehicles, but this guy is not even close to telling it like it is. I own an electric motorcycle, and my son-in-law owns a Tesla. Both of them are for sale. I do have some real world experience with e-vehicles and from my point of view, they are not yet ready for prime time. Charge times are just one problem. Cold weather performance is pretty disappointing. Range between charges does not live up to expectations. Repair costs are insane and owners are not allowed access to information that might allow them to fix anything.

 

[mouthpiece]

Just posted in the oil thread

So GREEN, the blades don't break down, they are not recyclable and they don't last long.
Another f'in scam

View attachment 194658

Pic from this article. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-06/wind-turbine-blades

https://stopthesethings.com/2020/06...the-subsidies-run-out-whichever-occurs-first/

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/759376113/unfurling-the-waste-problem-caused-by-wind-energy

 

[Snattlerake]

This was a worry, but states are now enacting additional road tax and fees for electric vehicles, including Oklahoma.
https://www.consumerreports.org/hyb...tting-electric-vehicle-owners-with-high-fees/

I also heard, "The utilities will buy back all the electricity you produce", referring to wind gen and solar gen system you buy.

I don't think this is true here. Am I wrong?

 

[SoonerP226]

I also heard, "The utilities will buy back all the electricity you produce", referring to wind gen and solar gen system you buy.

I don't think this is true here. Am I wrong?

I don't know about the other electric utilities, but OEC does buy the electricity you produce (it's in their Renewable Energy FAQs: https://okcoop.org/renewable-energy-faqs/ ) . My folks installed solar panels on their house, and you can see the generation in the usage graphs in the OEC app. They haven't generated enough yet to fully offset what they're using, but you can see the generating offsetting some of the usage.