So everyone,
We will need a major breakthrough in battery technology to achieve nirvana. Look at the mining required now to acquire enough rare earth metals to power the batteries we have now. The damage to the environment from this mining is frankly just ridiculous. Look it up. I’m not sure we even have a net positive environmental benefit from batteries right now.
Now they are working on new technologies for batteries and there are rumors of technologies that will provide that breakthrough without the destruction of the environment we see now. We can’t power the US with the technology we have now for batteries. No way.
Solar is good for peaking energy. Wind really is not good on the electric grid. The total cost for wind never shows the large generators that are on line to deal with the variations in power output and East of the Mississippi a large part of the energy comes off peak. Dealing w repair of these units is also an expensive treat. I’m not a fan at all of wind for electric generation.
T Boone Pickens had the right idea, take windmills out in the windiest places and make hydrogen. Develop new pipelines to use for transportation uses and you can mix a small percentage of hydrogen with natural gas, I think 5%. So the windmills are inefficient and the black box to make hydrogen is inefficient, but who cares? The wind is free.
A lot of smaller gas turbines can run on hydrogen, w modifications now, and I’m pretty sure the big boys, Siemens and GE, are working on using hydrogen in their largest most efficient gas fired generation units.
Now this would keep our Cummins a cookin and the Middle East can drown in their oil.
So what I’m saying is using wind to make hydrogen makes sense, using it for electric generation just doesn’t work well.
Hydroelectric power could be used to make hydrogen also. Point is use green power to make green power that is more usable at this time.
Like I said batteries need a major breakthrough in storage capacity and manufacturing that doesn’t destroy our environment. I think it will happen. And we could use hydrogen and battery storage as the basis for transportation and then use new small nuclear plants presently used in our warships for localized mid to large needs for electric generation. We can also use natural gas and hydrogen as needed for generation.
Peace
