Seven Generational Ruminations

The "cubic mile of oil"--a metric roughly equivalent to the amount of oil consumed worldwide each year--is frequently used to explain the challenge facing solar, wind, geothermal and biomass power. What would it take to replace the amount of energy in a cubic mile of oil? The best location for specific technologies varies, and some areas are best for one technology or another. Some places are windy, others sunny, the wind varies from season to season, and geothermal power is easily tapped only in volcanic regions.

One common critique of wind power is it's only available when the wind is blowing. Often hot days have no wind, hence the power isn't available when it's most needed. And wind is gusty, the strongest winds might be happening at times other than when the power is needed. While this point is thrown out to say that wind power is no good, what it means is to use wind power means finding a way to store electricity generated when the wind is strong and releasing it when its needed later.

Wind power is intermittent. One day the wind blows, the next day it doesn't, and often the days you need power the most, on hot days, are also the ones with the least wind available. Hence it's desirable to find a way to store the power generated by the wind, the question is what's the best way of doing so. Many who oppose wind power use this intermittency as a flaw of wind power, and use that flaw as a weapon against the deployment of wind power.

While this is a flaw of wind power it's not an unsolvable problem. Instead it's just a matter of engineering a way to store power.

This seems to be an interesting threshold to have reached ... for a whole country, Spain, to get the majority of their electricity from a renewable resource like wind power.

Inherit the Wind is a story about the reuse of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico to host wind turbines. It seems that the wind in the Gulf is very strong and that it's a good place for wind power, and that the wind tends to blow the strongest on hot days when the need for power is the most. Seems like a great fit, especially as there's all these leftover oil platforms.

This story makes for an interesting contrast against the wind project off Nantucket Island. In that project the locals are complaining up and down that the wind turbines will "ruin" their ecological situation because it will "ruin" the view of the unfettered ocean. Sigh.

Wind Power In Stormy Waters is a series of pictures documenting the process for installing offshore wind farms, and the huge wind turbines that are used.

According to Tree Hugger, Audubon Society "Strongly Supports Wind Power" even though many environmentalists get knots in their stomach thinking about the birds being killed by wind turbines. There have been studies recording birds being killed by being hit by wind turbine blades, but there are other studies on why birds get killed by wind turbines, how to avoid the bird deaths, and in any case the rates of bird death due to wind turbines are lower than birds killed by flying into skyscrapers.

Power your electric Car with Solar or Wind is about the big oil companies keeping us from having electric cars .. and the possibility to power your car on your own.