CNN/Money has an informative article today about the potential of wind power:

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I remain skeptical about the ability of wind or solar power to contribute a substantial portion of the world's energy needs. One reason for my skepticism is just a question of practical land area requirements.

Even the most ambitious wind farm currently being planned will only generate a peak of 4000 mW (and that's more than five times better than anyone has managed in the real world, so far), and it will gobble up a mind-blowing 200,000 acres of land. Meanwhile, the most ambitious solar plant being built (for completion in 2011) will produce a peak of only 280 mW, while using 1900 acres.

By comparison, the most powerful nuclear facility sits on about 1000 acres and produces 8212 mW. Keep in mind, that's not some ambitious projection of future generation capacity for some in-the-pipeline project, as with the wind and solar projects. Its the real-world output of an existing generation complex using today's technology.

Just as a really rough calculation, let's say that to make the world energy economy carbon neutral you need to replace an average of 13,000,000 mW of coal, oil, and gas. With the kind of nuclear facility I'm talking about, that'll take about another 1600 very large nuclear plants globally -- very ambitious, but not unreasonable -- it would be like building one such plant for every four million humans... three new plants for every two US states, for example. The combined land area it would take up would be less than half that of the state of Rhode Island.

By comprison, pulling off the same feat with massive wind farms would take 3250 farms and would take up over a million square miles of land. That's almost four times the total land area of Texas. And that assumes that you'd get the same wind efficiency average for 3250 wind farms as that one planned farm will get, which is unlikely. It will be built on one of the prime sites in the whole world for wind. The more wind (or solar) plants you build, the worse each new site will be for the technology, as the prime sites are used. Gradually you'll have seriously diminishing returns. By comparison, there are few limitations on where you can build a nuclear plant to get maximum output.

Feel free to check my number-crunching, but I think the basic point should be clear enough. In order for carbon-neutral generation to replace a serious portion of our current energy consumption (much less our future consumption, at present growth rates), we will have to be talking about some truly mind-boggling amounts of power. As such, the key concern is "scaleability." The limitations of solar and wind technology, which are tied to unusually sunny and windy locales, respectively, using current technology, limit their scaleability. Their huge land demands add an extra hurdle, making it hard to put them anywhere near places where the demand is (since the same forces that drive up energy demand in a location drive up the cost of land).

Those factors combine to mean that the more you rely on solar and wind energy, the less practical they become. You wind up building in less and less ideal locations, and transmitting the power over greater and greater distances. And that doesn't even factor in the materials cost of building these sprawling generation complexes. Nuclear power simply doesn't have the same scaleability issues.

I agree completely, but note that you only peripherally addressed solar.

Let's leave aside your assumption that solar must be contiguous and concentrate on using land that's already in use.

What if we put grid-tied solar cells on some reasonable percentage of every building in the US? We don't use up any more land and according to the numbers I have found as of 2002 we had about 150 MILLION acres currently in use for urban and rural housing. (I'm not even considering industrial)

Of course I support Nuclear as the fix needed NOW, but let's not discount the future by thinking too narrowly.

that it is really not an "either/or" situation. It's more like "all of the above". And it's not simply about the major wind and solar installations, it's also about the personal use of wind and solar to supplement the "central stations".

To achieve the kinds of reductions in CO2 and petroleum usage that will be required over the next 50 years to achieve our goals, it will require both short term and long term objectives. That means the use of "clean coal" technologies, increaded use of nuclear, more efficient vehicles, development of fuel cells, conservation and every other option which move us in the right direction.

Ron

I focused on wind because it's the weaker of the two. Solar has some promise, if the price of the cells comes down (or their efficiency goes up). If you could get a relatively affordable and efficient solar material that could be used for distributed generation (e.g., on everyone's rooftops), it could be a major contributor to the solution. However, with current technology, I still don't think it's anywhere near as promising as nuclear.

I'd be interested to see the math. Based on current small-scale panel technology's cost, how much would it cost to replace fossil fuels? I haven't crunched the numbers, but my guess would be that small-scale with cost more per mW than large scale (based on basic economic principles), and already large-scale solar isn't terribly economically competitive versus nuclear, much less versus fossil fuels.

Given the environmental impact of the absurdly named "clean coal," I hope that isn't being seen as even a good interim solution. I'd much rather see us go hard for nuclear than to dump that kind of CO2 into the atmosphere in an attempt to postpone the long-term changes we'll need to make.

is that it could be quickly retrofit to existing coal plants, at least reducing the CO2 production while additional nuclear plants are built and put on line.

Ron

I agree that given current solar costs and efficiencies that it's not yet cost effective v. nuclear. Yet it's doable.

But, and I have been following this MOST closely, thin-film solar should be able to reduce the current cost by tenfold in 5 years, 10 at the outside.

Making it VERY affordable.(on par with coal and NG, in point of fact...)

A few questions:

What about the waste from 1600 very large nuclear plants? The US seems to be having trouble finding a solution to the disposal of the nuclear waste we currently have. Who will be responsible for the waste, including the waste produced in the Third World plants? Wouldn't it be likely that such waste would end up in the environment, especially in cases of war or disruption in less developed countries?

You might ask yourself WHY ?

Ron

I agree with you, Boss, in that distributed solar is most likely to be the best answer.

The costs associated with the building of such a large number of nuclear plants compared with the costs of solar instillations would seem to say that putting our money into research of solar technologies would yield much greater returns.

I think I would rather ask you: Why?

as do the Canadians. The US does not.

By reprocessing the spend fuel bundles you can use the recovered fissionable materials to create new fule and reduce the high level wastes by more than 95%.

Ron

Micheal:

Have you ever been to a "Wind Farm"?

We have a 100 count wind turbin farm just an hours drive from my home. You should see this place, the bottom of the blades are probably about what a two story house would be from the ground. Cattle graze under the turning blades. Repeat cattle graze under the turning blades.

Fact:- Wind farms by neccessity are built on top of hills where the wind is most undisturbed. Hills around here mean grasslands, not farmlands because the soil is rocky and thin. It does not take much usable ground, as like I say cattle which would graze this land anyway still graze there after getting used to the slow moving rotors. The rancher really does well as he gets paid handsomely to lease the land for wind power and still can use probably 90 % of the land for grazing.

I have seen pictures of wind turbines in the surf alongside land. The problem with generating all forms of electrical energy is the transmission lines which mostly are far from where the energy will be generated, and the power must be sent to where it is utilized.

I know that many are in love with nuclear power and mostly they are in a certain age group. But, nuclear energy by it's vary nature is poterntially dangerous and not many persons would be overjoyed to have a plant built in their local area and it would have to be built in an area of the poor who didn't have the resources to fight the location. If you think there is resentment to drilling in Anwar, think of the resistance to building a nuclear power plant next to a rich neighborhood.

Also the waste is a tremendous problem and has never been completely solved. A noted scientist made the statement that nuclear power was a very complicated and dangerous way to boil water. And that is primarily what it does.

I think a possible solution might be in areas where there is adequate wind might be local power generated and then used in the location it is generated. That would eleminate the need for tranmitting the power for such long distances.

Actually - that's only true in "hilly" areas. The area in West Texas where the State is proposing to erect a wind farm is essentially FLAT - but the winds are consistently strong and "regular" - a prime requirement for wind turbines.

Ron

I've seen (some of) the wind farms in W. Texas and they are set on the top of buttes and well away from flat grounds. Driving I-10 toward El Paso there are some.

W. Texas isn't flat. Map