So how far away do you think practical fuel cells really are?

[TooMuchTime]

What is being ignored, is the fact that we are a vast country with several different resources to use depending on region.

How true. Being from sunny CA, I have installed solar panels from Vivint Solar. (If it's against the rules to "advertise," let me know and I'll change it!) It's a pretty good deal and I am currently producing nearly 5 kw during peak sunlight. It starts off at about 1 kw around 9 am, works up to 4.5 to 5 around 1pm and then tapers off until sunset. Since I only use about 1 kw at any time, I am putting 3.5 kw on average back into the grid during daylight. At night, I use PG&E and never use that much either. So kind of a hybrid solar/power-company works good here.

Colorado has huge reserves of oil and shale and the economy of North Dakota is in the middle of an oil boom. I know there is plenty of uranium on Indian lands (Navajos, I believe), the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska has enough oil to last hundreds of years with the taps wide open, and the Gulf states have plenty of natural gas.

The crime is we have a generation of youth that believes using natural resources is evil. Unless it is the plastic made from oil that is used in their iPhones.

[Mytur Binsdirti]

Wind turbines are killers.................



Rare Bird Flies Into Wind Turbine And Dies


An incredibly rare bird was killed by one of the liberal's beloved wind turbines.

Oh, the irony.

There were only eight recorded sightings of the white-throated needletail in the UK since 1846. One appeared this week on the British shores, and bird enthusiasts were understandably thrilled.


40 bird watchers arrived on scene to watch the rare bird, which breeds in Asia and spends winter in Australasia.


And then... It was killed. To the horror of the gathered bird enthusiasts, the white-throated needletail flew right into a wind turbine and died.

John Marchant, 62, said, "We were absolutely over the moon to see the bird. We watched it for nearly two hours. But while we were watching it suddenly got a bit close to the turbine and then the blades hit it. We all rushed up to the turbine, which took about five minutes, hoping the bird had just been knocked out the sky but was okay. Unfortunately it had taken a blow to the head and was stone dead. It was really beautiful when it was flying around, graceful and with such speed. To suddenly see it fly into a turbine and fall out the sky was terrible."

The last time a white-throated needletail was seen in the UK was 22 years ago.

A spokesperson from Bird Guides said, "Why it is ended up in Harris is a bit of a mystery – it should be well away in Siberia, Australia or Japan. It obviously got lost and the weather may have played a part. It is difficult to say."

"It was spotted by chance by two birders from Northumberland who were on holiday, and they knew what they were looking at. So there is a chance it may have been here a lot longer. It could have re-orientated itself and is capable of flying vast distances. In fact it spends more time in the air than on the ground. So it could have worked out it was in the wrong place and flown to where it should be," he continued.

Nick Moran runs bird tracking for the British Trust for Ornithology. He had been watching the bird's locations as it arrived into the UK.

"It is not the happiest ending for a bird that has flown half way around the world," he said. "It was a real day of mixed emotions for everyone there, they were all so happy they got to see it, but then witnessed it die."

The Rare Bird Alert sent out a tweet yesterday, saying, "The white-throated needletail on Harris flew into a wind turbine and has died. Pathetic way for such an amazing bird to die."

[Ghoste]

I don't know if its true or not but its sure a sad irony if it is.

[ws23rt]

The Columbia river gorge in Oregon/Washington is a very scenic and vast place. Some years back someone built a house on the washington side on his own property. Someone on the other side of the river saw it and registered a complaint. After a long battle the house was torn down to restore the vista.
Today as one drives through this pristine area we see hundreds of wind turbines. At night they all have lights on them. I guess they add to the pristine vista. And the power they produce is seldom needed so the gov. (us) pays them for the upset in there financial problem.
The folks that have a grasp on stuff like this clearly are not the ones that make these things happen.

[Ghoste]

We have had hundreds of the disgusting things forced on us where I live too and they just piss me off.   At peak output they generate just enough power to work the printers for the politicians who send out the reports about how great they are for saving the planet by making us use turbines.  Compound it with the farmers who are nearly prepared to knife fight each other for taxpayer subsidized leases they get for having one of them on their property and it doesn't take long to see they are little more than a propaganda exercise that I get to help pay for.
And for the face slap they paint the bottom 20 feet of them green to help them blend in to the local background.
I'd be all for them if I thought they worked but I really don't.

[ws23rt]

We have had hundreds of the disgusting things forced on us where I live too and they just piss me off.   At peak output they generate just enough power to work the printers for the politicians who send out the reports about how great they are for saving the planet by making us use turbines.  Compound it with the farmers who are nearly prepared to knife fight each other for taxpayer subsidized leases they get for having one of them on their property and it doesn't take long to see they are little more than a propaganda exercise that I get to help pay for.
And for the face slap they paint the bottom 20 feet of them green to help them blend in to the local background.
I'd be all for them if I thought they worked but I really don't.

They could work in the right places with the proper engineering. The ones we see are made very light duty (to meet a requirement they were made light duty) That means the drive system is on the edge of capacity and life span. It does not matter that it cost much money to fix them when they fail (and they do). They are as they are because someone unqualified checked off on it and said good to go.
BTW I have been working in the industrial power production world for almost 40 yrs mostly supervisor or more so my view point is what most don't see.
The media does not have time to translate relevant details.

[Ghoste]

Which doesn't explain why the taxpayer has to pay for the lease on the land, the purchase of the turbine and to subsidize the cost of the electricity they produce since this "free" source of energy production somehow costs more than other methods.

[ws23rt]

Which doesn't explain why the taxpayer has to pay for the lease on the land, the purchase of the turbine and to subsidize the cost of the electricity they produce since this "free" source of energy production somehow costs more than other methods.

All of these sources have merit. The people that move them forward are incompetent.

[ws23rt]

This is the kind of thread that can easily get off track and I have contributed to that.
So how close is a "practical" fuel cell?
The word practical can trip us up because it means different things to different folks.
We can do this now. The hold up is a fear of the unknown by those that believe anything new may have a down side. It is true.
Fire is a dangerous scary thing. we learned about it and made it work for us. Nuclear fire is a dangerous scary thing and we have learned about it and  make it work for us.
Those that think the earth is still flat need to shut up and watch for a change.
We have aircraft carriers and subs that use fuel cells that last. Space probes that work for many years. And if the only come back they have is the question about dealing with waste than they have ignored the many answers to that question.
Practical fuel cells are as far away now as they were when they were a dream even though we have them now.

[Mytur Binsdirti]

Back off track. Not the bird in question, but there is no doubt that wind turbines murder birds. Surely, someone needs to go to jail & be financially ruined from government lawsuits.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NAAzBArYdw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

[Cooter]

If wind turbines are killing off Uber rare birds, and the average John Q. Public can't drive 3 days in his/her Jeep Grand Cherokee without getting rear ended by some text messaging driver and exploding [Yet, IIRC, the Jeep GC has been around since 1993 and nobody even heard of exploding fuel tanks then?]; I doubt a Rolling Hydrogen Bomb will be produced anytime soon.

[Ghoste]

 

[Mike DC]

        
One could argue that we are currently driving around in gasoline bombs.  




Govt subsidies for alternative fuels may be misguided in the specifics, but the raw principle of subsidizing energy tech is not.  The fact is that we are currently subsidizing oil.  We slap some token taxes on it but we are also indirectly subsidizing it several times as much at the same time.  And if we counted the environmental damage (which does cost us real dollars in other indirect ways) then the subsidies on oil would look even higher.  No alternative tech can hope to compete with the existing industry if it does not receive proportionate subsidies and one of its biggest strong points is left out of the comparison entirely.    

 

[Ghoste]

True, but the subsidized gasoline isn't being propped up against a cheaper form of gasoline.