On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 2:20 AM, Tony White <tony.mzungu@gmail.com> wrote:
*very* good to be back!
same here. I'm skunked! Last few days without the list were awful.
I also believe in renewable energy - but we have to be careful in our calculations. There is an 'energy' cost associated with every technology - eg. the cost to produce, transport, and install the wind generators (and that includes the energy cost in producing the materials they are made from (eg. steel)). That has to be deducted from the energy produced during the expected lifetime of the generators.
Right.
The same calculation also needs to be made, whether wind power, solar power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power, wave power, tidal power....
My personal 'gut' feeling is that our best prospect is geothermal power. For most countries, this is not an option - hence the concentration on solar and wind - but we have our beautiful, seismically active, rift valley!
Totally agree. The one cost I've seen you miss, IMHO, is the cost attached to transmission. Which is why, while totally agreeing with you about geothermal generation, I think wind/solar combi would be good for "local" power production. I'm thinking of a few hundred households out there, I mean really out there. It would be really costly to link these folks to the grid, but they could be well served by a smallish wind plant? BR, S