{"id":2140,"date":"2011-04-22T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-22T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/energy-reliability-lets-do-the-study-for-georgia.html"},"modified":"2011-04-22T14:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-22T18:00:00","slug":"energy-reliability-lets-do-the-study-for-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/energy-reliability-lets-do-the-study-for-georgia.html","title":{"rendered":"Energy reliability: let’s do the study for Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"Which energy source is really more reliable?\nNuclear, coal, or wind, water, and sun?\n

\n\n<\/a>\nAs Plant Vogtle and others\n\nhave just demonstrated,<\/a>\nnuclear power isn’t as reliable as we might have thought.\nMark Z. Jacobson says we can generate reliable power from\nwind, water, and sunlight alone.\nWill that work in Georgia?\n

\nElsevier’s policy of charging for peer-reviewed articles from\nscientific journals is controversial, and some people find $19.95\nprohibitive to access Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi’s\n\nProviding all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials<\/a>\nfrom Energy Policy\nVolume 39, Issue 3, March 2011, Pages 1154-1169.\nFortunately, the same authors wrote an earlier version for\nScientific American, 26 October 2009,\n\nA Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables:\nWind, water and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s\nenergy, eliminating all fossil fuels. Here’s how<\/a>\n

\nA new infrastructure must provide energy on demand at least as reliably\nas the existing infrastructure. WWS technologies generally suffer less\ndowntime than traditional sources. The average U.S. coal plant is offline\n12.5 percent of the year for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Modern\nwind turbines have a down time of less than 2 percent on land and less\nthan 5 percent at sea. Photovoltaic systems are also at less than 2\npercent. Moreover, when an individual wind, solar or wave device is down,\nonly a small fraction of production is affected; when a coal, nuclear\nor natural gas plant goes offline, a large chunk of generation is lost.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\nThe main WWS challenge is that the wind does not always blow and the sun\ndoes not always shine in a given location. Intermittency problems can\nbe mitigated by a smart balance of sources, such as generating a base\nsupply from steady geothermal or tidal power, relying on wind at night\nwhen it is often plentiful, using solar by day and turning to a reliable\nsource such as hydroelectric that can be turned on and off quickly to\nsmooth out supply or meet peak demand. For example, interconnecting wind\nfarms that are only 100 to 200 miles apart can compensate for hours of\nzero power at any one farm should the wind not be blowing there. Also\nhelpful is interconnecting geographically dispersed sources so they\ncan back up one another, installing smart electric meters in homes that\nautomatically recharge electric vehicles when demand is low and building\nfacilities that store power for later use.\n

\nBecause the wind often blows during stormy conditions when the sun\ndoes not shine and the sun often shines on calm days with little wind,\ncombining wind and solar can go a long way toward meeting demand,\nespecially when geothermal provides a steady base and hydroelectric can\nbe called on to fill in the gaps.\n<\/blockquote>\nCritics complain that such load balancing would require new long-distance\npower lines.\nLiving as I do in a place that gets most of its electricity from\nPlant Scherer, the country’s dirtiest coal plant, near Juliette, Georgia,\nwhich is farther away than the Georgia coast, where wind farms could\nbe built offshore, I’m not impressed by that criticism.\nIf Google can do it\n\noff the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Virginia<\/a>,\nGeorgia could do it off the Georgia coast.\n

\nFor Nuclear vs. WWS, see this video of\n\nJacobson vs. Brand at TED.<\/a>\n

\nI think Jacobson and Delucchi’s recommendation of hydroelectric\nis more problematic, since we don’t need more dammed rivers.\nHowever, energy storage by pumping water uphill, spinning flywheels,\nheating salt, compressing air, etc. may be able to meet the same need.\n

\n\nOnce again,<\/a>\nI call for a rewewable energy study for Georgia to find out.\n

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