bostonbubble.com

[balor123]

America's Wind Power Bubble -- Massive Growth Yet Bleeding Jobs

Granted this article is called the "Power Bubble" but still we all know that Green energy is an important trend going forward and everyone needs to be on board. Those who aren't will be left with expensive unreliable power. What I don't understand is why, MA, with all its massive entrepreneur base, added only 9MW of wind power in 2009. It's the cheapest of all forms of power, very environmentally friendly, and we (as I understand it) have lots of wind to harness in parts of the state. We certainly aren't building solar plants.

It seems to be that MA may be creating the technologies but we aren't deploying them, which has to be where the bulk of the jobs are for the middle class. And business tends to migrate towards customers, not to mention that our power might not be competitive without wind.

[admin]

[melonrightcoast]

i think the large wind turbines look amazing and impressive. i think that every single home here in windy MA should have a small one to help generate electricity.

from the little I do understand, part of the problem with wind and solar is that they are unreliable and that you need to have a good battery system to store the power.

personally, i like geothermal systems, but I'm partial since i'm a geologist .
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melonrightcoast ... are you?

[balor123]

You can store the power or you can shift the usage, which is where the smart grid comes in. Often times you don't need to time shift at all as power appears when you need it. One of the biggest consumers of power in the southern states is AC and you only need AC when there's Sun. I don't know that Wind is so correlated. Batteries are a horrible way to store power though. It's not clear they're much better for the environment and they have limited charge/discharge cycles and are slow to charge/discharge with large energy losses. Lithium is highly limited and concentrated in only a few places (Bolivia, China). They are primarily used today, I think, because they are small and light, two features that aren't necessary for grid storage or even for a single house. From what I read compressed air is the most likely candidate for storage but I think the environment can take a limited amount of damage so if we get enough renewable power and price the polluting stuff high enough it might actually be sustainable. That's where the smart grid comes in, which I sort of wish I were involved with. Too bad I didn't listen to my professors who said that power systems was going to explode in 1998. Then again, those people work in the middle of nowhere and make an embarrassingly low amount of money (hence why we have such a shortage of those workers).

I think geothermal is interesting but don't know a whole lot about it. It's not very common and I think the installation cost is what sets people off. Why can't one geothermal plant be installed for multiple properties to ammortize the upfront cost? I suppose that would require planning, something that MA seriously lacks. Or maybe the bankers could come in and just roll it into the ongoing price of power.