Hippies attack Shell site near Edmonton

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Except that its not 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When the wind stops blowing, you have no power.

I should have been more clear. At least in Alberta, that almost never happens, but for the three-four times a year it does for a little is specifically why a combo wind/solar would be the best approach.

Electrical utilities have learned the hard way that if they are going to rely on wind generation, they have to have coal-fired, hydro, or nuclear plants on standby as a backup. I believe the figure used in the industry is 97 percent: i.e., for every 100 kilowatts of wind power, you need 97 kilowatts of reserve capacity from other sources.

I would argue the figure but I am not a scientist and don't have enough data right now. If someone reading this has any insight into why the number is what it is then please share.

And it's not free, either. The capital cost of building windmills is significant, and the cost of collecting and transmitting that power is often prohibitive. (The biggest single drain on our supply of electricity is induction loss in the power lines, and that can't be prevented unless ALL power is consumed right at the point of production.) If you have to have a backup for 97 percent of your windmills, it's generally cheaper to simply have 100 percent backup, pay for fuel, and not have the windmills at all.

I'm talking about residential installs, not fields on windmills. This means 1-2 25ft towers with 8 foot blades per property, as well as solar. If you owned your property for 25 years, the system will have paid for itself in less than half that time. Now imagine simply banking every month what you're paying per month on utilities now!

EDIT: By the way, windmills in residential areas are a first-class Bad Idea. Have you ever seen what happens when a windmill fails in operation? I have. Either the blades shear off, or the generator goes foom — and in neither case do you want to be within a city block of the wreckage.

When did this happen? Windmill technology today is amazing. BTW, have you seen what happens when a Nuclear plant goes boom?

Thanks for your post. Very good points.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

I should have been more clear. At least in Alberta, that almost never happens, but for the three-four times a year it does for a little is specifically why a combo wind/solar would be the best approach.

That's true. However, the wind in Alberta often drops to a level where windmills operate at only a tiny fraction of their rated generating capacity. That's what the backup is really needed for — not for the rare few days when there's no wind at all.

Solar has its own bag of issues, chiefly that it takes up huge areas of land that are required for other purposes. The same people who object to burning oil have also been known to protest against damaging the environment with acres upon acres of solar cells. Frankly, I have more sympathy with those particular protests.

I'm talking about residential installs, not fields on windmills. This means 1-2 25ft towers with 8 foot blades per property, as well as solar. If you owned your property for 25 years, the system will have paid for itself in less than half that time. Now imagine simply banking every month what you're paying per month on utilities now!

The thing is, if you're living on a typical 40-foot city lot, that means a windmill every 40 feet all along the street. Looks a lot like fields of windmills to me.

When did this happen? Windmill technology today is amazing.

Amazing, but not perfect. The same windstorms that uproot trees and take shingles off roofs can utterly destroy a windmill — and a windmill is much more dangerous when it goes. I haven't seen the effects in person, but I've seen photographs, and it gets rather grisly if there is anything valuable in the way of those blades.

Thanks for your post, btw. Very good points.

Thanks for your civility! I usually avoid the OT forums because of the festering arguments — Uncle Tyrannosaurus and Cousin Triceratops roaring at one another across the primeval swamp, with no hope of coming to any agreement — so a polite disagreement is especially welcome.

I really do wish we had a safe, cheap, and reliable way of supplying our energy needs without burning oil, which IMO is far too valuable (as a feedstock for petrochemicals) to be wasted by burning it. Unfortunately, wishes are not horses; wishes are not even horsepower.

I look forward to the day when we really will have the technology to do the job properly; but we're not there yet, and we don't gain anything by spending billions of dollars on half-baked remedies. Recall what I said about catalytic converters: well, let's try not to impose this year's technology on our children and grandchildren. That's what would happen if we tried to replace our energy sources all in one go.

Since the job can only be done gradually, we're stuck with burning oil for the time being. So I hope we can acknowledge that we are all responsible for the oil that gets burnt, and not try to salve our consciences by demonizing the particular people who supply us with it.

[DOK]

Windmills emit a constant frequency that has been found to make people ill. Because there is no stop or start to the blades turning, the sound comes out at a pitch that is undetectable by the ear, but very hard on the body, causing vertigo, stomach sickness, migraines, etc. Or maybe that's just conspiracy theory.

I think we all need to be very careful to not bite the hand that feeds us in Alberta. However, I do believe that the environment should come first, for the future of the world. The thing is, oil in the ground is worth nothing until it is brought up and refined. The same goes for trees growing on a mountain, fish swimming in the ocean, and water running in our rivers. They have no worth connected to them until they are taken from the earth and processed. If somehow we can tax this (yeah, yeah, booo taxes, but hear me out) and protect what's actually creating energy (meaning the natural state of the world, rain, water, fish, bears, etc. circle of life stuff). If we protect that and let it do it's worldly thing, then and only then, can we sustain our futures. If I knew that my money was going towards clean fresh water, wild salmon, thriving forests for our futures, I would pay up. Knowing that we can take from that supply to heat, produce energy, sell, create other products, etc. Call me crazy.

[Canuck-Hater]

Good for them, show these right wingers! But really I dont think it will achieve anything.

[tkflames]

Please consider that I do not work in the Oil Industry and instead in the mining and alternative energy industry before condemning this post

Solar Energy: Current solar energy requires the use of Silicon, a metalloid that requires 2000 degrees Celsius in arc furnaces to purify.. A few years ago, the amount of energy required to build a solar cell was more than then the amount of electrical energy that this Solar Cell would produce. I know it has improved since then, but we are talking 10% efficiency. The reality is, efficiency is created by taking advantage of economies of scale, however such operations are nowhere near effective enough for the footprint they require.

Wind Energy: As mentioned above, being anywhere near a wind generator has been shown to be unhealthy, but not yet proven to what extent. Preliminary studies suggest that this could have impacts on the heart, so it is critical that we know what we are getting into before jumping on these operations as the next big savior. As mentioned before the first common misconception regarding wind energy is that when the wind blows, you can harvest energy. This is incorrect, wind can only be harvested efficiently under very specific conditions and IPP's in BC spend a lot of money collecting data to find such sites. Sure everyone can throw a wind turbine on their roof, but overall this will not be a better solution than oil. I think wind can be used effectively, and will continue to become more effective, but not in the context of your local community windmill.

Biofuel- Jay Random did an excellent job detailing this; no need for me to add anything further

Hydro- Relatively clean, however have huge environmental implications. Since these are generally large operations, wildlife is generally very much affected. Also hydro requires very specific flow rates, so again this is not something you can throw anywhere. Having said that, with enough environmental care, I think these can be effectively used as a portion of a hybrid energy solution.

Wavepower/Woodpower/Geothermal Power- These are solutions that can only be applied only in specific areas and in the case of the first two are very much in their infantcy.

Saltwater Power- I think this is the only abundant resource on the planet that could equivocate Oil. There are very preliminary experiments on youtube regarding this energy source, but the reality is that we are probably 100 years away if it even works.

Nuclear- This is the cleanest form of energy - bar none - if you can justify the dedication to a cleanup effort 10,000 or more years from now. The entire waste generated by all of the nuclear power plants in Canada (mainly used in Ontario) fills only 3 hockey arenas to the boards in a year. In terms of environmental impact this is nothing, however, there are no guarantees that in the future, generations will dedicate enough money to this to ensure limited impact to the environment. Also it is impossible to predict how much a clean up effort would cost 100 or 1000 or 10000 years from now. I think the hope is that we can continue to develop associated technologies that limit the clean up effort and reduce the radiation caused by the waste.

Hybrid Energy Solution- The reality is, outside of Oil there is no "one-solution". I think most people can not accept this fact and therefore rather than solving the fundamental issues and mindset, dedicate themselves to biased hope in something that is in fact too good to be true. Hence movies such as "who killed the electric car" etc. are created and sold as truths instead of the bias that they are. Of course everyone wants to believe that the evil Oil companies are oppressing those poor suffering car companies and therefore we have low efficiency vehicles. The more logical answer is that car companies build cars that will make the maximum amount of profit within the limits with which they are forced (as do Oil companies for that matter). These companies don't have some evil-laughing master mind in a leather chair with a cat growling, instead these are your everyday investors that expect the company to make a profit. Managers receive their bonuses based on that and employees are promoted based on that. Some companies do a better job of promoting ingenuity and research over profits and sell this as "long term profits", but at the end of the day its about the bottom line. I am all for (while not endorsing) people like Al Gore educating on these matters and getting billionairs like the Virgin guy to invest massive amounts of money they can likely never spend in promoting these causes. However, protestors really anger me. Going into a private establishment, obstructing the ability of people to work and more importantly (in an industrial facility) endangering themselves and those employed there serves no purpose. Had they shown an equivalent amount of dedication to educating themselves on how to develope new technologies or educate those around them in a meaningful way to sooner reach those technologies, they would be far more effective. Sorry for the rant here at the end, but protestors, especially those disrupting innocent bystanders, really aggrevate me.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

There is no alternative to oil thats even remotely viable. Biofuels are a farce, it takes NG to produce fertilizer and you could use every inch of farm land on the earth and never come close to the 80,000,000 barrels the world consumes everyday. Oil companies meet demand, and what do they have to do with fuel efficiency of vehicles? They dont produce cars.

Natural gas is a viable alternative to oil when it comes to fuel. The governments and manufacturing sectors just need to buy into the concept and commit to it.

[Mad Mel]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

A third problem is that the most fuel-efficient vehicles are inevitably the smallest, but many people can't or won't use them. It's no use telling a soccer mom with four kids to drive a Prius; she needs a car big enough for her family. And if you want to tell a farmer or a plumber that he has to give up his pickup truck and drive a Smart Fortwo instead, I want to be there; I can sell tickets to it as a comedy act

While I agree with much of what you've said, anybody who has ever traveled outside North America knows how ridiculously oversized vehicles are there. Yes, there are some people who need larger vehicles. But the vast majority of North Americans drive vehicles which far larger and more inefficient than necessary for their purposes. I was one of them... our vehicles were an FJ Cruiser and a Dodge Dakota in Calgary; now we have a Subaru and two motorcycles. I loved my V8, but really I didn't need it considering that 90% of my driving was from West Springs to downtown in stop and go traffic.

[Mad Mel]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Natural gas is a viable alternative to oil when it comes to fuel. The governments and manufacturing sectors just need to buy into the concept and commit to it.

Very true. Natural gas burns much cleaner than oil, and in many countries they have already established the distribution networks so you can fill up your vehicle at the pumps. You can increase efficiency and reduce emissions even further by blending it with hydrogen (Hythane).

[Regorium]

I've also heard that at most, you want your wind energy to be something like 5-10% of your grid. I believe some European country is trying for 25%, and most observers say that is incredibly ambitious. Once you go over a certain threshold of wind energy in your supply mix, you start running into issues of completely overloading the grid. Due to the huge variation in energy production, too much power is just as much of an issue as too little power.

Also regarding battery powered cars: I'm not exactly sure that the environmental benefits are there, considering the ridiculous batteries that have been implemented. There were articles a couple years back that showed that the batteries in the Prius made the whole car more environmentally damaging than a conventional vehicle. Batteries cannot be efficiently recycled at this point in time, which just means an environmental nightmare several years down the road.

Really, I agree with what tkflames said, protestors should've spent their years in engineering and science to learn how to solve problems instead of spending their days crying about them. There isn't an easy solution to this.

[Oil Stain]

Originally Posted by Canuck-Hater

Good for them, show these right wingers! But really I dont think it will achieve anything.

Shell's HR staff will have those hippies ready to jump out of those "smoke stacks" to their death in three days.

I hope they like never ending meetings filled with coporate speak.