gdp's Comments

After Gutenberg : Coal pays the bills

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:36:51 +0000

While on the topic of disregard, Brad Johnson reminds Wonkroom readers that Don Blankenship called safety regulators "as silly as Global Warming."

After Gutenberg : Mounting Damages from Coal Ash Waste

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:19:38 +0000

State politicians know how to share the love, too. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-MT) made a “heavy-handed” demand that “local officials express support, in writing, for a proposed coal mine in order to receive stimulus money for local projects,” in a letter telling them to voice support for “coal money.”

After Gutenberg : Warmer-than-Normal, Drier-than-Normal in March

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:52:52 +0000

The Associated Press reports that Southern New England now has seen "record heat, as well as fire danger warnings, less than a week after record flooding” with “the earliest date ever for a 90-degree reading in Boston” — the “typical” first 90-degree day in Boston is June 5th. Weatherman Brad has more.

After Gutenberg : Mounting Damages from Coal Ash Waste

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:45:07 +0000

"You could not ask for a more craven illustration of the bankruptcy of national energy politics and the obeisance national legislators still must pay the coal industry, no matter what havoc it wreaks" than a statement by Bill ~~Wicked~~ Wicker, the communications director for the Senate Energy Committee. "This is a mining incident. This issue involves the health and safety of our miners, not our energy future." Such pandering incensed Grist's David Roberts, who sees the coal industry destroy the land, pollute the air and water, impoverish communities, and sicken tens of thousands of people a year. He sees the disregard for the safety of the people who dig the coal as another example of how coal kills and how our "elected" representatives continue to allow such malfeasance.

After Gutenberg : Coal pays the bills

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:30:36 +0000

One might presume that coal pays for Newsweek advertising. As Wonkroom Guest JW Randolph asserts, the article that Daniel Stone published, "West Virginia Mine Disaster Unlikely To Effect National Energy Debate", was so full of misinformation and false pretexts that I wanted to spend some pixels correcting a few things

After Gutenberg : GE Wind aims for off-shore market

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:16:39 +0000

Via Greenwire we learn that GE Energy continues as the largest supplier of wind turbines to the U.S. wind power industry, followed by Denmark's Vestas, Germany's Siemens, and Mitsubishi of Japan. As wind power proliferates GE Energy could see greater competition from Chinese turbine manufacturers that have geared up production to supply China's increased demand.

After Gutenberg : Push for More Wind Power Where Most Needed

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:08:25 +0000

While the US now gets 31% of electricity from Low-Carbon Source, Peter Behr and Jenny Mandel tells us that US get 2% of electricity from Wind Power. "Six states used turbines to generate more than 5 percent of their electricity last year," report the NY Times Greenwire bloggers. Iowa led the pack for wind's share in the market, producing 14.2 percent of its electric power from wind last year. It ranked second to Texas in the amount of wind generation capacity, as the Lone Star State exceeded 9,000 megawatts at the end of last year. While there was more than 10,000 megawatts of new generating capacity last year during a second year of recession, the question remains how the US can increase the percent of electricity that comes from wind power ten fold?

After Gutenberg : Warmer-than-Normal, Drier-than-Normal in March

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:55:50 +0000

AP reports that The Caribbean “is battling a record drought that has shut down schools and courtrooms and sparked brush fires and a prison protest,” with “the lowest rainfall totals from October to March since records were kept.”

After Gutenberg : Coal pays the bills

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 04:07:37 +0000

During the immediate time after the mine disaster with expressed regrets and calls for better mine safety, Jeff Biggers warns, "If we look at the titanic Massey violations, just above this mine, in the same community where all the journalists are now, there is a huge billion dollar gallon coal slurry impoundment. And Massey Energy is also blasting near this coal slurry impoundments and threatening the lives of the people below."

After Gutenberg : Renewable Energy Growth In China Now Greater Than Coal

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:28:41 +0000

"The Americans will always do the right thing after they have exhausted all the alternatives." -Winston Churchill

After Gutenberg : Renewable Energy Growth In China Now Greater Than Coal

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 14:41:47 +0000

When you say "humans", James, did you include Americans?

After Gutenberg : Push for More Wind Power Where Most Needed

Fri, 9 Apr 2010 21:47:35 +0000

NYC Treehugger Matthew McDermott reports that the United States now gets 31% of electricity from Low-Carbon Sources. "AWEA just released some 2009 stats for the United States showing the nation added 10 GW more wind power last year, bringing the total to 35 GW. In total, EIA figures show that hydro, nuclear and renewables supplied about 31% of US electricity last year, with coal supplying 45%."

After Gutenberg : Traveling Wave Reactor

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 14:50:28 +0000

Announcing his participation on a Dartmouth panel considering nuclear power and climate, Professor Joe provides links to some Climate Progress posts on nukes. For background, he advises that one start with “An introduction to nuclear power.”

And if you still want more, try:

After Gutenberg : Ultralife Energy Storage

Wed, 7 Apr 2010 19:19:44 +0000

separsons writes: "The largest sodium sulfur battery in America, nicknamed 'BOB,' can provide enough electricity to power all of Presidio, Texas. Until now, the small town relied on a single 60-year-old transmission line to connect it to the grid, so the community frequently experienced power outages. BOB, which stands for 'Big-Old Battery,' began charging earlier this week. The house-sized battery can deliver four megawatts of power for up to eight hours. Utilities are looking into similar batteries to store power from solar and wind so that renewables can come online before the country implements a smart grid system."

After Gutenberg : GE Wind aims for off-shore market

Sun, 4 Apr 2010 14:31:17 +0000

Having trouble making sense of your comment. The article is about large HAWTs for off-shore wind farms and not about someone living off the grid. Such wind farms provide cleaner energy for the Grid.

After Gutenberg : Manure to Biogas in the US

Sat, 3 Apr 2010 20:40:07 +0000

This blog has commented about a Scandinavian city that captured heat from sewage. There also has been some testing of using sewage with co-digestion in closed systems. Generally speaking, the use of human sewage in aerobic digestion presents too great a health risk.

After Gutenberg : Got a Real Type of Thing Going Down, Gettin' Down

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:55:13 +0000

Scientific Americanz George Muser relays cost estimates for a concentrated solar photo voltaic demonstration project in San Jose, Calif. The companyz Chief Budget Officer Bob MacDonald says that the CPV (Concentrated Photo Voltaic) array, which "looks rather like a big solar cooker, with a long mirror that focuses sunlight so that you only need a tenth as many solar cells to cover a given area," will generated electricity at a cost of about 15 cents per kW-hr. This is "about half the cost of regular solar panels." If it turns out that this is efficiency of the CPV array, then it is competitive with nuclear power. Of course, fossil power without an environmental cost surcharge is still cheaper, about 10 cents per kW-hr (varying with location).

<img src="http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/blog/Image/System_lowres.jpg" alt="" title="" />
"The basic CPV idea, which goes back to the '70s, is to use fewer solar cells and shine more light on each one." Designers rate a photo voltaic cell on output when they expose it to straight-on, full-on sunlight (about 1,000 watts per square meter at Earth's surface). When they can concentrate the light, the cell will generate proportionally more current and therefore proportionally more power. (The voltage remains fixed by quantum physics.) Nowadays, there are PV cells that capture a wider range of the solar spectrum and perform best under intense light.

The Skyline array relies on passive cooling -- namely, natural air flow around metal fins mounted on the back of the cells. You also have to factor in the cost of the mirror and, if the panels track the sun, motors. For small residential systems, regular flat panels are still cheaper, but CPV becomes economical for systems bigger than about 50 kW, such as those that are starting to show up on the roofs of shopping malls. For truly gigantic arrays, those bigger than about 50 MW, the cost of silicon begins to add up and solar thermal systems, which heat up a fluid to spin a turbine, become cheaper.

One of CPV's hangups has been the cost of manufacturing and installation, but MacDonald says his company has come up with a simplified mechanical design that can be built on a converted car assembly line. The units are sized to fit into a standard shipping container and are fully preassembled to make them easy to plug in at the site. A 1 MW array will consume about five acres. The company set up a 27 kW demo system in San Jose last May and expects to start shipping its production units later this year.

After Gutenberg : Protecting Their Gas

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:11:09 +0000

Good News, fellow woodchucks, Philadelphia officials have asked a state regulator to ban the natural-gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing until its environmental effects, especially on drinking water, are studied.