Why build nukes when wind can provide 3/4 of our power?
While Southern Company claims to be
“a company that is engaged in offering solutions, not just rhetoric”,
yet
does nothing about wind off the Georgia coast,
researchers in far California have demonstrated we can get
3/4 of all needed east coast electricity from offshore wind.
Bjorn Carey wrote for Stanford Report 14 September 2012,
Offshore wind energy could power entire U.S. East Coast, Stanford scientists say
A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that there is enough
offshore wind along the U.S. East Coast to meet the electricity
demands of at least one-third of the country.
The scientists paid special attention to the Maine-to-Virginia
corridor; the historical lack of strong hurricanes in the region
makes it a favorable site for offshore wind turbines. They found
that turbines placed there could satisfy the peak-time power needs
of these states for three seasons of the year (summer is the
exception).
“We knew there was a lot of wind out there, but this is the first
actual quantification of the total resource and the time of day that
the resource peaks,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and
environmental engineering at Stanford who directed the research.
“This provides practical information to wind farm developers about
the best areas to place turbines.”
Mark Z. Jacobson already worked out a framework for
powering the entire world from wind, water, and sun alone.
The late
John Blackburn, Ph.D., showed us how
to power North Carolina with sun, wind, and hydro,
plus less natural gas than NC uses now.
Now Jacobson is working out the details of implementation.
-jsq
PS: Owed to Seth Gunning.
Solar already provides peak power at peak load, and through distribution
is resilient, and that plus ever-decreasing prices will drive solar
deployments up exponentially for a decade or so yet.
If we add an inexpensive metal-free battery,
solar will take over even faster.
And that’s what Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has just
published as a discovery.
The paper reports a metal-free flow battery that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.
