Reduction in consumption of fossil fuels

[Pengwuino]

Nuclear power does have an emission in a way. Nuclear waste is the "emission" if that's what you want to call it. Although its not constant like other methods, its still there in the end.

And where do you live? I wish i could change suppliers haha.

 

[Pengwuino]

If a given homepower system costs $30,000, and 30 years of 5% compunded annual interest is $100,000 the annual cost would be at least $130,000 / 30 years = $4,333.33. Add a few dollars of maintenance, repair and insurance (even if you don't discretely buy insurance, you are essentially acting as your own insurer and hence still incur insurance costs; the same goes for loans -- if you do not take out a loan, you are essentially lending the money to yourself and hence incur opportunity costs equal to the prevailing interest rate) each year and it adds up to $5,000 per year of ownership costs. If that system provides 6,250 kwh per year of electrical energy (an average of 520.83 kwh per month), that would work out to a unit cost of 80 cents per kwh.

Whats that?

 

[Kenneth Mann]

The main driver for oil prizes going up right now is -would you believe it- insufficient refinery capacity. However windmill power in the Netherlands is three times more expensive.

That effects refined output prices in the US, but the main driver of crude prices (per barrel) are China, India and the other rapidly developing nations, and this is not likely to change. The law of supply, demand and price is still valid.

KM

 

[hitssquad]

and 30 years of 5% compunded annual interest is $100,000

Whats that?

Compound interest.
moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm


--
Inputs

Current Principal: $ 30,000.00
Annual Addition: $ 0.00
Years to grow: 30
Interest Rate: 5 %
Compound interest 1 time(s) annually


Results

Future Value: $ 129,658.27
--

 

[Pengwuino]

You mean for a loan? Oh i was figuring to buy it outright. Nothing is very economical when you need a loan for it :P What kind of figures are we looken at if you buy it outright.

 

[hitssquad]

The meaning of opportunity cost

You mean for a loan?

No. I meant that to buy anything, one must pay interest whether one borrows the money or not — which is what I wrote.

i was figuring to buy it outright.

(even if you don't discretely buy insurance, you are essentially acting as your own insurer and hence still incur insurance costs; the same goes for loans -- if you do not take out a loan, you are essentially lending the money to yourself and hence incur opportunity costs equal to the prevailing interest rate)

Nothing is very economical when you need a loan for it

It is not possible to purchase anything without at least lending yourself money equivalent to the purchase price.

What kind of figures are we looken at if you buy it outright.

The figures that I quoted.

 

[Pengwuino]

Oh so we're adding in opportunity cost... hmm... But what about re-selling the land and turbines afterwards eh eh? .

But more importantly, this begs the question... how do wind farms do it?? Is it just a case where they can better invest their money elsewhere?

 

[hitssquad]

how do wind farms do it?

They get special tax credits that make it profitable. Where the tax credits are not sufficient for wind-power investors to make a profit, wind farm are generally not put up.

Also, some power ulitities are charging special rates for wind and solar power. If someone wants to pay more, then the product, naturally, can be more expensive.

Also, large power plants are naturally more economical than small power plants. If you are attempting to produce some given thing on a small scale, it tends to be more expensive than the same item produced by a large factory.

 

[Pengwuino]

hmm.. wonder hwat kinda tax incentives there are where my godfather lives...

 

[hitssquad]

wonder hwat kinda tax incentives there are where my godfather lives.

I was referring to tax credits for major industrial ventures, not for homepower.

 

[Pengwuino]

Well i was thinken about a commercial windfarm... just not very big at all. Maybe 3 or 4 of those turbines you used in your example.

 

[Andre]

A new renewable is being (attempted) develloped in the Netherlands. Fresh water - Salt water boundaries. If you put several membranen between the two, the osmosis of the different salty ions runs at different speed, creating a slight electrical potential in the water containers. So if you have a river mouth, you're in business. The only problem is that a bit of power plant requires many square miles with container$ each of them with thousands of membrane$. So, the challenge is to manage the costs.

But compared to wind and solar energy, most rivers always flow

 

[hitssquad]

Well i was thinken about a commercial windfarm... just not very big at all. Maybe 3 or 4 of those turbines you used in your example.

Those are homepower turbines. The largest are rated at only a few kilowatts. The bigger the turbine, the more efficient it is. State of the art commercial windpower turbines are now 390 feet in diameter and are rated at 5 megawatts.
lm.dk/UK/Home/default.htm

 

[Pengwuino]

Those are homepower turbines. The largest are rated at only a few kilowatts. The bigger the turbine, the more efficient it is. State of the art commercial windpower turbines are now 390 feet in diameter and are rated at 5 megawatts.
lm.dk/UK/Home/default.htm

What are we looken at for a $150,000 investment? I'm going to look around to see what kinda turbines we're talken about for that price.

I remember having this discussion with one of my professors... why it cost like $5 million for one of those big ol turbines that get a few megawatts of power. Even he was like "well... there pretty big... but i still am not sure why it would cost so much". Are the electronics really... impressive? hehe

ooo check this out

http://www.town.ipswich.ma.us/ub/wind/Ipswich%20Report.pdf

$750,000 installation cost and only $450,000 made after 10 years after including maintanence costs and such without factoring in your opportunity cost. And its in massachussettes and according to another website, they only pay about 7 cents/kwh. Heck in California, we pay about 14 cents so i bet these figures are muuuuch better here.


hahaha oh man, i just heard the funniest response ever on the news. Some women is being interviewed about disneylands new semi-fingerprinting ID system and she was asked this question and she goes "Devilspeak!"

 

[Nerro]

If you have a lot of cash why don't you just build a few simple wind generators yourself? Darrius mills are simple to make and kind of foolproof :) (They look awsome too :D)

 

[Pengwuino]

If you have a lot of cash why don't you just build a few simple wind generators yourself? Darrius mills are simple to make and kind of foolproof :) (They look awsome too :D)

Oh god, i shoudl shoudlnt i... how complicated would it be. I am no electrician :(

This would totally be a good use of my time

 

[hitssquad]

My godfather's son owns a few acres and he's doing nothing with em.

Few areas of the United States offer the wind conditions that wind power investors typically look for. ~99% of the geographical United States would be rejected for wind investment on this basis. You might want to do some reading on this here:
http://www.homepower.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Know_Nukes

 

[Pengwuino]

Yah we live in a valley and its about smack dab in the middle so there's probably nowhere near enough wind to make any power.. but sure would be fun to build something for my house :D

 

[juju]

Hi,

I heard an interview a few months back, where a Texas wind power investor was asked why this type of investment.

His answer was that he could make money on such an investment and wasn't doing it for environmental reasons.

juju

 

[Pengwuino]

haha i looked at a compilation of wind data for the US and my city is basically at the 0 level... beautiful.

 

[pattylou]

Pengwuino, dude, you're in california. Are you a homeowner? I'm telling you, Solar. The governator wants us all on solar and the "million solar roofs" (google it) is going to pass.

Rebates for homeowners to put on solar already exists. They might get better with this initiative.

You can go small, or big. I mean, you can get a do-it-yourself kit at costco for some basic energy for minor needs. Look into it! You just seem so keen on wind, but you might be better placed to go with solar.

 

[Pengwuino]

I was feeling really "build it yourself" lately so that's why i was into the wind thing. But after looking at that damn graph, wind is out of the question. If we did go solar, we'd want at least 2kwh production capabilities since we use electricity like crazy so we'd probably have something professionally installed. Hopefully a government rebate will make the cost look more like a new car instead of a new house haha.

Ooo looks like this mollion solar thingy bill got through committee 2 weeks ago. Hope these dang democrats don't get in the way of things again.

These subsidies better be good because I am calculating that it would take at least 10-20 years before the stupid thing pays itself off.

 

[pattylou]

The CostCo kits are do-it-yourself; I don't know what you can get from them... I think they are a few hundred bucks apiece so they'd only suply a small amount of energy for you.

Democrats won't oppose environmental legislation. It's the dang republicans that you have to look out for.

 

[Pengwuino]

The CostCo kits are do-it-yourself; I don't know what you can get from them... I think they are a few hundred bucks apiece so they'd only suply a small amount of energy for you.

Democrats won't oppose environmental legislation. It's the dang republicans that you have to look out for.

Democrats are full of it. They tried to put a wind farm off of... one of hte 'Santa' cities and the rich hollywood crowd complained that it would screw up their view of the sunset so it was never built. Plus there mad that arnold is taking away their money so they are continually blocking crap. We have to have a special election because of them refusing to give up their little pet programs.

I don't want to get the Costco kit if its less bang for the buck, we need 2+ kwh for it to be even worth it.

 

[hitssquad]

we need 2+ kwh for it to be even worth it.

A kilowatt-hour (kwh) is a unit of energy, Pengwuino.

 

[Pengwuino]

oops... shouldn't have put that hour in there... but i think everyone understands what i meant.

Electrical generation has been screwing me up from day one. I couldn't figure out how the hell "kw/h" made any sense for the life of me until someone told me "are you sure you don't mean kwh?"

 

[hitssquad]

Homepower as a forced-labor full-time hobby

I was feeling really "build it yourself" lately so that's why i was into the wind thing.

You can do-it-yourself with solar by purchasing individual solar cells and using them to make your own solar panels. But even if you purchase all of your supplies prefabricated instead, you will have plenty of work to do installing your system and managing it.
physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=510640&highlight=solar#post510640

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The management category is critical for successful operation of institutional-size generating stations; it encompasses hard work and is stress-inducing. Management compensation packages reflect this by being huge. That all applies for homepower as well. If the management costs for homepower seem in given instances to be zero, it will be because the management is donating its entire compensation package back into the enterprises. This doesn't make management costs zero.
--

 

[Pengwuino]

... what does that mean? Sounds like you plopped down a page off a 'how to be a successful manager' type book.

 

[pattylou]

Democrats are full of it. They tried to put a wind farm off of... one of hte 'Santa' cities and the rich hollywood crowd complained that it would screw up their view of the sunset so it was never built. Plus there mad that arnold is taking away their money so they are continually blocking crap. We have to have a special election because of them refusing to give up their little pet programs.

Well, now you're talking about a subset of elitest democrats.

There are weirdoes in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, etc., everywhere. But the democrats in general would love to see renewable energy.

I am very very displeased with the special election. I did not sign one single petition. It is the legislature's job to figure this cr*p out, why we need to finance a speicial election is beyond me.

The petitions I saw which will appear on the special election, were right-wing issues. Notification of parents if a student requests an abortion, for example. No doubt there are left-wing issues too - but that's not what I see at the local Albertson's petition table.

So I don't shop there anymore.

 

[Pengwuino]

I don't care how they got the election, I am just glad they did. We got arnold in there because we were in debt up to our eyeballs and no one dared cut a program. Since the dems have just been criticizing and whining instead of doing their jobs, this is what happens; you have to waste money on an election to bypass them (although I am not sure how this will help since judges and the legislature have constantly by-passed initiatives we have voted on). Everyones just afraid to lose their jobs because they need to cut programs so instead, they just delay everything and this is what we get. Its cool for me though since i work at the elections so easy money :D.

Wait no its not easy money... i was the inspector at the 2004 elections and i wanted to kill myself at the end of the day. It was a small town too! We had people coming in who said they weren't sure what they were doing... the voting box arrived at the very last second... at the end our counts were off by 1 or 2 (depending on which time we counted) everytime. Oh and i got there at around 6:30am after abouta 45 minute drive to the polling location... and it was about 20 degrees... and teh person with the key didnt arrive for another half hour... and was working until about 10pm or something... god those were bad memories yet i still want to do it.

Lets see where was i... oh yah, democrats suck, guys rule! woooo :P. But really, everyone wants to see renewable energies... democrats just don't understand what there talken about when it comes to renewable energies and republicans just... don't talk. I mean 33 million people and only 4 nuclear reactors? This wasnt the result of any republicans i can tell you that :D

 

[Everett]

I think that an important issue that is often ignored with opportunity cost is inflation, the decrease in the value of a denomination over time. Basically, it means that for a loan, you will be paying with dollars/euros that are less valuable than the ones you borrowed at the initiation of the loan.

Investing in wind power is appropriate, because it provides an alternative to commodity electricity from the grid. The rising cost of conventional energy is a major contributor to the inflation that we have, and, in my opinion, will be the main cause of the higher rates of inflation that are coming soon. Money invested in wind power is an investment that protects you and your energy-dependent lifestyle from inflation.

 

[hitssquad]

I think that an important issue that is often ignored with opportunity cost is inflation, the decrease in the value of a denomination over time. Basically, it means that for a loan, you will be paying with dollars/euros that are less valuable than the ones you borrowed at the initiation of the loan.

Interest rates are not normally lower than inflation rates.

Money invested in wind power is an investment that protects you and your energy-dependent lifestyle from inflation.

When you say wind power, are you talking about homepower?