Why isn't Toyota on the E85 Bandwagon?

If manitoba could supply hydro to meet all of the US demands, I would be ecstatic. We both know that is not even close to being true. So lets be honest, and look at the cost of wind compared to coal and nuclear, which are the mainstays of US power sources.

Regarding reliability -- I read some months ago that Denmark intends to push wind to supply 50% of its domestic energy use. More than that would run into reliability and capactiy problems. When the US hits -- oh 40% wind energy on the grid, then the debate how to supply the remaining 60% will be cogent.

 

umm well at 5¼ cents per KWH (yes that is what i pay)...yes, hydro is cheap...

but we have a lot of land, but only a little that can be farmed. the Cascades, volcanos, etc have made farmable land a premium here. but the hills made wind very attractive (cant use it for anything else except skiing) on the eastern side, we have a huge desolated waste land that was a huge lava flow a few years back. the acidity doesnt allow much to grow there. its also very well suited to wind and solar to a lesser extent. granted we will not get rid of the hydro...its simply been way too good to us.

it is easy to see why you favor E-85. you have the land to farm... what land we have is already farmed to grow valuable commodities. high end table fruits, wines and vegetables. no way, that will change. we make a lot of money on that too.

we have a lot of space, but most of it cant be farmed.

 

Yes, cleverlever, they allow "idiots" like me to vote for wind power in one of the windiest places in the country. You can talk all you want about your credentials, but that doesn't change the fact that you are a condescending donkey. Your tone of "appreciating my spirit" and mocking me for using wind power has proven that.

Seriously, you worked on wind farms HOW LONG AGO? The 70's? THE CARTER ERA? Are you kidding me? You need to do some more research into the modern world, maybe drive out to the wind farm on the great plains of Colorado and watch the turbines turn.

Did I mention it's windiest at night when I'll be charging up my car?

Come on down to Boulder, Colorado. You can take a tour of NREL. Then of course, we can go out to the wind farm, and you can see for yourself. Step into the 21st century.

Yes, stand alone wind turbines do not provide reliable power for a household. When the wind stops blowing, something else must make up the difference, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the blowing wind for energy. That's the whole reason why the wind farms are ATTACHED TO THE GRID. Also, yes, your wind turbine that is below the treeline won't work for crap.

How's this for above the tree line:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/i...photo_12423.jpg

Notice the tree way down in the corner.

As for federal incentives, 2.5 cents is nothing. They might as well get rid of it. We Coloradans will have our 10% by 2015, and there's not much your Carter-Era naysaying can do to stop us.

Nate

 

In Western Washington solar isn't really an option. Even if solar was an option when the price for solar panels is compared to the price of a wind generator that produces the same amount of watts, the wind generator is much much cheaper.
Compare wind to solar

 

well i am a displaced wind farm employee and i can attest to not working when the fed money dries up. where i was, the best wind we had was before noon usually but we had sufficient enough wind to generate power on average of about 20 hours a day.

and benighted, i mentioned solar as smaller solution for Eastern and Central WA. but our latitude greatly reduces what we can collect even on the sunniest of days. Western Wa as you know simply does not have the sun to make it financially feasible.

 

Cleverlever, when was the last time you actually looked at turbine technology? Modern utility production turbines are turning out power at windspeeds as little as 7 mph. Investment in wind energy is going nuts in this country and that's not because there are a lot of philanthropic venture capitalists out there. Wind now makes sense financially. In well sighted locations it's very predicatable. Like I mentioned before Demark is already generating 20% of their electricity from wind. If wind were as unreliable and ineffective as you claim that wouldn't be feasible. Is sounds like you got all of your information from the Altamont, CA windfarm. That was relevant 25 years ago. The wind industry has changed quite a bit since then. Do you have an experience with modern turbines? Everything you've mentioned thus far is quite old. The cost of wind has dropped by a factor of 40 since 1980.

The PTC is a joke. I can't believe you're using that to claim that wind is viable only because of subsidies. The reason it was introduced was to allow wind a chance in the face of all of the gov't handouts to coal and nukes. Hell, congress has continually let it lapse, playing Old Harry with the wind industry. And after all that wind has survived and managed to grow at a rate of 20-20%/yr. Traditional energy sector growth has been more like 2%. Now that it looks like the PTC will be around for a while things are going nuts. The industry is maturing. The PTC may not be necessary that much longer.

And what kind of rate hikes would we see if coal companies had to cover all of their healthcare costs? The fed pays a billion $/yr for black/brown lung and other coal mining related health issues. What about the tax breaks and right offs? There is no free market in the energy sector. Using the wind subsidies as some kind of ecomonic argument against them doesn't make real sense. What would happen if the coal were no longer subsidized and all out of date/nasty coal plants had to be brought up to spec? How many new coal plants would you see?

My alma mater installed a 1.65 MW Vestas V80 turbine back in 2004. It offsets 40% of the college's energy consumption and has a production factor of 30%. Right on target. It runs about 98% of the time and there have been no known bird kills. The turbine will be payed off in 12 years and after that it's all bank. The college is considering installing two more turbines on the same site.

Nate, I voted for Amendment 37 as well! Colorado currently has 262 MW of installed wind capacity. By the end of 2007 Xcel will have added an additional 775MW of wind capacity, which gets them up to 7% of their total. The more the better. Now we just need some CSP plants to augment/replace the NG peeking plants.

 

I did, in fact, go google for "e85" and "prius", and about all I
found was numerous references to Priuschat [which I've obviously
already read], some inconclusive test results, and a whole lot of
whining and posturing. And no real answers. Strike 1...
.
The next question I've got is, why is it only E10 or E85 with
nothing in between? Why not E50? Why not a smooth continuum of
blending, which could stem simply from available supply of gasoline
vs. ethanol at any given time?
.
_H*

 

And where, pray tell, would the political gain for Ford/GM be in that ??

 

cleverlever,

I am still hoping you might comment on wind variability, as it affects the proposititon of windmills as part of a heterogenous grid. I realize this is more an economic question than a technical one, but any insight you might have would be interesting to hear.

 

Nate:

I think we have discussed the question of buying clean energy from our local utilities before. I also have the option in Albuquerque.

I am more than willing to pay 2 cents (and more) for clean energy, yet I decided not to buy the local plan --
The utilities do not promise to use the extra charges to INCREASE the amount of clean energy on the grid, but rather to have in their mix an amount of clean energy sufficient to cover those customers who paid for it. In my local utilitiy's (PNM) case, wind production from the New Mexico Wind Farm has been bought in-toto for the next 10 years, no doubt in (large ?) part due to a New Mexico ruling requiring clean energy in the mix. So extra money I pay will go into PNM coffers, but not increase clean energy at all. If customer demand for clean energy exceeded what PNM already has, they would have to become a customer themselves, and perhaps generate demand, but that situation is nowhere even close.

I decided a better use of my funds is to invest in clean energy companies that are actually part of the web that increases clean energy. That is easier said than done, but I am looking. In the meantime, I have stocks in clean energy companies.

 

I was looking at wholesale market prices for fuels a while back. Is 'spot' pricing the same as peak energy ?

And a related question: how much peak energy does an average utility use as a fraction of it's total ?

It would seem possible to model peak energy requirement change as a function of wind energy in the mix, given a locale's wind characteristics, alternative peak energy source costs, and local deman d variation. I'd hazard a guess that results vary dramatically from one area to another. Any studies out there to review ?

 

I find that really hard to believe. Has any wind-proponent agreed with the statement ?
BTW, for people not familiar, Xcel Energy has (the largest?) portfolio of nuclear energy in their mix of all the US utilities, so there is an agenda the CEO is pushing, and it is not wind most of the time.

 

Same search results. The closest thing is the CREED paper, in which
they do NOT draw any longterm conclusions but only speculations
and "to be researched" statements, and various banter from here
and evworld and, again, NOTHING pointing to a conclusive study of
how well the prius [or any other car's] fuel system holds up to
extended use of E85. Do you have any SPECIFIC urls/info I should
be looking at? If not, the question still stands.
.
_H*

 

Yes, but you could also point out that during the rolling blackout in New York back in 2003 the Cape wind project would have supplied a large amount of energy during peak hours. Also, Xcel Energy owns wind turbines across the country including here in CO. I find it hard to believe that the sum of all of those farms would be negetive.

Look, the energy companies are conservative and risk averse. In Nevada power companies stated again and again that forcing a renewable standards protfolio on them would cause energy prices to go up. The state disagreed and mandated the RSP. Energy prices turned out to be slightly lower. As more Energy companies come to understand the real value of wind more and more are investing in it.

If you want to see more about who's investing in wind, go to www.rewableenergyaccess.com. You'll see press releases from various companyies who've bought this or are funding that. Most of the projects are about 100MW in size. There are a few over 200 MW and a large number in the 10's MW range. The smaller ones are commonly in Europe or Asia.

NG isn't going to be able to cheaply meet peak power demands for much longer. The upward pressure on the price of NG is pretty strong. CSP with NG backup is probably the best peaking solution in many places. It's already starting to happen in CA.

Europe is already successfully (at least Germany and Spain) deploying wind on a very large scale (Germany has 18GW of installed capacity). It's clearly viable at the utility scale. A little more than to power a few cars.

So my question to you is where have you seen wind not work when deployed on a large scale?