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Old 09-05-20, 03:21 PM   #10
jjackstone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeff5may View Post
I fully agree with ac hacker on the "modern" approach being usually worse than the "historical" approach. The green new dealers would have us throw out our working system and build a whole new "modernized" one at enormous expense and resources. Don't be fooled. Look at Germany and California and the new power problems they've created following this new plan. A drastic change from centralized, power dense power sources towards low density, distributed generation opens up a big can of worms.

In the end, it's all of us end users that will be paying for the missing parts and reliability shortcomings. Yes, conservative habits and design improvement can shave and save a lot, but we can't just cut gigawatts off and not expect shortfalls to happen. A peak in demand with a short supply cannot be met by small sources; there has to be grid inertia to absorb the load. A massive electric flywheel if you will. No matter how you slice it, this cannot be met by any means by what the greens call renewable energy sources. Unless you fudge the numbers, then it only works on paper.
Jeff,
If I understand what you are saying, all these problems can be boiled down to both poor planning and poor execution. I agree that you can't put the cart before the horse and expect good results. But with proper planning, replacement of the old grid can be done with a minimum of problems. It has taken over a hundred years to build the old grid it and has become weak and overburdened in its old age. The question is how can we build a new, cleaner power grid, maintain enough reserve energy supply for those days when it is needed, and do it so that there is a more or less seamless transition to the new grid in a relatively short period of time?

The two most important items needed are money and resolve. If you look back at the space program you will see that it cost between $300 and $600 billion to land a man on the moon in today's dollars. While we learned a lot about science from the program, at the time it really had no practical use. But we had a lot of resolve to make that project happen. This is the same thing we need to transition our energy sources. Every president in the last 50 years has said we need to get off foreign oil.



I believe Obama was on the right track with all the new energy regulations, pushing solar and electric vehicles by providing providing tax credits for them, and trying to force better fuel economy for the automobile industry. The current administration has undone or is attempting to undo many of those regulations and financial aids. And for those of you that believe there is a free market and there should be no tax credits from the government, remember the oil industry in our country directly receives around 20 billion dollars a year in tax credits and incentives. Don't believe me, look it up.

JJ
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