[ExI] Efficiency of wind power.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 09:11:24PM -0700, spike wrote:

> There are some places where wind power definitely does pay and does make
> sense.  These are often not near population centers, so the cost of
> transporting the power is too great, such as out in Wyoming for instance.

There is another transportation problem of sorts: producing more power
than the grid can be absorbed. At the moment the operators shut down
the turbines, but it would make more sense to dump the surplus into
water electrolysis.

> What I envision is that they will be used to do stuff like electroplating
> metals out of solution which takes a buttload of energy, or in making
> synthetic octane from coal.  I haven't done the numbers on these processes,

If you don't need the energy from coal you do not need the coal
as carbon source, either. Also: peak coal.

> so I don't know if it out-pencils.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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