Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

[alan_m]

Russian high grade fuel for their aircraft mover

[SteveW]

While I agree that wind turbines probably don't kill very many birds, the cat kill figures are somewhat suspect.

According to the RPSB, over spring and summer (the peak time), cats kill

27 million birds in the UK, a small fraction of the figure you state, which was, of course, worldwide.

From a recent newspaper report, even that figure may be wildly exaggerated. The stats were apparently extrapolated from a count carried out at one location - which was a farm, where the cats were not fed at all and HAD to live by hunting.

Further, it has been calculated that 2 out of 3 bird deaths are due to farm cats, feral cats and other unowned cats. Domestic cats are therefore likely to kill no more than 9 million birds in the UK (and probably far fewer, due to the distortion of the figures already mentioned).

Analysis of killed birds has shown that many are already injured or ill. A proportion are fledglings that failed to fly and would not survive anyway.

[Slevin]

How many birds has Colonel Sanders killed?

[invalid unparseable]

How bought Willie:

[John Larkin]

Our internet provider at work is MonkeyBrains, all microwave. We have a dish on the roof aiming at another building a few blocks away, although they can do miles. We paid for 50+50 mbits and get about

400+400. To get fiber we would have had to pay to dig up the sidewalk for a couple of blocks.

A 100 Mbit microwave link pair costs under $100 now. A better longer range Gbit dish pair is about $200. That's astounding.

[John Larkin]

Russia actually runs on vodka.

[John Larkin]

I like birds. I feed a bunch of them twice a day. They prefer Fritos to anything else we've tried; I'm sympathetic to that choice. I have one giantic raven and a one-legged blue jay that will fly and snatch a Frito out of my hand.

The tiny little Juncos clean up every spec of food off the deck

[John Larkin]

This isn't about Saving The Earth, it's about fame and power. Political power, not electrical.

[Cindy Hamilton]

We feed the birds, too. The rabbits also benefit.

One afternoon I came out and put some banana bread out. I barely had time to turn around and step away from it before a rabbit dashed out of cover and started in on it.

[Scott Lurndal]

[The Natural Philosopher]

Tell that to any operator of a steam locomotive. Of course they can. All reliable generators except hydro take a bit of time to get steam up, but there is energy in to boilers to cope with medium term peaks of a few minutes.

Rubbish. You mean wind generators who get paid not to produce

It is not, That is why you add batteries to the grid.

They take power form the grid to turn when there is no wind otherwise the main beraings deform

[The Natural Philosopher]

You can throttle a stem plant instantaneously. All that happens in the limit is a safety valve will blow of excess steam pressure.

The UK ran on pretty much 100% coal up until the 1960s. They managed.

[The Natural Philosopher]

And those also use street paving quality gunk, preheated to make it liquid.

I am not sure why they switched from steam turbines to diesel, I wouldn't think there was much difference in complexity

Ah. according to the net it was simply a matter of fuel efficiency. Diesels use less bitumen :-)

[Scott Lurndal]

There are massive differences between steam locomotives and plants that generate electricity using steam.

? Of course they can.

A given generator needs to spin at a specific frequency, and the margins on that frequency are very small.

Where multiple generators are fed from a common steam prime mover, the startup time for any one generator is on the order of 10's of minutes - far too long to respond to large changes in demand.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The spot price is not what you think it is. In general power stations are contracted to supply power at a fixed rate. If those contracts exceed demand, the price goes negative and someone will be paid to shut down.

Its not a question that the coal people are paying to stay on, its that someone else will be paid to not generate, even if they could, and have a contract to do so. The ones who benefit most are those that pay the most from fuel. So gas typically would shut down

The way the electricity market works is that there are long term contracts and then there is an imbalance between the long term supplies and the short term demand. That goes into a balancing market - al least here in the UK - and prices can and do go crazy until some one steps in to silly the next 15 minute period or something at insane prices. Or someone agrees to get paid to cut output.

[The Natural Philosopher]

As long as its only twowatts. In general the biggest pumped hydro only lasts an hour or so, at full chat. The rest is marketing spin.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its not quite that bad, although the amount spent on adding kit to make renewables reliable is far greater than the cost of just chucking in a couple of nukes

If you look at UK demand (

) there is generally an evening peak of around 5GW in winter, that is spread out over an hour or two.

This is covered by a couple of GW of pumped, and a couple more of straight hydro, plus a little messing with imports, since france has a slightly different clock as it were.

Another couple would be handy if it could be built sanely No storage can cope with two weeks of no wind and cold weather and buggrall sun. That's renewable pie in the sky. In the end once you have skimmed all the profits and gouged all the customers, the reality that if you want to decarbonise electricity you don't use renewables. Nuclear is way cheaper overall.

You just plug it onto the existing grid close to where the demand is and that's all you need to do.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well if you get paid to USE surplus electricity that is of course a grand plan

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or melt lots of salt, or heat a heatbank of water.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So get rid if the stupid mediaeval windmills and solar panels that generate when you don't need it. And stop paying them not to produce