Alternative Energy Store : Solar, WInd and Renewable Power

I am considering a solar panels. How can I tell if my area gets enough solar energy a year to be worthwhile?

2010-09-05T16:16:27Z

Question by evelina rolon: I am considering a solar panels. How can I tell if my area gets enough solar energy a year to be worthwhile?
I want to know how I can determine my area’s (Rochester NY) yearly solar energy output to see if it would make economic sense to install solar panels. Any websites or resources where I can look?

Best answer:

Answer by shaniqua
If you are looking for the cheapest electrical power available solar panels are not going to be what you want.

Roughly solar panels will supply electrical power costing about 3-10 times more than what you can purchase from your local electrical company when averaged over the 20-25 year life of any solar panels.

Go look at how much you spend for your electricity in a single year. Then go look at how many solar panels you can purchase for this amount of cash (In my case I spend about 00 each year for power).

This means that economic “sense” must be tempered with some other desire for the solar panels.

I came accross a new, proven and tested home made wind power system and solar power system which eliminates our electricity bills. It was written by a Renewable energy enthusiasts Michael Harvey the diy called Earth4energy. You can get your copy to save energy and help environment while eliminating your power bills. Get it from here:

http://how-to-build-cheap-solar-energy.blogspot.com/

What do you think? Answer below!

The Future Of Wind Energy

2010-09-05T16:16:23Z

The Future Of Wind Energy

f you’re one of those people who every winter puts out 10,000 holiday lights or every summer keeps the air conditioning cold enough to make frozen treats on the kitchen counter – or whether you’re like everyone else who simply likes the modern convenience of electrical – then you should care about how we will generate electricity in the future.

We are in no danger of running out of coal, the primary fuel source for electricity generation in the US and many other parts of the world. And we could have as many new glowing nuclear power plants as we want. But the reality is that the pollution and safety impacts of these electricity-generating technologies forecast their necessary demise:

1) The problems with coal-fired power plants include sulfur (acid rain) and mercury pollution; coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of greenhouse gases in the world; and coal mining scars land and people alike.

2) Nuclear power plants are very clean in terms of emissions of typical pollutants, including carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas), but the potential for accidents and terrorist strikes has most people doubting the wisdom of more nuclear power. And let’s not forget that we still don’t know what to do with the tons of long-term radioactive waste nuclear power plants produce.

So what does the future look like for electricity generation? We must start making major strides towards cleaner technologies like wind, solar, wave, and biomass. Today we talk about wind energy in an article that was adapted from materials made available by Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute.

People have been harnessing the power of the wind for centuries. The concept of wind energy is simple: the wind pushes against angled blades, causing them to move (much like the sail on a boat); the blades are attached to a hub and cause it to turn, which in turn can drive other components.

In olden days – back when wind-powered devices were called windmills – the turning motion of the hub was transferred to mechanical devices such as grist mills or groundwater pumps. graphic of wind turbines In a modern wind turbine, the hub drives an electrical generator and the output is electricity.

The modern wind turbine has come a long way in terms of sophistication, and the designs of today’s wind turbines are elegant and very efficient compared to wind turbines from even a decade or two ago. Designers have also solved some problems associated with early wind turbines, such as birds dying by flying into them. Additional advancements have been made in siting technology – wind turbines can also be sited off-shore now.

With wind-generated electricity, the principal production cost is the capital outlay for initial construction. Since wind is a free fuel, the only ongoing cost is for maintenance. Given the recent volatility of natural gas prices, the stability graph of wind power cost; shows cost has come down from 38 cents per kilowatt hour in 1982 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour in 2002 of wind power prices is particularly appealing. With the possibility of even higher costs of natural gas in the future, natural gas-fired plants may be used increasingly as backup for wind-generated electricity.

When the wind industry first began to develop in California in the early 1980s, wind-generated electricity cost 38 cents per kilowatt-hour. Since then it has dropped to 4 cents or less in prime wind sites. And some long-term supply contracts have been signed for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. By 2020, many European wind farms will be generating electricity at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it cheaper than all other sources of electricity.

Wind-generating capacity worldwide is growing at over 30% per year and has jumped from less than 5,000 megawatts in 1995 to 39,000 megawatts in 2003 – an increase of nearly eight-fold. The fossil fuel with the highest growth rate – natural gas – grew at just over 2% annually during the same period. Oil grew at less than 2% annually, and coal at less than 1%. Nuclear generating capacity expanded by 2% annually.

Wind is appealing for several reasons. It is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign – a set of attributes that no other energy source can match. When the US Department of Energy (DOE) released its first wind resource inventory in 1991, it pointed out that three wind-rich states – North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas – had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy all of the nation’s electricity needs. Those who had previously thought of wind as a marginal potential source of energy obviously were surprised by this finding.

In retrospect, we now know that the 1991 data was a gross underestimate of the potential of this renewable energy source, because it was based on the technologies available in 1991. Advances in wind turbine design since then have enabled turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to convert wind into electricity more efficiently, and to harness a much larger wind regime. Such advancement have perhaps tripled the amount of harvestable wind. Thus, while the DOE could say in 1991 that North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas had enough wind-energy potential to supply all national ELECTRICITY needs, we may now be able to say that they have enough harnessable wind energy to supply all national ENERGY needs. (See sidebar for more information.)

Once we get cheap electricity from wind, we have the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen, which provides a way of both storing and efficiently transporting wind energy. At night, when the demand for electricity drops, the hydrogen generators can be turned on to build up reserves.

Once in storage, hydrogen can be used to fuel power plants, in much the same way that natural gas is used. This hydrogen can be used either as a backup for wind power or as an alternative to natural gas, especially if rising prices make natural gas prohibitively costly for electricity generation.

Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for the fuel-cell engines that automakers worldwide are working on for our everyday vehicles. While hydrogen-powered vehicles may still seem far off in the future, if push comes to shove on the climate front – i.e. once it becomes more obvious that we must stop burning so much oil and pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere – cars with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines could be converted to hydrogen.

Europe is leading the world into the age of wind energy, spurred in part by concerns about global warming. The record heat wave in Europe in August 2003 that scorched crops and claimed 35,000 lives has accelerated the replacement of climate-disrupting coal with clean energy sources.

The European Wind Energy Association projects that Europe’s wind-based electricity-generating capacity will nearly triple from 2003 to 2010. By 2020, wind-generated electricity is projected to satisfy graph of wind power capacity by country; shows a steady upward trend for all countries, with Germany leading, followed by Spain and the U S, then Denmark and India the residential needs of 195 million Europeans – half of the region’s population.

After developing most of its existing 28,400 megawatts of capacity on land, Europe is now tapping offshore wind resources as well. A 2004 assessment of Europe’s offshore wind-energy potential concluded that if Europe moves more aggressively to develop its vast offshore resources, wind could be supplying all of the region’s residential electricity by 2020.

Many countries in Europe are pushing hard to bring in more wind power. Here are a few examples.

1) The United Kingdom is requiring an investment of over billion in off-shore wind farms that should satisfy the residential electricity needs of 10 million of the country’s 60 million people.

2) Tiny Denmark, which led Europe into the wind era with the development of its own wind resources, now gets an impressive 20 percent of its electricity from wind.

3) Germany overtook the United States in terms of wind-based generating capacity in 1997. Now Spain is close to overtaking the United States as well.

Europe’s leadership on wind energy has given it a major economic bonus: nine of the world’s ten leading wind turbine manufacturers are in three countries – enmark, Germany, and Spain. These happen to be the three countries that have had the strongest and most stable market incentives for developing wind energy.

In the US, wind power has grown 26% per year on average over the last 5 years, but the United States is lagging in the development of wind energy. This is not because we can’t compete technologically with Europe in manufacturing wind turbines, but because of a lack of leadership in Washington. The wind production tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which was adopted in 1992 to establish parity with fossil-fuel subsidies, has been permitted to lapse three times in the last five years, most recently at the end of 2003 when Congress failed to pass a new energy bill. Such uncertainties disrupt planning throughout the wind power industry.

The United States, with its advanced technology and wealth of wind resources, should be a leader in this field, but unfortunately it continues picture of wind farm to rely heavily on coal – a nineteenth century energy source – for much of its electricity at a time when European countries are replacing coal power with wind power.

Europe is not only leading the world into the wind age, it is also leading the world into the post-fossil fuel age – the age of renewable energy and climate stabilization. By demonstrating the potential for harnessing the energy in wind, Europe is unveiling the new energy economy for the rest of the world.

Lester Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute. He has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” and as “the guru of the global environmental movement” by The Telegraph of Calcutta. His most recent book is Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

One final note about wind power. There are naysayers out there who claim that we would have to blanket the country with “wind-meels” to replace all our coal and nuclear plants. Don’t believe it. Remember that on a wind farm, the “footprint” of the operation – the turbine base plus the service roads – occupies only 5% of the land area. That makes wind power a perfect partner with open-space operations like farming and ranching.

And oh, by the way, our current electricity-generating technologies are blanketing the country with pollution!

James Nash is a climate scientist with Greatest Planet (www.greatestplanet.org). Greatest Planet is a non-profit environmental organization specialising in carbon offset investments.

James Nash is solely responsible for the contents of this article.

How much does wind power and solar power cost?

2010-09-05T11:48:50Z

Question by Hateme: How much does wind power and solar power cost?
In Australia how much would it cost to have a farm of wind power and solar power. If possible pls tell the cost of each thing individually. Also a sources where the information is found

Best answer:

Answer by A.Ganapathy India
I know the cost of solar pannel .Each watt cost you only 4 U.S $. No maintenance cost.Life of Solar panel is more than 20 years.

Add your own answer in the comments!

Q&A: What are the drawbacks from using solar energy?

2010-09-05T08:22:01Z

Question by vampirewannabe@rocketmail.com: What are the drawbacks from using solar energy?
What are some drawbacks from using solar energy? I know that it is expensive, and it only works when the sun is out, what are 3 other drawbacks?

Best answer:

Answer by cute_megan4u
it will work too well in the states that have 300+ days of sun per year and take away from parts of the U.S. that have less sun.

Give your answer to this question below!

Make Use of Wind Power Electricity and Optimize the Usage of Power in Your Homes

2010-09-05T08:09:05Z

Make Use of Wind Power Electricity and Optimize the Usage of Power in Your Homes

Looking for ways to reduce your electricity bill? There is a way out. The electricity that we receive at our homes is produced from fossil fuels its levels are depleting rapidly. With the shortage of such resources from where electricity is produced, it is but natural to charge rates that are so high for electricity consumption. Is there are a way to resolve this issue? Well, there are other natural resources like the sun which can be harnessed to produce electricity. Another important kind of electricity that will help you cut down on your electricity bills includes the wind power electricity.

With other sources of producing electricity like the nuclear energy, there is a clear rise in the global warming condition. In using these wind power electricity you can be sure that you will be contributing to reducing this effect.

Another important point about wind power electricity is that you do not have to worry about its shortage as this is a renewable resource that is generated continuously and why shouldn’t we harness this gift that nature has bestowed on us?

If you are at a loss to understand how to produce these wind power electricity, there are easier solutions. There are several packages that are available to produce wind power electricity. You can choose the pre fabricated versions that are available in the market, but the issue that you have to deal with is the money that you have to spend.

With these do it yourself packs that provide you with a series of instructions, you will be able to create a unit that will produce wind power electricity with the minimum amount spent. The components that you use are easily available in your hardware stores; some are even available in your home itself. With the guide that provides you with all these detail it becomes very easy to put up the entire system in an easier manner.

Learn more about wind power electricity and the ways to produce it. Check out My Blog for further details on this pack that empowers you with all the facilities you need to harness wind power.

Find More Wind Power Articles

2010 Deep Research Report on China Wind Turbine Blade Industry — Aarkstore Enterprise

2010-09-05T04:49:00Z

2010 Deep Research Report on China Wind Turbine Blade Industry — Aarkstore Enterprise

2010 Deep Research on China Wind Turbine Blade Industrytwas published by QY Research Wind Energy Research Center on Jan 2010. Since 2009, the price of China’s wind turbine blade has dropped substantially, Some companies have started down the contract price. Some wind turbine blade manufacturers have begun to appear underemployment problem.On the development trends of current domestic wind power equipment market, supply and demand tension has been greatly eased with the original manufacturers and the new large-scale expansion project inputs. However, we believe that prospects of the whole wind power equipment manufacturing remain favorable, despite the huge profits time has slowly away, but is still a relatively high profit margins in manufacturing industries and the future market scale will be further expanded.

On July 24, 2009, China Development and Reform Commission published the Notice on Wind Power on the Pricing Policy. It stipulates that the whole country will be divided into four categories of wind power resource areas according to the situation of wind power resources and engineering construction conditions, and then the corresponding wind power electricity price benchmark will be fixed. Since August 1st of 2009, the wind power electricity price benchmark in Chinese four resource areas will be 0.51 RMB (0.074 USD) Kw/h, 0.54 RMB (0.079 USD) Kw/h, 0.58 RMB (0.085 USD) Kw/h, and 0.61 RMB (0.089 USD) Kw/h separately. We believe that the new pricing policy will have a favorable impact to enhance the operator’s profitability and stimulate the development of China’s wind power industry. As for the unreasonable redundant construction in wind power industry, the government also has introduced some relevant control measures, which is undoubtedly good news to the existing industries and enterprises. The original “long-term renewable energy development plan” for wind powers by 2020 the total installed capacity is determined by 30 million kilowatts, and now that goal may be adjusted to from 100 to 150 million kilowatts, 30 million kilowatts and the goals may be able to achieve in 2011. We believe that the policy of this series will make wind turbine blade industry maintain a continued healthy growth.

In the report, the following information will be included:

China Wind Turbine Blade Production Supply Sales Demand marketing and technology (equipment) information;

China Wind Turbine Blade production and demand from 2009-2014;

China Wind Turbine Blade manufacturers Wind Turbine Blade Capacity Production Cost Average selling price Production Value Revenue Profit etc information;

China Wind Turbine Blade manufacturers Product Information (included 750KW, 800KW,850KW,1.5MW,2.0MW wind turbine blade etc information and technology information);

Upstream raw materials analysis (included: glass fiber, resin etc raw materials sources and supply chain relationship; Equipment source and supply relationship);

Downstream client or demand analysis, (included: sales contracts customers etc);

China Wind Turbine Blade industry development trend analysis by technology (Hand Lay-up VARTM) price etc;

China Wind Turbine Blade industry development trend and related conclusions;

In a word, it was a depth research report on china Wind Turbine Blade industry chain. And thanks to the China Wind Turbine Blade marketing or technology experts help and support during QYResearch Wind Energy team survey and interview.

For more information please visit :
http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/2010-Deep-Research-Report-on-China-Wind-Turbine-Blade-Industry-13453.html

Aarkstore Enterprise specialize in providing online market business information on market research reports, books, magazines, conference booking at competitive prices, and strive to provide excellent and innovative service to our customers. We are built on the premise that reading is valuable, capable of stirring emotions and firing the imagination. Whether your looking for new product trends or competitive analysis of a new or existing market, Aarkstore Enterprise has the best resource.

Is there an inexpensive wind turbine?

2010-09-05T00:15:15Z

Question by sally_dood: Is there an inexpensive wind turbine?
Is there an inexpensive wind turbine. The only one I am seeing is this air-x thing which only produces 400 watts at 28 mph winds. AND ITS 500$!!!! Is there a turbine that is around the 500$ range that produces enough power to power the whole house???? Or is there another alternative????
solar is probably out of the question as it is so expensive.

Best answer:

Answer by joel95ex
all turbines are hella expensive…

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

2010 Deep Research Report on China Wind Turbine Blade Industry — Aarkstore Enterprise

2010-09-05T00:15:11Z