Like the illusion of Wall Street, with its vast and powerful investment banks, now shuttered, China too is an illusion perpetuated by the Globalists that gave us the 15,000 mile Caesar salad, poisoned cat food and lead based paint on babies' pacifiers. Like the illusion that money would come from thin air to always push housing prices higher, China has spent a generation pursuing its illusion. Pursuing an unattainable dream to be like the West, while 6000 years of its carefully shepherded top soil blows into the sea.
Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 4:20 pm Post subject: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
I checked out this article about offshore wind farms. Although brief, it had one very important point that has stuck with me: wind 15+ miles off US coastlines could produce over 900,000 megawatts of electricity. According to the DOE and this article, that's equivalent to all current U.S. power sources combined.
Let's check out the feasibility of this type of power production. Does anyone here have extensive experience in wind turbines? An expert quoted in the article says we could see these projects as soon as 2012-2015.
Is anyone familiar with the environmental impact of offshore wind farms? All I know is that several European countries are ahead of us here, with projects in progress.
It seems to me that if we can drill offshore, we can install a wind mill... but how secure is energy transmission back to the coastline?
I'd think that coastal utilities would be absolutely salivating over this opportunity, as it has potential for high public support. If we don't see the turbines every day, and most of us aren't inconvenienced by their presence, will Americans do anything but demand them? Their installation and maintenance could produce green collar jobs.
Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 4:30 pm Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
Egmond aan Zee, offshore Netherlands has a 108 megawatt capacity. Enough to power about 100k Dutch homes. It is Shell WindEnergy's first major offshore wind park to date. hope this helps.
1 kilowatt-hour of electricity = 3,413 Btu or 1 Megawatt-hour = 3,413,000 Btu
1 cubic foot of natural gas ... 1,008 to 1,034 Btu
1 barrel of crude oil ... 5,800,000 Btu
Therefore...turn the crank...
250,000 barrels of crude = 1,450,000,000,000 Btu or 1.45 Trillion Btu per day
200,000,000 cubic ft of natural gas = 201,600,000,000 or 201.6 Billion Btu per day
(I used the smaller of the two numbers above)...Murphy's law...
Add it up = 1,651,600,000,000 or 1.6516 Trillion Btu
900,000 megawatts electricity = 3,071,700,000,000 or 3.0717 Trillion Btu * 24 hours = 73.7208 Trillion Btu per day (if operating at 100% efficiency)
So covering all the coasts with windmills will produce 73.7208/1.6516 or 44.636 as much energy as one oil well !!!!
Call it 45 times as much as ONE oil well. I'm sure someone on this forum knows how many oil wells there are in the Gulf of Mexico alone??
Which is why we are a carbon fueled society and why when TSHTF we are going to really be hurting.
OK, so I was bored....
Someone want to check my work?? _________________ A horse is like a motorcycle that loves you back!
Joined: Jul 12, 2007 Posts: 46 Location: Mississippi, USA
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:11 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
I got to thinking about it last night. If we use 20 Mbarrels per day of crude then that is 80 Thunderhorse wells. So all the windmills produce more than half of our current liquid energy usage.
Of course windmills produce electricity and oil is a liquid fuel so this is really apples to oranges. According to the article, the windmills can replace our electric powerplants. They weren't talking about oil wells. But there is no doubt that we could replace it all with windmills. It would take alot but it could be done.
I just personally don't think it will be done. At least in time to prevent the crash. That is why I am hoping for a fast crash. If we realize SOON that we have to get off our asses and start building alternatives before the price is too high we might yet survive.
And the sooner the sheople realize that the free lunch is over, the sooner we can prioritize our energy usage to support those things that are really important. _________________ A horse is like a motorcycle that loves you back!
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:22 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
I thnk that they should put windmills on the platforms of offshore oil rigs as soon as they are done pumping up whatever is there to be pumped.
If we are going to have electric cars in our future, we need as many electric sources as possible.
We were on vacation in Cape Cod, and it was kind of funny...those who lived away from the beaches had signs in front of their houses pro-wind farms, and those houses on the beachfronts had signs opposing wind farms off the coast.
Also, is there any effort to make small (individual house size) windmills? Where I live (NEOhio) it's either windy or sunny almost all the time...if there was a combo unit solar/windmill that would sit on my roof, I'd buy it!
Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 277 Location: Second Vermont Republic
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:29 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
baha wrote:
OK, so I was bored....
Someone want to check my work??
Easy enough to debunk. Thunder Horse is a huge project, not a single well. If you had 44 THs to add in the US alone, you'd triple American production of crude.
I don't know about the economics of offshore wind, but your back of the envelope math doesn't invalidate it.
Joined: Aug 24, 2005 Posts: 442 Location: Costa Geriatrica, Spain
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:35 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
mos6507 wrote:
skeptik wrote:
Plenty of free space off Americas East & West coasts as far as I can see.
And thanks to the rapidly increasing dead zones, not a lot of environmental conerns either.
Thought we were discussing oil rigs and windmills. Agricultural run off has nothing to do with it. No dead zones in the North Sea... Old oil infrastructure there provides anchorage for sessile organisms and increased fish populations on what would otherwise be a bare muddy bottom.
baha wrote:
I That is why I am hoping for a fast crash. If we realize SOON that we have to get off our asses and start building alternatives before the price is too high we might yet survive.
Bit of confused logic going on there? If you want to start building alternatives in order to survive a 'fast crash' is the last think I would have expected you to want. Surely you'd want as much time as possible to prepare and a 'slow crash' in order to ease the transition. During a 'fast crash', in the sense that I understand it, nothing much of anything gets done.
Last edited by skeptik on Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:44 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Aug 03, 2007 Posts: 4590 Location: Boston Suburbs
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:38 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
mommy22 wrote:
Also, is there any effort to make small (individual house size) windmills? Where I live (NEOhio) it's either windy or sunny almost all the time...if there was a combo unit solar/windmill that would sit on my roof, I'd buy it!
You could try attaching some tiny pinwheel generators to your roof but I don't think it would do much. You need to get a large windmill high in the air to catch enough wind to be worth doing. That's when the zoning nazis will swoop down on you. _________________ http://doomsteaddiary.blogspot.com/
Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:38 am Post subject: Re: How 'bout offshore wind instead of offshore drilling?
I don't think it is as easy a calculation as how much energy generated by a turbine versus an oil/gas well. The offshore wind turbines are huge. The amount of energy consumed to build one needs to be taken into account. A couple of years ago I spoke with a senior exec from a company that had installed an offshore wind turbine in Scotland. His comment is it would never pay for itself if not for gov't incentives. Basically burning more oil/gas energy to build the thing than you would ever see in return.
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