Alain Fournier wrote:
[sci.space.history and sci.military.naval deleted from the followup groups]

Richard Casady wrote:
On Fri, 09 May 2008 10:09:35 -0400, Call Me Ishmael
wrote:


Poetic Justice wrote:

Richard Casady wrote:

On Fri, 09 May 2008 01:25:43 +0100, Andrew Swallow
wrote:


If you want to help the world build wind farms,

Iowa is a leader at that. 5% of the juice in Iowa is from wind. Unlike
solar, it works at night.

What do they do on a summer day when there isn't a breath of air or
breeze?

On a peak load summers day with all the air conditioners running....


You fire up a standby gas turbine plant. They have one of those in
downtown Des Moines. Doesn't even have a stack or cooling towers and
it's not all obtrusive. Wind generators are not expensive to build and
there is no cost whatever for fuel. It pays to have them even if you
still have to have a full set of fossil or nuke plants, that can carry
the load with no wind. No wind across the entire state is unlikely to
say the least. When the wind blows you put fossil plants on standby,
and don't burn the fuel.


More maintenance and cost to replace the wind, do you deduct all that
co$t from the "efficiency" rating of the wind power?

We have peak use Turbines 50 miles up the road, as a matter of fact I
know someone who put in an application to run the plant.

Why not use the Wind to *compress* giant *tanks of air* and use that
compressed air to make electric when the wind dies?


You have the right idea but a few mistakes in the implementation.

You don't want a full set of coal or nuke plants. Those take days
to restart and weather forecast still isn't perfect. You want
something that can be started in minutes. The gas turbine will do
the trick. Even better is hydro-power, you can start or stop
a turbine in a hydro-power plant in seconds, and the turbine
itself is cheap, its the dam that is expensive. When you
shutdown a few turbines at a hydro-electric dam, the dam is still
doing its work, it is accumulating water for when the wind will
go down. Here, in Quebec, we have added turbines to our dams so
we can make electricity at a rate that would not be sustainable
by the amount of rain we get. We can deplete our reservoirs when
the wind is down and replenish them when there is more wind.

Also, your claim that no wind across the entire state is unlikely
is not good. Weather patterns are rather large entities.


Alain Fournier