Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Just what we need


In terms of energy issues (notice, I'm not gonna call it a energy CRISIS), this is something that I can get behind 100%. Our electrical grid needs to get away from carbon based powerplants. Period. Wind and solar are nice local solutions for additional power, but they are not reliable in terms of being able to produce on demand and usually plans for these involve some sort of electrical storage system, and those are terrible for the environment.

Aside from the energy source switch from carbon to nuclear, the other issues are around electrical loss from transmission lines. But if you took these types of small power plants, you could decentralize our grid and keep power local and be able to ratchet up as needed and also be able to have local solar/wind farms that would have their greatest impact locally.

Are there issues? Sure, but its the best thing out there that will actually solve energy needs while reducing our needs for carbon based energy production facilities. (we have two massive dirty coal plants here that I'd love to see shut down and replaced by nukes)

1 comment:

egon said...

Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995. Unless the sum of point losses is less, for whatever the greater number of power plants, it actually still makes sense to centralize the losses.