[MPlayer-dev-eng] [sidetracking] energy

[Luca Barbato]

Michael Niedermayer wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 04:42:10PM +0200, Luca Barbato wrote:
>> Diego Biurrun wrote:
>>> No electricity 1/3 of the time?  That sure is not good enough for me :)
>> 3 orthogonal places and you are more than covered ^^;
>>
>> Uranium would last at most 40 years.
> 
> U235 yes, U238 no
> And you mentioned Th232 already ...

I know that is possible to get much less expensive and pretty safe 
nuclear plants, but I'm sure that people pushing nuclear in Italy aren't 
for this. (Hopefully the rest of the world can get better)

> That of course doesnt mean wind energy isnt usefull, just that its a
> little tricky if theres no wind in the whole country for a week and you
> happen to have some political problems with your neighbors.

Over 800m you always (almost) have wind.

Having different sources is always good, wind right now is dirty cheap 
(and using kites instead of windmills works even better), the new solar 
panels may deliver 3 times the energy currently delivered. With a good 
energy distribution network with decent buffers (either hydro electric 
or cryo) you can do pretty well with contained expenses and

> Besides according to wiki wind provides a mere 1% of power currently.

According to other sources wind based plants installed last year were 
20GW vs 2GW of new nuclear plants, basically because they are way 
cheaper and they are quicker to setup.

> We would need 100 times more of these wind mills to just cover the average
> but thats the average not the actual need each day.

Just using one source is wrong, monoculture is the start of famine.

> And theres another problem with pure wind based power economy. As long
> as you sell the power on a euro per watthour its one thing but when
> the world is forced to have ten times more wind mills to cover the
> low wind high power demand days. You effectively also reduce the
> euros per plant per hour by the same factor by which you need to have
> overcapacity.

I agree completely =)

> So while wind surely could provide more than 1% i really doubt it would
> be economic to provide the majority of power.

A kite carousel can produce the same energy per surface than a normal 
nuclear plant, I'd be happy if 1/3 of the energy comes from wind and sun 
and the other sources have their share as well.

lu

-- 

Luca Barbato
Gentoo Council Member
Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero