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| Re: DC Streetcar 'possibly not going to happen' (1342263) | |||
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Re: DC Streetcar 'possibly not going to happen' |
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Posted by WillD on Wed Mar 4 02:57:39 2015, in response to Re: DC Streetcar 'possibly not going to happen', posted by Jackson Park B Train on Tue Mar 3 13:40:52 2015. FWIW BART buys some wind generated electricityYeah, that'll umm, turn the lights on in a train. And that's about it. I wonder if they could even keep the rectifiers humming with just renewables. It would be a lot of fun to see the substation recs blow up when fed the dirty AC a wind farm produces. Power factor correction? We don't need no stinking power factor correction! In general, CA is heading for 25-30% renewables That's almost undoubtedly a nameplate capacity of 20-30%, which bears virtually no resemblance to what the grid actually sees. Wind Power provided a whopping 1.5% of the State of California's power in 2014. The state imported more dirty coal power from Nevada than it generated in wind power. Solar panels have an availability factor of somewhere between 20 and 30%, Wind only slightly better. So that "20 to 30" percent suddenly becomes 4% to 15% when averaged over time. To make matters worse, those solar panels produce almost all their power during a 4 hour midday period which does not correspond to peak demand in winter months. Since we lack an effective storage means, that energy is dumped on the grid through power purchase agreements and feed in tariffs, and completely wasted. The size of the problem is amply illustrated by San Francisco's Solar Map which proudly states that the 22.9MWdc of installed solar panels produces 31,113 MWh/yr. That's an effective capacity of 15% and we don't even know if that generated power was utilized. You're just barely halfway there in the most dense concentration of rooftop solar panels in the US. we consistently use fewer kwh/resident that all the other states Mostly because California has no heavy industry. They account for just 5.6% of US industrial electrical use, but 11% of US transportation fuel usage. Refineries run off their own waste gas, and they make up most of what California considers heavy industry. Build some electric arc furnaces, or some ore refineries and you might see your electricity use tick up. And at least here in NJ I can't say I'm particularly worried about how many kilowatts I use. The little bits of U235 at Hope Creek, Salem, and Oyster Creek weren't long for this world anyway. A couple of them likely powered my computer long enough to type this. |
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