Group items tagged

This article, from WPRI.com (the website affiliated with the Rhode Island news channel), discusses the plans to build a wind turbine in the town of Narragansett. As someone familiar with the area--I grew up in Massachusetts--I am aware of the intense debate revolving around wind power on the New England coast. The case of the Narragansett turbine is notable due to the town's status as a tourist destination. The argument is centered around the fact that, although new forms of energy are universally considered to be important, the region's primary economic facet is tourism. Those opposed to the turbines argue that their presence negatively impacts the aesthetics of the coast, while proponents of the turbines take the position that sacrifices must be made to ensure a bright future. The building of the Narragansett turbine could perhaps be a step towards acceptance of the turbines' presence.

People love talking about wind and solar. For good reason, too. Geothermal, hydro, and other renewable energy sources are valuable, but ultimately only sun and wind (and mostly sun) have the heft necessary to power the nation. That leaves us with two big problems! Night time and windless days. Enough power has to be produced to meet minimal needs at any given time, which is related to the idea of baseload production. When the wind is really moving, or the sun is particularly bright, wind and solar plants can generally overproduce. But all that is for naught when night rolls around, unless things like pumped hydro or NaS batteries fill in the gaps. Of course, there is always nuclear. Tempting as it is to say you can either argue for nuclear, or read about Japan, the nuclear option is still on the table - largely because of its ability to provide constant energy. But if wind and solar are indeed more desirable, storage is an absolute must, and worth being informed about.

Perhaps alternative energy technology's most promising industry, wind, is finding itself to be far more controversial as it becomes far more common and popular. Partially, this is just a good old example of showing us how nothing is perfect. But it does beg the question of large scale energy industry period - are those who see no place for that, in any form, on to something?

This is potentially a huge project to bring wind energy to the East Coast. A lot of interesting issues were brought up like the potential spike in energy costs and the bureaucracy that such an initiative would have to get through to even be a reality. Its going to be a big deal if it follows through, so worth knowing about.

From Anti-Matter to floating wind farms, these are some practical and not-practical-yet energy alternatives. Many are well known, others are not, and some are new twists on older ideas. The question I still have is speed - can we implement these fast enough?