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Re: Solar power



A great interest of The American Policy Inst., Inc, i.e., me, is to
determine if windmills and photovoltaic solar cells are net consumers or
producers of high-grade energy (Gibbs free energy, say). We use Emergy
Theory as modified by me, but the research is difficult and costly. No
one has done it!!! When someone tells you that solar energy now "costs"
x cents per kilowatt hour, you *know* they don't know which end is up.
We need to know the kWhrs/kWhr. I know you all get the point. Regards /
Tom
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This is an old thread, but I just picked it up. Anyone who thinks wind energy
is environmentally clean hasn't looked carefully into the matter. I live near
Livermore, California, southeast of San Francisco. There are beautiful
rolling hills surrounding the valley here. The pass to the east is now
covered with thousands of wind mills, sometimes generating power. There are
many different types of wind mills and propeller shapes. Most of the time
these wind mills are not running, because the wind is either too slow or too
fast, or they are undergoing maintenance. Building them started several years
ago, the government offered a tax credit for investing in such things. If
your net worth was on the order of a million or more you could buy a share in
one of these wind mills and write off the cost over several years, and then
reap the profits. These wind mills were better tax write-offs than energy
producers.

The beautiful hills around the valley are covered by these steel monsters.
They are polluting - visually polluting. (Unlike the beautiful wind mills we
think of in the Netherlands). They are something that possibly a (few)
engineers would think are beautiful (I have heard one say so).

Not only are they visually polluting, but they make noise. The noise can't be
heard in the valley, but ranchers have complained that their grazing cattle
are bothered by the noise.

One small, safely built, nuclear reactor would be a far better, more reliable
and less polluting, choice.

Frank from Livermore.