Re: Global Energy etc.

[Daniel Schroeder <DSCHROEDER@CC.WEBER.EDU>]

> > Don't complete write off wind energy--it seems to be becoming
> > much more economical than it once was.  Denmark already gets
> > 13% of its electricity from wind, and plans to increase that
> > to 50% by 2030.  Take a look at www.windpower.dk.
>
> Folks, help me out re Wind Power if you will:  I think that it is a quite
> reasonable assumption to take the Sun as a source outside the system, but
> the wind???  If the energy of the wind is decreased, what happens to the
> rest of the planet?  Why is that different for using oil or gas?
>
> Jim Green

The *total* energy in all the earth's winds is so enormous that
I think we could extract enough energy to provide all our current
electricity use without much global effect.  In Romer's energy
book there's an estimate of 2 times 10^15 watts for the total
rate of conversion of solar energy to wind energy worldwide.
If the U.S. gets 2% of that energy and we extract 1% of what
we get, that just about equals our total electricity consumption.
Whether it's practical to extract as much as 1% I'm not sure,
but we could certainly extract a lot more than we are currently.
Right now that energy is just "wasted", converted to low-grade
thermal energy by frictional effects.

Dan