thanks for the link.
I am a hydro producer fan and believe it is cheaper then wind. anyone have any sources for this type of info..
Honestly I couldn't rattle off any cost analysis comparison, but I believe both have obvious benefits and drawbacks. I don't think wind (and solar for that matter) will pan out to be effective for large scale centralized generation systems. They just can't accomodate grid needs without a more solid backup like hydro or.... yech.... coal. I think in a few decades we'll probably see the applications of wind and solar refined and it will probably turn out to be most cost effective when utilized in distributed generation scenarios (smaller scale, like individual buildings or maybe a neighborhood). The relatively meager output just won't justify the cost of large plants.
Of course, technology will probably advance leaps and bounds and render my opinion moot.
One technology I've been loosely following is wave power. Here in Newport, Oregon, a couple of companies have determined that the coastline and wave patterns are ideal for wave power generation. One of them even deployed a test wave power buoy last year - apparently it worked better than expected as far as generating power, but it wound up sinking (ha!) during one of our gnarley winter storms. Trial and error.
I foresee a lot of tough decisions having to be made as oil production dwindles. Dams are great, but what are the impacts of the ensuing reservoir on the riparian ecosystem? What about marine life migration? Nuclear is good if applied properly (and I expect to see a flurry of nuclear plants going up sooner or later), but what about the waste? A fellow electrician thinks we should just launch all the nuclear waste into space. Great idea, but what if the launch goes awry? Or the rocket blows up? It's happened before, and not just once. Wind and solar are good but it would take much too massive of an infrastructure expenditure to make it even viable amongst competing energy sources. Natural gas is okay but it will just postpone the fossil fuel situation - it's not renewable. Coal is just archaic and ridiculous.
I think what it boils down to is that 6,000,000,000 people is just too many
