From: Kai Becker (kmb@kai-m-becker.de)
Date: Sat Feb 01 2003 - 05:34:00 MST
Am Samstag, 1. Februar 2003 06:58 schrieb Spudboy100@aol.com:
> Ah! Great idea! Now how man cars and motorbikes can you power with such
> a wind farm? I would like the answer to be, hundreds of millions, but I
> think I know this is not the case.
Sure, although (1) there are <100mio. cars in Germany (which is quite
enough...) and (2) the wind power business in Germany is quite -well-
powerful. More than 10GW installed (Aug 2002). That is 3.5% of our total
consumption on electricity (total rate of renwable energy in Germany:
8%). 130,000 people in Germany are working on renewable energy, 35,000 of
them for wind power [1].
> The technology of hydrogen transpotation and storage doesn't seem to
> be quite there yet,
Not on the individual level, say for cars, but surely on the more
industrial level, e.g. combined heat and power units in the low MW range.
There's a higher loss during long distance transport compared to
electricity, but AFAIK this can be more than compensated by using the
abovementioned CHPU's.
> one needs to be skeptical of claims of a golden clean energy age.
Sure. But we have seen, how the massive use of tax money can push even a
technology as uneconomical as nuclear fission into a kind of virtual
profitability.
Kai
[1] http://www.bmu.de/reden/rede_trittin020806.php?vers=text
-- == Kai M. Becker == kmb@kai-m-becker.de == Bremen, Germany == "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"
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