Stanley Paris Calls it Quits

[pdf27]

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

In the cost metrics alone, they are losers. The roughly 17:1 gearbox used to speed up the input speed to drive the generator has a mean time to failure of 6 to 18 months after the warrantee period. It weighs 50,000 to 80,000 pounds and requires a massive crane to come on site for disassembly of the drive trane and swop-out for a rebuilt box. The turn around cost is greater than the value of the energy harvested between failures by a factor of 4 to 10 X. The Fed and other Fed subsidized agencies always ignore this as well as the original 50% subsidy on the installation of the windmill. They amortize the cost of the original installation only - over 30 years. Since the failure rate is 30 times that rate, the resulting claims are border on the biggest lies of al time. They also don't include the very significant line losses from sending power from Iowa to Chicago for instance. The true normalized cost is easy to approximate and amounts to dilluting the grid with energy at around 10 times the cost of the other 98% of the power that is there. The total is so small that the grid absorbs the insult without much impact. (don't forget the subsidy).

Reliability figures over here (Europe) seem to be a great deal higher than that your numbers - see http://www.supergen-wind.org.uk/docs...bility_PJT.pdf for some reasonable (if old so presumably pessimistic data) - MTBF for turbine gearboxes is around 10 years, averaged over 20,000 turbine-years and an average of 13 days to fix. My suspicion is that you've swallowed a propaganda line rather than are repeating accurate numbers.

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Now lets situate the towers offshore - say the Great Lakes. The cost to maintain over water is generally published to be 3X shore installations. The infrastructure to do so does not exist. If any one of us drops any oil in these waters it is a 5000 dollar fine. The gear box and its extensive hydraulic processing system of pipes filters heat exchangers & pumps contains about 60 gallons of really nasty specially modified oil. In addition, there will be barrels of it up-tower to refill (from losses). The service vessels will further drool hydrocarbons. You need only check Youtube to find a plethora of towers falling over, catching fire. Consider this mess of hundreds of towers and the disturbance to thousands of acres of lake bottom - all to harvest wind power at an efficiency of less than 10%.

The infrastructure does exist - it's just in Europe, and consists of a bunch of jack-up ships with very large cranes and similar specialized equipment on board.

Originally Posted by Nicholson58

Lets assume that wind power was a screaming success. The utilities STILL NEED to have an installed, non operating infrastructure of conventional generation to account for non-production times (no wind). SO add to the massive cost of poorly producing towers, an idling, high efficiency generation station. NOW what is the cost per Kilowatt-hr? Your crappy 10 cents on the dollar is further reduced by the cost of the idled generators.

Err... no. Electricity utilities do that day in, day out anyway because demand during the day is about double that during the night. U.K. National Grid status is excellent for this - it plots all wind, coal, gas and nuclear generation in the UK on the same axis. Better yet, you can download the data and play with it in Excel to see what the impact on the grid is. Net result is that for UK weather patterns, if you're balancing the grid with coal you can need about twice as much coal as you do wind (nameplate capacity). If you're doing so with gas, you need about as much wind as gas - below that, the grid doesn't even notice. Above that, you need fast responding storage such as hydro to balance the grid in the approximately 15 minutes every day when you have the peak loads.

[goboatingnow]

Quite a lot of water based wind turbines in Europe and more going in.

As for Prius , what's the deal, it's not a particularly good or efficient car , BMW s new 520d beat it fuel economy as do many small modern turbodiesels

Hybrids in Europe are just a tax dodge really , manufacturers are using them to produce lower average co2 figures , which move the car into a much lower tax band. I mean a hybrid 4x4 with about 30 miles effective range is only a tax con job

Dave

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Quite a lot of water based wind turbines in Europe and more going in.

As for Prius , what's the deal, it's not a particularly good or efficient car , BMW s new 520d beat it fuel economy as do many small modern turbodiesels

Hybrids in Europe are just a tax dodge really , manufacturers are using them to produce lower average co2 figures , which move the car into a much lower tax band. I mean a hybrid 4x4 with about 30 miles effective range is only a tax con job

Dave

This BMW 520d? http://www.fuelly.com/car/bmw/520d/2013

30 mile range in a Hybrid? You mean in electric mode maybe?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

This BMW 520d? http://www.fuelly.com/car/bmw/520d/2013

30 mile range in a Hybrid? You mean in electric mode maybe?

As in this BMW 520d http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-new...t-ar54284.html

This was the version with regenerative braking etc don't think its sold in the US. ( can't be sure its even the same engine )

Dave

[a64pilot]

I didn't see any test, but think it may be like the one that the Brit journalism TV show ran where they put a Prius and a BMW on a track essentially running the Prius full out and the BMW of course at the same speed was running much more leisurely.
BMW and Prius both got about 40 MPG, with the BMW doing slightly better.
This has absolutely nothing to do at all with real life driving, and to give them credit the Brit TV show didn't try to pretend it did.
If you set the conditions of any test, you will get the results you want. How about just using the Fed's fuel economy numbers?

[a64pilot]

I've always been confused by electric cars or by hydrogen fuel cells for that matter.
First where do you get the enormous amount of electricity if most cars were electric? Nuclear or coal?
Hydrogen is just an energy carrier, where do you get the Hydrogen? Nuclear or coal?

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I didn't see any test, but think it may be like the one that the Brit journalism TV show ran where they put a Prius and a BMW on a track essentially running the Prius full out and the BMW of course at the same speed was running much more leisurely.
BMW and Prius both got about 40 MPG, with the BMW doing slightly better.
This has absolutely nothing to do at all with real life driving, and to give them credit the Brit TV show didn't try to pretend it did.
If you set the conditions of any test, you will get the results you want. How about just using the Fed's fuel economy numbers?

No this was a long run Paris to Geneva. The Prius actually ran out of fuel the BMW arrived with a 1/3 of a tank remaining and was 1.9 m/g better overall fuel economy.

These days modern small turbo diesels will quite easily meet or beat a Prius , nothing special about them now.

Dave

[a64pilot]

Well, back in the day I had a VW Golf Diesel that would return about 50 MPG, but with the newer US Diesel pollution requirements, I doubt you could beat a Prius mileage in the US, Newer Diesels have to have Urea to use in the Cats etc., Plus since the adoption of ULS Diesel, Diesel is way more per gallon than gasoline, so you would have to get a lot more fuel mileage in a Diesel to get the same costs as a gasoline car. Cost is my issue, not saving the world or feeling smug
I can get 17 to 18 MPG in my C3500 Duramax Diesel when unloaded, which before ULS Diesel meant my cost per mile equaled a gasoline fueled vehicle that got 20 MPG, now it equals one that get 15 MPG doe to the higher cost of ULS Diesel. I don't like ULS
I love Diesels, but given common rail fuel systems, computer controlled electronic fuel injectors etc., higher fuel costs, it's hard to make one make sense anymore. it cost me $3,500 to replace my injectors in the Dmax, would have been more than $5K if I had it done. Common rail fuel systems run fuel pressures up to 30,000 PSI and this wreaks havoc with injectors and you ahd better have microscopically clean fuel.
In Europe, Diesel Audi's, VW's, Mercedes etc. have been a mainstay for well, a long time but I believe their pollution requirements I don't think are the same.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

No this was a long run Paris to Geneva. The Prius actually ran out of fuel the BMW arrived with a 1/3 of a tank remaining and was 1.9 m/g better overall fuel economy.

These days modern small turbo diesels will quite easily meet or beat a Prius , nothing special about them now.

Dave

Oh, and in that test the Prius returned 40 MPG? I get 47 at 80 to 85 MPH, wonder what they were doing to get 40?

[a64pilot]

Wow, sorry to pull this thread so far off topic, I'll try to control myself

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Oh, and in that test the Prius returned 40 MPG? I get 47 at 80 to 85 MPH, wonder what they were doing to get 40?

Well if you think about it. On e your running the petrol engine all you really have is a simple overweight 4 door saloon with a fairly crappy engine. Any modern small efficient diesel will put perform it miles per gallon.

The Prius doesn't give 57 over long distances in any numbers I've seen

Dave

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Well, back in the day I had a VW Golf Diesel that would return about 50 MPG, but with the newer US Diesel pollution requirements, I doubt you could beat a Prius mileage in the US, Newer Diesels have to have Urea to use in the Cats etc., Plus since the adoption of ULS Diesel, Diesel is way more per gallon than gasoline, so you would have to get a lot more fuel mileage in a Diesel to get the same costs as a gasoline car. Cost is my issue, not saving the world or feeling smug
I can get 17 to 18 MPG in my C3500 Duramax Diesel when unloaded, which before ULS Diesel meant my cost per mile equaled a gasoline fueled vehicle that got 20 MPG, now it equals one that get 15 MPG doe to the higher cost of ULS Diesel. I don't like ULS
I love Diesels, but given common rail fuel systems, computer controlled electronic fuel injectors etc., higher fuel costs, it's hard to make one make sense anymore. it cost me $3,500 to replace my injectors in the Dmax, would have been more than $5K if I had it done. Common rail fuel systems run fuel pressures up to 30,000 PSI and this wreaks havoc with injectors and you ahd better have microscopically clean fuel.
In Europe, Diesel Audi's, VW's, Mercedes etc. have been a mainstay for well, a long time but I believe their pollution requirements I don't think are the same.

Can't really comment I've regulary put up 180 k miles on diesels including modern ones. Diesel is generally cheaper then gasoline in Europe

[a64pilot]

OK, first, it's not even an Otto cycle engine, need to do quite a lot of reading as I'm afraid there may be some things you don't know about, like how the two MG's interact with the planetary gear train and the ICE for starters. How can the power stroke be longer than the compression stroke for example, doesn't sound possible does it?
Where did 57 come from? Ours has averaged 54 over 120,000 miles so far. I routinely get 60+ in city driving and when playing Hypermiling I've gotten I think it was 72.3 for 150 miles or so, but that was with no traffic and was just an experiment, not realistic

[DDabs]

Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey

Lol



Jersey...old Jersey .

So, the island off the coast of France? Do you live there? Are you English?

Sorry, just curious!

[Custom30]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Why can't I compare it against a SUV? SUV's are the most common and I'll wager 99% of them don't carry more than our Prius can.

You are either not serious, or seriously challenged with spatial perception.

I can easily name 10 SUV's that can carry at least twice what the Prius carries spatially. Yukon, Tahoe, Suburban, Expedition, Sequoia, Land Rover, etc..

If we begin to talk about the actual load capacity (weight), the statement becomes even more ridiculous.

It is pretty clear you like to compare apples and oranges as the same, you bought the Prius.

You might as well say it's also as fast as a Corvette, and climbs rocks just like a Jeep.

So, how much would you like to wager. I'd suggest betting your Prius pink slip, like in the old street racing days.


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