[lbo-talk] Hundreds hit the streets in Olympia, Washington

[Gar Lipow]

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:10:18 -0800, martin <mschiller at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Mar 20, 2005, at 2:44 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
> 
> >   We could get much of our low and medium temperature heat from solar
> > energy.  That still is not going to match the 98 quads we consumed in
> > 2000, much less matching the population growth to the present and into
> > the future.  But we could get 30-40 quads total.
> >
> 
> What percentage (of the '98 quads') is given up to transmission loss?
> 
> Martin
> 
Not taking time to look it  up, so from memory about  35%  of energy
is  used generate electricity. I think as much as 10% of that may be
trqnsmission losses.  But if we are going to use  wind to  provide
half our electricity those may go up rather than down. Because there
plenty of large cities 500 miles from the nearest wind source. (I
think pretty much all of the U.S. population, possibly excluding
Alaska is within 500 miles of class  five wind sites or better.)  Much
more significant are losses from conversion of heat to electricity. 
If half our electricity came from wind that would go way down. The
rest of the mix would be hydro, geothermal and biomass. The hydro and
geothermal would have to  travel even further than the wind
electricity. Because they are good baseline sources, which you need
for a reliable grid and which wind is not. Even with efficiency
improvements hydro and geothermal would not provide the other 50% you
would need for a realiable grid. This is where biomass comes in; and
it could probably do what you are thinking of - decentralizing
generation, increasing thermal efficiency (because you can use highly
efficienct mass produced generators and then use  the waste heat for 
low temperature purposes) and reducing transmissions losses (because
they are closer to where  you use the power.)

Now you may note that I did not mention solar electricity. That is
because PV  electricity is still around 25 cents per kWh to produce.
Wind electricity is now produced in the U.S. for 4 cents per kWh.
(Documented by the IRS.) Even with  transmission costs, using wind  to
provide half of U.S. electricity (again maybe excluding Alaska) would
make sense.

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