Wind could power the entire world | Hacker News Reader

Wind could power the entire world

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14 pointsnreece32 comments

Lemon/penny batteries could power the entire world, too. Here's the math:

One lemon/penny battery generates 0.0001 W. Thus, one kilowatt requires 10 megalemons. 10 megalemons produces 365 * 24 = 8760 kilowatt hours per year, or 876 KWH per megalemon per year.

The US consumes roughly 4 trillion KWH per year, which would require about 4.5 petalemon to power. Worldwide production last year was on the order of 6.5 gigalemons (13 megatonnes according to Wiki, 200g for the average lemon), so we have a bit to go, but this proves that a significant fraction of the US's electrical needs can be provided by lemon batteries currently. Minor implementation details such as maintenance of the lemon batteries, storage of them, operating lifetime, cost, and trivialities such as "Where do we find 4.5 petapennies?" can be hammered out at a later date.

(P.S. Less sarcastically, if you want to generate the world's electricity needs without being primarily reliant on fossil fuels, you have two options. The first is nuclear power. The second is dividing the world into permanent camps: those that have sufficient access to electricity to enjoy a standard of living comparable to America in the early 1900s, and those who do not. Group #2 will have to vastly outnumber Group #1.)

I agree that the best option availlable at the moment is nuclear energy.

But what about the thermic solar plants that are currently being built in the deserts of the US and Africa? Those with parabolic mirrors heating the pipes set at their focal point?

I foresee issues around the longevity of mirrors in sandstorms.

Legions of itinerant mirror polishers.

Or shrink the size of the global population.

Rubbish. We could all, individually, convert to wind power right now and do it quite successfully.

Your problem only exists if we all have to be lumped into a group, together, so someone can sell us shit and control the whole thing.

In short, you clearly wanna sell lemons. There are other ways...

We could all, individually, convert to wind power right now and do it quite successfully.

Let us know how it goes.

I walk to work, bicycle when necessary. I could run my household off two of these, and be done with the whole problem: http://windgeneratorstoday.com/go/portable-wind-generators

I'm having a hard time figuring out why /could/ hasn't been replaced with /am/. Apparently you can make the linked to wind generators for $100 so you're only looking at $200 total investment.

Thats a good point. Stay tuned ..

Dude, that's one of the funniest and wittiest comments I have read in a while. Cheers!

I suggest reading http://www.withouthotair.com for a reasoned discussion of this issue. A couple of quotes:

"if we covered the windiest 10% of the country [the UK] with windmills (delivering 2 W/m2), we would be able to generate 20 kWh/d per person, which is half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 km per day".

"I should emphasize how generous an assumption I’m making. Let’s compare this estimate of British wind potential with current installed wind power worldwide. The windmills that would be required to provide the UK with 20 kWh/d per person amount to 50 times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; 7 times all the wind farms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world."

In theory, yes. And in theory, all we would have to do is pave over a few square kilometers of New Mexico and we can power the entire world with solar.

But these studies completely ignore all of the practical issues with wind power at its current scale, let alone scaling it to power the whole world.

Start now. Continue R&D and funding. In 10 years, the technology will be dramatically advanced and scaling will be far easier.

Just because it's hard doesn't mean it isn't worth doing anyway. When the Manhattan project started, they had no clue how they would come up with the theoretical quantity of nuclear material they needed. It was impossible. They went forward anyway and in the process invented the methods they needed to make it happen. Now we have nuclear weapons coming out of our ears.

Exactly. Burning stuff is a mature technology and we are plagued with inertia.

They did a preplanned thing in Sweden when they built warships and planted trees suitable for new warships.

Now those trees are ready to be used -- but those pesky iron ships, from the 1860s onwards, got between. :-)

Check: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Fusion

Will they work? We will know in less than ten years. If they work, the money would be better used in battery research, to run cars on electricity.

If you wait because something better might come along which disrupts your present efforts, you will wait forever.

Eventually, you must commit to something while recognizing that you may have to be adaptable and change your course later. Success depends less on what you choose to do and more on the fact that you are doing it.

Yeah, but you need to do some sanity checking to see how likely things are to ever be competitive...

I agree that wind research should be done, but I really think/hope something better (lower investment costs and lower aesthetic impact) will be found.

It's difficult to take articles like this seriously. This type of "if we covered the entire earth's surface with (wind|solar|biomass|exercise bikes), we could power the entire world" argument is already reduced to absurdity. There's nothing there even to poke fun at.

It's cool that some of these technologies are making progress and all, but really, is there anybody who actually thinks it's a good idea to scale them up to this level? In the name of the environment???

Let me put that another way.

"Does anybody think it's a good idea to depend entirely on a finite resource that can only be used once and also smells?"

And totally mess up my waves by reducing wind speeds. Stay away from my waves, you scoundrels!

One of the potential upsides of global warming that gets little attention is the opportunity for great waves over the formerly-urban reefs along the edges of the risen oceans.

I read that in a "get off my lawn" old mans voice.

Except with a 'surfer bra wannabe accent?

i'm riding the thermal drafts of HN comment hot air right now, dude.

Wind power is only available in certain parts of the world. Distribution would be a massive problem. Thousands of miles of cables and transformers are not easy to maintain.

We already have thousand of miles of cables and transformers.

My Aunt and Uncle own a wind power company and they cleverly sited nine turbines next to a coal plant so they would not have to run miles of cables.

These are trivial problems.

That must be the most uninformed thing that I've read in my life. How is the map of electricity cables between chad and congo?

Are you aware that wind power needs special sites? And you cannot just move it beside where you want it?

Yes I am aware of this and far from being uninformed I am speaking of things I learned from the owners of a successful Wind Power Utility. see Lingan under projects http://www.confedpower.com

They are in Nova Scotia, not Chad so I can't comment on the situation there.

Extra bonus points. This was a startup by people with no prior experience in the industry that has done extremely well from the getgo.

P.S. They were talking about running an underwater power cable from Yarmouth Nova Scotia to Boston Mass.

Sounds nuts, but they said the economics were doable and provincial utility was their partner.

Never thought wind power would destroy the environment.

could not should

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