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Old 07-10-2007, 07:38 AM   #22
HL1978
Dojo: Aunkai
Location: Fairfax, VA
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 429
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Re: Motorcycle Girl in Chernobyl Dead Zone

Quote:
Stelios Papados wrote: View Post

Areas appropriate for incorporating solar panels, wind turbines? How about the seas? Two thirds of Earth are covered by water and if oiling platforms can withstand waves and storms so will wind tourbines or solar panels. Every denial to clean energy is purely politics/petroleum related and this can be easily proved. Just my humble opinion (shared by almost everybody I ever spoke to...)
While you can put windmills of the coasts (and the same with solar panels) you would not want to put them at the same depths as oil platforms because of the costs to do so. You can put them further out to see, but there are signifigant losses for power transmission over great distances of up to 30% plus you would need a lot of transformers (i.e. you wouldnt want to power a city in the middle of america, with electrical power generated 3000 miles away, it is better to generate power locally).

Is it worth the environmental costs to cover a signifigant portion of the earth/water with solar? With no direct sunlight below the panel you can't grow anything, and I have no idea of how it would effect the oceans/currents/agae growth if they were covered in panels.

A better solution is local power generation. If you were to use solar, place it on the sides of buildings as well as the roof.

Interestingly enough methane recovery from landfills is becoming more popular method of power generation and is carbon neutral. Essentially you sink a large number of pipes into the landfill and suck out the methane.
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