Are renewables stormproof? Hurricane Sandy tests solar, wind.

[jpak]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/1119/Are-renewables-stormproof-Hurricane-Sandy-tests-solar-wind.

Renewable energy may one day offer consumers relief from the widespread blackouts that have become a predictable by-product of major storms. The flexibility of wind and solar, combined with the decentralization of a microgrid, offer a degree of resilience not found in the top-down, traditional generation system, clean energy experts say.

Efforts are already underway to harness solar’s unique characteristics to help victims of hurricane Sandy, which devastated large swaths of New Jersey and New York and left millions in the dark.

<snip>

“The photos you reference are dramatic but reflect only a small fraction of the vast solar field, less than 5 percent,” Thomas Holt III, a representative for Holt, told The Christian Science Monitor in an e-mail. “Power was and is pumping uninterrupted. Already the manufacturer SunPower is hard at work to replace the ones that were damaged and making better an already great project.”

<snip>

Aggregate data can be difficult to collect, since many solar and wind installations are privately owned by individual residents and businesses, but industry experts said they heard of only minor structural damage to renewable energy systems.

<more>

[dipsydoodle]

1. Might not do

the gearboxes much good on wind installations.

[jpak]

2. The NJ coastal wind farms did just fine

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112727288

[dipsydoodle]

3. Thats because they were locked.

Now I wonder if that was to protect the gearboxes.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. That's the point. They are built with overspeed conditions in mind.

Just like solar PV on rooftops is built to codes for high winds or snow load as appropriate.

[FogerRox]

4. No gears, turbines now use direct drive

[NNadir]

6. No renewable energy asshole has come to pick up the cadmium laced solar panels

laying at the edge of the road on my block.

This remains, year after year, decade after decade, a meaningless form of energy in New Jersey, but huge PSEG trucks drove around burning tons of diesel fuel to hang this toxic junk off of telephone poles around here.

Now many of them are laying in the street, leaching toxic metals into the ground water, making many places in New Jersey electronic waste dumps.

I have a series of photographs of these expensive, useless pieces of oil and gas greenwashing crap that my son and I took, laying among the shattered trees that all of our anti-nukes caused.

While we were all waiting for your silly fantasies to come along with the return of Jesus, the seas started eating the coasts all around the world. On this damn planet, after throwing hundreds of billions of euros, dollars, yen, yaun and other currencies down the rabbit hole - money that might have fed the poor, educated young people, provided health care and funded real science - the failed solar enterprise on the whole planet can't even provide as much energy as four medium sized gas plants.

Lucky thing we didn't bet the future of the planetary atmosphere on this stupid obviously deficient enterprise, despite 5 or 6 decades of cackling by its adherents.

What's that you say? We did? Well then, so much the worse for us.

Thanks for the hurricanes, the continental scale grain crop failures, the rising seas.

Heckuva job, anti-nuke

You must be

very,

very,

very,



very,



proud.

[jpak]

7. Another fact-free sociopathic rant

yawn