July 2, 2023

Sloganeering replaces mathematics in promoting renewables. Just because one windmill will create electricity does not mean the result can be multiplied to solve energy problems.

The first thing wrong with multiplying the windmill effect is that most of the factors are not included in the assumptions. No accounting for cost, manufacturing, energy input or environmental destructiveness goes into the assumptions sloganeers use.

That means even the one windmill is not actually increasing the energy supply. It is destroying the energy supply and putting more carbon dioxide in the air than burning coal. Real engineers used to explain how that works. They were silenced, if not shoved out of their jobs for saying so. And that was several years ago, while the inefficiencies are increased over time with the size of the windmills and conflicting results.

At first, windmills were quite small compared to the more recent ones, while larger ones are less efficient than smaller ones. Then the early windmills tapped into existing lines, which removed the need to add transmission lines, while the cost and environmental damage of the lines is greater than for the production of the windmills. (Windmill Efficiency)

Fifteen year ago, engineers were saying, it takes a windmill to produce a windmill. That means nothing was gained in producing windmills. But windmills have been getting immensely larger since then; and since increased size greatly reduces efficiency for windmills, it would take about three windmills to produce a windmill now days. That means there is three times less energy and three times as much carbon dioxide in the air for each kilowatt of electricity produced by recent windmills.

Sloganeers ignore production costs and the impossibility of producing required transmission lines. The needed transmission lines cannot be produced for replacing fossil fuels with renewables. Even now, the cost and environmental damage of needed lines is so prohibitive that it prevents significant expansion of renewables. Renewables are only being placed where existing lines can be exploited.

There is six times as much energy being used as fossil fuels as electricity. To replace the fossil fuels with electricity would require six times as much electricity to be produced. But the increase in transmission lines would be vastly greater than six times as much as presently exist, because fossil fuels were moved near cities for producing electricity to eliminate transmission lines, where renewables must be located hundreds or thousands of miles from consumers.

That means the factor of six must be multiplied by several hundred or a thousand in terms of the miles of transmission lines being produced. People don't grasp what multiplication means. A factor of two means doubling transmission lines. There is already a severe shortage of transmission lines. That means a ten percent increase cannot be produced. Doubling is a hundred percent increase. It means no increase in transmission lines is practical, while close to six thousand times as much is needed.

A windfarm in Montana is supposed to send electricity to Los Vegas and Los Angeles. The transmission lines are so expensive and environmentally damaging that they were held up for ten years. Out of desperation, the lines are supposedly going to be built. But that problem developed ten years ago, when there were still a lot of options and uncertainties. A brick wall exists at this time, which means no extreme measures can be used anymore in overcoming the absurd costs and environmental damage.

There is a similar problem in getting electricity to electric vehicles. Overhead lines would have to follow every highway to put a charging station approximately where every gas station exists. But overhead lines are so imposing and environmentally damaging that underground lines would be needed, except that it isn't possible to put that much electrical power under the ground.

Overhead transmission lines go up to two million volts, though half a million volts are more common. But voltages over ten thousand become a problem underground due to arcing through the insulation into damp soil. To increasing the insulation makes the lines less flexible, so they can't be rolled up for production.

A half million volts divided by ten thousand means fifty times as many lines or fifty times as many amps per line. The amperage determines the thickness of the wires. Heavy wires cannot be increased by a factor of fifty in thickness for underground purposes.

It sort of adds up to a project similar to a pipeline in putting straight rods of copper several feet in diameter under the ground. In whatever manner that problem is supposed to be approached, it is one of the main reasons why the needed charging stations don't exist and never will.

Those are the reasons why sloganeering fake science and technology is a fraud upon the public.

(Parenthetically, the only solution to the energy problem is to produce nuclear in a safe and responsible manner. Coal should be used in transitioning to increased nuclear. But the primary reason for decreasing instead of increasing nuclear is because the incompetent power mongers who took over everything cannot manage that much complexity. They assume they can reduce renewables to a simplistic form that they can manage; but they are wrong again.)