On 12/7/07, Vitaliy <spam@maksimov.org> wrote:
> peter green wrote:
> > From what I can gather very little electricity production comes from
> > oil anyway because oil is the most expensive of the fossil fuels
> > already. Afaict the big sources are coal,  natural gas, dam based hydro
> > and nuclear.

I will consider oil and nature gad similar. Along with Coal, they all
belong to fossil fuel.

> > Dam based hydro is a very nice source of power in terms of running
> > clenliness and output control but availible sites for new installations
> > are very very limited and the inital installation is a political and
> > environemntal nightmare (forests rotting underwater produce a lot of
> > polloution).

I think Hydro power is a possible solution for some places (small hydro
power stations).

> > Most other renewables generate on thier own relatively unpredicatable
> > schedules making them a grid operators nightmare, a small ammount of
> > sources like that is tolerable but ultimately unless storage costs come
> > down dramatically it will be very difficult to run a whole grid off them.

The future may be distributed power generation. This may not happen
easily in US since it has an old power distribution system (remember the
blackout back in 2003). In many part of the world, it is actually possible.

>
> Coal produces by far the worst emissions, and accounts for nearly half of
> all electricity production.
>
> Regarding hydro, from what I've read, besides the fact that it's destructive
> to the environment, there just aren't any suitable spots left.

Actually there are already technology means to mitigate the effect
of the emission/pollution caused by coal or nature gas. Just spend
the money which would have been spent on Nuclear power stations. ;-)

Regarding distributed generation and alternative energy source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_generation

It is actually possible to work with grid energy with proper inverters.
Example: I've seen solar power and fule cell powered system
connected to grid power without major technological problem.
The problem is to get the grids to accept this.
http://www.onecyclecontrol.com/OCCv7/Business.html

Xiaofan
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