What do you know about alternative energy.?

Question

examples??

Answer 1

1)  Available types are solar and wind.  Initial cost is way high.  Both are somewhat usable for homes but one would need to do a lot of research for site-specific suitability ie amount of direct sunlight. (shade seriously lowers solar cell output) and average wind speed.

2) There is a lot of confusing and wrong information about wind power for homes.  Most legitimate manufacturers suggest lot size of 1 acre or more.  Commercial towers have 100 ft blades and produce 30-40 kwh.

3) A couple of companies are in the process of building commercial solar farms.

4) Am considering it myself.

5) two types of installation, off the grid and Co-generation where the utilities buy back any surplus power you generate.

6) Batteries for off grid and current stabilizers and inverters for co-gen seem to be the bulk of the expense.

Answer 2

I don`t think alternative energy will help grandma from freezing to death this cold winter

Answer 3

Usually when something is alternative it is because it isn't any good and that seems to be the case with most alternative energy.

Wind and solar power lack the reliability to handle baseload and we don't have the large scale energy storage technology we need to make them reliable enough to rely on, even if we did have it once you factored the energy storage in and overcapacity needed to charge it the economics might even make coal with externalities internalised look cheap.