What Alternative Energy Source do you think is the best?

There is a lot of strange thinking when it comes to renewable energy. It goes like this: "The wind is free so if we extract energy from the wind then we will have as much free energy as we want." What they don't tell you is that coal and oil are also free.

Just as you pay for equipment to extract energy from the coal and oil so you have to pay for equipment to extract energy from the wind. No difference. They also ignore the amount of aluminium, steel, carbon fibre and concrete that goes into a wind turbine.

They also ignore the fact that each one needs its own road for building and maintenance purposes and the fact that each one needs to be individually wired. They also need to be wired to the grid so that they can take electricity from it. This is required to keep the blades turning when there is no wind to prevent the rotor from bending and to provide lighting for maintenance purposes when the turbine is not producing.

Another problem is that most people have no idea how many wind turbines would be required to replace the current fossil and nuclear fuel power stations. Do the sums. Find out how much electricity your country needs then see how many square miles of wind or solar you would need to supply that.

Then work out how you could store the energy so that you can have power all the time and not just during daylight hours or when the wind is blowing. Don't just say "a battery". Work out how big the battery would need to be or how many mountain lakes you would need to fill.

Another problem is that if the wind drops or night falls then these "renewable" methods don't work at all. How would we manage with no energy for a day? In the old days of wind driven sailing ships, a ship could be becalmed for weeks.

Another problem is that these "renewable" methods are less renewable then many imagine. Magnets for generators and chemicals for photocells still have to be sourced. Wind turbine blades are often carbon fibre which is not biodegradable.

We will end up with piles of wind turbine blades at some point. Another problem is that the existing grids do not cope well with fluctuating supplies. If large variations are detected the grid usually protects itself by switching things off.

Things like cities. Part of the hype uses the nameplate capacity when describing how much energy will be produced. That is like me claiming that as my car will do 100mph and I have owned it for 5 years it has now travelled: 100*24*365*5 = 4,380,000 miles when, in fact, it has only done 50,000 miles.

Wind and solar don't produce power for much of the time just as my car is stationary for most of the time. Picture below is wind turbine magnets not harming the planet!

If you really want to know the practicalities and problems with wind power then you need to seek out reliable independent expert opinion. Luckily one such source is readily (and freely!) available which I recommend below. "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" is by a world leading scientist Prof. David MacKay FRS.

The book is available as a free download (pdf) along with a 10 page summary on this link http://www.withouthotair.com/download.ht... It is a great and enlightening read on the viability and sustainability of energy sources but particularly wind and solar. If you prefer a hard copy you can buy from Amazon. He explains (without taking sides) how the low energy density of wind and solar impact on the viability of these technologies for large scale energy generation.

I can guarantee there will be aspects of renewable energy covered in this book that you will not have considered before.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.