870
Technology Connections - You are being misled about renewable energy technology. (www.youtube.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/solarpunk@slrpnk.net
176 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Amazing video by Technology Connections. It's a long one, but don't miss his 30 minute angry rant at the end.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 42 points 7 months ago (3 children)

"A wind turbine is like an oil derrick that generates eq. 3 gallons of gasoline evry single minute."

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Tbh I thought it would be more

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Except the wind never runs out. Also we can use the energy from wind turbines 3x as efficiently as we can the energy from a barrel of oil. Carnot is a bitch.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Wind sometimes runs out (as in, calm weather) and wind turbines do eventually run out after a few decades. But, 3 gallons of gasoline-equivalent per minute seemed a bit small for my intuition, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to compare it to pumpjacks for oil.

    I'm doing these calculations in metric, because the US traditional units are insane, and nobody should subject themselves to that.

    3 gallons is about 11.3L, so 11.3L per minute is 678 L per hour, or about 16 kL of "gasoline-equivalent" per day.

    Apparently a pumpjack pumps about 5 to 40 "barrels" of crude oil per day. A barrel is 159 L so that's 795 L to 6360 L per day.

    So, the back of the envelope "how much 'energy' does this big mechanical thing produce" seems fairly similar, ignoring a whole lot of complexity.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent