Re: theWatt Podcast 75

On wind power and exponential growth:

One of the things that i studied at university was microbiology. You start theone day wih a few thousand microes on a swab and a few days later they become visible, followed shortly by complete saturation of thier solution and die off from metabolite poisining or consumed resources. I clearly dont believed in persistant exponential growth.

However, the nature of exponential growth is relavent to the comment above about the number of years it would take to install a qauntity of wind turbines.

I dont see why growth couldnt continue untill saturation of the grid--that still a hell of a long way off...in some areas >20% has been acieved but i`m not sure what the curent us grid could cope with--what is clear however is that the time argument is bogus.

I agree that HV DC lines are costly, they may ake subsidies and would advantage all intermitant sources of power, they may require almost the level of subsidies that nuclear power needs for its insurance and waste cleanup. However, i`d rather look to a clean low carbon future of distributed rather than concentrated nature. The concept of smart grid is gaining traction, and in the UK we have small examples, germany have done much better, US research on automation and time signaling is groundbreaking.