Had to explain to an engineer that Wind Power is not a viable replacement of Hydro Power... Why?

Not new here wrote:

chgray wrote:

[quote]Anecdotalpal wrote:

Nice try Elvis. You are just as ill informed as the other poster. They aren’t recyclable because nobody can get them down once they are so high up there. Idiots.

The same crane is busy getting new blades up somewhere else.

Blades last up to 25 years so they really don’t have to replace them anytime soon.

Maybe will have a maintenance crane and a new install crane by then. There are many many cranes around today. But you know that already

Of course everyone conveniently leaves out nuclear. Clearly the best energy source currently. Been handicapped by unbelievable red tape and media lies about safety.

Why not just build a dyson sphere? Seems simple enough.

Don't you have a professor to ask this question to? I doubt you are really in graduate school. Anyone smart enough to make it that far would know that letsrun is a cesspool full of bozos talking out of their asses

4:13mileas8thgrader wrote:

Don't you have a professor to ask this question to? I doubt you are really in graduate school. Anyone smart enough to make it that far would know that letsrun is a cesspool full of bozos talking out of their asses

Anybody with an internet connection or a library can find the pros and cons to different power sources in a very short period of time. That was part of my original point. It takes like 10 minutes to look a lot of this stuff up, part of why I was so confused why someone such as a civil engineering PhD student would be both so ignorant on the subject and so confident in herself despite not actually knowing anything.

Also, I never tried to frame it (in that conversation or this one) that hydro = good, wind = bad. People who think like that are simple-minded and unsophisticated in their thinking. It's more complicated than that. There are tradeoffs, there is no perfect energy source, and different geographic locations work better for different types of power production. That's kind of what I was trying to explain to her since her idea was essentially wind power = good, everything else = bad. I created the thread because I find this level of thinking to be on the idiot plane.

FWIW, nuclear is the answer. Almost all of the nuclear power plants in the US were built decades ago, 50+ years ago in quite a few cases. The technology has advanced enormously since then, and nuclear energy is far more efficient, safe, and green than most people realize. Tidal power and other similar technologies that utilize the ocean have a lot of potential also, but they're not there yet in terms of being practically implemented on a large scale. Nuclear is.

nuclear

nbskis wrote:

manville wrote:

The best power solution is a combination of wind, solar, hydro / pump storage. Pump water uphill when there is an abundance of solar and wind, release when there is not.

Grid inertia is why solar and wind were not as reliable as hydro but that is changing quickly.

Glad someone here actually knows what they're talking about.

ah no? pump storage needs very smimilar situations as hydro. But most hydro potential is already used up in developed countries. its also not really good for the environement to flood a lot of the land. This wont work out at all. On top wind and solar isnt only fluctuating in short time spans but can also vary over a year. you cant store enough energy if wind underperforms for a whole year for example.

Doopitydoo wrote:

Of course everyone conveniently leaves out nuclear. Clearly the best energy source currently. Been handicapped by unbelievable red tape and media lies about safety.

Media lies like these?

Windmills, have you seen these things? I see them, sometimes, we see them, many times they are not spinning. Many people say they have seen them...not spinning, not spinning at all, for many days, weeks even. And the sound, that sound when they do spin, it's terrible. So terrible. Many people say the sound can give you cancer. And....what about the birds? Those beautiful birds. You go under them, dead birds. Everywhere. Beautiful bald eagles, dead, laying there for people to look at. Who wants this? It's crazy, they're crazy.

Should have asked a mechanical engineer, not a civil engineer, but if the person is not licensed as an engineer, can they really be called an engineer at all?

in the uk, we is chartered, not licensed.

The OP's argument comes with a built in premise that is designed to make sure you cannot win. The OP assumes that WA's energy needs must be powered by renewable energy located in WA and not produced anywhere else.

And that is just the beginning. Hydro's impact on salmon fisheries in the PNW alone is almost enough to justify a major draw down. Salmon is a great source of protein that has a minimal carbon footprint compared to beef, chicken and pork. But you have to have very healthy fisheries and damns are a huge problem for wild salmon.

But back to power generation, hydro is only as reliable as the weather is. When there are extended periods of drought, hydro plants are at risk of shutting down, like what happened in California over the summer. Solar and wind are subject to weather disruptions, but storage systems can very easily smooth out those disruptions. Wind will frequently over produce energy which requires operators to shut down windmills. Instead of turning off windmills, the overproduction can be stored in a number of ways. Battery arrays, compressed air and pumping water up a hill to release later and turn a turbine are all cost effective ways to store energy from renewables.

Quant Bio wrote:

When I explained to her

I also had to explain to her

She was completely ignorant of this also...

I left the conversation pretty confused first because I was surprised someone in civil engineering would be so ignorant and frankly pretty stupid, but especially secondly that they would be so extremely sure of themselves despite having apparently never looked into any actual data or numbers at all. Is this sort of thing common?

So you thought you won an argument with a girl and decided to come post about it on a running forum, presumably to bask in the glory?

Was that the first time you had spoken to a girl?

It might just be the last time you speak with that particular girl.

Engineers just really love to think they are experts in everything, not just their narrow domain of expertise. Getting a PhD in concentrically braced frame design does not confer a ton of knowledge on hydro vs wind power. Hell, she could have been getting a PhD in the structural design of hydroelectric dams and she still probably wouldn't have the domain knowledge required to discuss it. But that doesn't stop every engineer from speculating wildly.

maintenance costs wrote:

Wind turbine blades are riculously expensive and not recyclable.

Cost is relative. All power plants are ridiculously expensive.

Is spent plutonium recyclable? How about coal ash? How about all the concrete and asbestos in old power plants?

Anyone who is surprised that someone in any given field would be ignorant and stupid is certainly ignorant and probably stupid.

Imagine some bro cornering a woman on a topic she's not qualified to give professional advice. Then he comes to a forum to humblebrag about further denigrating her.

you must be single wrote:

Imagine some bro cornering a woman on a topic she's not qualified to give professional advice. Then he comes to a forum to humblebrag about further denigrating her.

1) She asked me out to coffee.

2) She was the one who was spewing all kinds of ignorance. That was my point. I don't fault anyone for not knowing things, but to talk out our arse, repeatedly, confidently, even after being made aware you don't really know what you're talking about, is pretty bad. I called her stupid because this is pretty basic critical thinking and logic... Even if she has a reasonably high IQ, her thinking is very unsophisticated and undeveloped, very badly so.

Funny someone else commented on engineers being this way... I've had this experience with a number of engineers. There's definitely a high ego involved. The pattern I find is that engineers TEND to be very intelligent very engineery type things (math, etc), and average to damn near mentally handicapped in just about everything else. This causes a lot of them to overestimate their intelligence and knowledge in general because they're far above average in things like math. They don't really know what to do when they meet someone whose intelligence is both high and applied across domains. They also tend to not expect anyone in biology to be equal to or above them, which might explain some of my encounters.

FWIW, I have several friends with PhDs in different engineering fields, and they all say that I'm the smartest of the group. I have spent enough time working with and around MDs and PhDs in different fields to know where I stand.

If you have to talk about it, you aren’t the smartest in the room. Besides lacking self awareness you are also socially inept with low emotional intelligence.