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Originally Posted by OldManOnFire
Just seems to me if there was money to be made, whether the energy companies paid for it themselves or needed help from the government, they would already be lobbying for it. Is Kennedy the only person to see the benefit?
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I don’t know. You are the one who brought Kennedy up and the entire topic of DC transmissions in the first place, not me. I corrected your confusion about what Kennedy was talking about. Is it a good idea, I’m not sure. However I can speculate as to why Kennedy thinks it is a good idea and that’s what I did. Would it actually justify the cost, well that would require a level of detail and analysis that I don’t see available right now.
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Those current coal operators have seen the writing on the walls where locals and the federal government are not so keen on allowing any more coal power plants. Until they can scrub 100% of the CO2 from their emissions, their growth is done.
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Hopefully so but they aren’t going quietly hence a variety of new
PR campaigns on their part. Regardless it doesn’t mean they would decide to invest in a power backbone that would benefit green only energy sources which is what Kennedy was suggesting.
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The right of eminent domain usually cannot be stopped once someone makes the decision to build. If a HVDC line makes any sense at all, except for my position of creating and supplying power locally, then it should be built.
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Come on, “should be” when it comes to government regulatory agencies is often not reality. The EPA shouldn’t be overruling states that are trying to implement emission reduction plans but that hasn’t stopped them from doing it.
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There are also a vast quantity of people who live in rural areas and these are the people, at least in my opinion, who are initiating the growth in solar and wind installations.
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Okay but even if you look at the 20% or so of rural residents I still think your situation is fairly atypical. I bet most places, especially in the wide open central US, have relatively small problems installing the solar panels right on their rooftops or very close to their houses and don’t need to convert to AC to transfer the power to their house. Regardless what’s it got to do with a DC power backbone? The US will not be able to solve its energy/emission problems with localized power production alone; it’s just one piece of the solution.
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When we want AC power to another part of our land the energy companies have no problems quoting $50K to $100K cost! We get tired of power outages each time one of billions of trees falls and breaks the power line while we wait 1-2 days for service. And like most everyone, we don't like being held hostage in a monopoly situation.
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All the more reason for you to localize. You do have to remember than millions of people don’t have such power supply problems and so they don’t rationalize the need for local production as much even if there are other good reasons for them to do. They will still need grid power because solar and wind are intermittent and it will be quite some time before they can be overdeveloped and used in combination with an energy storage system.
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I was just joking some about cold fusion.
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Yeah I know but somebody has to play the straight man.
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If it was going to work I think someone would have figured it out by now. As I sit in my office, perched high on our hilltop, watching the wind blow the trees around, enjoying the bright and warm sunshine, I can't help but believe that the answer to our power issues might be right in front of our eyes. We know we can harness solar and wind, although with low efficiencies, but I'm guessing there's another science or math at play that is yet to be discovered...
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All the more reason to give people incentives to exploit that unused power.