What are some challenges using and managing renewable energy resources?
Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at
7:27 am
Like winter power, solar energy and biomass fermentation?
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Filed under: Renewable Energy
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I think one of the biggest challenges is just getting enough renewable energy to replace a good portion of energy generated by fossil fuels. Right now I think renewable energy accounts for only about 1-2% of the total energy produced. Sources like solar and wind power are good at adding capacity to the grid during peak usage, but they’re not good base load power generators.
Also another problem is that they are more expensive to produce. The cost gap is closing, however, because the new technology is getting better and better, and also it’s starting to cost a lot more to drill for oil and even mine coal. Of course, renewable would be a lot cheaper than fossil fuels if the true cost of obtaining coal and oil were calculated, like using our military to secure a steady supply of resources overseas.
The challenges are competitiveness in costs, infrastructure, storage technology, conservatism, interests of the fossil fuel industry.
For example wind energy is probably the cheapest way to produce electricity, but wind energy is an uncontrolled source, wind turbines only operate when the wind velocity is not too low and not too high, and the technology to store vast amounts of electrical energy is not simple, in addition, wind turbines should be placed in suitable locations and not near urban areas.