New York To Close Indian Point, Tilt At Windmills And Burn More Oil
Governor Andrew M. Coumo of New York announced last week that Indian Point Energy Center will be shutdown. Alternative with Indian Point, New York is apparently going to tilt full on at windmills.
According to Forbes, the computation on how much energy the nuclear power plant can give to New York goes to nearly one-third of the city's demand. That raised the question on how one-third would be filled when the plant closes for four years.
Solar electricity may be out as potential alternative since all rooftops in Manhattan would not be sufficient to equal the gap the Indian point could give, aside from the 400 percent higher costs than the plant's cheap kilowatt-hours. Still there's no possibility that New York will build a new nuke, new coal plants, or get natural gas from Pennsylvannia Marcellus.
What if New York will conserve, reducing the full consumption to 30 percent lesser? Conservation looks impossible as peak demand has been soaring. If the city will turn to harnessing new technology, which thought to help reduce the consumption still the sum total is to demand more wind turbines as it would need real power to operate.
Will greater windmills do even better? Still it would be left behind compared to the power the Indian point could generate. Plus it always on function whether calm or windy. The necessity for much bigger scale of land to be used for turbines and more transmission that is needed to carry the power from upstate will invite large local opposition. Such great necessity requires large windfarms at least 440 percent, New York State reported.
Batteries should also be look at since converting episodic wind into baseload requires storage that needs lots of batteries. It can be calculated that for four years NYC needs to buy 40 percent of the whole world's lithium battery before Indian Point is slated to be shut.
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