contractors will buy millions of Lightnings

[Nick Gerteis]

There are a lot of factors. One is
Solar and wind do not generate, or more accurattly capture, power all the time. Solar is not productive at night. The wind is not always blowing. How do you have gird power at night with no wind? You dont. You need to store that energy for use at night. During calm days. There is no solution for this. Do you think batteries can suppply enough power to Ford's second and third shift assembly plant? What about an entire cities worth of demand with numerous production facilities?

The grid is also not a static demand. This fluctuats every hour of every day. What happens when demand increases? Turn on more sunlight? Make more wind?

Power storage is no where near where it needs to be. Not even close.

And wind? You know it would take 750 to 1,200 1 mw wind turbines to replace a single coal power plant? Where ya gonna put them? What are you going to do with the 75-100 foot blades after you replace them in 20yrs? Cant reuse them. Cant recycle them. Cant burn them. That is a rather large issue quickly.

There are books written on the subject. You shoud read some. The one mentioned in this thread is a good start.

I am not wrong just because i am not going to write 750 pages of a technical document.

Power companies are not investing 100's of millions of dollars building new natural gas power generating plants this year and spending 10's of millions upgrading coal plants if in 5-10 years they will be closed. No CEO is approving that project. They are doing it because they have more than 25 years to recoup costs and there is no other choice. Renewalables at this point in time are suplememts to the grid. That is it.

Facts are facts.

Just because power companies are sticking to their outdated and quite literally fossil business model doesn’t mean it’s a good decision: Institutional inertia is real.
Turbine blades, a non issue. If they’re as sturdy as you suggest we’ll find a good use for them. Racking for solar panels? Towers for all the new high voltage long distance transmission lines we are building?
These lines will also help address your first point, which is the only one that actually is an issue. But: Power can be generated 1000s of miles away from where it’s used, we’re a really big country, the wind is always blowing somewhere. For the few days of the year that the entire US has no wind or sunshine, we will be using the soon to be largely EV fleet as one large locally distributed backup battery. Ford is truly leading the way here by offering bidirectional charging on the Lightning. If one Lightning can keep your house running for a week, thousands will keep the Ford plant running for a few hours at night.

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[corradoborg]

Turbine blades, a non issue. If they’re as sturdy as you suggest we’ll find a good use for them. Racking for solar panels? Towers for all the new high voltage long distance transmission lines we are building?

The assertion that wind turbine blades can't be recycled is not only false, but new replacement blades are specifically designed to be recycled in 20-25 years. Even the old ones installed 20-25 years ago can be recycled. It's just a little bit more of a process because they weren't initially designed with that in mind.

When turbine blades are buried in landfills, it's because of laziness and outdated thinking. Not because of an inherent lack of reusability.