Renewable Energy Products that Cause Embarrassment To the Industry

One of the challenges facing solar and wind energy is capacity factor, i.e. the ratio of the total energy generated by a device to the total energy that it’s potentially capable of generating (multiplied by 100, to make a percentage).  One of the points of value of baseload power plants, e.g., coal and nuclear, is that they have enormous capacity factors, i.e., that they run at optimum capacity almost constantly.  Correspondingly, one of the challenges associated with solar and wind is capacity factors that can be in the 20s, due to irreparable issues like the sun’s going down at night and the inconsistency of the wind at any given place.

That’s one of several reasons that the product promoted here (and pictured above) is a total ripoff.  Wind blowing near trees and buildings is not worth harvesting, and cost per KWh associated with this device is going to be outrageously high.  This is true of “small wind” generally, but it’s especially true with this ridiculous thing, which has an entire laundry list of other issues that make it impractical in the extreme, like maintenance costs and the resource utilization required to build and install it.

Now, some might say that there is symbolic value in such a product, but I disagree.  To me, it only demonstrates that its owner lacks a basic understanding of the energy challenges that lie in front of us, i.e., to create devices that offer:

High EROI (energy return on investment, meaning they produce many times more energy in the course of their lifetimes than was required to put them in place and maintain them) and

Low LCOE (levelized cost of energy, meaning the total cost of the energy produced per KWh, given the cost of the device, installation, fuel, maintenance, and decommissioning at the end of its lifetime).