Why don't power companies allow people to generate electricity by windmills and put it back into the grid?
441897
Many Power Companies do allow this, and they pay you for the electricity you generate.  It's sometimes called "co-generation".  You have to get the hardware set up so that the power you generate goes back onto the grid safely.\n\nAhhhh, to live free and off the grid.
385490
Yes wind is definitely a renewable energy source. Take a look at the link provided for more info on RES and other examples.
36981
Well it it quite difficult imagine a computer running on gas, but it may come due to innovation technology. It is quite practical that whatever the source eg. turbines or heat or solar receptors, the energy "generated" is always converted into electricity which is a standard form used. Now if you want to say that is electricity was'nt there what would we have done, well we would have worked something out. A gas powered land mower is quite practical. Why not a computer for that matter. \n\nAll the best.
394468
Green energy that includes natural enegetic processes.  Geothermal power, wind power, small-scale hydropower, solar power, biomass power, tidal power and wave power fall under such a category. Some versions may also include power derived from the incineration of waste.\n\nRemember that no power source is impact-free. For instance, concerns are raised over bird kills and in some cases noise pollution by windmills and over heavy metal use and associated mining damage by raw materials used for constructing solar cells.\n\nHere in Greece we have used windmills  ancients before electricity but now we use it to produse electricity for our islands. We use also solar cells and  small-scale hydropower to produse electicity.
428972
Alternate energy sources are our next step to stabilize our economy and lessen the dependence on other countries to provide us that need. However, they are extremely costly and hard to come by. Wind mills are a disaster in terms of the amount of space it needs to operate. Solar panels are not effecient everywhere, say Seattle or Alaska. Nuclear fission is the next step but since it is potentially dangerous as nuclear bombs, it's being closely monitored thus dampening the research process. I guess we are still depended on oil is because it is so universal and exremely easy to use and harness everywhere. I agree with you, if I had enough money to fund researches like these, I'd do it in a heartbeat!
1185253
One of the realities of the energy debate is that it really does take a portfolio of technologies.  Nuclear clearly has a part to play, as does wind, solar and other renewables.  Coal certainly isn't going away anytime soon either.  \nThere simply aren't enough resources to cost effectively build just one kind of power generation plant for all the world's needs.\nthe National Renewable Energy Laboratory has some great discussions about this if you're interested enough to find them.
801669
There is a lot of possibilities starting from the simplest one which is wind generator.  More complicated would be water generation where a usually dam is build and potential energy of the water accumulated behind the dam moves water through turbines and generates power. Some other may include thermal energy of the earth. If you drill deep enough you will get to the earth crust zone where temperature is high to produce steam and this steam is converted (generated) into the electric power. Ocean waves are also source to generate energy.
815781
Good question.\n\nThere seem to be many other sources of energy but they seem to be expensive to obtain or to require large amounts of land to be dedicated to crop growth or for collectors.  This is in itself a type of inefficiency. \n\nIn the long term prices may come down but energy such as crop based gasoline alternatives don't seem to me like they would cut it with a growing demand for gas their will be a growing demand for the amount of land that must be dedicated to its production. not to mention the population is growing and its not going to stop.\n\nIf we move toward becoming almost entirely dependent upon alternative energy we must move towards harnessing different kinds of power and not just search for one solution.\n\nA lot of money would be lost from a lot of big companies.\n\nFor instance there is a windmill type device you can purchase for your home needs right now for around $10,000 it is highly efficient\nand supposedly super quiet.  It is said to be able to generate between 30% to all of a homes energy needs depending on where you live. If too much energy is generated the excess may be sold back to the electrical company.  \n\nIf you could purchase three of these at the hefty price of $30,000 you could theoretically not ever have to pay a power bill again in some places or pay almost no bill at all. The electrical companies services could be utilized as a form of backup power.  \n\nIf everyone had these wind collectors this would certainly shrink the electrical power industry.\n\nThere is no information available to me about how much it can cost to repair these items or how well they can withstand the event of a hurricane or tornado. \n\nBut I dont think think alternative energy is a pipe dream it is just something that is going to take a large investment to start up and develop towards higher levels of performance and efficiency. \n\nThe engineering of rugged devices will have to play a large role and does currently, however, a lot of trial and error needs to occur to see what works where and why and what got destroyed by random acts of god and the forces of nature and how that can be prevented.\n\nShould things begin to look rather good for alternative energy... and it seems things look better day by day... energy companies would have to begin facing downsizing and new business models and perhaps invest themselves into the production of alternative energy or alternative energy generating devices for sale to the public.  Either way at some point they wont be the economic giants they have been to this point and thats probably gonna keep them from helping.\n\nAlternative energy will only be a pipe dream if people are afraid to nurture it and harness the energies available. This is something that is and will be heavily influenced by politics.\n\nOn another note, I think that nuclear power seems to be an "easy way out" but I don't believe that it is a good or secure solution.  There have been so many nuclear mishaps you dont hear about and so much waste that you cant prevent or do anything about. Aside from alternative energy being developed for fear of a lack of oil I also thought a large part of it was moving towards a cleaner earth. Moving towards nuclear power and nuclear waste is dangerous for everyone.  Radiation does not simply go away it is corruption of matter and it is "contagious".  Sure we could maybe launch it off into space, but should something go wrong on the way out of here we would face yet another type of radiological disaster.
3611
The easiest thing would be to switch all cars to hybrid.  Right now.  The technology is here.  Wind power now costs less than coal, but our government keeps giving money to the coal industry because of lobbyists.
33311
They might be part of the solution, but are hardly THE solution. Tidal power plants work very much like hydroelectic dams. Tides are predictable, but only flow for portions of the day. Tidal range is a local effect so only some locations are suitable for using tidal power. For example in the Caribbean the tides are so small no one notices. The environmental impact of using tidal power by building dams across estuaries is likely to be considered more of a problem than the energy is worth. Tidal turbines resembling an underwater version of a wind farm might have less environmental impact and might be a more realistic solution, but no doubt there will be environmental impacts that limit their use as well.
1180063
Environmentalists are against it. (Go figure). They claim that enough solar panels to provide an adequate amount of power for any sized city would take up too much space and would damage the ecosystems they are put in.
121402
Yes. It is just not possible to generate more electricity than that motor consumes.
391212
Because we are too lazy. The government is also saying that it's trying to help us. Still, I haven't seen any wind turbines being built where I live. Plus, my parents don't have the money to send me to a protest and I don't have the resources to organize one.
23338
Then everyone would fight for the technology to build that machine.  It is not about sources of energy that people fight about.  It is the control and power.
1019039
Rotating turbines attached to electrical generators produce most commercially available electricity. Turbines may be driven by using steam, water, wind or other fluids as an intermediate energy carrier. The most common usage is by steam in fossil fuel power plants or nuclear power plants, and by water in hydroelectric dams. Alternately, turbines can be driven directly by the combustion of natural gas or oil. Combined cycle gas turbine plants offer efficiencies of up to 60%. They generate power by burning natural gas in a gas turbine and use residual heat to generate additional electricity from steam. Wind turbines generate electricity by using the wind. Solar chimneys use wind that is artificially produced inside the chimney by heating it with sunlight. Solar parabolic troughs and solar power towers concentrate sunlight to heat a heat transfer fluid that is used to produce steam to turn a turbine. Small electricity generators are often powered by reciprocating engines burning diesel, biogas or natural gas. Diesel engines are often used for back up generation, usually at low voltages. Biogas is often combusted where it is produced, such as a landfill or wastewater treatment plant, with a reciprocating engine or a microturbine, which is a small gas turbine.
61481
There are many ways to create electricity, all basically involve converting another form of energy (usually kinetic energy, eg. hydroelectric plants, or heat energy, eg. nuclear,coal, geothermal).\n\nWikipedia has explantions of these, see the site in the source. It basically says:\n\nRotating turbines attached to electrical generators produce most commercially available electricity. Turbines may be driven by using steam, water, wind or other fluids as an intermediate energy carrier. The most common usage is by steam in fossil fuel power plants or nuclear power plants, and by water in hydroelectric dams. Small mobile generators are often driven by diesel engines, especially on ships, remote building sites or for emergency standby.\n\nFuel cells produce electricity using a variety of chemicals and are seen by some people to be the most likely source of power in the long term, especially if hydrogen can be used as the feedstock. However, hydrogen is usually only an energy carrier, and must be formed by some other power source.\n\nThe world relies mainly on coal and natural gas for power. The high capital requirements of nuclear power and the fear of its dangers have prevented the ordering of new nuclear power plants in North America since the 1970s.\n\nSteam turbines can be powered using steam produced from geothermal sources, solar energy, or Nuclear reactors, which use the energy created by the fission of radioactive plutonium or uranium to generate heat. Nuclear power plants often use a primary and secondary steam circuit to add an additional layer of protection between the location of the nuclear fuel and the generator room.\n\nHydroelectric power plants use water flowing directly through the turbines to power the generators. Tidal harnesses use the force of the moon on bodies of water to spin a turbine. Wind turbines use wind to turn turbines that are hooked up to a generator. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is used to level demands on the power grid.\n\nPower generation by thermonuclear fusion has been suggested as a possible way of generating electricity; currently a number of technical obstacles and environmental concerns stand in the way, but if realized fusion might provide a relatively clean and safe source of electrical power. The construction of a large experimental reactor (ITER) is expected to commence in 2005-2006.\n\n\nPlease also note that a few places around the world produce usuable electric power from sources like geothermal energy, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power, and wind power, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
456954
Ok here ya go!\n\n In 2005, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was 58,982 MW, their production making up less than 1% of world-wide electricity use. Although still a relatively minor source of electricity for most countries, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 1999 and 2005.\n\nMost modern wind power is generated in the form of electricity by converting the rotation of turbine blades into electrical current by means of an electrical generator. In windmills (a much older technology) wind energy is used to turn mechanical machinery to do physical work, like crushing grain or pumping water.\n\nWind power is used in large scale wind farms for national electrical grids as well as in small individual turbines for providing electricity in isolated locations.\n\nWind energy is abundant, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and mitigates the greenhouse effect.\n\nAn estimated 1 to 3 % of energy from the Sun that hits the earth is converted into wind energy. This is about 50 to 100 times more energy than is converted into biomass by all the plants on earth through photosynthesis. Most of this wind energy can be found at high altitudes where continuous wind speeds of over 160 km/h (100 mph) occur. Eventually, the wind energy is converted through friction into diffuse heat all through the earth's surface and atmosphere.\n\nThe origin of wind is simple. The earth is unevenly heated by the sun resulting in the poles receiving less energy from the sun than the equator does. Also the dry land heats up (and cools down) more quickly than the seas do. The differential heating powers a global atmospheric convection system reaching from the earth's surface to the stratosphere which acts as a virtual ceiling.\n\nThe change of seasons, change of day and night, the Coriolis effect, the irregular albedo (reflectivity) of land and water, humidity, and the friction of wind over different terrain are some of the factors which complicate the flow of wind over the surface.