In general, several forms of hydro are considered to be safe, cheap, clean abundant, that is, better than wind or solar, so what is the hang up????

Hydro Association says only 3% of dams generate hydro. Waterwheels very good. Tidal just political inclusion. Rather inferior.

Let me give some comparative numbers. The formula Power equals 1/2 density times area times velocity of fluid cubed can be used to calculate and compare how much energy is in a given volume of air or water. We start with water being 833 times heavier than air at 62.5 pounds per cubic foot, a big advantage. Also, water flows 24 7 365 whereas wind blows only a third of the time, a three fold advantage. Of course, cubing wind speeds is a big advantage fot wind power althiugh the area of a turbine or waterwheel can be scaled up, adding another advantage to hydro given equal or comparable labor costs. So hydro by the numbers is mostly superior as you can calculate by multiplying three by 833 by the area advantage.

I want to point out that I am Tweeting daily about this under my name, neillevine3. I would like to point out that the Obama approach as exemplified by his handling of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf was to strong arm BP for reparations first rather than recruiting expert Petroleum Engineers to advise on capping the leaking well, exacerbating BPs frustrations and not ameliorating the immediate cause of pollution quickly.

Hi Neil, thanks for this discussion and all the great info and thoughts. What do you think of tidal stream hydro? An alternative to dams on rivers and barrages on estuaries. James

I would like to add I am not a Professor of Engineering and aennd the politend oical reaction to my NYSERDA submission may depend on geopolitical developments, depending on how dumb the Iranians may be.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203750404577170412230319648.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews#articleTabs_comments%3D%26articleTabs%3Dcomments

If hydro gets any real traction, would that help hydrogen fuel cells???

http://thehill.com/video/administration/206841-obama-we-need-an-all-out-all-in-all-of-the-above-energy-strategy?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

It has recently come to my attention that Britain and The Philippines are proceeding with small hydro projects, including an installation at one of tbe Queen's castles. Also news stories poi.t to unstable conditions in Nigeria, Sudan, Iran, etc., raising questions about unstable foreign sources of energy, especially Iran, which seems to be very belligerent.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/01/31/bloomberg_articlesLYNDWQ6JIJVA01-LYOI1.DTL It is being reported that Iran is making threats.

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/international/iran_prepared_to_attack_us_overseas_I7LJeQD5eygyGZZHOzS56N another. No predicting exactly what Iran will do nor the Obama response, although I wish Obama would solve the problem.

Just venting. As I have said, what Washington wa.ts Washington gets, despite the merits or facts. Solar and wind are the high oriced choices.

Let me put it this way. Automakers apparently, plan to produce hydrogen fuel cell powered cars by 2015. However, an equivalent price of $12 a gallon means very little is being done to produce hydrogen gas since it is my understanding H2 can be used to supplement natural gas, which is selling at a much lower price. The discrepancy is Washington's responsibility and should be brought up with appropriate officials, especially if Iran does something since expanding natural as supplies would help in an emergency. Thank you.

Let me try to clarify something. After various communications with NYSERDA, I handed in a complete waterwheel proposal and was told they woukd be offering "approprate" contracts this spring. On the other hand, they verified almost nothinh and offered no information about US DOE, who are really in charge. I am looking to get something legsl and proper done.. Any advice or suggestions??????

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/ my point is easy to generate hydrogen could supplement natural gas or power fuel cells, either choice would provide added revenue. I am, for sure, at a loss as to why this is not being done.

Thank you for the Facebook post. My reading of Beacon, Solyndra and the high cost of hydrogen fuel is that Washington has done little or nothing to increase supplies, even though hydrogen can supplement natural gas up to 20% leaving politicians ooen to complaints of doing nothing.

Water is great, but much of it is already harnessed. In order to do so more effectively would be to use it as pumped hydro, that is, use wind and solar to power it up a hill for storage. However, isn't their easier ways to store (and generate) energy than building lots of large dams? Molten salt is probably the best form of energy storage. It can be heated by a bunch of mirrors (and sunlight). Or it can be heated by fissioning U233 (from thorium), the ultimate and unlimited power concept. Meltdown proof and already proven with some 22,000 hours of operation at ORNL (before being shut down in favor of plutonium producing operations necessary for winning the cold war) LFTR (liquid thorium fluoride reactor) is also load leveling and requires thousands of times less land than solar (however, I'm not against solar either!). In fact, we should use LFTR to power the massive undertaking of creating robotically mass produced solar panels and LiFePO4 batteries, necessary for massive jobs creation across the nations...

Sorry, my computer bad.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/on-climate-change-its-money-vs-mouth/ trying to explain political inanities

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