The Guardian Appears Ready to Power Glasgow 100% From Wind (Part 2)

Once again may I plead for wind farm output of electricity to be quoted as megawatthours per year.

Whoopie I was first!

Suppose you could buy a car that didn’t need gasoline, or other fuel.
Would you pay $100K for a wind-powered car just so you could save on gasoline? Oh yes, the car goes faster and slower depending upon the wind speed and doesn’t run when the wind doesn’t blow. So you also buy conventional car for those days. And the wind-powered car also needs twice as much maintenance as a normal car and needs expensive overhauls every 15,000 miles or so.
Who in their right mind would buy this car? But that’s what we are planning to do with electricity.

i dont think people understand wind turbines enough.
not only are they inefficient and un reliable for base load power, they need wind speeds of at least 8-10 mph to even work. thus making them completely obsolete for 90% of the time period that graph was taken in.
now it seems to me that that kind of power wouldnt even be able to supply a hundred people for a whole day much less a whole city. People need to learn that the only way wind will be effective is as a supplemental power source to reduce costs on consumers

I have long maintained that wind and solar energy will be limited by the desire to meter it. Wind and solar work just fine in isolated areas where some electricity on an intermittent schedule is better than no electricity.
Due to their intermittent nature they just do not lend themselves to utility scale deployment. Now if we had a way of storing the electricity that might become a different story. Currently, the only way to do that reliably is the pump/storage reservoir. There is a distinct shortage of those on the great flatland.

I have often wished a reostat could be hooked up to the lights and camera’s during a congressional meeting on wind power. Then run a few days based on the actual wind speed. Watching the lights flicker on and off would change a lot of these idots minds.

I think stories like this gain credence is that the public at large generally not understand how electricity is produced and used. The general impression I get from a lot of people is that electricity is made via powerplant, windmill, solar panel …ect and stored in some manner and is there when you need it. Kind of like a giant battery.
Once this misconception is corrected, these supplimental energy sources lose their appeal.

A devastating attack on a straw man, Goddard.
Won’t they be surprised when they complete the project only to find they hadn’t taken into account calm days, I sure hope they have lots of warm clothing.
It is fine to point out the limitations of green energy. hypotheses about climate changes, and scientific methodologies and conclusions scientists make.
Will there not be a cumulative decrease in C02 emissions overtime with this project and others like it? Like Spain’s and Germany’s wind farms and solar projects?
Solar has a significant contribution to make. Middle Eastern oil producers realize its potential.
Wave energy has good potential and will contribute to sustainable energy especially in UK, Ireland, and other countries and it is becalmed less than wind power.
Together, the alternative energy sources are our first steps towards sustainability. I don’t believe coal or oil will ever be completely replaced as desirable as that may seem. Coal and oil use will probably always be necessary.
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Strawmen don’t have a home at WWUT.
The Boy of John

This reminded me of an article I saw earlier this week, “Wind farm ‘kills Taiwanese goats'”.
http://article.wn.com/view/WNAT94E034B2283A4F0FE613A4619C8BDC13/
I don’t know that Windmills are really goat killers, but can you imagine any other large scale projects being undertaken without extensive consideration of their impact on their surroundings?
MikeEE

I have read that to replace one megawatt of fossil fuel generated electricity it requires 4 megawatts of wind powered turbines. This would consume 60,000 acres or 88 square miles of land for every megawatt.
Using the State of Maryland as the example, 58% of the state’s land area would need to be used to construct wind turbines to replace the state’s 65 megawatt consumption. I assume the population would need to relocate to the othe 42% of the state, since this assumption is that the towers are located as compactly as possible.
Most of the State’s conventional power sources still could not be replaced due to periods when the wind does not blow. We should hook Al Gore’s house up to a wind turbine and see how he likes it.

Wind speed needs to be a minimum 13 mph to generate electicity.

I know what would really help the Guardian’s case… If they would just commit to being powered only by the Whitlee Wind Farm.
They could rightfully brag about being 100% green-powered and not having to rely on fossil-fueled plants for the 75% of the time the farm produces no power.
They could publish only when the wind blew.
They could stay warm or cool only when the wind blew.
They could eat food from their canteen fridge only when they were sure the food hadn’t spoiled.
The could editorialize why they could only print during the random, unpredictable times that there was enough wind to turn the blades, but isn’t it just great how easy it is being green!
Here is a national windpower output curve from Denmark a few years ago. Remember this is the combined, large area, multi-hundred windtower output curve. Also, remember this is why Denmark has a massive grid energy exchange with Norway, Sweden and Germany to blend the output of Nuclear, Hydro, Natural Gas and other AE’s just to provide some semblance of ‘smooth, reliable’ power. Denmark utilities have also requested a halt to ne windpower as trying to control the variability is quite problematic as they pass the 30% windpower contribution level.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/denmark%20wind%20power%20output/Nick_Rouse/Danishwindpower.jpg

Why do we hear nothing of the geothermal energy that is powering much of the city of Southampton, U.K.? It might well be worth examining the economics of this unheralded project that seems to be almost completely ignored by the media here.

The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.

Of course, but an intermittent energy source is not sustainable.

Dear Guardian: Please disconnect your buildings and presses from the grid and connect them directly and exclusively to the wind farm. If you do this, I’ll eagerly subscribe.

As new wind farms are added to the national grid capacity credit or value falls.
Germany has reached a point where new wind farms will only produce at 8% of nameplate capacity.
http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/the-capacity-credit-of-wind-power/

Trash that straw man by intentionally not understanding,
Jeff Alberts (09:48:53) :
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Of course, but an intermittent energy source is not sustainable.
Oil and coal will eventually run out.
Sun and wind will not, not in any time frame that will matter.
The Boy of John

Not only can the Whitelee Wind Farm not power Glasgow on clam days, it can be expanded to also not power all the other cities of the world on clam days too.
With capabilities like this, we will have Anthropogenic Global Warming entirely under control in less than a millennium.

AnonyMoose (09:54:19) :
Beat me to it though I would add their homes and autos (they do use all electric cars don’t they?). I would also suggest the politicians and government agencies do the same. Of course they’re in the dark already so they might not notice when the lights go out.

Perhaps we could persuade the Guardian to go truly green and power it’s presses 100% with wind generated energy, then we would only have to put up with this nonsense, say, one day in ten!

john boy,
Suppose that the electrical needs of Glasgow were to double over the next twenty years, but they did not also double the conventional electrical generation capacity. Also consider that many existing UK power plants are due to be decommissioned over the next 5-10 years, which will cause a net decrease in dependable capacity.
How would they supply the grid on low wind days? BTW – good luck with that solar energy idea in Scotland. Ever wonder why Scots have such fair skin?
I’m not trying to kill your cuddly, lovable straw polar bears. This is an exercise in logic.

Other than visually polluting natural vistas with big windmills instead of using tiny ones that go on rooftops and parking lots, I don’t see how they would supply anything on a calm day unless they had ultracapacitors.
We can just keep powering our cities with good-ole-coal, it will emit CO2 and the plants take it in, no concern if you look at this link (the top)
http://www.iceagenow.com/Record_Lows_2009.htm
165 Record lows tied or broken in 28 states, you practically need something special to pull that off O.o

We already know how to generate enough energy from fusion to power the entire world.
The problem is that the spatial and temporal distribution of energy from thermonuclear explosions might not be ideal for generating a safe, consistent supply of energy.
The point being that the total amount of energy available from an energy source, may not be particularly useful information.

For all industries, machine down time is unacceptable and every minute of down time is lost of revenues. For the industries it is unacceptable, why should it be for people.
Here is another one: Having an open-heat surgery done at 90% is not recommended.

The extended phrase 24/7/365 (“… 365 days a year”) specifically denotes a service that is available year-round, such as police, firefighters, and emergency medical services.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24/7

Please make mention often that the Guardian is a loss making publication. Its parent company owns AutoTrader which does turn a profit. Thus traditional gas guzzling cars (and the food, cars, travel and technology sections of the Guardian) subsidise the newspaper’s environmental columnists.

John Boy (09:24:51) :
A devastating attack on a straw man, Goddard.
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Strawmen don’t have a home at WWUT.
Goring each other’s strawman, er, bull? Do you honestly believe that the warmist crowd is simply setting a goal of “more sustainable energy sources”? Is that why they seek to shut down fossil fuel use by either making it illegal or excessively expensive? Is that why they distort scientific findings in order to frighten the public into accepting these actions?
You seem a bit too intelligent to excuse this disingenuous argument. You have to know that if the primary goal was presented as you say – making energy production more sustainable – the political and economic momentum required to make significant advances in the short term would never be realized.

I think it’s cute how John Boy sets up a straw man in order to complain about a straw man.

Oil and coal will eventually run out.
not for another 100 years or so. by then we will have fusion, or positron gravitators, or some other as yet un-thought-up technology. This is what the market does. We didn’t leave the stone age because we ran out of stones.
Sun and wind will not, not in any time frame that will matter.
Irrelevant. The relevant issue is cost. Today. Wind and sun are intermittent. Why would you build two power plants: one that is only available but 10% of the time and another that is available 100% of the time, but is only used when the first one is unavailable?
You have one expensive boondoggle that CAN NOT be used 90% of the time. You have one fine plant that is being underutilized. It makes economic sense to fully utilize the 2nd, and thereby eliminate the need for the 1st.
To have both is a waste of finite resources. And money.
And somebody has to pay for all this.

It’s on the Beeb as well
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8057198.stm
140 windmills on 55 square kilometres

As already stated, the biggest problem is that people are clueless about where their energy comes from and how much energy we actually consume.
From an environmental standpoint, windmills can and do work with a few hurdles to overcome. If a wind farm can produce, overall, 10% of the energy requirements of any load, that’s a potential 10% less energy being generated by coal/oil. In and of itself this is a good thing, but not for reasons even remotely related to global warming.
But, as we all know (and stated repeatedly), there are technical issues, as well as fiscal issues. Articles like the above are simply a bait-and-switch strategy.

“Suppose you could buy a car that didn’t need gasoline, or other fuel.
Would you pay $100K for a wind-powered car just so you could save on gasoline? Oh yes, the car goes faster and slower depending upon the wind speed and doesn’t run when the wind doesn’t blow. So you also buy conventional car for those days. And the wind-powered car also needs twice as much maintenance as a normal car and needs expensive overhauls every 15,000 miles or so.
Who in their right mind would buy this car? But that’s what we are planning to do with electricity.”
Actually if hydrogen fuelled cars become common, the easiest filling station will be a turbine hydrolysizing into a gasometer. The gasometer acts as a capacitor to even the flow. Although there is an energy loss in hydrolysis, I suspect that ease of pipeline transport and storage in existing gas facilities, makes it an on demand power source.
However I would suggest they answer the question “How do you get a hydrogen filling station infrastructure in place quickly?”.
Hydrogen powered farm equipment from a free filling station may work too?

For those of you that claim oil and coal will eventually run out .. . .
This seems like a good idea until you read “the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones.” I have lots of stones on my few acres – they are free but bring your own carrier and you load. Likewise, we still have bronze, arrows, whale oil, buggy whips, radio, and so on.
Oil and coal will become less important for energy purposes over time as other sources of energy replace them for this purpose. But run out they won’t.

I don’t take anyone seriously if they use ‘children’ and ‘future’ in a single sentence. My BS detector goes wild when I hear or read such a thing, and then all the evidence pointing towards a charlatan pours out.

I’ve been trying to inform people I know about windfarms via facebook. Mostly I focus on what they might do to wildlife, taking for granted that people do not understand that these things end up costing the rate payer more money. One of my friends comes on and says, “I do not care about about the bats, the birds or the views so long as my electricity bill goes down.” People still believe that wind power is free, somehow. My friend like most people does not understand how electricity or electric companies works, and really who has the time to self study electrical grids well enough to know what is really going on opposed to the hype put out by the government and the wind industry.
99.99% of the people are too ignorant to have a meaning input as to how an energy grid should be operated. I, like my friend, just want my bills to be as low as possible, and really do not care how the power company achieves this. I also want to be able to use as much electricity as I please, when I please. When I flip a switch, I want something to happen. As long as I pay my bill, the amount of electicity that I use seems to be my own business, and I do not want anyone telling me how much electricity I should be using. If I want to crank my AC to 60 on a hot day, that is my business. If the power company needs more juice, then they should build new generation stations and pass the cost on to me. If I cannot afford the bill then, the power company can shut the service off. For my entire life, the power company was out of sight and out of mind. How this ever became a political issue is beyond me.
Over the last decade, we saw gasoline and diesel skyrocket. As I understand it, these wind power things, require generation for regulation electricity from generators which run on gasoline and diesel, thus increasing demand while prices are already high on a commodity that we have to import. I feel like the last sane man on Earth, which makes me wonder if I am really crazy, because it seems to me that everything that we are doing is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, while a bunch of ignorant people are having conversations which are way beyond their pay grade expecting results which are precisely the opposite of what they should realistically expect.
If anyone knows where the spaceship back to Bizarro World (or Earth?) please take me home.

John Boy said;
“Wave energy has good potential and will contribute to sustainable energy especially in UK, Ireland, and other countries and it is becalmed less than wind power.”
Alas the word potential is all it is. I have just carried out a major study of wave energy in the UK and it is startling how little is being done. There is good work at the Wave Hub in Cornwall and the Wave energy Centre in Orkney is great, but the sad fact is that wave energy is at least 10 years behind wind power, which itself is only at a very early stage of development.
The Govt have realised that wave, tide and solar are not going to provide a measurable power supply for twenty years and so are betting the house on wind power.
As a proponent of wave power I greatly regret that it is not the saviour I had hoped. The only thing that will turn it around is a massive research and development programme akin to the US Apollo programme.
As for the Severn tidal barrage (I have assumed you are British) unless you are much less than middle aged I doubt it will be seen in our lifetime.
There is a yawning energy gap and I dont think those in authority have any real grasp as to how much power a modern economy needs. Hire a small generator and boil a kettle from its output. It is likely to trip out or at least complain. Try it with an electric oven. It won’t work. We need lots of power and renewables have potential buit are not a practical proposition unfortunately for our next generation needs over the next twenty years.
Tonyb

Hamsters. Those little spinny wheels and hamsters.

Sandy (12:09:55) :
or other fuel includes hydrogen, doesn’t it?

Peter Hearnden
I think you are from Dartmoor (much of which is a beautiful upland area in Southern England at 370 metres or more for those that don’t know).
I am not making any point here, but would genuinely be interested in your view as to whether you would want such a wind farm on Dartmoor that would be big enough to power Exeter? Transmission lines would be needed as well, where there are none at present.
Personally I dont think you save the environment by trashing the countryside and in the UK so many inland ‘suitable’ sites are in beautiful areas.
Tonyb

Good Lord; You people sound like a bunch of old oil, and coal men. What are you all afraid of? If the stuff works as badly as you say people will figure it out pretty quick, and quit building it.
In the meantime, it’s not costing much; and, we’ll probably learn a little bit. Chill.

RMS Titanic, unsinkable 90% of the time…
That anniversary is coming up, by the way, which is perhaps rather fitting, given the direction our national leaders seem to be taking at the moment with regards to energy policy.

Steven Goddard,
I very much doubt you think the wind climate 370 metres up a Scottish hill is the same as at sea level, if you do you need to visit said places in Scotland!
Tony B
Fwiw, I like windfarms, and I find them visually unobtrusive, and I wouldn’t oppose one if the case was good. However, if you look at the Whitelee site it’s clearly very well exposed to prevailing SW winds and I suspect there isn’t such a site ( Haldon Hill the closest perhaps) that is suitable in our part of the world.
Anyway, I don’t know why it is that a blog from California seems to spend so much time over UK issues and one UK newspapers. But, hey, there we are.

Kum Dollison
Not costing much? It’s putting 15% on my electricity bills. And that’s only so far.

No matter how many wind turbines are used for Glasgow the same amount of conventional capacity will be necessary for periods when the wind does not blow or is so strong above 25m/s that they have to be shut down. That conventional capacity will be either fossil fuel or nuclear. A huge increase in cost(£billions) will be the result as to obtain 100% electricity then 200% of installed capacity is needed so as to include wind power. Also wind power has at most a 20% load factor so if there is 1000MW of installed wind capacity there will be at most 200MW of actual electricity! note that the Dutch government has stopped all subsidies for wind power regarding it as too costly. also Germany has 17000 wind turbines which produce the grand total of 6% of its electricity. However debt struck Britain carries on regardless
even if there is overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are NOT the cause of climate change.

I hate windmills but can accept that there may be SOME places outside of Glasgow where they may be the best means of producing power:
http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=26046
No goats here and the penguins don’t fly.

Terri Jackson,
No generation source is 100% reliable, so there has, for example, to be backup for a coal fired power station in case that fails, or back up for nuclear when they are shut down for maintenance.
The idea that it’s only wind power that needs backup is thus a myth.

Terri, you are wrong about the numbers, wind farms in West Texas have production capacities that exceed 40% of rated capacity.
“In Texas, the average capacity factor of wind farms
installed in 2004 through 2005 is 39 percent,”
“The West Texas wind
farms that generate power for the city of Austin’s
utility company, Austin Energy, have capacity factors
ranging from 35 percent to 40 percent.”
http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind-reserve.htm
“THE ENERGY REPORT • MAY 2008 Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts”
*** to access the .pdf click on Wind Energy Overview link under Additional Resources

Let them do it and soon. It’s better to have only one city as a guinea pig than the whole country.

Steven Goddard “If you have spent any time on the west coast of Scotland, you know that it is normally windy there too” exactly!
Of course the wind doesn’t blow relentlessly. But normally it’s windy in these places. Now, given that, given also that no power source is 100% reliable and I think wind power needs to be part of the mix of generation in the UK.

Kum,
Good luck with solar energy in Glasgow during the winter.

They have plenty of biomass, there, I believe.
Look, Steve, if this post is “all about” Wind in Glasgow, fine. There are, probably, better places for Wind Turbines.
Unfortunately, this blog is turning into a rabid, anti-alternatives, every where, all the time, day in, day out rant. I think that’s a mistake. I think poll after poll tell us that the “People” mostly think AGW is bunk, but “alternatives” to coal, and petroleum are something that are of interest to the everyday Joe.
You can’t just be “Agin” Everything. You’ve got to be For “Something.”
Otherwise, regular people just tune you out as a “Collection of Cranks.”

The story of Glasgow is a tragedy. The demise of Britains second city is due to to chronic governmental incompetence stretching back for generations. It needs power and how, because it’s lifeblood is the politically incorrect heavy industry steam and shipbuilding, (Clydeside built meant world best once), and before that rum, tobacco and sugar trading. But the Ayrshire coalfield on its doorstep was politically sacrificed in the 70’s. There was a feeble attempt to plant the head office of the doomed national Britoil’s offices there, to resurrect the city centre, for a few years. Now its back to a city with high unemployment supported by benefits, waiting for a saviour. Its not windmills.

kum,
When you go to turn on the lights now, do you have a problem obtaining electricity?
“If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

David Ball (10:58:46) :
I see proponents of AGW using the abbreviation WWUT.
Dyslexia seems a common complaint among warmists – probably why they feel at home at the Grauniad. One of the more persistent posters on George Monbiot’s thread constantly refers to this site as WATTSUPDOC, which might have been mildly amusing the first time he used it, but is now just laboured and gratuitous. In keeping with his comments, I suppose.

Kum Dollison (14:42:39) :
You can’t just be “Agin” Everything. You’ve got to be For “Something.”
Otherwise, regular people just tune you out as a “Collection of Cranks.”
I think the hue and cry you hear is necessary to slam on the brakes before we head over the cliff. After that, we can calmly and collectively come to an agreement on the best course to follow.
Personally, I don’t have anything “agin” alternate energy sources like wind and solar when they are seen for what they are – supplements to more reliable and LESS EXPENSIVE energy sources. And as technology improves, those alternate sources will become less expensive and more reliable – truly viable alternatives.
If warmists would drop their crusade against carbon, then we might be able to move the lion’s share of electrical energy production towards natural gas (and increasing the numbers of diesels and NGVs vs the convention gasoline vehicles). And while we have relatively inexpensive energy, invest in nextgen nuclear reactor research, perhaps providing the technological critical mass to achieve practical, large-scale fusion, providing us with the ultimate SUSTAINABLE, low environmental impact energy source.
Is that “fer” enough for ya?

Kum Dollison (14:42:39) :
Unfortunately, this blog is turning into a rabid, anti-alternatives, every where,
all the time, day in, day out rant. I think that’s a mistake. I think poll after poll tell us that the “People” mostly think AGW is bunk, but “alternatives” to coal, and petroleum are something that are of interest to the everyday Joe.
Why and when we rant.
When green agenda articles promote energy production sources that are reliant on the prevailing weather conditions as an alternative to those that aren’t.
Deep desperation for an actual viable alternative energy source that is beyond the control of a cartel.
Frustration that our rich Western societies have been manipulated into believing that wealth generation and prosperity are great evils, right about when this evil wealth was on the cusp of spreading to the 80% of the Earths population who live in poverty.
Knowing that 25% of the population of the planet live without electricity and that bogus, weather reliant pseudo alternatives are never going to remedy that.

“David Ball (10:58:46) :
I see proponents of AGW using the abbreviation WWUT.”
They might be using it so that others won’t be able to google it. Maybe “WWUT”
needs to be added to the search terms here so WUWT comes up first on google searches…
Mike

Paul,
I appreciate your frustration, but sometimes you just have to let the kids play. Someone mentioned upthread that their electricity bill went up after, I presume, his utility started buying some windpower. Well, the thing is, anytime a new electric plant of any kind gets built electricity rates go up. The utilities have, it seems, almost everywhere managed to get dispensation to raise their rates on the “front end.”
Someone else mentioned that federal subsidies for wind was $23.37, I think it was, per Megawatt hr.. Well, heck, that’s about two, and a third cents per kilowatt hr. It’s not a big price, and maybe we’ll learn something.
People might be pre-occupied with other things (making a living?) but, they’re not stupid. They know the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and that the sun “goes down” every night; but, they, also, like to see people trying new things. They’re Americans. (at least, the ones that live in “America” are:)
They know that coal is dirty, and that oil, being a finite substance, can’t last forever. In fact, they saw gasoline go to $4.25/gal last year, and they’re watching it start to climb again.
And, they respond to “Positive” Messages. They will respond to “The Earth’s Climate is just fine.” They’ll respond well to, “It was hot two years, ago, and it was cool last year, and we think it’s going to be “mediumish” this year, but “Hey, it’s the Weather.”
People will respond to, “CO2 is GOOD for the Earth.” “It’s Plant Food.” “The Earth is 6% Greener than it was a couple of decades, ago.” “We’ve been in a warm period, but now we’re probably heading into a cooler period.”
But, when they see Wind working in Texas, and Iowa you’re going to lose their interest when you start telling them that Wind is Stupid, Period.
When they see Millions of Solar Panels getting installed, they might be a little skeptical about it paying for itself on their own roof; but they might like the idea that someone else is doing a little work on it. Again, they’re Not Against Progress, and Coal is Finite, and “Dirty.”
In short, you need to “Sell” your own product, and let the doomsayers pitch theirs. And, keep an open mind, and “Stay Focused.” You’ll Win.

It would be enlightening to study/discuss the real purposes BEHIND alternative energies promotion, BEHIND global warming, etc. i.e. BEHIND all UN regressive agenda, WHO are the ones and WHICH organizations and people are BEHIND that agenda. Discussing or studying isolated items, as climate or energy it is simply useless, it does not affect THEM and their up to now world success. The world is in need of a kind of “Glasnost”, of transparency, of exposing those blood sucking gnats BEHIND these agendas and scientifically demonstrate their mental disability which causes them to compensate this pathology by such a mounstrous and at the same time stupid conspiracy.

I am really thinking lately about Energy = xVelocity cubed. The trouble with wind is that the energy produced is a factor of wind velocity cubed. So the energy output curve is very steep. You can’t tell how much power a turbine is producing by looking at it, because they generate power by torque, not speed of the wheel. So there is enormous fluctuations of power output as the wind goes from 15mph to 20mph to full output at 28 mph. Now a very, very interesting paper from Germany, referenced in this post.
http://nofreewind.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-often-does-turbine-produce-power.html
to the right of the red/green chart under Now for the Bad News.
measured grid feed-in from wind in 15 minute intervals, but measured the high and low. And found that the fossil wasn’t able to follow those very, very wide intra 15 minute fluctuations. So there was nothing like a 1:1 replacement of wind for fossil. On page 6 of the study the author states “For 8.3 TWh of electricity feed in by the EEG mechanism, compensation and regulation power of 3.2 TWh were necessary within the Vattenfall grid area.”. What this means is that the wind only replaced fossil by 62% or 38% of the wind was lost!
A grid manager today told me grids rebalance every 15 minutes, the don’t really follow the wind around all day, up and down up and down. For the most part it is just part of the load since it usually represents a small part of total energy in the grid. So this results in a different calculation to achieve real capacity factor. In a good location a turbine might have 30% capacity factor, or 30% of it’s possible output. But this study shows that only 62% fossil is actually replaced because the fossil still have to compensate for part of these random fluctuations. So the REAL capacity factor for good location is 30% times 62% = 18%. !!! Or in many poorly suited locations capacity factor is 20% so it is really 20% times 62% or 12%. This makes a huge difference when figuring Capital construction costs etc for who pays for construction, usually the taxpayer, or shall i say ALWAYS a taxpayer! Anywhere! And the turbine company could care less how much fossil is used to try to follow his output, because the Grid is FORCED to buy the power, and it is their problem. Us CHUMPS, the consumer, we pay for it. I guess a real greenie couldn’t care less, 10%, 20% or 30%, because “every little bit helps”, especially when it is someone else’s dime who is paying for their red dreams.

The components of those West Texas turbines were shipped through our town regularly a few years back. Big ol’ things, the generator housing was the size of a large mobile home. I wonder if the steel mill and metal-processing facilities that made those were powered by wind? Even in windy West Texas, where I spent my college years, 40% availability isn’t enough to run a steel mill.
Part of the reason that coal and oil lasting for decades or centuries is “like Eons” is that a century ago most people travelled at the speed of a horse, or a walking man, unless they took a train for a longer distance. A century before that the fastest thing was a ship — then as now, assuming the wind was blowing. A few decades makes a big difference in the 20th and 21st Centuries. If Polywell/Bussard fusion pans out, CO2 ceases to be a problem, except for environmentalists, whose drive to control will now have them arguing that the EPA should regulate deuterium. It’s always something.
Big, ugly wind towers are actually an improvement on most of the West Texas landscape, I welcome them. CO2 sequestration can be helpful if it’s sequestered into oil wells to improve production yield, trash to treasure. I don’t have a problem with wind power advocates, I do have a problem with bad math and excessive moralization regarding sustainability, especially when that mantra is used to forcibly cut us off from energy sources that are available to us. Subsidized wind power is not cheap wind power, despite centuries of research and technological progress there is still no free lunch. If there were, we’d be using perpetual motion machines rather that futzing around with windmills. Somebody always pays, and hardcore AGW advocates are all about externalities until you point out the exceptionally toxic byproducts of silicon solar panel lithography, or the fact that it’s taxpayers taking a bath so some people can feel justified in buying wind power.

Power curves for modern wind turbine
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/762/powercurvefh1.jpg
note the speed is metres/sec!
Not all uranium is available with a net energy production:
http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/4262/energycliffij9.jpg
i.e. seawater uranium is NOT viably extracted
cost comparison
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/9996/uswindpowerfullcosts.jpg
http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9468/electcostsfullcompared.jpg
Bird fatalities and wind turbines
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/7838/birdfatalitieswindturbi.jpg
Nuclear power researched
http://www.stormsmith.nl/publications/Energy%20from%20Uranium%20-%20July%202006.pdf

Wind power is already storing useable power for the future –
each kWh generated displaces an amount of energy being generated by oil/gas (at 30-60% efficiency) thus saving this for use in the future.
another way of storage
http://www.hydrogen-yorkshire.co.uk/documents/Hydrogen_Generation_HMGS_fact_sheet.pdf

Smokey (13:20:51) :
ralph ellis (14:55:46) :
Hats off to both of you. Well and clearly written.
But infinitely more difficult is: how do we get entrenched, greedy, self-serving] politicians to learn from what you have so well written and do what’s best for their countries? I surely don’t know.

I bet the Guardian believes in the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas as well!

Wow !!! Another great thread with great posts by great posters. When one reads a novel it is written by one or two authors. This blog has the interesting aspect of having a multitude of posts by highly intelligent posters. Vast demographic as people of every age and education level provide many points of view on any given thread. Usually in a unique way. Makes for some good reading !! Cheers to all !! ……..

Breeders
Fifty years of intensive research in seven countries (USA, UK, France, Germany, former USSR now Russia, Japan and India), with investments of many of tens of billions of dollars so far have failed to demonstrate that the breeder cycle is technically feasible (see Appendix A). Even if the breeder cycle starts working flawlessly next year, the share of breeder power could become significant only at the end of this century. The high fissionable fraction of natural uranium theoretically achievable by the breeder is the source of the old nuclear dreams from the 1950s: the ‘all nuclear society’ using energy ‘too cheap to meter’. Today these unproven figures still give rise to the technical dreams of untold quantities of cheap, clean nuclear energy for all mankind for the coming
In 2005 the world nuclear fleet consumed about 68000 Mg of natural uranium. Of this amount about 40000 Mg has been actually mined. The remaining 30000 Mg comprised depleted uranium and HEU (highly enriched uranium) from military inventories. Within a few years reserves of HEU will be depleted and from then on all needed uranium has to be mined. When the very rich ores in Canada will get depleted within a decade, the uranium has to be recovered from leaner ores. Likely the uranium prices will rise sharply in the near future.
An example may clarify the consequences of the dilution factor. Assume that common granite, with an average content of 4 grams of uranium per Mg granite, were to be used as uranium ore. The amounts of granite on earth are immeasurable and so the amounts of uranium. What’s the problem?
To fuel one reference reactor with a nominal capacity of 1 GW(e) each year about 162 tonnes natural uranium have to be extracted from earth’s crust. The mass of 162 tonnes uranium is in 40 million tonnes of granite. The rock has to be crushed, transported, ground to fine powder and chemically treated with sulfuric acid and other chemicals to extract the uranium compound from the mass. Assumed an overall extraction yield of Y = 0.50, a very optimistic assumption, 80 million tonnes granite have to be processed. This is a block of 100 meters width, 100 meters height and three kilometers length. Each year, for one reactor. For comparison: a coal-fired power station of 1 GW(e) consumes about 2 million tonnes of coal each year.
How much energy (fossil fuels) and chemicals would be needed for processing 80 million tonnes granite?
To fuel the current world nuclear power plant fleet of 400 GW – supplying 2.5% of the world energy demand –, each year 12 cubic km of granite would have to be processed each year. That would be a mountain with a base of 4×4 km and a height of 2.3 km
As it turns out, the grade at which the energy consumption of the full nuclear fuel chain equals the gross energy production and the net energy production falls off the cliff and plunges into the sea of zero, little depends on the size of the energy debt. Between ore grades of 0.02 and 0.01 the nuclear system meets its zero net energy limit.
Consumption and supply of uranium
The current world nuclear fleet of 367 GW has an annual natural uranium consumption of about 68000 Mg/a. How long will the currently known uranium resources last?
The largest known resources have ore grades below 0.05% U3O8 and are more or less near the verge of the energy cliff. The sum of the resources of Olympic Dam, South Africa, Namibia and Kazakhstan is about 2.6 Tg uranium. These resources are marginal is respect to their net energy content and would cause a significantly higher specific CO2 emission than the currently mined ores.
The remaining higher-grade resources have a mass of 1.9 Tg and will be sufficient to feed the current nuclear capacity for 28 years. Then the specific CO2 emission will rapidly rise and may approach the value of a gas-fired station in about 65 years, when the poorest ores will get exploited. However, the net energy production of the nuclear system will approach zero in the same time.
Thorium breeder
The thorium breeder is based on the conversion by neutron capture of non-fissile thorium-232 into fissile uranium-233, by a similar system as the uranium-plutonium breeder. The feasibility of the thorium breeder is even more remote than that of the U-Pu breeder. Besides, only minute quantities of U233 exist in the world at this moment. It would take decades to obtain sufficient U233 from special reactors to start up the first operating Th232–U233 breeder system. It would take 9 doubling times to attain a thorium breeder capacity equalling the current nuclear capacity. Even with an unrealistically assumed short doubling time of 20 years that would mean two centuries.
A directory to read
http://www.stormsmith.nl/report20071013/

The BBC while in Europe made a big deal of this. When the announcer asked the builder of these wind turbines how efficient they would be the CEO of the company which built the system said it would operate at a maximum of 35 percent efficiency. That was an answer that I did not expect. The CEO added that they could have never built the system without government help. (Apparently Shell pull out of the project based on pure economics) Personally as someone who relies on electricity, 35 percent efficiency is not reassuring. As an investor, betting on 35 percent efficiency, when there are more efficient ways of producing electricity at a much cheaper cost is a tough sale. Now you know why governments have to “assist” in their construction.

bill (21:01:36) :
Wind power is already storing useable power for the future –
each kWh generated displaces an amount of energy being generated by oil/gas (at 30-60% efficiency) thus saving this for use in the future.
———————-
This is why Greens cannot do math and had to invent Green Math to validate their pie ( or giant rotor ) in the sky energy poicies. Wind energy displaces nothing, ZERO, fossil fuel load generation must be maintained to be available on demand, that is the simple fact the supply is unreliable and it is not feasible to man and maintain generation plants and “spin them up” on NatGas or other as needed because the delay, demand spikes are commom.
Wind is an energy company’s best tradable production but is kind of like selling ice cream from a moving truck, right place right time and you may get a cold treat on a stick (or some elctrons made by wind power) diverted to your grid when a spike in demand occurs. Then there is the price…
In Texas there has been documented periods where the cost of Mw\h of production has spiked to $4,000 per unit due to demand requests and a lull in generation and Texas has been forced to create a Conservation Alert to warn people when supply is unavailable.
This is why the National Smart Grid is so important to the Administration, they think they can produce just the electrical demand and no more and shunt it around the country at will, sending wind power from the middle to the coasts as needed. The logic is demand moves across the country in waves and we can just move the capicitty with it. Problem is that is not a very secure Energy Grid, not a very efficent energy grid when addressing regional demand issues and transmission distances, and poses the potential for service intrerruptions impairing the entire National Grid.

Most of Glasgow’s electricity comes from Hunterston nuclear power station. Nuclear is the least flexible system so if it gets “switched down” by a fewe hundred mw (actually only its electricity production & transmission will be cut off since nuclear reactions don’t do such fine tuning) it will not save a penny or a gram of the scarce material (a mere 4.6 billion tons of it remaining in seawater.

This is the level of intellect that is guiding America’s energy future: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/05/21/waxman-clueless-about-his-captrade-bill-youre-asking-me/

Retired Engineer,
Please pardon my ignorance, but doesn’t Mixed Oxide fuel contain Pu? If MOX contains Pu, and MOX works in many if not most reactors then wouldn’t it be most accurate to say that fuel rods could not be made out of Pu alone but would have to be mixed with Uranium?
As I understand it, uranium becomes enriched during its life in the reactor, then the fuel rods can be reprocessed effectively making the amount of energy that could be created via atomic power infinite. If we do have an infinite energy source, then we need to change our thinking away from most efficent towards what we could do with all that extra power.
Perhaps we should think about what else we can do with nukes aside from just generating electricity. Could we use all that waste heat to distill sea water? Heck, could we build dedicated nuclear reactor which would do nothing but distill sea water? Could we make enough water to give desert dwellers a drink? Could we make enough water to recreate the California agriculture miracle in other deserts around the world?
I’ve read about processes where sewage can be turned into crude oil with heat and pressure. Could it be possible to hook a nuke up to a municiple sewer or a big hog operation to make a fuel with the same energy density and ease of use as good ol’ oil?
My thinking is, that the powers that be are wasting time and money with all of these various alternative energy ideas, conservation and new technology when we already have an infinite supply of energy at our finger tips.

This needs an article of its own to bring attention to it on WUWT
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Whitehouse2009.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/22/bbc_whitehouse_climate/

I’ve signed a lease to have 3 wind towers put on my farm. A few salient points:
The developer collects data for at least six months from meteorological towers before financing is possible.
While it may be said that “20m long blades only has 2.7 kw.” The kw increases as the square of the blade length – such that, nameplate power on turbines currently being produced is over 2 megawatts per tower and is getting greater with each passing year.
While there is depreciation expense on towers – THERE IS NO FUEL COST!.
The local county will collect almost twice as much in property tax on each tower as the landowner collects in rent.
The rent offered is high enough to make most landowners consider it a good deal – almost comparable to the kind of rent that one earns from cash rent.
The power from the wind varies as the cube of the wind speed – meaning power curves of wind turbines (which are very well studied) are very steep.
The engineering involved in designing a wind tower is much better understood that the engineering involved in a creating a climate model …… Wind tower’s have been tested in real situations. For example Betz’ law (which states that you can only convert 59% of the energy in the wind) was formulated in 1919.
An important design consideration is sheer – meaning difference in windspeed between the low and high end of the turbine.
Local nature groups will oppose a wind farm (greatly irritating property owners) for capricious reasons largely having to do with simpleminded notions about corporate greed or personal aesthetics.
No American soldiers lose their lives defending wind towers.
In general wind is stronger and more sustained over flat treeless areas such as the Dakotas ( or over seas ).
And, of course, the higher the tower the better, since wind speed improves with height above the ground.

Hank,
While, I respect your property rights including your right to make as much money as possible from the land that you own, I do not believe that these windturbines represent capitalism as usual. Pumpjacks are not pretty, neither are oil refineries or transmission lines, but these things increase the efficiency and the energy supply which makes everyone wealthier. Wind Turbines do not make everyone wealthier through an increase in energy supply and would not exist in a free market. They only exist because of government. They are not better, faster or cheaper than what came before, nor do they decrease the demand for coal or nuclear energy, they do not decrease the demand for oil or lower costs to ratepayers. You might make money, the wind company might make money, and even the county might make money, but us common folks who are paying higher rates are getting the screws, which decreases our purchasing power and makes domestic manufactoring less competitive and more expensive so in aggregate we all become collectively less affluent while being forced to look at these ugly things.
Worst of all, these things are redundant and completely unnecessary. They are nothing more than an added expense which gets passed on to us. Yes, the government might try and shift around the burden by taxing so called polluting industries to subsidize these things, but that is only going to increase their operating expense increasing the incentive to move their operation offshore costing jobs, or suffer the financial loss which will force them to decrease the dividend payments to shareholders decreasing their purchasing power, it will limit the company’s ability to attract new capital which will limit their ability to expand, hire more employees and compete to their ultimate potential. The result is going to be higher unemployment, less productivity, more social welfare and we all end up less wealthy than we would be if these things did not exist.
If someone were to design a machine to destroy wealth while presenting the illusion of creating wealth, one could do no better than a wind turbine. I’m certain that you, Hank, are an honest man, and are just trying to maximize your earnings, just as I am certain that the men building these things are honest men just trying to do a days work, but the corporations and governments that are putting these things up are destroying wealth by doing so. Since the monsters are destroying wealth in aggregate, much like a parasite sucking the life out of the beautiful animal of capitalism that created it, it is righteous to seek to prevent these things from going up and try to have the ones that already exist be destroyed, since they cost the rate payer the most money when they are working.
To create another analogy, suppose that we are both on an island and one of us has fishing tackle. That fishing tackle is capital because it creates our means of survival. All is fine and good until the one of us finds a club and learns that he can bonk the other on the head and take the product of the fishing tackle (fish). It would be perfectly righteous to for the owner of the tackle to seek to destroy the club since the club destroys wealth. These wind turbines are identical to violence, although they are not obviously violent they use the force of government to redistribute the wealth of of capital while providing no benefit in return.

is a European HVDC supergrid linking Icelandic geothermal, Scottich Wind, Scandanavian hydro, North African Concentrated Solar etc.

Oh really? In the meantime, the Germans don’t want to develop their weak grid to cope with peak electricity from the northern windmills that must be preferentially accepted by law and transferred to the southern industry, where it is in fact needed. They prefer to ram these excessive watts through Czech or Polish grid, which is due to the commie regimes still a bit oversized. However, such an impulse might damage the grid and indeed both Czech Rep. and Poland experienced blackouts due to German overdrive. Therefore Czechia installed at the borders sort of fuses, to protect the grid, but Germans complained at the EU because of blocking the free transport of goods. Incredible.

1. We’ve used Pu239 and high-enriched U235 reactors since the early 50’s – the second nuclear submarine (SSN 575) tried a liquid metal reactor back then, an dfound it couldn’t compete from a maintenance and reliability standpoint.
2. Th and U233 have long been viable fuels. Recycling and fast flux breeder reactors have been running in Idaho Falls since the early 1970’s. Carter – a democrat eco-illogically mis-guided liberal president in the mid-70’s if I remember correctly – pulled construction funding from a breeder reactor that had a commercially-viable design for a breeder-electrically-generating power reactor 40 years ago. There is NO technical reason why we are not running those now.
3. Soviet-era Pu239 fuel was bought from the Soviet bomb storage sheds many years ago, shipped to the US by the Bush administration, and was used for many years as a nuclear fuel in US power reactors. No modifications needed to the reactors – but their fuel refilling plans were slightly (and quietly) changed.
4. Could we burn nuclear fuel to heat (assuming brackish and dirty – assuming it is available) salt water to condense into fresh water to water deserts? Well, yes. BUT IT ISN”T COST EFFECTIVE. It costs more to produce that “fresh water” per gallon than it does to buy and burn gasoline. Some places are deserts for a reason. They have no water natureally – and they should NOT be turned into farmlands BECAUSE they are NOT economically viable as farms and livestock producing areas. CA canals “work” because they have billions of tons of naturally pure fresh water falling as ice and snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountians, which – relatively slowly – runs off downhill into collectable areas, and which can be run “downhill” most of the way to the south and east to be used for irrigation and people. The mountains in the way can (just barely) be pumped over, and some of that recovered energy be picked up as the water flows downhill from the high spots.
There are few other areas where those combinations can be duplicated.
5. The AGW extremists DEMAND higher energy prices and reduced energy availablility as a fundamental part of their justifications for the tax-and-cap and oil drilling restrictions. It can be correctfly argued that Pelosi’s oil production restrictions, and her (deliberate) meddling in international oil markets between 2007 and 2008 FOR her AGW extremism CAUSED the high energy prices and economic recession we now face worldwide. The ECO-extremists WANT high energy prices and more (human) deaths. They see each humans as a pollution soiurce themselves, and – since the mid-70’s – have been trying to limit (Western) population growth and economic expansion.
6. No one (on this site) “wants” to deny alternative energy systems their place. But … significant pause … to date, NO “alternative energy source” is an “economical energy source.” EVERY alternative energy source is in place because of government intervention in the market – even Israel’s alt energy efforts stem from the fact that “they” are denied realistic oil and coal imports BECASUE of the regional religious hatred.
NO wind energy can make it economically on its own. NO solar power installation can make it without government intervention – artificially raising electric rates to “force” utiliities to subsidize the installation and use of photovoltaics. Do coal and nukes use government intervention?
See DOE and TVA for examples. Yes, but now – Those PAY the more ineficient wastes of money (ethanol, wind, solar, tides). Doesn’t make wind attractive: it is a waste of time, money, and valuable resources. For nothing.
7. A 7 or 13 megawatt generator at the top of a wind tower still needs maintenance and servicing. LOTS of servcing. That’s why less than a 1/5 of CA’s vaunted wind farms are ever turning: over the past years, even at very low powered (low failures, low loads) older wind turbines, MOST CAN’T RUN past their first 2-3 years. You simply can’t afford to spend 2-3 weeks shutdown having people climb a 200 foot tower hand over hand to go up and take them apart and reopair the d*mn things. So maintenance is reduced and they fail. And a 7 or 15 MW wind turbine takes just about as many people to fix and just as long to fix as a small ground-based 125 MW CT’s. You just have to repair 20 TIMES as many wind turbines to get as much power out (40 % of the time) as ! large combustion gas turbine.
BUT – today’s wind energy “guru’s” will have sold their plans and their concepts to gullible cities and states and nations and investors – made their money (like GE and Pickens) from the first three years of (almost 38% operation) then sell out before the next twelve years of 15% operation. Then you have go take the things down and destroy them as a liability for failure during for next year.
8. A modern gas turbine running a heat-recovery steam turbine gets 68% fuel efficiency at 100% availability generating over 360 MW. 24x7x365. (I’ll grant I need to shutdown for 4 weeks a year every second year to replace things.)
All that on 5 acres of land. Including the parking lot. Give me 2 more acres and I’ll give you an extra 360 MW. And use the same control room. And the same number of operators.
9. Unneeded starts and stops DESTROY converntional power plants: heat up stresses, water entrapment erodes baldes as systems heat up, thermal cycles stress pipes, supports, pumps, turbines, lube oil systems entrain acids and waters when they are cold, steam systems are less efficient as they heat up – and hurt pipes, boilers, water chemical systems, thermal resistance paints, pipe supports, boiler supply piping and economizers entrap chmicals as they heat up in the gas pths … There are LOTS of “bad things” from a maintenance standard and length-of-plant operations standpoint as an engineer that are very, very destructive each start and stop cycle.
Wind farms exaggerate EVERY start and stop cycle, because, as the Danes and Germans and Brits and CA’s have found out, you can’t rely on them. So we have CT’s here up north that have 8000 and 12,000 running hours, but have also 2200 starts. EACH RUN cycle is a very short amount of time: lifetime maintenance goes up, plant life goes down. But Mass and CT and NH democrat politicians don’t care: they proudly point to their states’ SUBSIDIES of hundreds of (unprofitable) wind plant as evidence of their stupidity (er, caring.)
And then demand nationally that more states act that irresponsibly. Wasting tax money on energy policies that do nothing but waste money and destroy power plants.
10.
In 1908, if you were told to build a runway and flight support for an airplane, you could take a flat grass pasture 200 feet long, 50-75 feet wide, and put up a tent and a wooden pair of saw horses holding a vise as the “maintenance facility.” No need for electric power – there were no radios, radars, flight control towers, or taxiways. AND YOU COULD NOT HAVE PREDICTED THEM. You couldn’t have predicted landing lights, nor hangers, nor cranes, nor fuel tanks farms nor crash truck stations either. Your BEST airplane was a modified Wright Flier carrying two people for a few minutes, flying 200 feet high at about 35-50 mph, that could (just barely) make controlled turns. And that passenger would shortly be killed – in a plane crash.
So, 38 years later, a B-29 would be capable of flying around the world. A B-36 wold be taking off on concrete runways 300 feet wide, 8 feet thick and 12,000 feet long.
Bristol Brabazon 1949 290,000 lbs
Hughes Flying Boat (Spruce Goose) 1947 300,000 lbs
Convair XC-99 1947 320,000 lbs
Northrop YB-49 Flying Wing 1947 194,000 lbs
Convair B-36 1946 370,000 lbs
Lockheed R6V Constitution 1946 184,000 lbs
Douglas DC-6 1946 97,200 lbs
Douglas C-74 Globemaster 1945 145,000 lbs
Blohm und Voss BV-238 1945 176,400 lbs
Boeing 367 Stratocruiser 1944 120,000 lbs
Lockheed 049 Constellation 1943 86,200 lbs
Martin JRM Mars 1942 144,000 lbs
Douglas DC-4 1942 73,000 lbs
Douglas XB-19 1941 164,000 lbs
Tupolev Ant-20bis 1940 99,200 lbs
Blohm und Voss BV-222 1940 108,000 lbs
…
Y aknow what’s “funny” about all of those government-sponsored, big-business-supported, BEST-IN-THE-WORLD designed airplanes?
None were flying commercially and successfully 5 or 10 years later.
EVERY ONE had been replaced by pair of a simple commercial products from Boeing: The 707 and the B-52. Slide rules and profits. That’s what you need to produce power.
Now, tell me – what will be invented in the next twenty years. The next 40 years.

Roger Sowell-that nuke was taken off-line in a controlled manner of -MW/hr, not instantaneously tripped-but it could have been if needed. The grid does have sufficient reserves for the largest unit on-line at any given time to be taken off-line. It does not have sufficient spinning reserves to accomodate a multitude of rapidly fluxuating 2-2.5 MW units going from full on to full off in minutes. To accomodate that kind of fluxuation, gas-fired or coal fired generating stations with very fast ramping capacity will have to be installed to accomodate anything more than about 10-15% of wind generation mix and that 10-15% will have to be mirrored with coal, gas, or nukes at heat and of equal capacity at all times to maintain demand. So, wind generation doesn’t even replace an equivalent amount of conventional generation as fossile (or nuke) fuel is expended just to have sufficient spinning capacity to allow the wind units to connect to the grid.

Read this alarmist article.
The BBC has based an yet another article based on a computer model prediction.
“But new studies by Chilean scientists suggest climate change could pose huge challenges for the country.
The scientists say their models show projected temperature increases of at least 1C to 1.5C and a drop in rainfall of at least 10 to 15% in the next 40 years.”
Then there is the nonsense claim that such a rise in temperature, if it were even to occur, would wipe out Chile’s wine industry. It’s warmer in California, South Africa and Australia yet their wine production hasn’t ever been affected negatively.
I stopped reading when I came across this photo with caption
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45806000/jpg/_45806168_007311287-1.jpg
“The rate at which Chile’s glaciers are melting has increased in recent years”
The photo shows the fragile surface of an iceberg or sea based ice sheet (which do not exist in Chile) cracking off. It does not show a glacier or even melting.

Aron,
Colorado’s Giant Sequoias have already disappeared due to climate change – 35 million years ago.
http://www.nps.gov/flfo/

ralph ellis (01:37:47) :
Of course, everything needs a backup. The difference is that a good nuclear plant may get 90% run-time every year, and the 10% or so that is missing is most often PLANNED. You know when the energy outage will occur and plan for it.

There is no way of predicting the unplanned as occured in 2003 (i think) = grid shutdown in large area. and I think you will find the uptime nearer 80%.
Windelecs run only 20 – 25% of the time and you have no idea when they will stop. Indeed, they may stop five times in one day and the owner will say that ‘we generated for 50% of today’, …
There is no normal energy source in the world that can instantly take up 100gw of supply, so all the UK fossil and nuclear plants will have to be running all day anyway – just in case.
they do not stop everywhere simultaneously. The wind speed allows hours of warning.

Nuclear Energy Institute, from their press release about reliability:
—
Nuclear Power Plants Set Reliability, Output Records in 2002, Industry Tells Wall Street
NEW YORK—The nuclear energy industry posted another year of record-high operating performance in 2002, underscoring the crucial role that nuclear power plants play in the nation’s diverse portfolio of energy sources, industry executives told Wall Street financial analysts today.
Although final performance figures are not yet available, preliminary estimates for 2002 show that the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants set an electricity production record for the fourth straight year, increasing their output 1-2 percent to about 778 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh). Nuclear power generation in 2001 was 769 billion kwh.
The plants’ average capacity factor—a measure of efficiency—reached a record high for the fifth straight year, climbing to about 91.5 percent in 2002.
“By any measure—reliability, productivity, safety, economics—the nuclear energy sector has achieved major gains in recent years,” said Don Hintz, president of Entergy Corp. and chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) board of directors. “We’ve achieved these results by concentrating on safety, by continuing to share the best operating practices across the industry, and by further sharpening our management skills.”
Since 1990, the industry’s sustained excellence in operating performance has enabled the nation’s reactors to increase electricity production equivalent to what 25 new reactors would add to the electricity grid, NEI President and Chief Executive Officer Joe F. Colvin said.
“In just the last five years, the increase in output is equivalent to 13 new 1,000 megawatt power plants,” Colvin said.
With improved productivity and reliability leading to better economic performance, the average production cost (fuel costs plus operations and maintenance) in 2001 stood at a record low of 1.68 cents/kwh. The average production cost for 2002 likely will set a new record when those figures become available later this year, Colvin said.
—
Hmmmn. 91.5 percent capacity factor, eh?

Steven Goddard:
I did not know the Weather Underground has wind speed measurements at 80m and 100m ??
Most weather stations (unless they are a lighthouse) measure wind speed at 5m or 10m height, or at a height not significantly different.
The hub height of modern new installation wind turbines is usually ~80m.

OT (but media related so maybe not)
SHOCK HORROR! BBC manages to cover an Antarctic story without blaming or even mentioning Global warming !
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8066991.stm

Ron de Haan (14:57:19) :
Today a windmill in the Netherlands lost a blade.
The blade landed on the A6 highway without hitting a single car.
That’s what I call luck.
http://www.nu.nl/algemeen/1970377/wiek-van-windmolen-valt-op-snelweg.html

Sorry, I only saw the tennis boobs video link further down the page. 😉

Nice post. Looks like wind power is really starting to get some serious consideration in Australia now.