From Viv Forbes of Australia’s Carbon Sense Coalition comes this new document intended as “a submission to the Australian Senate Enquiry into Wind Farms” on the extraordinary costs of wind power generation both economically and environmentally:
Wind power is so dilute that to collect a significant quantity of wind energy will always require thousands of gigantic towers each with a massive concrete base and a network of interconnecting heavy duty roads and transmission lines. It has a huge land footprint.
Then the operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of the wind’s energy can be captured.
Finally, when they go into production, wind turbines slice up bats and eagles, disturb neighbours, reduce property values and start bushfires.
Wind power is intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. To cover the total loss of power when the wind drops or blows too hard, every wind farm needs a conventional back-up power station (commonly gas-fired) with capacity of twice the design capacity of the wind farm to even out the sudden fluctuations in the electricity grid. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.
The entire document is 30 pages long.
Can I suggest that rather than just read and comment on the document, perhaps some talented WUWT readers could help Viv by doing some fact-checking or provide some further concrete examples of how wind power will cost the Earth.
Viv’s email address is in the doco (as they say in those parts)
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It all sounds like more double Dutch to me-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/holland_energy_switch/
These are state of the art wind turbines, totally useless as generating equipment.
However they make excellent water pumps. Any forward thinker with money should obtain the many dead ones and set up a pumped storage capacity for hydro electric peak feed in and make money for jam. California has hundreds of dead ones and lots of high country. Thousands of miles of coast line around the world have high elevations close to the coast, pump the sea water uphill and use the power as you need it. Do not these fools in their folly see the idiocy of electricity from the fickle winds. However they are excellent water pumps.
I still like this report on wind energy:
http://incoteco.com/upload/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
It basically says that Denmark, Europe’s biggest wind producer, has never used any of its wind energy, as it is too unreliable. It sells most of it (at a loss) to Sweden, who can mix it with hydro power more effectively.
The report also has a few gems like:
Actual energy production was only about 20% of rated power.
They have such rapid outages of power, that no conventional power plant could take up the load.
Sometimes, the wind carpet becomes an energy consumer.
Denmark was without any wind power for 54 days in 2002.
Denmark was below 10% rated wind output for 14 weeks in 2003.
You cannot run a 24/7 technological society on such unreliable electrical supplies. And backing this unreliability up with conventional power would be massively expensive, and negate any CO2 savings. Everything in our society runs on electricity. We would go back to the Dark Ages (literally) within a week of losing all electrical power.
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Free range chickens are scared of hawks and eagles that fly high and just swoop down and eat them . Wind farms are excellent way to expand the supply of free range chicken as those wind blades scare or kill many hawks and eagles 🙂
Yes, wind power needs backup. But it is not true that this has to come from conventional power stations. Different types of backup are needed for different timescales of wind power outtage. Htydro is best for shor spikes, nuclear only for prolonged outages, various fossil fuels in between.
But from our side of the debate we should avoid the charge of cherry picking. As David MacKay has described another route would be smart meters for charging car batteries. For a financial incentive car owners could indicate how long they would be prepared to delay or slow down their charging, so that that power could be used to replace wind power. E tirely possible, needing computing capability comparable to that needed by today’s mobile phone nerwork.
We really must be more careful in our arguments.
I am not sure turbines CAUSE bush fires unless they explode spitting shards hot enough to lead to combustion of bush material on the floor or wherever of the sort we have in Australia. Turbines are, usually, installed in cleared areas with dedicated access paths (Note in the article). As for lightening strikes, they are earthed (One would assume so with tall structures, safety for maintenace crews etc), so that is a moot point IMO.
But yes, Australia seems to be about 20 years behind the 8-ball (Ignoring ALL trends in the US and the EU). The Gubmint is commited to killing off industry (Claims to not want the “car industry” to die off. What did Toyata do with the AU$32mil it was given to make an Australian made hybrid (Thanks KRudd747)? How will you do that Ms. Gillard? Oh yes, put a price on carbon.) and production, and substituting that “income” from taxation with “a price on carbon” on everything. A wet dream!Not sure where state and federal gubmint is going to get the extra “income” to pay for the subsidies it talks of if there is no industry and no production, and therefore, fewer people working (If CA in the US is anything to go by), can you answer that Ms. Gillar?
I assume the white dusting is snow on the ground, in the picture with the dead windelec.
As with the last crumpled windelec we saw on WUWT, it looks like some brain-dead engineer did not calculate the extra drag (bending moment) that a windelec covered in blade-ice would produce (ice considerably disrupts the airflow over the blades, and causes greatly increased drag). If this miscalculation is widespread, this means that many if not all windelecs are in danger of falling over in icing conditions.
If this was an aircraft fault, all planes of the same type would be grounded until a modification had been carried out. I would suggest that all windelecs of the same design as this (and the previous crumpled windelec) are not operated in icing conditions, until suitable repairs and modifications are undertaken.
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Wayne points to one if not the only way wind turbines can be useful; as water pumps.
As for an excellent piece on the futility of wind as a primary source of electricity see; “The Wind Farm Scam” by Dr. John Etheringham. Although written from a British perspective it covers the full range of all that is wrong with wind. The advantage of his inquiry is that it is based on the reality of operating wind farms in Europe. “Power Hungry” by Robert Bryce talks of power density, something that wind has little of.
Nice try TFNJ but have you ever heard of battery life by number of charge cycles?
This is another idiot idea by people who have no idea of engineering reality.
Just ask Scotland this past December when their wind turbines failed to deliver as the wind dropped sharply and they were forced to use French nuclear power. Furthermore, windpower has a hidden dirty secret which the Greens don’t want you to know about.
Other things to consider regarding this form of ‘clean’ energy.
Here in the UK, Call me Dave’s ‘greenest government ever’ (I assume the double meaning has been lost on him) are still relentlessly pursuing wind power – although one of his other Big Ideas (Localism) seems to be putting a much-needed spanner in the works, as ‘local’ people and the planners are frequently turning down applications for wind farms. A recent government sub-committee (see Bishop Hill’s blog) has, basically, implied that they are a waste of time, money, and resources – but of course it takes a brave man/government to say: ‘Yep – you’re right and we were wrong – Britain may be windy – but not THAT windy and not CONSISTENTLY windy, so we’ll concentrate on energy SECURITY – because that’s much more important…’
Won’t happen any time soon – bear in mind our government has actually passed a LAW (The Climate Change Act) which makes it a legal requirement to reduce the country’s CO2 emissions by EIGHTY PERCENT by 2050..! Break out your horses and carts, and spinning wheels, folks…
Anyway – back to the main subject. I have written to our dear Department of Energy and Climate Change (like they’re connected in some way) asking them to desist from trumpeting THEORETICAL outputs for wind farms. A new offshore farm has just been approved off the mouth of the Humber – and the press release stated that this would power (note the phrase) ‘UP TO 150000 homes’…
At the time I wrote to them, I suggested they took a look at the NETA tables for electricity production (updated every ten minutes). It was a typical February day – and wind was providing 6% of installed capacity (0.3% of total demand). On that basis, this money pit in the North Sea (our money, of course) would have powered 9350 homes.
The other thing which they fail to ‘get’ in my view, is this. 200 years ago, sailors, millers and drainers-of-the-fens, dumped wind power in a big hurry, in favour of steam power (and eventually diesel and electric power) – due to the one unassailable fact – that wind does NOT blow when you need it..!
Finally – not only are these things a blot on our precious landscape, but sited as they must be on windy uplands far from centres of population (no gigantic wind turbine in Parliament Square, I notice, droning away) – they of course require a whole new infrastructure of pylons, transmission lines, roads and substations.
Let’s keep up the pressure – someone MIGHT eventually listen to us…
Apparently when wind blows traditional power plants are throttled back slightly, but not shut off.
Here are 2 long pieces dealing with the problems with windpower
http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html
http://docs.wind-watch.org/ProblemWithWind.pdf
Forgive me for being a bit facetious, but that dead wind mill in the photo reminds me powerfully of a giant frozen leek ….
TFNJ says: February 14, 2011 at 2:07 am
“Yes, wind power needs backup. But it is not true that this has to come from conventional power stations.”
You should apply for a job in the UK with National Grid (National Grid own the electricity transmission network in England and Wales and operate the entire transmission system throughout Great Britain.), because you obviously know more about this topic than they do.
/sarc off.
In 2006, in their 7 year statement NG said (http://tinyurl.com/4gb45fy):
However, as the amount of wind increases, the proportion of conventional capacity that can be displaced without eroding the level of security reduces. For example, for 25000MW of wind only 5000MW (i.e. 20% of the wind capacity) of conventional capacity can be retired. This implies that, for larger wind penetrations, the wind capacity that can be taken as firm is not proportional to the expected wind energy production. It follows that the electricity market will need to maintain in service a larger proportion of conventional generation capacity despite reduced load factors. Such plant is often referred to as “standby plant”.
In other words, this means that in order to accommodate 25GW of wind power there is a need for 20GW of conventional generation capacity as “standby plant”.
TFNJ said, on February 14, 2011 at 2:07 am.
QUOTE
Yes, wind power needs backup. But it is not true that this has to come from conventional power stations. Different types of backup are needed for different timescales of wind power outtage. Htydro is best for shor spikes, nuclear only for prolonged outages, various fossil fuels in between.
UNQUOTE
TFJN – I’m not sure where you live, but it does not seem to be in Australia.
Australia is a dry continent. We have already dammed all the rivers that are there and that the Greens (and perhaps many others) will allow. So there is NO MORE hydro power potential in this country.
Again I’m not sure where you’re from, but the majority of Australian voters and both political parties, are not extremely, crash hot keen on nuclear power.
Also have you considered that having both a hydro AND a neclear power station on hand, both ticking over, (because who can tell if the need is short term orlong?) so they can instantly ramp up to full output, whenever mother nature decides to suddenly take a break – well that may be just a bit more expensive than we Ausies are prepared to bear?
But now I see.
You do mention fossil fuels as a base for electricity production.
Now THAT is a great idea.
Clever thinking.
We have odles and oddles and odddles of top quality coal very handily located to the main population centres.
Clever lad.
You left the obvious answer until last.
Very droll!
November came, with raging south-west winds. Building had to stop because it was now too wet to mix the cement. Finally there came a night when the gale was so violent that the farm buildings rocked on their foundations and several tiles were blown off the roof of the barn. The hens woke up squawking with terror because they had all dreamed simultaneously of hearing a gun go off in the distance. In the morning the animals came out of their stalls to find that the flagstaff had been blown down and an elm tree at the foot of the orchard had been plucked up like a radish. They had just noticed this when a cry of despair broke from every animal’s throat. A terrible sight had met their eyes. The windmill was in ruins.
With one accord they dashed down to the spot. Napoleon, who seldom moved out of a walk, raced ahead of them all. Yes, there it lay, the fruit of all their struggles, levelled to its foundations, the stones they had broken and carried so laboriously scattered all around. Unable at first to speak, they stood gazing mournfully at the litter of fallen stone. Napoleon paced to and fro in silence, occasionally snuffing at the ground. His tail had grown rigid and twitched sharply from side to side, a sign in him of intense mental activity. Suddenly he halted as though his mind were made up.
“Comrades,” he said quietly, “do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!” he suddenly roared in a voice of thunder. “Snowball has done this thing! In sheer malignity, thinking to set back our plans and avenge himself for his ignominious expulsion, this traitor has crept here under cover of night and destroyed our work of nearly a year. Comrades, here and now I pronounce the death sentence upon Snowball. ‘Animal Hero, Second Class,’ and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings him to justice. A full bushel to anyone who captures him alive!”
From Animal Farm, Chapter VI by George Orwell.
We notice time and again the script for AGW hysteria is stolen right from Orwell. This windmill thing is not an exception. It can’t be anything else, but a conspiracy.
Therefore Animal Hero, Second Class, and half a bushel of apples to any animal who brings the traitors responsible for destruction of windmills to justice. That would take care of the problem.
It is surely not some power game of pigs, is it?
TFNJ says:
February 14, 2011 at 2:07 am
Yes, wind power needs backup. But it is not true that this has to come from conventional power stations. Different types of backup are needed for different timescales of wind power outtage. Htydro is best for shor spikes, nuclear only for prolonged outages, various fossil fuels in between.
But from our side of the debate we should avoid the charge of cherry picking. As David MacKay has described another route would be smart meters for charging car batteries. For a financial incentive car owners could indicate how long they would be prepared to delay or slow down their charging, so that that power could be used to replace wind power. E tirely possible, needing computing capability comparable to that needed by today’s mobile phone nerwork.
We really must be more careful in our arguments.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I don’t want to be rude but car batteries are absolutely hopeless and cannot possibly work as a practical solution to back up times when wind does not provide sufficient energy.
About 15 to 18 years ago, my dad decided he would have an electric car. He liked the idea of a car being powered by electricity. This was a big swop since he was driving a Lotus sports car. Any way, the car had about 70 batteries (may be more) and although it was meant to have a range of about 100 miles and a top speed of 50 mph, in practice in the hilly countryside in which he lived, the range was nearer 30 miles and the top speed was nearer 40 but after 5 to 10 miles you would struggle to get 40mph particularly at night if you had to use the lights. The car was a novelty and if my dad went to a restaurant or a pub, they would run a power lead so the car could be charged whist my dad was having a meal or a drink. In practice, this was quite necessary.
The point I make is that 70 (or even more) car batteries could not run a small car for more than a few hours. The power consumption of a car is modest indeed (electric lights say 150 watts, heater, windscreen wipers say 120 watts plus the main power motor – I don’t know what that was but that was the most power hungry item). Now consider a house – electric kettle 3,000 watts, cooker 5,000 to 9,000 watts, microwave 600 to 1,200 watts, electric water heater 3,000 watts, electric shower 7,000 to 11,000 watts, lights say 800 to 2,500 watts, fridge/freezer say 550 to 1,000 watts, washing machine/dryer 500 to 4,500 watts, dishwasher 1,200 to 1,500 watts This list does not include any form of electric heaters.
In the UK, the main fuse to a house is usuallly rated at 100 or 120 amps. We have 240 volts, so the maximum wattage is circa 25,000 watts. Obviously, no one is expecting this to be the continous loading of the house and perhaps the continous loaading is more in the region of 10,000 to 15,000 watts.
Just imagine how many car batteries you would need to run a house at 240 volts for just 6 hours. In the UK, the 2009/10 winter there was an about 3 week period when windfarms were producing only between 3 to 8% of their rated power output and some days when they produced zero. How could car batteries cope during such a lengthy period?
Houses don’t run on 12volts. Of course, you could instal low voltage lights and of course, batteries could run a computer and other high tech electrical items eg., amplifiers, dvds, tvs etc. However, they are incapable of running power hungry items. Even if you were to gang them up both in parallel and in series say 5 parallel rows of 20 batteries in series (ie., a total of 100 batteries which would be capable of delivering 240 volts), they would quickly run flat when used for a power hungry application such as boling water and cooking, drying clothes etc.
The idea of car batteries being used as back up even for just a day is ridiculous. You would need thousands of batteries.
The financial cost would be prohibitive. The batteries in my dad’s car didn’t last very long. He had to replace these at a cost of about £3,000 and this was at least 12 years ago. The price today would be considerably higher. The capital cost of this idea is enormous. The environmental costs involved in manufacturing the required number of batteries would be outlandish.
The bottom line is that without a suitable storage device (such as a water dam and hydro-electric plant) wind is a hopeless form of energy provider. Anyone with an ounce of commonsense can see that the plans for further windfarms should be stopped immediately.
Hydro may be best for short spikes, but then that means that, when the wind is blowing, we will have to cut back on the generating capacity of hydro. Because wind is so unpredictable, using nuclear for long outages would result in a difficulty in ramping back down when the wind starts to blow again. The sudden spike would also necessitate hydro to ramp back down quickly to compensate. — John M Reynolds
wayne job writes “These are state of the art wind turbines, totally useless as generating equipment. However they make excellent water pumps”
I am intrigued by this statement. First, I know nothing about the subject, so I am really seeking information. Here in Ontario, Canada, we have an ideal situtuation to use wind power for pumped storage, but there are absolutely no such facilities operational or considered for the future. And I wonder why. I suspect that wind power cannot be used DIRECTLY to power any sort of electric system, such as a water pump. The output is far too variable.
Does anyone know whether my guess is anywhere close to reality?
In South Australia where windy politicians proudly pronounce our State as the leading windmill State, our first windmill farm at Starfish Hill is now up for sale by all accounts-
Watch the video carefully for the one not turning due to damaged blade tips no doubt, as were 3 out of the 23 I counted as damaged only a few weeks ago when I was there. I believe blade tip disintegration is a common problem in a matter of a few years, rather than complete catastrophic failure, although that can depend on location. Caveat emptor for all those ‘green’ taxpayer subsidised investments now.
RE: Metal Thieves
The always clever and resourceful metal thieves will find a way to knock the turbines down, cut’em up and haul the metal to the scrap yard.
In BC, copper thieves were ripping old copper ground lines off of utility poles. BC Hydro had to start a program to replace these with aluminium wire.
In several cities thieves would take down light standards, rip out the copper wire for scrap and then haul the light standard to the scrap yard.
Jim Cripwell,
The idea is to use the mechanical energy of the wind turbine to drive a pump directly, no electrical power involved. When the wind blows you get water pumped to a potential head that can be used to generate hydro when it is needed.
Totally proven technology that is reliable, pumped hydro is used in many places, usually pumped by off peak electricity from coal plants then kicked in at high demand periods.
wayne Job
These are state of the art wind turbines, totally useless as generating equipment.
However they make excellent water pumps. Any forward thinker with money should obtain the many dead ones and set up a pumped storage capacity for hydro electric peak feed in and make money for jam. …
Unfortunately this wont, in most circumstances, deliver useful power – unless you have a very large water storage area for your pumped water.
I’ll demonstrate the problem.
Consider how much energy is required to power a 2Kw heater for a day.
2Kw = 2000 Joules / second
Assuming a drop of 30m (100ft) – how much water would be required to sustain 2Kw of power?
energy = force x distance
so force = energy / distance = 2000J / 30m = 66N
Divide by 9.8 m/s^2 (acceleration due to gravity) to get the mass:
66N / gravity = 6.8 Kg of water / second, to generate 2Kw of power.
How much water would be required for a day?
6.8Kg/2 * (seconds in a day: 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds) = 587,755 Kg
or 587 metric tons of water, to power a 2Kw heater for a day.
Scale this calculation up to see how much water you would need to power a city, and you will see why hydro schemes are so enormous, yet only deliver a small fraction of global energy.
Harold Pierce Jr,
Re: Metal Thieves. True dat. I had a shopping center in Sacramento in 2006. When copper prices were at $4 a pound I noticed some water dripping from the roof. I went up and found that someone had cut out and removed all the copper drain pipes from the air conditioning units.
They probably got $400 – 500 for the scrap copper. Cost me $6,000 to replace it.
Meanwhile in Obamaville:
“In the energy area, the budget would support Obama’s goal of putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 and doubling the nation’s share of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035.
The budget proposes program terminations or spending reductions for more than 200 programs at an estimated savings of $33 billion in 2012. Programs targeted for large cuts included …, while a program that helps pay heating bills for low-income families would be cut in half for a savings of $2.5 billion ….”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Obama-unveils-373-trillion-apf-145221377.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=
So, let’s see; to balance the budget we will waste a bunch of money making power more expensive and then stop helping the poor to pay for this unnecessarily expensive power? Yeah, that should work.