I was in a conversation today at lunch with a fellow who told me that “wind power is better than anything we’ve ever done for generating electricity”. That made me wonder, how reliable (beyond the constancy of wind issues) is it?
Whenever I drive through Techachapi or Altamont passes here in California I note that there always seems to be a fair number of these three blade windmills that are out of commission. Perhaps failure is more common than one would expect. I found a couple of examples:
And this one also, though I don’t know what the ending for it was like the one above…
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Uhhh, sorry boss I can’t come to work today my rechargeable toothbrush didn’t recharge… no wind…
Moderators,
I put some relevant links up in my previous post. Can someone pleeease dig them out? I forgot to “cite” them. Or I can repost later if that is not possible. For now I’ll include a few other links. The Brits have a lot of experience already with wind power on a national scale.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/08/scourge-of-greenies-us-style.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/08/greenie-schizophrenia.html
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/09/confrontation-shapes-up.html
RE: Reply by John Goetz: In all seriousness, software ought to be able to deal with that.
While software can help manage the grid there are physical limits to trying to match load to demand especially when the load from wind farms can drop very quickly. This will cause power surges in trying to meet demand leading to the aforementioned problems. The only way around it is to “over-engineer” the grid which only makes wind power that much more expensive than traditional alternatives such as fossil fuels or nuclear.
Here in Ontario the feed-in tariff paid to producers of wind driven electricity is twice the going rate and for now wind is getting a free ride in terms of backup capacity costs since for now the grid, through its interconnection with other providers in Quebec and the U.S. can handle the load fluctuations. However this will no longer be the case once more wind farms are brought on stream and coal fired plants are decommissioned driven by misguided policy based decisions – not economic or engineering based ones!
Reply by John Goetz: OK, so we give up on wind?
Forgot to mention, my wife and I drove from Virginia to Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. Lovely little place to visit, but the roads are terrible!
Anyway, one one tip of the island there were several huge wind turbines, one or two three-bladed as I recall, and a couple helical types. None of them were spinning even though the wind off the Atlantic was quite plentiful.
I haven’t found any pictures of the ones I saw, but apparently they have a “proper” wind farm there now: http://www.canwea.ca/images/uploads/File/North_Cape2.pdf
The power generated by a wind turbine is a function of the air velocity CUBED. So if it generates its rated power at 20 mph, it can only generate 1.6% of the rated power at 5 mph. At this wind speed it probably doesn’t turn at all.
Now this has nothing to do with wind power, maybe a ‘software failure’ but back in
2003 I remember a big power outage in Ontario and New york state.
http://www.ontariotenants.ca/electricity/articles/2003/ap-03k19.phtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_North_America_blackout
Ric Werme (18:57:04) :
Thanks, I don’t have those links.
Have you seen Jennifer Marohasy’s blog? In this link
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001356.html
she quotes a paper by a Bob McDonald, where at the end he says…
“Barrel shaped turbines currently be[ing?] developed may solve this problem completely.”
What does he mean “barrel shaped turbines?”
Also, to allegedly minimize noise there’s a new serrated design for the turbine blade I find amusing on the scarry side
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/03/uprating-wind-turbine-blades-and-more.html
It looks like they should call it the “no bird survives” blade, as seen on those cooking shows on TV.
Reply by John Goetz: OK, so we give up on wind? YES!!!!!!!!!
It is only cost effective for small scale use.
My wife and I drove thru southwestern Minnesota a couple of months ago. Quite a few windmills there.
There was a recent article I saw somewhere (maybe National Review?) that talked about why you can never get Wind above 20% of your grid –basically it just isn’t reliable enough on a minute by minute basis. Electricity is all about RIGHT NOW.
Bobby Lane (19:18:57)
NICE WEBSITE!
I always think of it as Wind goes across laterally – parallel to the surface while the gravity of all that steel is downward. The frictional forces of the blades and generators spinning laterally (versus gravity pulling downward) means that the energy loss and efficiency is very poor for wind power.
What kind of grease is required to keep all those tons of steel in the mechanics working properly?
A new design is needed where the frictional energy losses are minimized to near zero.
Wind power really sucks if you have to cross the equator, as any fan of Patrick O’Brian would surely know…
CoRev- “Wind mills can achieve an efficiency rating ~40% at their optimum.” True, but this is never achieved in any wind farm. Britain has experienced 22% on average, and wind farms in the US range from 9%(!) to 32%. Older windmill designs are much worse.
Typically wind generation needs a 90% backup with conventional generation. E.On in Britain just announced that they will need to build $1.4T of new conventional generation to back up the huge wind initiative being pushed there.
Off-shore wind farms have had terrible infant mortality (1 year to replacement), but newer designs appear to be much better.
Has anyone figured out the effects the large windfarms have on climate?
I mean wind is an energy flux from high pressure to low pressure which creates weather patterns (and climate in the long term). Now if we start removing this energy in ever increasing amounts, won’t this start have a greater and greater effect on weather and hence climate?
I’m sorry, but I don’t know exactly the content of all these links, but I collected them a few weeks ago (havn’t time to watch them all now).
Crasch:
Burning turbines:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH-2m4A_6NQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgXcHzi2t4s
A comment:
“i work as an electrician am 51 y.o. and can tell you that the generator is made of iron,steel,copper,aluminum,carbon,rosin,plastic,le ad,oil and or grease for the shaft bearings,and other materials,aluninum and or fiberglass and other materials for the for the prop,and take a lot of energy to manufacture and transport and produce very little eletricity in return,just a BIG SCAM !!!hydro or nucleur is the way to go !!!”
Propaganda (not according to research) about silent turbines:
Turbine noise (some with bad recording quality) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YvSDw5Gll0
A clip from the bird union about a greedy wind power owner and…
For Scottish accident data see: http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk
http://mospublic.ercot.com/ercot/jsp/frequency_control.jsp
shows the instantaneous Texas grid load, but has to be refreshed manually. I notice they have added the wind power output to the chart.
In a previous wind power discussion on this blog, I asked about the turbines on Oahu which seem to be abandoned. One of the regulars on here sent me a link:
[jeez (19:45:12) :]
George M.
You’re talking about the Kahuku Wind Farm.
http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/wwg/history.html
which says, essentially, that the turbines were never cost effective and were abandoned to the property owner in the early ’90s. Now, if they did not work out on the north shore of Oahu, where the wind always blows, then where are they going to be useful?
Nice photo of the German unit, BTW. There has been a lot of failure information in the power utility literature, where the greens hope no one sees it.
The Grail is Electrical Storage, once we can store generated electricity in massive amounts then wind and solar become feasible.
This is part of the thought behind new battery technology, that the car becomes the storage medium. With swappable battery packs service stations could have racks of batteries all containing stored energy.
In addition we would need power stations that would store massive amounts of energy for the grid.
Storing it in another form of energy, like heat, is very wasteful and expensive.
So until the super capacitor gets built we cannot use wind or solar for base-load power, it is good supplemental power and micro-site generation but with an efficency of 18% of rated output I would not run my business on a field of these alone.
We could maybe look at Wind/Hydro combinations where we make a closed loop hydro facility with the power to cycle the water provided by wind it should be fairly stable in output if the feed storage was large enough, not much chance of running out of gravity….hmmmm
dkjones (20:07:43) :
I have wondered about that, but you’re the first person I’ve ever see actually ask the question. I would think we should know that, because if “a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Beijing can affect the weather in Boston” then it would seem sensible to ask what effects removing thousands of megawatts from circulating air might have on, well, everything.
http://canadaweather.piczo.com/winds_dynamics_maps?cr=3
http://code.google.com/p/worldwindrcp/
Bob L. The 1500 C figure may be right as that would be on the verge of liquefaction of ferrous metals. Sounds like you are describing a combined cycle cogeneration turbine. It would take a lot of water to do all that. Installation cost would be a real bear though. Other than that and the fact that you woudn’t get a lot of recoverable energy out of 350 degree rock unless it was really close to the surface, sounds totally free except for maintenance costs.
Speaking of wind power the only thing that will make it feasable is some sort of storage technology and / or cogeneration scheme. I sort of like the pump storage method. You don’t have to worry about any chemical batteries and you can tap it whenever you need it. Downside is it takes real estate and water.
I thinh we give up on wind SUBSIDIES. We have to pay for all the mortages that people can’t afford first.
Not sure about reliability, but certainly Wind power is not delivering anything near the rated capacity. As I understand it the British/Scottish experience is that windmills are generating less than 25% of rated capacity, meaning we’ll need a powerful lot more than people seem to think to deliver even a fraction of the power we want.
Sorry I’m using band width for more wind alternative/wind power “common sense propaganda”.
In Green Tech Media, Neal Dikeman at Cleantech.org revealing the truth:
“People think new energy [technology] is going to be disrupting the whole industry … It’s not. … People are lying to themselves if they think their technology is game-changing and it isn’t.”
He continue with facts which I think everyone should know of (but don’t) :
“Oil companies are making 70 percent margins and ethanol companies are making nothing,” he said. “If prices fall, ethanol gets shut out first. Wind also is more expensive to produce – five times more expensive than coal. Solar technology is 20 times more expensive than coal. And subsidies are 100 times higher than oil on a per-unit basis.”
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/dikeman-spouts-off-on-new-energy-1365.html
Links:
Articles about research on health problems for ppl living nearby turbines:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548746/Wind-turbines-%27are-ruining-our-quality-of-life%27.html
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1218250522129010.xml&coll=7&thispage=1
About bad economy and huge subsidize, due to a British study:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029143/Wind-turbines-unreliable-cost-home-4-000-claims-think-tank.html
A link to the study could be found here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sam_talbot-rice/blog/2008/07/03/wind_wont_solve_energy_gap
Wind power pricier, and emits more CO2 than thought:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/wind_power_needs_dirty_pricey_gas_backup_report/
Problems with on grid wind power:
http://maxedoutmama.blogspot.com/2008/07/problems-with-on-grid-wind-power.html
About an Economist article on Danish wind power:
http://www.openmarket.org/2008/04/23/the-windy-denmark-question/
I am a veteran of the wars to stop commercial wind power from spoiling the vistas here in the Catskill Mountains and I learned a few things along the way.
The comments about unreliability of electricity from industrial wind turbines is bang on target. 25% is generous. Furthermore, they don’t reduce CO2 from baseline power plants because the boilers are kept burning 24/7 regardless of demand. More often than not, when the turbines spin up, it is hydro or gas turbine generation that shuts down.
At least in the US, the primary driver for the use of industrial wind turbines is the tax breaks. Without these subsidies, commercial wind power is unprofitable.