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?
Mike McMillan (21:22:41) :
The government does not have a cent of its own, as it neither reaps nor does it sow; it only has your money and that of your fellow citizens ( and the Australian government has mine; every single cent!)).
As a Texas Panhandler, all I can say is that I hope those engineers are ready for Panhandle weather. 100 MPH straight line winds, and tornadoes are common. I have seen it go from a balmy 85 degrees to about 17 in 24 hours. Days where the wind blows 40+ mph all the time with much more powerful gusts. Ice Storms happen every year. Blizzards across the plains can leave drifts 10 feet high, only a couple of years ago we had a series of blizzards so bad that they were having to airlift hay to cattle trapped out on the range, still 10s of thousands starved or froze to death.
Admittedly, the Texas Panhandle is NOT a thing of beauty, but that has never stopped man from doing thier best to make it even uglier. To make matters worse, we are dead flat and have no trees so you can see these things from miles away. I cannot wait until they build T-Boones multi-billion dollar transmission line. Old timers will be telling their kids about when the Panhandle was only sort of ugly, it’ll be great!
Guess it really doesn’t matter though. Money evidently really does either grow on trees or come out of the clear blue sky somewhere between Washington D.C. and New York City, and they are willing to share that money with the Panhandle so long as we promise to make our area as ugly as possible. In the end, it’s a good thing because the people out here will need something to do after the Ogalalla goes dry from growing corn for ethanol and our land becomes the Great American Desert, again, but this time without the native grasses which have all been plowed under for crops. Heck, maybe with some luck we can experience another dustbowl.
Have you read the Calgary University reports on damage to bats (and, I suppose, other wildlife) caused by these wind-generating machines?
They found the majority of mortality was NOT caused by collision withe the blades, but rather by the rupturing of internal organs due to the lowered air pressure in the vicinity of these wind turbines…. Bats, as well as other critters, are serious ‘web of life’ members, from pollinating to seed spreading and pest control…
This does not even address the ‘wind shadow’ some farmers downwind of these ‘wind farms’ are reporting, which they say causes such a reduction in percipitation as to put them out of business….
Klockarman (22:40:20)
That’s pretty nasty.
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James Burnham (22:36:12) & Ric Werme (18:57:04)
Thanks for info on alternative wind-power rotors. They seem like they are for smaller applications though; and if scaled up I don’t see why they wouldn’t also cause problems for birds and/or bats. I guess you just have to put them up and start collecting data?
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Jeff Alberts (22:24:41)
“Ah, the great Chaos Theory fallacy.”
I was using that term rhetorically. What I was trying to convey was that if tiny perturbations can have long term measurable effects, why then aren’t we worrying about large scale damping of a major climate driver? My guess is that there’s no more to worry about than with whatever CO2 we are adding to the atmosphere, but I would fell more comfortable if I had some other handle on it than a gut feeling.
So, if anyone has an answer for dkjones (20:07:43), I would also be interrested.
Neil Jones (23:19:10)
“BSI will soon be able to provide a simple and reliable tool that helps make this possible.”
A “tool?” Why can’t they just do an exhaustive analyisis? It’s probably based on estimates, and they are going to be entered by people who are out of the loop of data collection, so if there were problems with the numbers, they would never know it. When it’s done I’d like to see the way the validated it.
Neil Jones (23:19:10) (from your second link)
“Plans to develop a joint windfarm and gas power station in the Irish Sea have been given the go-ahead by the UK government.”
That’s insane!”
It really gives me “confidence” in their carbon comparator “tool” they tout in that first link you provided – not.
I’ve discussed the functionally efficiency of wind turbines with actual turbine farm operators … the wind farms are often offline for easily a third of the time. Considering mean time between failures (MTBF) is considered high, the capitalization is on par with other power sources (cost per megawatt) I expect ultimately the financial return on current wind turbine tech to be a colossal flop.
Nearly each cost in an energy-driven economy reflects, ultimately, some kind of energy usage. With the exception of some luxury goods (diamonds) the measure of commodity energy-of-production is generally reflected in its cost: If the cost of something is high, the energy required to deliver that good or service is commensurate to its cost.
So as the maintenance of these mega-turbine wind farms increases, the functional use of upstream energy increases, the more CO2 is consumed to support this kind of “carbon neutral” infrastructure.
This isn’t to say that wind turbines are a total flop. The energy industry is looking at flodesign’s new jet cowling laminar bypass wind turbine design. We’ll have to wait & see whether their prototypes work.
I work in the energy industry here in the UK. What a lot of people don’t realise about commercial wind power is that due to its inconsistent nature, existing power stations need to be on stand-by to cover times of high demand and/or times when there is no wind. What this means is that the coal-fired power stations are turning over, burning the coal but with out actually generating electricity. Therefore regardless of where the electricity is being generated, the same level of CO2 emissions are still being created.
Wind power is little more than a publicity stunt.
Here is an interesting study on variability of the energy produced by wind over an entire country (Germany), the article is in German but there are many graphs:
here
The most interesting graph is called
“Taglich erzeugte Energie aus Wind”
(Daily energy generated by wind for ENTIRE GERMANY), you can see the extreme variability, there is no ‘averaging effet’, if you want to be able to have electricity when you need it, you basically need 100% backup
Wind power – certainly an interesting and controversial topic! In Europe, many countries have deployed wind energy extensively. Denmark for example has deployed wind turbines to 0.9KW per capita – a huge investment. Yet real world performance data from countries such as Denmark is not encouraging. Wind generated electricity has proven to be a virtually useless commodity, incapable of displacing fossil and nuclear fuel consumed in power stations due to problems arising from intermittency and inaccurate wind forecasting. Danish carbon emissions remain amongst the highest in Europe, and Denmark will remain dependent on coal fired generation for the foreseeable future. In my own country (UK) we have deployed over 2,000 MW wind energy, to the exclusion of reliable means of producing electricity. This has proven to be a costly exercise, with the government’s least-cost scenario (i.e. for meeting EU renewable energy directives) standing at 210 billion UK pounds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the headline of one national newspaper comments this morning “Back to the dark ages – National Grid raises the spectre of blackouts this winter”.
Never quite understood the american obsession with dishing windmills – no they are not perfect, they are not going to produce ALL of the USAs energy needs, but they can be a very good (if expensive) supplement to the non-transport energy sector.
Here in Denmark, about 20% of the energy used in housing, offices, factorys etc. is supplied by windmills. They are subsidised, but cost roughly the same
as diesel (highly taxed) cost in Denmark after the recent oil price hike.
The major advantage is though (and this is where americans should really pay attention) “non-dependance on oil/gas/coal”.
Concerning geothermal power:
It has already been pointed out that water can become corrosive as it dissolves minerals from the rocks. There is another problem that was raised some years back, that of deposition of minerals on surfcaces with fine clearances. As the water/steam cools in the pipework, turbine etc. some of the minerals get deposited so you are transfering minerals from the ground and laying them down on the inside of the plant. Not good for pressure frops and fine clearances.
Someone will know better than me but I believe there is a small geothermal plant in the US that uses a different heat ransfer medium to get the heat from the “hot rocks” and then pass the heat onto pure water, the heat exchange fluid then being recycled underground. I remember it was in the open air in a dry region. The heat exchange fluid was chosen so as not to dissolve minerals from below.
Iceland makes geothermal power work on a small scale (by US/UK standards).
@The Engineer:
Wind turbines will do nothing to reduce American reliance on oil for two reasons:
1) As with coal, is it not possible to stop burning oil when electricity from the turbines comes online, the boiler has to be kept hot.
2) Very little U.S. electricity comes from oil-fired power plants.
Furthermore, unlike Denmark, the U.S. has large reserves of coal which is more efficient than wind turbines for power generation.
Industrial Wind Turbines are simply a legal tax dodge here in the U.S. and have zero economic benefit for Americans
Coal burning power plants should cover their smokestacks with wind turbines and solar panels. That way they can emulate Al Gore’s yacht and simultaneously grind up his disciples engaging in “civil disobedience.”
Looking at these pictures from an engineering viewpoint, they probably should have multiplied instead of adding! Whoops! That good old formula SH1t² comes in handy every now & then.
Will: “…the headline of one national newspaper comments this morning “Back to the dark ages – National Grid raises the spectre of blackouts this winter”.
I remember the power cuts in the early 1970s – we had dinner by the light of candles and paraffin lamps, which was fun, but then I was still a kid. This time round, I don’t think it will be so exciting. These days, businesses require complex IT systems, which in turn require uninterrupted power to function properly, so I think it’s likely that blackouts would cause even more chaos now than they did then.
The government have had plenty of warnings about our aging power infrastructure over the years, but they have not exactly risen to the task.
If we all end up freezing in the dark, sometime in the winter of 2013, my thanks will go to our wonderful competent Labour government, our noble and principled Greenpeace activist friends of course, and a very special thanks to James Hansen .
I remember driving to Brentwood from San Jose. I hit an area where as far as the eye could see there were windmill generators. Also as far as the eye could see none of them were spinning–what a total waste—someone somewhere should be fired or held accountable for such stupidity.
Here in Sweden we can look at the production online for a total of
787 turbines with an installed effect of 682 MW. They are right now
producing 28 MW, thats about 4%, impressing?
You can have a look at this link, I suppose Google can give a
reasonably good translation, just click on the link “översikt” to
get an overview.
vindstat
Stand-by power wind, solar, gas turbine, are heavily subsidized. My N.Calif electric giant is required to purchase this stand-by power at an elevated cost value regardless if there is less expensive coal-hydro-nuke-oil elect.energy available.
Wind turbine – high maintenance is good for a person that wants to establish family roots – like at Tehachapi’s 5000 units
Alternative elect production needs to be a local application. NIMBY (not in my back yard) needs social counseling redirection. San Francisco is an ideal wind location – NIMBY(first verse of the Green bible)
IMO Wind electric (excluding ‘no other alternative’) is a twin infant of the current House-Finance SNAFU. Heavy handed Congressional-CA Legislative bodies are playing pocket pool with special interests.
REA – Rural Electrification Act (Shasta Dam 1936) sells power to small REA-born providers at less than cost. These providers buy more than they could ever use. Regulations allow them to sell to the main-stream grid providers (PG &E) at ‘market price’ stand-by power rates (more expensive than the National Grid rate). In other words these stand-by power rates (always profit level) reflect PG&E electric users bill rates.
Reply by John Goetz: OK, so we give up on wind?
No – not entirely. However, the picture the greens try to paint of wind power being a replacement for the current sources of power that drive our modern industrial society is bogus! Sure, wind power can economically provide a bit of power at the margins but that’s about it. Its use should not be subsidised. Let the technology stand on its own two feet from an economic perspective with a focus on the best situated sites. If private investors can make it work there without sudsidy THEN it can expand to wider use as the technology and the related economics improve. However, don’t hold your breath there as any further improvements on this front are likely to be incremental in nature with no big breakthroughs.
yonason (21:38:18) :
“…you see it’s being paid for by the government, not you or me.” — Mike McMillan (21:22:41)
Uh, you’re joking, …right?
Right. Were I commenting to the RealClimate hockey
puckstick readership, I would feel obligated to state the obvious, but not here.A real environmental problem with boutique power like wind and solar is energy density. Coal and nuke plants are relatively compact, but to generate equivalent megawatts with wind/solar takes vastly more acreage, and at that, it’s only unreliable part-time power.
Patrick Henry (04:44:32) :
Coal burning power plants should cover their smokestacks with wind turbines and solar panels.
Take another look at the second photo above. I think that’s what they did.
Ric Werme (21:50:22) :
… Perhaps excess electricity could be used to electrolyze water, and (at least the hydrogen) be fed into a pipeline system. Hydrogen can be stored for the slow production periods …
Hydrogen has its own problems, such as leakage and hydrogen embrittlement of metals like steel. It sits atop a metals column in the periodic table, and like mercury, it’s soluble in a number of metals, soaking in and weakening. The molecules are so small, they will leak thru seals and joints with little provocation.
I’ll admit it does burn cleanly, e.g. Challenger and Hindenburg.
Ask any pilot who has extensive experiene with propeller driven aircraft such as the C-130. “Prop” is a four letter word, and they are clearly the work of the devil! 😉
The suggestion that area averaging be done to smooth out inconsistent output has one rather obvious problem. It requires a massive transmission line grid, which does not exist, and if the greens have their way, will never exist. The present transmission line loading is approaching critical in many corridors, and adding variable wind generated power will quickly collapse the system. Even TBP is running into major problems getting his proposed farm output to urban areas a couple hundred miles away.
I have seen wind generators in the West while on vacation, but In Tennessee where I live, wind speed averages 4-7 mph throughout the year, making it unsuitable for elec. generation. In fact, the entire Southeast has been rated as unsuitable. Some 93% of wind generation potential lies west of the Mississippi. This is important because the Federal legislation that has been discussed may have across-the-board penalties for all States if they don’t do renewable energy. But Tennessee can’t do commercial solar, wind, or natural gas. Senator Alexander has estimated that ill-advised legislation could unfairly impact our residents. At the present time, national wind power is no more than a local phenomenon, because transmission lines don’t exist to get it from its generation in the West to where most people live, in the East.
Hey guys and gals, little harsh don’t ya think? Hell, the first artificial heart sucked too. But at least somebody had the guts to come up with the first one along with the guy who said, “plant that sucker here doc”. Since then, how often do you hear about artificial heart implants? Never. But they are being used in lots and lots of people’s chests because they have gotten better.
I see nothing wrong with the notion that current wind towers suck, kill stuff, and apparently break wind. I find the process of innovation a kick in the pants to watch and thank God there are people out there with the guts to to do it. They sure as hell get no praise for their efforts. As far as I know, dead inventors of stuff we use now got none when they were alive either.