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?
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Looks like we need to go nuclear
– you know France produces about 80% of its electricity from Nuclear
– and their electricity is cheaper then the UK’s
“Håkan B (05:16:33) :
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?”
Okay so, doing some limited math, in order to have enough wind turbines to replace say the new gas fired power plant near Dresden, Ohio that will generate 580MW we’d need to place (580/28)*787 ~ 16,000 wind turbines. Assuming each wind turbine requires ~1acre of land so we’d need 16,000+ acres devoted to these beasts (for those like me who are challenged to visualize 16,000 acres, it’s roughly 25 square miles) AND would have to install infrastructure to collect the power from each turbine and transport it to the grid. Sounds like a great idea to me..
Michael (20:25:18) :
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.”
That’s exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!
Thank you!
Anyone else have any?
Here is a good article on the rating and scaling specifications for Wind generation as compared for a single nuclear generation facility.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2008/3533windmills_for_suckers.html
Plus a link to the PDF file.
I see from this board that most people do not necessarily oppose wind power. They oppose heavily subsidized wind power. That can make sense. But what’s the best balance? Susidize a technology too much, and there is no incentive to make it more efficient. Subsidize it too little, and there is no incentive either to develop it. Sometimes, subsidies are not always apparent. Integrated circuit technology, an American invention (trivia: who remembers by whom?) was heavily “subsidized” by the Army’s missile program and by the space program. They bought millions of immature chips, and probably most of them failed. Of course, what they didn’t do is force industry to include the chips in household electronics, which would soon have led to a consumer backlash! People would have complained (rightly) that the technology didn’t work!
I’ve had a long talk last year with an engineer who spent his life working on windmill technology. I was actually doing a sociological study of the dynamics of the acceptance of new technologies for a course I was taking. I won’t explain what my findings were here, but I’ll just say that that engineer was very much convinced of the potential of wind power. All those issues of intermittency, unreliability, etc. can be resolved, and in fact most have been resolved already. It’s really an engineering problem, and why should we not trust our capacity to solve it? 20% of total grid power is apparently very easy to handle, with backup thermal or, even better, hydroelectric plants (who essentially act as energy storage devices).
But the problem is mainly political. Greens have pushed for wind power too much, and governments have agreed to install a lot of immature wind farms, and apparently would be quite happy if all this turned into a fiasco. A lot of people who commented on this board think the same!
Here in Quebec, a lot of wind farms have been installed, but the problem is that they’re not at the right place! We have tremendous wind potential, but it’s way up north, where terrain is flat, wind is abundant, and not too many people live. Furthermore, we already have the transmission lines because the bulk of our hydroelectric plants are over there. But that would be too easy. Much better to install them in populated, but poor areas, and pretend you’re helping the local economy, but are actually enriching clever businessmen who will, who knows, contribute to your next campaign!?
Actually, wind can be used as reliable baseload power:
Dont take my word for it —
Stanford University:
“The researchers used hourly wind data, collected and quality-controlled by the National Weather Service, for the entire year of 2000 from the 19 sites. They found that an average of 33 percent and a maximum of 47 percent of yearly-averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable baseload electric power. These percentages would hold true for any array of 10 or more wind farms, provided it met the minimum wind speed and turbine height criteria used in the study.”
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/december5/windfarm-120507.html
BTW, Many of the turbines in Altamont are 25+ years old with technology that is 2 or 3 generations old.
Large-scale wind generation may, by removing some energy from the wind, help stave off global cooling.
The Danish are in the process of decommissioning a large part of there wind farms, the problem is that they have not enough capacity ( the country is to small ) to absorb the surges created by the fluctuation in wind power generation. To absorb these fluctuations they have been putting them into the German grid at a cost of several hundred million € a year, to combat this expenditure they have had to spend millions to buy ‘proposed’ generation costs from wind turbine companies, the whole ‘wind farm fiasco’ is a lesson in idiots leading idiots.
Bob Lackey
Geothermal power is great but it is lacking in technology. New Zealand is the worlds leader and they have as yet to find a way to drill and use the heat, the problem is that (example) if you drill into a hot spot and drill another hole say 500ft distance and then join the 2 shafts together it does not take very long before the surrounding area cools as the heat is absorbed by the exchanger, natural steam vents (as found in New Zealand and Yellowstone Park) are in NZ used to drive turbines, and are very successful.
As to ‘storing’ energy, the only economical and proven way is in off peak hours, pump water up a mountain into a lake and when required bring it down to run the turbines and into a lake at the bottom of the mountain, a closed system that uses the excess power generation ( off peak, no shut-down big savings)
@ur momisugly Dee Norris
You keep talking like this is an either .. or problem. It isn’t
Its a and…and solution.
Wind and Sea and Solar and Biomasse and Gas and Coal and Petrol.
Please start expanding your energy capabilities for two reasons.
1) America doesn’t set the price of petrol – OPEC does. And as long as they want to play their game you are their petrol slaves.
2) Perhaps you wouldn’t need to invade iran/iraq in the future.
Reply – I don’t remember invading Iraq, sorry. Best of luck to you. – Dee Norris
Here in Northern Colorado and Wyoming we have a couple of large wind farms. If you suffer from “green guilt” you may have the privilege of paying 15% more for your electricity in order to receive “wind generated” electricity. I live outside the Boulder CO city limits so I don’t suffer from this particular malady. However, there seems to be quite an infection of it in general, as it is reported that there is good participation in the program.
I call this an ignorance tax since the power goes straight to the grid and I get as many “green” electrons running through my house as anyone paying the surcharge. To all those that suffer from green guilt: I’m happy that you have the disposable income to waste on this kind of thing.
Besides, I have personally planted hundreds of pine trees at Ft. Robinson NE. I figure my “carbon footprint” is covered for life. I’d like to see algore out there sticking seedlings in the ground in the snow and mud.
Massachusetts Governor: People Could Freeze to Death this Winter
“Governor Patrick says there’s a real possibility that people in America could freeze to death this winter due to the soaring cost of home heating fuel.”
http://www.whynam560.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=189062&article=4304667
But let’s forget about that and build more windmills.
Solar and Wind generated power, rather than required redundant backup generation sources, will really only be cost effective when coupled with an efficient power storage system.
In simple terms, think of Wind or Solar generating power to pump water uphill and behind a dam. When lots of power is available a lot of water is pumped, when no energy is available, nothing is pumped. Water is released from the dam to generate electricity in a classical way.
I would think energy storage coupled to intermittent generation is how it needs to work. But, in the end, this mechanism must be proven to be cost effective before I can get excited about any of it.
Private companies should continue to create small wind and solar farms, learn about it, explore the practical needs and maintenance, tweak it, refine it and try to drive the costs down. Until is it on par or less than coal or nuclear, I’m not interested.
Karl Heuer- Interesting.
So lets put up a 1.5 MW wind tower for $3500/kW. That kW is nameplate rating. At a good wind site, we can expect availability of 25% of nameplate rating. Based on the Stanford study, between 1/3 and 1/2 of this power can be relied on for baseload (i.e. you can schedule it for day-ahead grid planning). That means we can use wind for baseload generation if we are willing to spend $3500/(0.25*0.5) = $28,000/kW for it. Just to remind people, a brand-spanking new nuclear plant currently runs about $6800/kW, and it has a baseload availability of 93%. And nuclear is the most expensive of conventional sources in terms of capital costs.
Also, I just checked electricity sources and prices in wind-loving Denmark. In 2007, about 19% of electricity was supplied by wind at an availability of 26%. The average retail electricity price in Denmark was 37 cents/kWhr, with peak demand prices considerably higher.
With all of those wind towers, you would expect Denmark’s CO2 emissions from the power grid to have dropped. Indeed, the CO2 emissions related to electricity production have dropped (albeit an almost imperceptible amount) from 58 MTonnes in 1998 to 56 MTonnes in 2007. With 3.1GW of installed wind at an average price of $3500/kW, that is a cost of $10.9B for a 2MTonne/year amelioration. Over 20 years, that comes to $271/Tonne. Looks like the cap and trade value of CO2 needs to be bumped up a bit.
Whilst in the navy and operating with helicopters I know the pilots were paranoid about anything hitting the rotor blades as the smallest chip/dent/etc caused imbalance.
How do wind turbines fair when hit by birds, bats, kites, hang-gliders, etc.
I would think the time spent on blade maintenance and balancing would be high (thus costly) plus this equals downtime.
I don’t think this would be an issue. In a chopper you have a much higher velocity of rotation meaning anything hitting it will have much more force, hence more damage (plus the psychological issue of wondering if running into a bird in a chopper will kill you). The low spin rate of the windmill will not generate as much force to cause damage with something colliding into it.
Wind power is fine for small scale and specialized applications. What it isn’t good for is main power grid production. Unfortunately it and solar are being taken from their very good and efficient niche uses and being sold as a replacement power generation system for the main grid. Neither of them can actually meet that kind of goal, which doesn’t make them bad. It just indicates that they are being utilized for applications that they are not good for.
Just looking at those windmills, it should be obvious that they can never supply enough power to replace coal or hydroelectric. Each one is so small – just think of the number of windmills that will be down due to the inevitable maintenance issues. In a coal-fired plant or a hydroelectric dam, extra capacity is built in to allow for generators being off-line for routine maintenance. Just picture the number of acres with extra windmills that have to be built just to allow for inevitable down time. And if the wind’s not blowing, all the extra capacity in the world will do no good unless you have a back-up plan.
It just strikes me as a really bad idea straight out of fantasyland. And taxpayers are getting the shaft on this scheme as well.
spangled drongo (18:29:57) :
If wind was ever to be a genuine alternate energy source we would still have wind powered commercial shipping.
The ocean is one place wind will work if it is ever going to.
SkySails in Germany is developing a kite system for commercial shipping. It’s not intended to eliminate the engine in a ship, but to supplement it and reduce fuel consumption. The prototype systems are installed and being tested on a couple of cargo ships at the moment. Interesting stuff.
SkySails site.
Small scale wind and solar are a good fit in some markets,
like here in SoCal. But regulation makes it so that these
resources are infrequently used.
SoCal wind and solar are a good fit for residential use due
to two factors. First, we have net metering. Second we have
HIGHLY non-linear pricing. Pricing is done by “baseline +
tiers”. The baseline is about enough electricity to run a few
lights and a refrigerator for a month. The cost is low. The
next unit is 2nd tier, and it costs twice as much. The 3rd
unit is 3rd tier, and costs 4x as much. The fourth unit is
4th tier and it costs 12x as much. MANY people have bills
using 4th tier power, and they are paying 10x the average
national electric rate.
Having a small solar array or wind turbine for the exact and
only purpose of eliminating 4th tier charges is a good choice.
Typical payoff time is less than 3 years. If the system is
enlarged and sized to zero out the electric bill, payoff time
is decades.
paminator:
$3,500/kw installed is absolutely ludicrous
Installation costs for wind are $1.365K/kw rated in 2006
“Figure 20 shows that average costs equaled $1,365/kW nationwide, but vary by region.”
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41435.pdf
Economies of scale from larger turbines and larger farms (Pickens just ordered 667 turbines from GE Wind for 1 site)
will continue to lower installation costs in terms of real dollars.
Lots of little breakable things scattered around are a maintenance nightmare.
Anthony, I am very familiar with three of those well known California Wind farms. The Altamont Pass farm in the SF Bay area, is on the way to my favorite local fishing hole, and there is another at Pacheco Pass going over the hills from San Jose area to highway 5 where my second fishing hole is. Then I frequently drive by the Tehatchapee farm going through Moab to southern California.
I have no idea what the average power of those windmills is, but I doubt they are in the megaWatt class; and yes, it is quite common to see a significant fraction that are out of action or down for repairs. They have a natural self destruction mechanism due to wind shear. The wind speed near the ground is much less than the winds aloft as any sailor knows, so when a fan blade is near the ground the wind is low and when it is over the tower, the wind is higher, and the thrust on the blades goes as the square of the wind speed. So the blade is constantly driven by a cyclic variable thrust at the rotation rate of the fan. The resultant of the three blades may be a fairly constant thrust on the tower (it isn’t because of the non linear speed/thrust relation) but each blade sees the full pulsating thrust, so the blades slowly shake themselves to death. When the farm is working properly, all the blades are phase locked so the vibration frequency is very exact and constant; and they simply fail (individually) by fatigue.
The power output goes up as the cube of the speed; but because of the squared thrust relation, the maximum wind speed has to be curtailed, since a doubling of the design wind speed ; which will happen quite regularly, will result in four times the blade and tower load; so they need to be turned off and clamped down during high winds; which severely hampers their operating up time.
Going down in wind speed, while not destructive is somewhat more undesirable, because a drop in wind speed to half the design velocity results in the loss of 87.5% of the generating capacity.
Altogether a rather poor sort of energy source.
Also they take far more than the advertised amount of space, because each fan needs an intake “duct” and an exit duct to allow air to flow smoothly through the fan. Each of those three farms in my area have large unusable stretches of terrain in front of and behind the actual towers, where alternative usea are limited without causing air flow constriction.
They are actually gas turbine engines, where solar energy provides the heating of the working fluid (air), and a napkin calculation based on the temperature difference shows that the carnot efficiency is very low; indicating that these wind turbines have a very poor coupling to the incoming solar energy.
Solar cells may only be about 10% efficient (installed efficiency); but wind turbines are way less than that in solar conversion efficiency.
And as that Danish movie shows; the self destruction can be quite spectacular.
The wind shear problem forces you to raise the tower height to reduce the amount of cyclic thrust variation; but that just exacerbates the problem of designing the tower to take the loads.
A niche application at best.
REPLY: Excellent summary, thanks. – Anthony
And for you who think nuclear is the answer:
1. Current world uranium production does not even meet current need. (this is data from an industry site)
Worldwide Production 2007 = ~42,000 Tonnes
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html
Worldwide Uranium Need 2007/2008 = ~64,600
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
2. US uranium reserves are insufficient to support any signifigant expansion of US nuclear industry and will simply make us dependent on foreign Uranium
US Uranium Recoverable Reserves: = 342,000 Tonnes
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf75.html
US current use/need = ~19,000/yr
US need to provide 50% of electricity (not overall energy) = ~48,000 (currently US nuc provides 19% of us electricity).
Years of US reserves at increased rate = 7
Phil M (06:40:08) :
Looks like we need to go nuclear
– you know France produces about 80% of its electricity from Nuclear
– and their electricity is cheaper then the UK’s
__________
Phil,
The problem with France’s nuclear power is that nuke plants operate at one speed, by design, power output cannot be adjusted to provide peak power needs. As a result France has to go to the grid and buy power on the spot market to meet peak power needs. This is hideously expensive and the French are dependent on others for their power needs. Going all nuke is not such a good idea.
And the initial construction costs for a nuclear plant are astronomical:
For a 2 reactor (Westinghouse AP 1000’s) 2300MWe total Progress Energy has told shareholders and regulator $17 Billion — that is $7391/KW and the site required 3100 Acres
http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/993686.html
“”They may be more expensive,” Progress Energy informed state regulators in documents filed Tuesday.”
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/article414653.ece
The timeline for new nuc plant construction averages 6 years
Is it possible to extrapolate the results of the video clip to the potential hazard T. Boone’s turbines would face in its proposed location in Tornado Alley?
My son-in-law worked for a wind turbine generator company who have/had installations in the Netherlands. The MTBF at that time was not good.