Glasgow Looking To Freeze In The Dark

As an electrician I find it great that the econazis are pushing alternative energy solutions. That will put more electricians to work since there will be no other work in North America.
Personal opinion only. LOL
PhilK

The problem with wind is that it has to be backed up 1:1 by conventional power generation such as gas fired, coal, oil or nuclear.
It means have to have 200% capacity to ensure 100% supply.
Does that make economic sense?
It’s pure economic lunacy.

Oh and that also would require a constant wind speed of 24 mph.

That study was done by Westinghouse Power systems.

And did I not read that while a wind turbine may “SAVE” about 6 tonnes of CO2 in its lifetime, it will require about 42 tonnes of CO2 to construct and maintain the unit during its productive lifetime.

Wanting something to work just doesn’t cut it. We need new, viable technoligies to produce energy. I saw an interesting ad from an American company that makes small nuclear reactors, about 3′ in diam. X 5′ tall. They are selling them in Africa to generate heat for steam-powered electric generators. It is ridiculous that we can’t build our own reactors for our own use, nor refineries to process our own oil. Being enviromentally conscious does not mean we need to live in mud huts without running water nor power and with a life expectancy of 35.

It is worse than that not only are these towers incredibly ugly and cover huge tracts of land these wind turbines kill birds. At Altamont Pass, California, more than 1,000 birds of prey are killed each year, along with 1,000’s more of less precious species. Of course, when a flock of ducks land on oil extraction tailings ponds due to an equipment failure and subsequently all die then the whole world hears about it.

Each one of those turbines delivers 2.3 Megawatts? (322 megawatts/ 140 Turbines)
I looked at the specs and that figure is the optimal amount of power generated under optimal conditions. If they get what others are getting (around 25% overall) that ‘plant’ will generate around 80 megawatts on average. Will be fun to watch the draw on the other power sources when there isn’t any wind, or its too cold, etc.
“The total area covers 55 square kilometres” is an interesting follow on paragraph lead in. Devoting 55 sq kilometers of land to power 45,000 homes (180,000 *.25) is, well, in the words of Mr Spock — fascinating.

Also when there is strong wind (in some cases above 20 m/s , and in some cases above 16 m/s) the power generation from the turbine is switched off.
So when we are freezing in the storm the wind power won’t be there either.

Any engineer will tell you the wind mill to backup ratio must be one to one, or else when you hit the switch, nothing will come out. Might be good to have days off for the Internet addicts, but business will need some form of generator to take the load. Can you imagine trying to operate a business only when the wind blows?
So now we have the facts about ethanol leaking out, the industry is going bankrupt, and it produces more CO2 than just gasoline — Seems they have been unable to make the corn seed hop in the ground, harvest itself and show up at the appointed distillery …
Wind power suffers variability. Or the wind blows where people don’t want to be.
There is a no alternative, except nuclear power, and of course we don’t want to do that.

Jeremy (11:38:01) :
It is worse than that not only are these towers incredibly ugly and cover huge tracts of land these wind turbines kill birds. . .

Well, I don’t think they’re ugly; to my eye, they’re graceful and elegant, a tribute to how technology can be beautiful.
But if they’re just sitting there doing no useful work, they make very expensive sculptures.
And of course, killing birds is not useful work, usually (doubtless there are farmers who might prefer a few less crows).
/Mr Lynn

Damn that html filtering…

>Zeke Hausfather (11:39:28) :
Actually, you tend to need the most electricity during the hot days of the summer, since space heating is primarily done with natural gas or fuel oil, while all cooling uses electricity. <
Hi Zeke I am guessing that you may not have been to Scotland. There is no A/C apart from large poublic buildings and office block plus possibly the very occasional factory. The need for cooling is therefore extremely small however the need for heat is a constant. Glasgow is on or close to the same latitude as Moscow.
Doesn’t get as cold as Moscow because of the moderating influence of a maritime Climate. However that makes for a damp penetrating cold, very chilly.

Here in Kansas, the movers and shakers in the state are really pushing for more wind power. Like Scotland, we often have very cold winter days with no wind and and in this part of the state, some of the hottest days of the year have no wind.
I suppose I can live longer without air conditioning in the summer than without heat in the winter, but why do I have to make that choice? The economics just don’t make any sense, especially when you remember there isn’t any viable way to store excess wind energy for when you need it. (Sure, someday there probably will be, but nothing right now).
Meanwhile, coal is a wonderful source of stored energy and it’s very affordable.

George E. Smith,
Well, okay, let’s do some ‘back of the envelope’ calcs here.
Assuming
1) we use the above turbines to meet the 20% figure
2) generously assuming they supply 50% of rated capacity.
3) Acreage requirements for the turbines are as stated in the article.
Each turbine supplies 1.65 mwatts
Total electrical demand in the US in 2007 was 764,476 mwatts (US Dept of Energy)
then, to supply 20% of that need (not accounting for increase in demand) you’d need 92,664 turbines. Each turbine requires .15168 sq miles, so 92,664 turbines would require a land area of 14,055 square miles.
Okay, so the distance from the Canadian border to Mexico is roughly 4,000 miles, so you’d be able to put 26,666 windmills in one line from Canada to Mexico. Looks to me like (based on my assumptions) you’d need one line about halfway or a little more from the Canadian border to Mexico, say about halfway through Colorado?
If the turbines deliver 25% of rate capacity it would stretch from Canada to Mexico with another line stretching about 1/4 of the way.
Using Mr. Papsdorf’s numbers, that many turbines would generate 3.892 million tons of CO2 in manufacture and maintenance.
I would wonder how long it will take to manufacture 92,000 wind turbines, not to mention transportation and assembly? I don’t know what production capacity at Siemen’s is, but I suspect it would take them a number of years to build that many windturbines. I also wonder what % of the world’s steel/aluminum production would be devoted to this endeavor.

re: Phil (11:21:21) :
They survey sites for wind powered generators for at least 12 months prior to designating them as suitable.
Yes, they do. But all statistical surveys/research will tell you is how things *were*, and are never a guarantee of what will happen at any given time in the future.

We need to convert to sources of clean, renewable alternative energy …
… clean, renewable alternative energy …
… clean, renewable alternative energy …
… clean, renewable alternative energy …
… clean, renewable alternative energy …
… It just sounds so perfect … and if you hear it often enough, it must be true. There’s just no escaping “the truth”.

This seems to be (yet) another story where “capacity” is misrepresented as actual generation. The capacity is the generating potential if all conditions are perfect for maximum generation. Overall, systems rarely provide over 30% of capacity averaged over the course of a year. Most systems are closer to 10% of rated capacity in overall average annual generation. So rather than 322 megawatts, they are going to be lucky to average a third of that over the long term.
And then there is the problem of the inflated capacity numbers themselves. It turns out that wind conditions have been rated too optimistically and the actual wind potential is really much less than the amount used for capacity calculations. In many cases the wind potential for generation has been inflated by 200% or more. That is why actual generation tends to come in at around 10% of “capacity” in many cases.
Ignore the “capacity” numbers and focus on the actual generation figures. But you probably won’t be able to find them anywhere because they are generally never published. It is only when lawsuits are brought and there is a discovery process is it exposed that the wind farms don’t earn their keep.

Have you wondered that the only way to sell these silly hardware is through “tipping” (free translation=bribery).

If anyone wants to know what the wind is doing at any time in the UK, see:
http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

“I drive the Altamont Pass quite often”
I drive over that pass, too, though not often. I don’t believe I have seen more than half the units turning at any given time.

These 140 turbines, sitting on 55 square kilometres of land, and generate 322MW’s of electricity, which at 25% efficiency means about 80 MW’s. To produce the same output as one medium sized power station of 1 gigawatt, of whatever type, would therefore require an area of 660 square kilometres, which is approximately 256 square miles, or 16 miles square.
This area must be close to the area of Glasgow and Edinburgh plus many other Scottish cities combined.
When is this form of energy going to be put into context. I don’t disagree that wind shouldn’t form a part of the grid but to portray it as the panacea for all our future energy requirements needs to be stopped before we do serious damage to our economies. That it is, remains a disturbing mystery to me,

Have you realized that only the “first world” countries are engaged in this nonsense?. “Third world” countries would involved in such a madness only if “first world” tax payers pay for it.

D Carroll,
Russia turned off the gas in the middle of the Siberian Cold Front which made the air cold and still. Triple whammy.
Perhaps Scotland can rely on global warming to keep warm?

Its a point I have raised before in the UK, the UK is kept artificially warm from the gulf stream and the predominant winds carrying the warm moist air over the country, this makes it milder than places of a similar latitude i.e. moscow, but also wet.
For it to get really cold i.e. minus figures the wind needs to stop, hence the problem with wind power – but on the plus side most of the UK has reticulated gas (which has other supply issues!) so at least people will have heating, and UK house are often well insulated.
I was pushing for a large scale tidal barrage that could harness the power of the severn estuary, but the Econazis didnt like the turbines as they “may” damage the dorsal fins of fish and it would shift the tidal cycle by say 6 hours

Mr Lynn (11:23:04) :
Are there places in the world where the wind never stops blowing?

Yeah, in places where people like RFK Jr the NIMBY doesn’t want them.
The other problem is the turbines have to be shut down if the wind blows too hard, something on the order of 50mph (depending on the turbine model). There’s a fairly narrow window for them to operate nominally.

Steve Goddard (12:22:19)
“BTW – I suggest that everyone in the UK stocks up on good rain gear for the summer, since The Met Office forecast another hot one.”
Thanks Steve, it’s already started. We’ve had wonderful sleet/rain storms in the last few days.
Back to normal then.

Patagon (12:41:32) :
I agree that wind power plants are a visual pollution and they are noisy too, but I don’t see any problem in having to back them 1:1.
Why not just spend the money on the backups instead? Coal generates electricity at about 1/2 the price of wind. With a 1:1 backup, you’re more than doubling your expenses and getting nothing in return.
If you are a large company (like those owners of wind mills), you surely are into other power generation systems. If you make your purchased gas or coal reserves last longer by switching partially to wind, you are effectively using cheaper fuel the longer you delay the use (on “normal” market conditions), so it adds profitability to your backing system.
See above. Why does wind power cost so much more than conventional power? Conventional power is cheaper than any alternate energy current available. Wind power is not profitable without subsidizes and mandates.
If you are a country which relies on imports of fossil fuels (like most countries), wind will reduce (slightly) your foreign dependency. If you are European and Russia cuts your natural gas supplies whenever she has a row with Ukraine, then making your gas storages last longer and using wind whenever available is a very good idea.
At least on the days when the wind is blowing.
I don’t think wind is an overall solution, but I don’t see anything wrong in developing renewable energies, especially if solar could be used one day to its full potential.

There is nothing wrong with developing renewable energies. Pushing them into production when they can’t perform on a reliable, cost-effective basis is something entirely different.
Steve Keohane, I think you refer to Hyperion nuclear reactors. They look pretty amazing. I wonder why we don’t see more research and investment in that direction: http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com./
Unfortunately, the enviro-politically winds are blowing the other way. Reliable energy sources such as coal and nuclear are out. Feel-good, unreliable, expensive energy sources are in.

I think it’s a winner, suitable for rivers as well as slow tidal flows, extremely eco-friendly potential for schemes both big and small, that nobody has really spotted properly yet.

The environMENTALists will have a problem with it. Some rare bacterium will be threatened by these tidal generators, I’m sure.

Acciona (Spanish company) put its 120-turbine Ttanka wind farm on the North/South Dakota border online less than a year ago. It’s 25 miles from my home. I enjoyed many nice motorcycle rides through the construction area during construction.
My initial view is that the turbines don’t hurt the view at all. I actually rather admire them Having learned more about the general economics and limitations of wind power, however, my enthusiasm is a bit chastened.
If wind power works as well as it’s often claimed, the public should be continually informed of things like exactly how much power is being generated, when the turbines are active, and when the demand factors are such that various turbines are turned on or off. Acciona claims the project produces enough power for 60,000 US homes. I’d like to know when and how often, and the costs of that power relative to our coal and hydro plants.
Ken in North Dakota
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/08-11-2008/0004865237&EDATE=

I wonder how long after reality asserts itself it will take the general public to do the math.
ah…there’s the problem: the general public doesn’t do math.

Heres the problem.
During Winter
What are some of the coldest airmasses possible? – Artic Highs. High pressure is stable air = no wind.
During Summer
What are some of the hottest airmasses possible? – Sub-Tropical Highs…. You get the picture.
What many claim is that these wind farms are placed where its windy.
However, quite often the studies to assess just how windy it is are done over 1, maybe 2 years. 2 years of weather is not long-term climatology. What happens when the PDO, or the NAO or the AMO or some other climate pattern changes phase – suddenly a location that had a favorable wind profile in the study is dead in the water for several months, years or decades.

I have a new label for what is called “renewable energy” like wind power and solar power.
The new label should be “low density, intermittent dispersed energy power”

Seems to me, you’d make a lot more progress inventing affordable new energy storage technology. That would even help with fossil generation, by evening out the load. It’s a necessary pre-condition for unreliable sources anyway, you can start to use it straight away where it’s going to be even more cost-effective with conventional sources, it makes a lot more sense to make that the priority.
Start there with the quick wins, and when you’ve extracted all the juice from fossil fuel, only then go on to develop less reliable sources like wind and tide and so on. You would have the infrastructure and experience with the technology then.
It doesn’t get the green support, perhaps because it is not as obviously reducing fossil fuel use, and perhaps because (like nuclear) it doesn’t meet their real long term goal, to reduce all energy use and technology, returning to some sort of organic hunter/gatherer society, or whatever that ‘sustainable’ nonsense is about.
It also fairly obviously isn’t cost-effective yet, or it would be used more. Waiting until it was would defeat the whole object of their game.

Wind turbines, like the parliamentarian likened today to the Speaker of the House of Commons ( topically from Glasgow), are stuck with us like chewing gum on the soles of our shoe, and for which we pay for our sins.
And also from the Telegraph today this gem of concern:-
‘Lake Windermere is being polluted by pesticides and fertilisers from farming, New Zealand Pigmyweed imported in 1911 is choking other wildlife and the lake is threatened with drought and flooding due to climate change.’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5345899/Lake-Windermere-is-polluted-say-environment-watchdogs.html

Richard111 (12:30:44) :
If anyone wants to know what the wind is doing at any time in the UK, see:
http://www.xcweather.co.uk/
—–
Thank you!

hareynolds (12:28:19) I believe it is a unit by Hyperion Power Generation, $25 million each, 28% of cost per btu of natural gas. I think the ad I saw said it would power 18,000 homes, and that it used a uranium ‘hydride compound’ (may not be correct), that is recyclable, and lasts 5 years before recharging system. That’s $278/year for electricty.
I always wanted to run the numbers on what just nuclear waste could do in a small unit in one’s backyard for individual use, or maybe a few houses. If well contained, it could be a good solution for waste disposal. It would not even have to produce steam, just warm water for heat to put a big dent in energy bills.

The new label should be “low density, intermittent dispersed energy power”
How about “dispersed, random-intensity power” DRIP.
Maybe DROP. DROOP. can’t come up with POOP, although it would be appropriate.

In Sweden in late january this year wind power was actually down to 1,3% of full capacity. This means that Swedish wind generators were not generating enough power to run their own control and de-icing systems.
For anyone interestid in viewing wind power in action, this is a real-time graph of how some 800 wind generators are performing.
http://www.vindstat.nu/
The blue line is 24 hour figures, the red line monthly figures. The line at the top of the graph (8000 MWh per dygn) is about 46% of full capacity. Apparently they don’t foresee the system even reaching 50%. The average is about 20% or a little less.

….and of course it makes one wonder why we ever stopped using them in the first place…….

Ira (13:12:25) :
PLEASE REMOVE PhilK (11:12:46) : I though you had a rule against name-calling. Using the term “Nazi” (in “econazi”) for anyone who has not killed at least a million people trivializes the holocaust.
Sorry Ira, but you are a speech-nazi and probably a soup-nazi.

“Steve Keohane (11:35:57) :
Wanting something to work just doesn’t cut it. We need new, viable technoligies to produce energy. I saw an interesting ad from an American company that makes small nuclear reactors, about 3′ in diam. X 5′ tall. They are selling them in Africa to generate heat for steam-powered electric generators. It is ridiculous that we can’t build our own reactors for our own use, nor refineries to process our own oil. Being enviromentally conscious does not mean we need to live in mud huts without running water nor power and with a life expectancy of 35.”
– And who’s going to cart your waste away? What will they charge you for it? Where will they dump it?
Not just the warmists living in fairyland.

Way off topic, but is it odd to have freeze warnings into the South this late in the year. Our lilacs mostly froze this year where I live due to a SERIES of late snow storms/cold weather.

OT: Obama to Set New Vehicle Rules, First Carbon Limit (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agqPp0iSPbp4&refer=worldwide
Obama to Set New Vehicle Rules, First Carbon Limit (Update1)
By Kim Chipman and John Hughes
May 18 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama will announce tomorrow new rules for vehicle emissions and mileage, setting the first-ever nationwide standard for greenhouse-gas pollution, according to people familiar with the plan.
The limit will be coordinated with new national fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, said the people, who asked not to be identified before the announcement.
The action, which follows California’s push for approval of its own proposed standards, is the “biggest single step to curb global warming,” Dan Becker, director of the environmental group Safe Climate Campaign, said in an interview.
The White House’s top energy, environment and transportation officials have been meeting with automaker executives and other groups as the administration worked to craft a single national policy for vehicle emissions. It seeks to avoid the confusion of different state rules across the country.
The Washington-based Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., has called for a single standard.
It’s “yet another indication of the growing consensus within the business community that Congress needs to take strong action on energy reform, and it needs to do it now,” Dan Weiss, a director of climate policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, a Democratic-leaning policy group, said in a statement.
2012 Vehicles
The proposed federal rule would start with 2012 vehicle models and by 2016 models would equate to a fuel-economy standard of slightly less than 35.5 miles per gallon, said one of the persons knowledgeable about the plan.
The Transportation Department announced in March that cars and light trucks will be required to meet a U.S. fuel-economy average of 27.3 miles per gallon for 2011 models, a 2 mpg increase from the previous year’s level.
Obama, in his first week in office, directed his administration to reconsider the denial by former President George W. Bush’s administration of California’s request to set its own rules limiting tailpipe emissions. GM and other automakers have said the California standard would cost billions of dollars and harm their struggling industry.
California requested a waiver to impose its own standards in 2005 and has said that the Bush administration misinterpreted the Clean Air Act in making its decision. California’s program is aimed at cutting gases tied to global warming 30 percent by 2016.

I lived in Glasgow for many years – when it’s cold, more often than not there’s no wind!

One of the issues of alternative energies is scale. An analogy is making chocolate at home or in a small store front and watching the production line for Hershey’s Kisses.
An actual example can be seen using Wikipedia and Google Earth. Of interest is the “pumped storage” associated with Kinzua (kin-zoo) Dam in northern Pennsylvania. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Dam
Use these coordinates [ 41.839736 n, 79.002619 w ] to get a better look. Zoom out until you can see the entire reservoir and compare it to the small circular storage basin on the ridge-top to the south. Can you scale this up to be really helpful? In whose back yard?
Here’s an idea: Disband the UN-IPCC and its nonsense and divert all the money and brainpower to study electricity storage possibilities.

Re: ethanol
There is actually a better solution (pun intended):

Performance and emission characteristics of a turpentine–diesel dual fuel engine
R. Karthikeyana, and N.V. Mahalakshmib 2006
This paper describes an experimental study concerning the feasibility of using bio-oil namely turpentine obtained from the resin of pine tree. The emission and performance characteristics of a D.I. diesel engine were studied through dual fuel (DF) mode. Turpentine was inducted as a primary fuel through induction manifold and diesel was admitted into the engine through conventional fueling device as an igniter. The result showed that except volumetric efficiency, all other performance and emission parameters are better than those of diesel fuel with in 75% load. The toxic gases like CO, UBHC are slightly higher than that of the diesel baseline (DBL). Around 40–45% smoke reduction is obtained with DF mode. The pollutant Nox is found to be equal to that of DBL except at full load. This study has proved that approximately 75% diesel replacement with turpentine is possible by DF mode with little engine modification.

Good old fashioned turpentine. And it doesn’t burn food for fuel.

Can we tax GE enough into building those turbines for free?

I was in one of these machines while operating. 850KW On what was a pretty calm evening, it was producing 160kw +/- 10kw Installed on a Collage campus in an urban area. Although it’s connected to the grid, the collage receives no revenue and therefore dumps that extra power. In spite of this, it’s expected to pay the 1.2 million euro installation cost in 7 years. That a year less then the original estimate.
The installation cost of one of these turbines (1MW) is about 1.5m euro. At 25% efficient and at retail electricity cost thats paid for in 4.5 years.
What does it cost to build a coal or gas fired plant and what does the fuel cost to run it?

The wind blows like hell up here on top of the Llano, trouble is that it is not constant. Sometimes it blows 50 mph and sometimes it does not blow at all. I go North bound out of Amarillo and see all these monster wind farms and fewer than half of the things are even turning, even on a gusty day.
Politics, uhg… I like freemarkets better.
REPLY: I can vouch for that, I drove from Amarillo to Liberal, KS and back down into OK by Buffalo, OK for station USHCN surveys and saw many wind projects with blades idle. Gearboxes are the key- they don’t hold up. – Anthony

Interesting that the UK has just started the worlds largest wind power project. Those interested can go:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/05/london-array-20090517.html#more
The plan is to get a gigawatt out of 90 square miles off the coast with roughly 1000 towers. Eleven towers per square mile.
Too bad they don’t give details of the increased government support which supposedly makes the project feasible. I am dubious about doing this for $3B for the first phase of 630MW. That just seems too low for such construction.
But maybe there is more money going into construction than the article mentions.
Wind power stats continue to baffle me. No cost ever seems exactly clear or honest. Estimates for expected turbine life seem to vary from days to centuries. And the actual power output – not capacity – even from existing sites is ferociously disputed.
With that in mind, it is a very good thing when others build. Facts will gradually settle the arguments.

Green’s don’t care much about logic, I actually had this conversation:
Greenie – This house is run is run 100% on solar power, it’s for the poor you know, so they won’t be at the mercy of greedy power companies.
Me – Ah, good how will they get power at night?
Greenie – I just said it’s “SOLAR,” they’ll get it from the sun of course!

Bill Marsh (12:14:46) :
George E. Smith,
Well, okay, let’s do some ‘back of the envelope’ calcs here.
Assuming
1) we use the above turbines to meet the 20% figure
2) generously assuming they supply 50% of rated capacity.
3) Acreage requirements for the turbines are as stated in the article.
Each turbine supplies 1.65 mwatts
Total electrical demand in the US in 2007 was 764,476 mwatts (US Dept of Energy)
then, to supply 20% of that need (not accounting for increase in demand) you’d need 92,664 turbines. Each turbine requires .15168 sq miles, so 92,664 turbines would require a land area of 14,055 square miles.
Okay, so the distance from the Canadian border to Mexico is roughly 4,000 miles, so you’d be able to put 26,666 windmills in one line from Canada to Mexico. Looks to me like (based on my assumptions) you’d need one line about halfway or a little more from the Canadian border to Mexico, say about halfway through Colorado?
If the turbines deliver 25% of rate capacity it would stretch from Canada to Mexico with another line stretching about 1/4 of the way.
Using Mr. Papsdorf’s numbers, that many turbines would generate 3.892 million tons of CO2 in manufacture and maintenance.
I would wonder how long it will take to manufacture 92,000 wind turbines, not to mention transportation and assembly? I don’t know what production capacity at Siemen’s is, but I suspect it would take them a number of years to build that many windturbines. I also wonder what % of the world’s steel/aluminum production would be devoted to this endeavor.
This is so brilliant.. had to repost but would also add the question that many turbines… and the the conversion of that much atmospheric energy/ convection to electric on such a scale… would by terms of absolute math/ physics.. directly and certainly change the global climate dynamics.. Some one here must have the mathmatical chops to have an idea of the totals.

“”” Bruce Foutch (13:29:22) :
RE: George E. Smith (13:09:31) :
“I drive over Vasco Rd to the delta to fish regularly, and we use those fans there to decide whether to go home or not. When the fans are turned on; they generate a lot of wind over Frank’s Tract; and since it is very shallow (8 ft) it builds up dangerous waves for small fishing boats.”
Sorry George, but I think you got your physics backward. Windmills are passive and can only remove energy from the wind. They do not create wind, as they are not turned on in the sense you imply. “””
Hey Bruce; if the fans are turned on, there is always a wind blowing; if they fans are turned off there is no wind blowing. pretty near 100% correlation; so it should be obvious to anyone that the fans are creating the wind.
Just ask AlGore; and he’ll whip a coupla graphs in front of you and say: “see don’t they look correlated to you? ”
Seems obvious to me; correlation equals causation!
George

Britannic,
I experienced some of that global warming drought on Lake Windermere last August. It poured rain the entire time we were on the boat.
The good news was that the lake wasn’t very crowded.

NoAstronomer- “Echoing Paul James reply to Zeke Hausfather on electricity demand in winter …”
As an additional data point on winter versus summer peaking of electricity use, Progress Energy in Florida (where I live) reports that it hits peak demand in the coldest months of the year, not the warmest. There is freezing weather in north and central florida, a lot of electric or heat pump heating systems, and little to no residential gas infrastructure.
Florida, fortunately, has not jumped head-first into wind turbine farms, seeing as it has some of the worst wind resources (Class 1 or 2) in the country. We are trying to build four new nuclear reactors. Time will tell if this ever happens.
Texas uses wind farm energy in day-ahead electric supply scheduling with an 8% of capacity rating. That is what they feel they can count on for day-ahead contracts. Those farms are in some of the best wind class regions in the country, and should theoretically be producing at 30 – 35% of capacity.

Bill Marsh (12:14:46) :” George E. Smith,
Well, okay, let’s do some ‘back of the envelope’ calcs here.
Assuming
1) we use the above turbines to meet the 20% figure
2) generously assuming they supply 50% of rated capacity.
3) Acreage requirements for the turbines are as stated in the article. ”
I don’t see any replacement cost or figures concerning down time after the spring tornados rip up a whole bunch of these turbines, as they most certainly will.

dhogza,
You said, “If you want to reduce raptor mortality at the hand of man to zero, you’re going to have to ban the automobile, airplane, tall buildings …” I am sure some of your friends have palns for exactly that.
The problem is that windmills do not do as advertised. They do not save nearly as much carbon as claimed, they make undependable power, they are completely dependent on tax payer subsidy, etc. And no matter how much lipstick AGW promoters put on windmills, they are still huge ugly clutter on the landscape.

It seems that neither the general public; nor the political class; nor even the venture capital investment class seem to get the fundamental hangup in “Renewable Green (clean) Energy.”
The sun supplies it at an average global equalized rate of 168 Watts per square metre on the Trenberth Scale.
At least with PEV solar, the energy output is about linear with the energy input; and since most solar cells are just Silicon diodes, the output Voltage is fairly constant at around 0.5 Volts (under optimum loading) over a wide range of input solar irradiance; well it changes about 26 milliVolts for a doubling of the solar flux, and output load current; or about 60mV per decade. So you get about a 12% Voltage change for a 10:1 change in solar irradiance; and that range of supply Voltage can easily be handled by even crude DC-AC inverter circuits.
By anybody’s standards, that is a pretty good situation; and actually the biggest problem might be designing the inverter circuits to operate over a 10:1 ratio of supply current.
Now contrast that with a wind turbine, where the available power goes as the cube of the wind speed; so you lose 87.5% of your generating capacity for a 2:1 reduction in wind speed; and you get an 8X overload for a doublng of design wind speed. Well there’s a 4X increase in the thrust on the tower; plus there’s a vertical wind shear gradient that any sailor can tell you about; so the fan blade close to the ground sees a lower wind speed than the blade going over the top; so theres a cyclic thrust problem that flexes the blade axially every rotation; creating a vibration that literally shakes the system to death. Well yes, you can ameliorate these problems with individually feathered blades; pretty much like a helicopter rotor has to do; but that is an additional mechanical complexity and wear and tear factor; that wind farms have to deal with.
And yes they are ugly as sin; just ask the Kennedy Compound denizens.
PEV solar arrays in urban or residential areas are relatively benign aesthetically. I like what Applied Materials is doing covering their employee parking lots with them. So they get auxilliary power, and the employees get a covered carport for their chariot.
But it still eats a lot of area since the PEV efficiency is roughly in the 15-20% range; so the electric output now averages more like 30W/m^2; with a peak of about 4-5 times that.
A plant to generate about the 205 of total electricity sought would cover only about 30,000 square miles or 19.2 million arcres; which just happens to be the exact size of the whole Arctic National wildlife Reserve.
So is it better to use maybe 2400 Acres of the ANWR arctic desert; that is visited by no-one; or the whole 19.2 million Acres of the Desert southwest that is home to millions of people, and visited by millions more; and which would certainly result in an unexpected change in the climate of the whole desert South western United States; if not the entire country.
Time to get real; renewable green energy is a good niche application auxilliary energy source; but it isn’t going to work for prime time; it is only barely superior to the fig trees we started with, and today there aren’t enough monkeys to gather figs for us at a fast enough clip; even if we had the fig trees.
George

I work for a Florida electric utility.. and can verify with absolutness the point made by Chris y.
Our greatest demand is in winter… not summer, and my company is building a giant solar farm…. which will in our greatest demand have its least capacity… and I will add the additional point of clarity the such facilities( wind or solar) are indeed more significantly affected by adverse weather events( hurricanes, tornadoes) and as such can be rendered in effectual for significant lengths of time as a result.
take for instance the current canopy numbers expected in the next 5 days( overall cloud cover during sunlit hours) and any solar farm here in (sunny south Florida) would be effectively neutralized.

How about ice build up on the blades? Any danger from flying ice when they pick up speed after being iced up?
Consider the tons of concrete needed for each windmills foundation, and the paved roads needed to service these windmills, not to mention the dead raptors and noise. If thats green I am an alien.
Of course, the argument that modern wind farms are not as deadly to raptors may be true, but there are few wind farms today. Once they start expanding in numbers, there will be wind farms built in locations they should not be built.
And those who count the dead raptors on private property that is receiving carbon credits for the use of their land are not going to be without bias. It would only be a matter of time before rodents learn to seek safe havens around these windmills which will lead to more raptors deaths (some by starvation) and exploding rodent populations that could upset the surrounding environment.

Wind does not make much sense without a back up system and the locations in the middle of no where requires huge transmission towers and lines to be erected. In searching for home wind system, I came across a site that advocates a “new” style turbine system for cities. It is much different looking and they are installing in a variety of urban environments. Starts around $15,000 for 1Kw service. Like the looks and it’s quiet. Here’s a link to the site: http://www.aerotecture.com/
If you watch the documentary page, you can see the windmill in action. It’s lightweight and apparently easy to set up, no harm to birds, no throwing of ice, and can operate in turburlent wind. Interesting….
debby

I flew into Chicago last winter on a -15 F day. Clear, sunny and still! As a power plant guy I watch all the plants and had a good chuckle flying over the Dresden Nuclear Plant. It was running as fog was forming over the cooling pond. The surrounding wind turbines were not stirring. I guessed about 50-80 MW peak of Wind Turbines generating nothing around a 1300 MW nuke.
Toys!

The San Onofre nuclear power station in Southern Cal., occupies about 84 acres of land. That station is pumping out 2,350 MW from its two reactors 24/7 year in and year out.
From time to time I have to drive out to the imperial valley for my work and I pass along a wind mill station in the mountains. Typically around 75% of the windmills are actually turning, the others are, for whatever reason, static. This is when the wind is actually blowing, which is not all the time. I’m not sure exactly how many windmills, working perfectly with ample wind, it would take to match the power output of one 84 acre plant but I am sure that the windmills would be occupying square miles of land, not acres. A lot of square miles. Is this what we want? Is this the best we can come up with? I hope not.

Nomination for Quote for the Week:
Retired Engineer (15:12:47) said :
We don’t have a good ‘battery’ of any kind. Invent one and the world will push an electric car to your door.
OT, full of factual errors, but I figure this needs NYT AGW puff piece needs IMMEDIATE VIVISECTION and SUBSEQUENT GRILLING (followed by consumption with a nice Chianti) by the WUWT cohort:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/science/earth/18juneau.html
bon appetit

“How much rain will fall in the sea rather than wait to hit the hills?”
I would like to see them bore a hole through one of the coastal mountains and put a turbine in the center. When the Santa Ana’s blow, there would be a gale through that tunnel. And I mean a turbine more like a jet engine. You could taper the bore so it constricts right where the turbine is and you would have to somehow screen off the entrances to prevent debris buildup, but in some places it would, I believe, generate a lot of power.
Also, when the wind blows the other way, it would allow a path for more moisture laden water to get inland to dump more precipitation on the next row of hills inland rather than dumping it all on the coastal range which simply washes back out to sea.

D Carroll (12:36:30) :
“As for killing birds, my kitchen window probably kills more.”
Sounds like you are an eco-felon for having such a window. Have you no shame, Sir?

World Electricity Prices: Denmark, Holland, Germany and UK “lead the way” in cost per kilowatthr and turbines. We in the USA aim to follow their lead. As quickly as possible!
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/elecprih.html
Onatario is purchasing On-Shore Wind at 13.5c/kwh while they are buying it wholesale normally for 4c/kwh
http://www.nofreewind.com/index.html
Altamont Pass Wind = California Chumps!
http://nofreewind.blogspot.com/2009/04/california-wind-not-there-when-you-need.html
North Dakota Weekly Wind = No wind……no wind…….no wind….Wind capital of USA
http://basinelectric.com/Energy_Resources/Wind/Basin_Electric_Generation/index.html
How your electric company will pull their hair out for Your Wind. Seriously, your electric company would NEVER EVER do this to YOU, it if wasn’t mandated.
http://www.nofreewind.com/zugzwang.html
Reliance on Wind Power WILL cause blackouts, (double click video to go to youtube if it stalls)
http://nofreewind.blogspot.com/2009/05/video-wind-plant-power-output-curves.html
How much to build?
http://nofreewind.com/power_cost_build.jpg
from http://nofreewind.com/wind_us.pdf Wind Power in the US
EVERYWHERE in the world it is the same. The Gov’t pays a huge portion of the cost in tax “credits” to build these monsters. In the US about 65% back in 5 yrs. Then they FORCE the power companies to buy the kilowatts, realize at night and on weekends the Load or need of power is about 60% and the coal/nuclear are just cruising along, they don’t need any wind! and to some degree they can only go so low in output. They can follow the wind to a point, but look at the charts and see the insanity that is needed to do that. http://www.nofreewind.com/Charts.html (double-click most to enlarge). Then most power companies pay the wind farms inflated rates for the electricity.(as in Ontario above). And Delaware just said that the electricity bills are going up by about 6%/month for the one offshore wind farm. Offshore wind, instead of being nirvana, is even twice the cost or >15c/kwhour WHOLESALE!!! And then to finally add to our MISERY, in the US the Gov’t give another behind the back Renewable Energy Credit of 2.1c/kwh which is a little less than 1/2 the price of regular wholesale.
Terrific overview from an engineer: http://the-green-wind.com/overview/wind_power_engineers_opinion.pdf
Finally. 30 miles down the road from me, we have a nuclear plant, 2 towers, that supplies 2400 MW of power, it worked continuously non-stop all last year!! 2400 MWhours. To replace that one plant. 2 MW turbines times 5,000 = 10,000MW. But the turbines only produce 25% of that, their capacity, so the 10,000MW = 2400MWhours from 5,000 turbines.
Greenies don’t care about their environment whatsoever.
http://the-green-wind.com/overview/boone_fragmentation.pdf
These 5,000 turbines would be strung out 6 per mile on our beautiful ridges in Pennsylvania, or almost 1,000 miles of trubines and road and 4 acres of clearcut minimun or 20,000 acres. OR we have this one iddy biddy nuclear plant which takes up about 30 acres!!!!
sorry for long post, but I tried to pick out my best stuff.
http://www.nofreewind.blogspot.com/

“Are there places in the world where the wind never stops blowing?”
Congress!

Let me add, I meant 2.1 cent Production Tax Credit, (not RenewEngCr)
Also, as far as cost to build. For the “nameplate capacity” Wind is a bit cheaper than coal, and less costly than nuclear. But remember Wind only produces energy, which is measured in time, at 25% on average of nameplate capacity, ie. 2 MW turbines produces .5 MW power. (but you have to convert to hours/time to get energy) So it is MUCH more expensive than ALL technologies build a certain amt of Energy. Nat Gas is the cheapest to build but most costly to run.

Say I had a desperate desire to reduce CO2 emissions….
The obvious thing to do would be to do the following.
[1] Mine and refine metals emitting large amounts of CO2 form the Fuels, Electricity and Coking Coal for the steel.
[2] Fabricate the refined metals into Windmill parts and assemble parts in a Factory, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[3] Transport windmill parts from warehouse to factory and completed windmills from factory to warehouse, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[4] Transport windmills to “wind farm” sites, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[5] Build, Operate, Maintain, and Decomission Gas fired power plants for the backup power, emitting VERY large amounts of CO2.
[6] Build and Maintain the electricity transmission infrastructure from the wind farms to the existing grid, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[7] Build, warehouse, and transport maintenance parts for the windmills, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[8] Conduct maintenance activities on the windmills, emitting large amounts of CO2.
[9] Decommission and Dispose of Windmills at end of life, emitting large amounts of CO2.
And the reason for doing this is so that I can reduce emissions of CO2.
The investment of resources into Windfarms is an absolute scandal that we will rue in the future when we discover that we have underfunded infrastructure investement in,
[1] Cost effective base load power generation.
[2] Transport and Ports Infrastructure.
[3] Water supply.
[4] Hospitals
[5] Education
etc.
Windmills the abject lunacy of our times.

Re: Przemysław Pawełczyk (15:46:37) :
——
Not every municipality in UK is so stupid. Read the short post of mine
“Renewable” Is Kinda Perpetuum Mobile
based on article from Guardian
Ministerial hectoring on green energy is fascism in the wind [>]
The Guardian, James Lovelock
Sunday 29 March 2009
——
How on earth did I forget the hyperlink? (it’s at 0.55 AM here) Here it is:
http://p2o2.blogspot.com/2009/04/renewable-is-kinda-perpetuum-mobile.html
There you’ll find also hyperlink to another
When People Got It? That They Are Duped by EcoMorons?
http://p2o2.blogspot.com/2009/02/when-people-got-it-that-they-are-duped.html
based on excellent review of the wind energy costs by Gregory Murphy
The Non-Science of Wind Energy
LaRouche PAC, by Gregory Murphy
February 7, 2009
Mea culpa. Regards

Pincher Creek, Alberta has huge windfarms. The latest tally on bird kills is 16,000 per year !!! The turbines do not differentiate between raptors, swallows or any other kind of bird. These farms are also a LONG WAY from anywhere!!! This makes transmission of said power a HUGE problem. When will people realize the futility of this endeavor and move on to real solutions. I am not poo-pooing wind and solar just because I do not like them. The fact is that they are not practical by any stretch. Can we move on to other ideas that WILL work?

Ah, but the earth is warming, don’t forget, so there won’t be any cold days that leave us without electricity. Hey, you know the climate cultists will say that sooner or later! In fact, and unfortunately, I’ve already had one “kindly” point that out to my unelightened mind. So it all comes back to square one… they simply refuse to aknowledge that things aren’t warming and that, even it was, that CO2 has nothing to do with it. Therefore, they will continue to be windy about wind power no matter what reality has to say on the matter. Yep. Reality just bounces off their brains just like bullets bounce off of superman’s chest. They just won’t die, and that’s what makes them especially annoying!

Gearboxes are the key- they don’t hold up. – Anthony

In the previous windmill thread there was one post with a link to a company making a gearbox-free wind turbine.
Not that this would obviate the many inherent limitations of wind power that have been discussed in this thread. Perhaps the most convincing argument against any large-scale deployment of wind turbines was the anonymous PDF linked by ‘nofreewind’, though I’d have liked to see an author’s name attached:

Terrific overview from an engineer: http://the-green-wind.com/overview/wind_power_engineers_opinion.pdf

The non-blade turbines mentioned somewhere above and in the previous thread (essentially rotating cylinders of various types) seem intriguing, and perhaps free of some of the deficiencies and hazards of the big ‘propeller’ turbines. They seem to be designed for small-scale applications, but that may well be where wind power is most suited.
It would be interesting to see what would happen to the wind-power industry if the government subsidies were to disappear. It will be hard to convince even free-market politicians to drop those, given the widespread ‘conventional wisdom’ that ‘alternative energy’ is both necessary and desirable. What’s needed is a campaign to turn public opinion back in favor of the ‘old reliables’, coal, gas, and nuclear, and to let the free market deal with ‘alternative’ technologies as they may or may not appear.
The problem is that the ‘greens’ and the media have convinced practically everyone that the old reliables are bad, so we have to find alternatives, no matter how foolish or uneconomical they are.
Time for an educational campaign. We need a political party that is willing to stand up and proclaim: “Cheap, abundant energy is the key to our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives, health, prosperity, and happiness. Coal, gas, oil, and nuclear power are abundant and cheap, and properly controlled, not a danger to anyone or anything. It’s time to stop fearing the future and to forge ahead confidently, trusting to common sense and American technology.”
Where is that political party?
/Mr Lynn

It seems like a good time to get some facts into the discussion, as there has been much disinformation spread about wind energy.
A good resource for wind facts may be found here:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43025.pdf
From this, average capacity factor in California for 2006 was 36.9 percent of nameplate capacity — see Table 7 on page 24. There are some wind power plants with capacity factors in the mid-40 percent range (see Fig. 21).
Wind power plants receive, on average, about 5 cents per kwh generated (see pgs 19 – 20)
The key to intermittent renewable power is storage, hence the incredible amount of research into this area. see
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/energy-storage-key-to-renewables.html
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-i-support-renewable-energy.html
Wind power plants are not toys, as some have written above. In California in 2006, wind power provided more than 4,400 Giga-Watt-hours. The data is available here:
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html
Backup generation is not a major issue. The fossil-fired plants will be built whether wind power plants are built or not. Until economic renewable storage systems exist, that is the case. This is the same issue as fluctuating load on a utility grid — when the wind increases, the fossil plants throttle back a bit, and when the wind drops, the fossil plants increase output a bit. In California, the fuel that is reduced is natural gas.
For the big picture, T. Boone Pickens has it right. Every kwh generated by wind and solar frees up natural gas that can and should be used for vehicle fuel. That reduces petroleum demand, and imports of oil from the Middle East.

Rob (16:15:05) :
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this case it also depends how near the object is.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/windturbines2.gif

That is a rather appalling misplacement of a giant turbine, rather like something out of the old movie version of “War of the Worlds.”
But is it real, or is it Photoshopped?
/Mr Lynn
Reply: A quick search found this caption for the photo, but not necessarily proof.

One of the massive turbines of the Black Law windfarm in South Lanarkshire, ScotlandThis is a duplicate of a Digital Negative taken on a Nikon D2X camera, with a Sigma 50-500mm f/4-6.3EX DG HSM lens, of one of the 42 massive turbines at Blacklaw Wind Farm, which rise to a height of 110 metres to the tip of the blades. The picture was taken from a distance of about 4/5th of a mile from the village centre of Forth on the B7016 road looking NW.

~ charles the moderator

Roger Sowell,
You said “The fossil-fired plants will be built whether wind power plants are built or not.”
You are missing the point of the article – the UK government is too panicked about CO2 to build the necessary fossil fuel plants.
BTW – you linked to a table which showed wind producing 1.5% of California’s electricity. Should we be impressed?

Reply: A quick search found this caption for the photo, but not necessarily proof.
. . . The picture was taken from a distance of about 4/5th of a mile from the village centre of Forth on the B7016 road looking NW.
~ charles the moderator

Maybe not doctored, then; just seriously foreshortened by the very long lens!
/Mr Lynn

Johnnyb (14:53:21) :
REPLY: I can vouch for that, I drove from Amarillo to Liberal, KS and back down into OK by Buffalo, OK for station USHCN surveys and saw many wind projects with blades idle. Gearboxes are the key- they don’t hold up. – Anthony
Anthony there are other machines that do not use gearboxes:
http://www.enercon.de/en/_home.htm
That Utube should have been a link NOT embedded, sorry!

Stephen Goddard,
You can be as impressed or unimpressed as you like. I fully understand the point you tried to make, and that is, that it is a waste of everyone’s time and energy to pursue renewable energy. You are certainly entitled to that view.
And yes, wind is a small percentage of California’s energy supply, but that is limited by geography. Wind will never be a huge source of supply in California, but it has greater potential in the Great Plains area, and offshore. In California overall, geothermal plays a much greater role at around 5 percent.
One could look to Iowa for greater percentages, but a smaller base. Iowa achieves around 5 to 6 percent of its electricity from wind.
Politicians are generally not engineers, and do not listen to engineers when they should. The engineers could easily tell the politicians that to rely solely on wind power will not work. None of us ever claimed it would. As I wrote above, only economic energy storage will achieve that goal.
Some cynics write that after 30 years of pouring research money into renewables, we in the U.S. obtain barely 2 percent of our electricity from that source. Therefore, it is a bust and we should cut off the funds.
From the table I linked to above, renewables provide 10 percent of all power generated and sold in California. Renewable generation is mandated by law to be at least 20 percent by the end of 2010, and 33 percent by 2020. As California is a rather large state with one of the top power generation and consumption figures, those are impressive figures for renewables. I suppose whether one is impressed or not depends on one’s point of view.
For comparison, the toxic nuclear power plants so beloved by the anti-renewable crowd provides only 12 percent of the power sold in California. That percentage continues to drop as nuclear power will never increase here, but renewables and natural gas plants will.

Roger,
My biggest complaint about “renewables” is the environmental destruction which low intensity power sources cause. Power lines everywhere is something that which old environmentalists like myself detest.
Why not sink the billions into developing economical fusion power? Get that solved, and all the other energy technologies become irrelevant.

Steven Goddard,
I am a rational environmentalist, and completely enjoy the outdoors. Few things are as refreshing as hiking and camping through the High Sierras or sailing the high seas.
But as an engineer, I am also aware that the benefits of abundant energy are worth the costs of having it. Economies of scale dictate that power lines will be built to bring the power from the large generating plant to the consumer. Distributed generation, as that term is now used, reduces the need for power lines because the power is generated either on-site, or much closer to the consumer. Cogeneration in industrial facilities also reduces the need for transmission lines. The realities of solar and wind power require some transmission lines to collect and send the power to the consumers.
One could also argue that telephone poles across the land are a blight, yet for decades that was (and still is) the case, just so consumers could use telephones rather than wait for snail mail for communication. Roads, highways, bridges, railroads, ports, cities, all are useful yet change the natural landscape.
As for nuclear fusion, it has been a long while since I looked into the state of that art (early 1980’s). There seem to be insurmountable difficulties in finding materials of construction that will not melt or evaporate at the very high temperatures obtained in a fusion reaction. Magnetic pinch bottles were used, and perhaps still are, to squeeze plasma until it begins the fusion process. Even if that fusion process is someday sustainable (they were thrilled at achieving fusion temperature for a fraction of a second), melt-down is a very real problem.
There were two fundamental problems to overcome, the first being how to sustain the fusion reaction, the second how to keep the thing from melting. Sustaining the fusion reaction required a magnetic bottle with an inlet for fresh fuel, and an outlet for the reaction products. The nature of a magnetic bottle does not allow for inlets or outlets, at least at that time. There may have been advances since then, I do not know.
Then, finding a way to do something useful with the heat without melting the reactor is a bit of a problem. The materials science professors and researchers were having quite a bit of difficulty with that one. It had something to do with the energy of inter-atomic bonding, under which everything they tried disintegrated at those temperatures.
It is a very good thing that the sun is so very far away from Earth.
Therefore, unless some amazing breakthroughs in magnetic bottles and heat-resistant materials have occurred, or will occur, fusion is off the list of energy providers.
We (the engineers) are much closer to having renewable energy storage systems that work reliably and economically. At that point, wind, solar, wave, and ocean current energy will provide everlasting, cheap, reliable power. And that is a very good thing.

Roger,
I hold degrees in science and engineering and have worked for many decades as both, and am keenly aware that harnessing fusion is just a technology problem.

Steven Goddard (21:22:54) :
Why not sink the billions into developing economical fusion power?
Roger Sowell (22:13:16) :
We (the engineers) are much closer to having renewable energy storage systems (…)
And that is a very good thing.
Messrs Engineers,
You are closer to (stolen via taxes) bucks, be frank. What about superconducting lines deep in the ground for power lines? BTW Do not the “underground” fiber optic cables supersede the copper “air-lines”? Do you have to spoil everything in the name of money?
Regards

bill. Also don’t post so much irrelevant stuff when you answer me next time. One specification with almost a page of lines wasn’t relevant at all. 3 blades… Rotating clockwise… etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Graaaaasp. Nothing was relevant but one line.

It is a sad sad world that these carpetbaggers proposing useless wind farms to receive government subsidies have been allowed to perpetuate the lie that wind turbines have any impact on CO2 production.
Roaring Forties – Hydro Tasmania are waiting for their government subsidies to be guaranteed before they build thier proposed wind farm at Pipers Creek in the beautiful Macedon Ranges of central Victoria Australia.

Laws of physics deemed capitalist & warmongering, government funds peaceful perpetual motion.

James P (01:25:20) :
Please, read the following blogs’ posts on nuclear reactors:
1) http://nextbigfuture.com/
2) http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/
and do not invoke memories of “Jack Lemmon (stupid) smile…” and Hanoi Jane’s equally intelligent facial expressions…
Regards

sorry about the typo!

But when they are working we burn a lot less fossil fuels! If they work at full capacity for 30% of the year then we burn less fossil fuels for 30% of the year … surely that makes sense?
It’s been discussed up thread, but no, that’s not the way it works.

Mike D. (23:53:29) :
“Well, I don’t think they’re ugly; to my eye, they’re graceful and elegant, a tribute to how technology can be beautiful.” [quoting me]
. . . I am sorry, but your personal opinion on what is beautiful counts for absolutely nothing in the real world. What does count is the opinion of petty bureaucrats, carpetbagger functionaries who determine whether your home is in keeping with their whims or not. And most often not. But the big ugly windmills get a free pass because… well, who really knows?

Right; my personal opinion counts for nothing. I remember being impressed with the wind farms near Spain’s Atlantic coast, dozens of graceful turbines turning languidly while cattle grazed beneath. But I can understand how some would not want pristine wilderness invaded by these huge instruments of technology. And my personal aesthetic does not mean that I agree with politicians spending taxpayer’s (= my) money on unnecessary projects that will just increase my electric bills.
If unsubsidized ‘alternative’ power systems could bring me electricity more cheaply than ‘traditional’ systems (including nuclear power), then I’m all for them. If not, then send them back to the drawing boards and let’s drill, mine, and burn.
The problem is, the public has been brainwashed into thinking that drilling, mining, and burning are evil. If you want to keep the “petty bureaucrats, carpetbagger functionaries” from building “ugly” wind farms next door, you’ll have to turn around public opinion and get the politicians to stop the subsidies.
/Mr Lynn

I had a letter published in our local paper (Charleston, SC, Post & Courier, May 13th) regarding wind power. It was in response to another letter indicating that off-shore wind power could generate (and implicitly replace) twice the power consumed by South Carolinians.
I subsequently got an e-mail from an individual at Clemson University Restoration Institute (although the address was from Eco Energy LLC). His response, however, did not refute any points made about the limited capabilities of wind power, but did indicate that projected figures for SC would be a ‘significant’ 10%. The actual Megawatt capacity may be a significant number, but it’s a far cry from the requirements. I don’t believe in anyones books that 10% is significant. This doesn’t mean that wind power should be abandoned, but when traditional means are plentiful and cheap, the economics plays a significant role.
In general, people cannot comprehend large numbers. Anything above a thousand (kilo, mega, giga, billion, trillion, and so on) is equated to be ‘a lot’. Unfortunately, without a baseline comparison – an error of omission – the political commentary all just hot air which the general public breathe deeply.
Sadly, we live in a Twitteresque world (the next generation of the 30 second YouTube video): if you can’t explain your argument in 140 characters or less, then you have no comprehensible argument.

JohnnyB,
Are you advocating the use of breeder reactors? Do you like the prospect of North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Pakistan pumping out large quantities of Plutonium?

Pfft, no-one claimed that wind turbines could produce power when there was no wind. Talk about your straw man arguments, it’s like listening to rabid creationists or anti-vaxxers. Are you denying that they’ll produce reasonable amounts of electricity when there’s wind? Like there is most of the time in Scotland rather than on one cherry-picked week?
And if your argument is more to do with not liking the look of them, well i can’t say oil refineries, tankers and rigs are exactly my cup of tea from an aesthetic point of view either. Or oil spills come to think of it…

You’re being selectively and unduly negative there, Anthony — not least because it’s gloriously sunny in that picture. Early February saw a short-lived cold snap in Britain which produced the coldest temperatures we’ve seen for a long time, with the most snow for over 20 years. But it looks like the solar PV was working fine, as indeed it was here in London nearly all that week.
Glasgow is a windy place. In the west of Scotland, the number of days without any wind isn’t many — this chart of wind speed in Glasgow shows an annual average surface windspeed of 11 knots . and even in your charts, the wind speed spent four days out of seven above 5mph at surface level.
As any meteorologist worth his salt will know, the wind speed increases with height above the surface, and windspeeds at 50 m above the surface (for example, at the top of large, tall turbines) are 75% greater than those that are measured at the surface.
There are plenty of even windier places to choose from on the west coast of Scotland. This wind speed chart for the island of Tiree, just 100 miles NW of Glasgow, shows the annual average wind speed as 14 knots — and it’s one of the sunniest places in Scotland as well.
Even better is to place the wind turbines offshore. Wind velocities are even higher and more consistent. We have a huge amount of wind offshore UK and that is why wind offers enormous potential as an alternative energy source in our windy islands — for reference, here’s the UK government’s view.
This wind map of the UK and offshore areas shows that even in the southeastern coastal areas very near to London, as at Sheerness where the new offshore London Array windfarm is being built, annual average surface windspeeds are around 13 knots — considerably higher than in onshore SE England where this falls to 9 or 10 knots.
Although even offshore the wind isn’t continuous through a few cool clear days, as you point out, it remains a fact that monthly average wind speeds right across the UK and its offshore shelf are highest in the winter when the energy load is at its seasonal peak.

Roads,
During a temperature inversion, like the “Siberian Cold Front” experienced in February, winds are also light “at the top of large, tall turbines.”
But I’ll bet you knew that already.

Here, https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html, you can see in real time the contribution of different energy sources to the whole electric network in Spain. You can move through the calendar choosing different seasons and dates- Apart from the fact of being the wind energy heavily subsidized notice in the graphs the 1:1 backup needed if there’s no wind. In the case of Spain, browse for a day with no wind (green data) and see at peak hour how the hydroelectric energy increases enormously to cushion the lack of wind. See also how maximum energy from wind does not usually match peak hour. It’s easy to play, although it’s in spanish is a self-explanatory gadget and based on real data. Hope it’s useful.
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