Guest post by Steven Goddard
The Telegraph has an article today about the latest addition to the UK wind energy grid, described as “Europe’s largest onshore wind farm at Whitelee.” The article says :
When the final array is connected to the grid later this week, there will be 140 turbines generating 322 megawatts of electricity. This is enough to power 180,000 homes.
Assuming the turbines are actually moving. The problem is that on the coldest days in winter, the air is still and the turbines don’t generate much (if any) electricity. Consider the week of February 4-10, 2009 in Glasgow.
The average temperature was -2C (29F) during the week, and there was almost no wind on most of those days. No wind means no electricity. On the coldest days, there is no wind – so wind power fails just when you need it the most. On the morning of February 4, the temperature was -7C (19F) and the wind speed was zero.
In order to keep society from lapsing into the dark ages, there has to be enough conventional (coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear) capacity to provide 100% of the power requirements on any given day. Thus it becomes apparent that Britain’s push for “renewable” energy is leading the UK towards major problems in the future.
The belief that conventional capacity can be fully replaced by wind or solar is simply mistaken and based on a flawed thought process. People want to believe in renewable energy, and that desire blocks them from thinking clearly. The people of Glasgow were fortunate in February that there was still still enough conventional capacity available to keep their lights on. As the UK’s plans to “convert” to “renewable energy” proceed, this will no longer be the case.
Wind and solar can reduce the average load over a year, but they can not reduce the base or peak requirements for conventional electricity.
In the future, weather forecasts may have to include a segment like “No electricity from Wednesday through Friday. Some electricity possible over the weekend.”
BTW – You can purchase those nice fluorescent green jackets at the Claymore Filling Station in Ballachulish for about £12. I’ve got one just like it in the closet.
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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
I don’t like them at all. He’s certainly not walking in a winter wonderland.
From that article
“Removing the conifers and returning the area around the site to bog land is not only good for wildlife, such as birds, but blanket bogs are the world’s third best store of carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere,”
Patagon
Why rely on Russia,what’s wrong with nuclear power?I know which I’d choose.All those billions thrown at windmills,only to turn around and spend billions on solar?
I think the inmates are running the asylum in the UK.
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.
The Earth is cooling and the Arctic is increasing it’s ic cover.
So why would they build windmills?
Maybe the should be building a CO2 machine.
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.
Meanwhile, on the ethanol front:
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090518-711449.html
From this article:
“NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Production units of biofuel maker Pacific Ethanol Inc. (PEIX) filed for bankruptcy protection Monday amid pressure from weak demand and low prices.” “…High corn prices and low demand for the fuel, which is blended with gasoline, cut into producers’ earnings last year. ”
“Rival ethanol producer Aventine Renewable Energy Inc. (AVRN) filed for bankruptcy protection last month amid the industry downturn while Verasun Energy Corp. (VSUNQ) was forced to sell most of its assets to oil refiner Valero Energy Corp. (VLO).”
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.
E-ON were keen to put up a couple of dozen turbines a couple of miles from where I live (still might be, I suppose). The guy in charge admitted that without government subsidy they wouldn’t even think about wind power.
According to the brief they put out for local consumption the construction of the concrete bases would need 76 truckloads of concrete a day every day for three months (I may have some of the figures wrong; I’ve lost my copy, but it was something of that order). He still claimed that they would pay for their construction (in energy terms) within the first year!
A “green” friend who works for another of the power companies admits that he has never measured any of his installations working at better than one-third capacity and for all his other environmental credentials he admits quite openly that wind power is a waste of money and completely useless as a tool in the fight against global warming, or indeed anything else.
Trouble is, wave or tidal is not visible. Which means it’s not sexy. Which means politicians aren’t interested.
The environMENTALists will have a problem with it. Some rare bacterium will be threatened by these tidal generators, I’m sure.
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.
Those windmills aren’t just killing any birds; that region has the highest concentration of Golden Eagles in the USA.
I don’t know what peak power level those units are but they should have been taken down or replaced with larger units years ago; and yes most of the time, half of them aren’t operating. Same goes for the fans at the top of Pacheco Pass on hiway 152.
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.
Reply: Given that we occasionally let the word “denier” through in some contexts, this request is denied. ~ charles the moderator.
It’s pretty obvious that wind should only be used to supplement conventional power systems, and never used as primary generation.
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=
It gets worse. The electricity produced by these turbines has to be subsided by the taxpayer. This currently stands at £6bn for the next 20 years, i.e. serious amounts of cash.
It would be more productive to burn the money.
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.
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.
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.
dhogaza (11:47:40) :
If you’re suggesting that the raptor blenders at Altamont didn’t receive a lot of negative publicity when the problems became apparent you’re very mistaken.
Glad to hear it. The sooner they remove those unsightly bird killing things and start using clean natural gas fired plants the better (of course a gas fired power station is just as much an eyesore but at least it doesn’t cover hundreds of square kilometers of land). North America has an abundance of natural gas in unconventional shale gas.
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”
Bill, you’d better check the back of that envelope: 96,664/26,666 = 3.6 lines of generators from Canada to Mexico.
The land area of 14,055 square miles need for these wind mills is roughly equal to the entire land mass of Maryland and Delaware. No trees, no buildings, no nothing except windmills. Oh, the insanity of it all!
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.
I agree that wind power plants are a visual pollution and they are noisy too
I think they’re rather elegant, and noise isn’t an issue with any I’ve heard. I think earlier ones had noisy gearboxes, but now you can’t hear them above the wind from any distance. Close up, there is a faint whooshing, rather like the pink noise used to lull people to sleep.
I really don’t mind turbines – any power they produce will offset power produced elsewhere (law of conservation of energy) and they will make more economic sense if/when fuel prices rise and some attention is paid to energy storage (look up Dinorwig if you’re interested).
Given the choice, I would probably opt for wave energy, as that is effectively concentrated wind, but development in the UK was stopped by officialdom just as (or because) prototypes were becoming viable in the 70’s. It’s a sad story, and a good illustration of what happens when governments interfere with research:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/1992/64/2832
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
And what if this happens? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEccgR0q-o
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!