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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Anectdotal point…..I’m an avid windsurfer and I’ve lost count of the number of days wasted sat on beaches waiting for the wind to blow.
I could prob tell you the strength of a breeze from a gust across my face, even down to F1 or F2. I am EXTREMLY conscious of the wind strength at all times (so I can bunk off work if it starts to blow..).
Trust me…wind power is not guaranteed. Ask any sailer/kitesurfer/parasailer about wind reliability and they would laugh.
The problem is that what works in some countries does not work in the UK…our wind comes from lows blowing in.
At El Medano in Tenerife – top windsurfing spot – there is a windfarm which seems to turn most of the time – this is because the trades get diverted over the islands during the Azores high and therefore the Caneries in summer, in general, are windy….thats why we go there…for the wind which is more reliable than back home. Local effects can boost the wind – El Medano and Pozo in Gran Canaria or Sotovento in Fuerte – and these are indeed good sites for wind power.
In the UK we mostly sit it out during summer and winter with next to no wind for our pastime. Windsurfing in the UK is a mainly spring / autumn sport because thats when its windy. So when I hear peeps telling me a windfarm will work, I laugh…don’t try to tell me that, I’ve been chasing windy days for 20years.
We consider ‘windy’ at around 10knots these days as that will get a big rig planing on flat water. It does not happen very often. In the last few years I’ve started mtbing instead as I’ve got fed up wasted days with crappy wind up to my ankles trying to get planing.
I think windmills need 8k before they start generating anything worthwhile?
Being ‘atuned’ to the wind as I am, that seems about when they start to move vigourously, from my anecdotal experiance.
Oh…and it rarely blows at night either…the number off times I’ve had to swim home after that ‘last run’ at the end of the day…
The point is that Steve Goddard is right. Wind is not consistent. Imagine I was trying to sell you a petrol power generator but I could not guarantee its power output and told you that one day it would be really good but the next day it probabley wouldn’t start…would you buy it?
Its a quaint oddity that we can use as a top up, but its not a solution – we only have to look at the Danish system to see that – sadly the UK isn’t set up to feed in or – perhaps more pointedly – parasiticly feed off the French & German baseload…
A cynic might suggest that windpower is being ‘set up’ by our gov to fail so they can bring in nuke power…?
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.
…s’cuse spelling…
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.
Patagon (12:41:32) You’re right, I didn’t get as far as your message prior to responding to hareynolds
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.
Bruce…
I think George meant ‘turned on’ meaning it got windy so there will be waves so no point going out, not that the ‘mills caused the wind.
…at least I hope you did George! Heh!
….and of course it makes one wonder why we ever stopped using them in the first place…….
I forgot one thing – You have to click “Översikt” at the top left to see the graph.
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.
Bill Marsh (12:14:46)
Have a look at the website of Oxford Physics professor David Mackay
http://www.withouthotair.com/
He estimates that, in the UK, onshore wind turbines would need to cover the whole of Wales (20,778 sq km or 8000sq ml) in order to provide one tenth of the average persons daily power usage. Not only that, the windmills required” would amount to 50 times the entire wind hardware of Denmark, 7 times all the wind farms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world”
“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.
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.
uhm….no.
There are expenses involved in having capacity built that is essentially sitting idle for portions of time. 1) it requires capital to build, and without generating any juice it’s not making any payback income. You can’t “pay” for co-gen capacity from “savings” from using the wind. 2) it requires capital to maintain. I imagine that frequently starting/stopping any generating plant severely adds to the required maintenance needs and probably shortens the life of the hardware. 3) it requires capital to purchase fuel to have in inventory for immediate use. Even nat gas probably requires some contractual amount just to have the volume on “standby.”
And these costs have to be added to the cost of the wind generation itself, making it even less cost effective. And it’s you and me that have to pay for that in the form of higher energy costs.
Prob’ly a few more reasons I haven’t thought of yet.
Why oh why would we (or anyone) think that wind is a good idea? It can’t be relied on for base load. It can’t be relied on for peak load. It’s cost prohibitive on any other basis.
I can’t believe we’re (collectively) this stupid. Present company excepted, of course.
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.
Echoing Paul James reply to Zeke Hausfather on electricity demand in winter … for several historical reasons many old towns in the UK and Europe do not have gas lines to residences. So electricity supplies the energy for a larger proportion of winter time heating in Europe than in the US.
Mike.
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.
Mr Lynn (11:23:04) :
Are there places in the world where the wind never stops blowing?
Yes indeed: IPCC and it’s warm wind!
I lived in Glasgow for many years – when it’s cold, more often than not there’s no wind!
322MW supplies 180,000 homes?
1.8kW per household peak demand?
They must all be down the pub to save on their electricity bills;-)
Oh, and the Glaswegians are renowned for their home ethanol production.
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.
I’ve had a small bet with myself for a few years now. What will happen first for the UK – the lights will all go out or it will become the flagship state of the new Eurabia.
Methinks the lights going out will win by a filament.
Re: ethanol
There is actually a better solution (pun intended):
Good old fashioned turpentine. And it doesn’t burn food for fuel.
Hey, it gets even better
Obama to Set New Vehicle Rules, First Carbon Limit (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agqPp0iSPbp4&refer=worldwide
For all those folks who said it would take YEARS? to implement the new regs????
Not.
Can we tax GE enough into building those turbines for free?
An important element in power generation is matching output to demand; the higher the proportion of wind generated power the more problematic this becomes. Not only does there have to be 100% cover by more traditional forms of generation, the power stations concerned have to be online continuously and be able to ramp up output fast, ie be gas or nuclear. While the level of output from renewables is negligable this is not much of a problem; if and when the proportion grows the costs will rise steeply in an effort to retain a reliable grid system.