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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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.
The Obama administration is slated to increase subsidies to the ethanol industry. At least then they will be profitable and won’t need to get bailouts.
We can only hope wind power will follow the same free market structure as the ethanol industry to pave the way for millions of Green jobs.
sarc/off
Green is the new Red.
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
They just don’t get it. Alas. Statistics don’t change. Weather patterns don’t change.
I am a FORMER employee of the local utility (Northern States Power, RIP).
During 11 years of my 15 years there the 100 MW (100 1 megawatt wind turbines) on “Buffalo Ridge”, the WINDIEST PLACE IN MINNESOTA was observable by the engineering staff through “Sys-Op”, which tallied ALL the generation by the utility.
Although I have to go by memory, my memory is pretty good. (And I DID dump some data and average several times..) Typical production: 8 MW total.
That’s an 8% capacity factor. At the base capital cost for the units, and standard amortization the cost per KWHr was: (Hold on to your hat!) $1.45.
Yes, 20 times that of the consumer charge.
OUCH! Imagine a levelized bill of $100 a month. Going to $2000 a month!
The MAXIMUM I ever saw as 47 MWe, with a huge winter storm edging through, supplying 35 to 45 mile an hour winds. That lasted less than 10 hours.
THESE NUMBERS HAVE NOT CHANGED!
Nor will they change. Sometimes certain combinations of physics and finance are as immutable as the law of gravitation or thermodynamics.
Alas, wind power fits into this category. A net loser.
“Retired Engineer (15:12:47) :
…
2) Energy storage: The only idea that made any economic sense was to pump water up to a high lake at night and run it back down through generators during the day. The eco’s fought it tooth and nail.
….”
The Grand Coulee Dam uses the second principle. During low demand water is pumped into Banks Lake. Most of that water is used for irrigation but during periods of high demand it can be released back into the Columbia River for extra power generation. I do not know how efficient this is compared to other methods of energy storage but of course it can be used to generate very large amounts of power and they needed to create the lake for irrigation purposes anyway. Like hydroelectric and geothermal power sources this type of effort relies on having the correct local geography.
The obvious lack of steady wind in the much-vaunted wind power of the Pacific NW is seen in the Bonneville Power web site: http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx. The advocates of “renewal” power say that the answer is to put wind turbines on both sides of the Cascade range.
The article also highlights most effectively the misdirection being used by these renewable power plants, both wind and solar.
The nameplate capacity is 322MW.
The actual power supplied is in KiloWattHours (KWH)
322 X 24 X 365(.25) X 33% X 1000
Where 322 is the nameplate capacity, 24 hours in a day, 365(.25) days in a year, percentage efficiency, 1000 converting Mega to Kilo.
Hence the total power produced is now 931.5 million KWH
Therein lies the misdirection.
What these plants calculate now is that is the amount of power used by X number of households, in this case above, 180,000 homes, making you believe that the towers effectively power these houses.
The power goes to the grid only, and all the houses on that grid draw their power from the overall grid, so the inference being this plant supplies the power to those houses, when in actual fact the turbines provide power to the grid only 33% of the time over the whole year, and that 33% is a best, because in Europe, most wind plants are only effectively delivering their power at around 20 to 25%, and even those figures are sanguine.
What also needs to be considered here is that residential power only makes up 35% of the overall power consumed. The main consumers come from the Industrial and Commercial sectors, where power is mainly required 100% of the time. (Source EIA)
The same applies for solar plants, also quoted at around 30% when their delivery rate averages only around 16 to 20%. Even solar concentrating (thermal) only operates at around 30 to 35% at best, when this is quoted as the direction we should be moving.
So, the use of the power versus households data that these renewable plants use is a misleading use of data, designed to highlight how effective they are when the opposite is indeed the case.
Tony.
George Bruce (17:50:43) :
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?
———————–
Don’t be so hard on the guy. He could’ve offset his own entire carbon footprint by this method.
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?
hareynolds (17:19:44) :
OT, full of factual errors, but I figure this 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
—————————-
Not off topic at all. The solution is obvious. Construct some serious wind turbines up there, carbon dioxide comes out of the atmosphere, global cooling ensues, the glaciers come back big time and press that land back into its proper shape. All in a days work for the modern scientist.
The other thing that amuses me about green power statistics.
Power generator x supplies so many thousand homes.
Domestic utility use is a fraction of the actual demand. The real energy users are industry and transportation. Both of these users pay a heavily discounted power bill compared to domestic users because of their much higher consumption.
When you compare KwH invoices for industry vs domestic the argument against green energy efficiency is far better.
http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/SmartEnergyMatrix.htm
http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/SmartEnergy25kWh.htm
http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/docs/Windpower_2003.pdf
http://www.beaconpower.com/products/EnergyStorageSystems/docs/Grid%20Freq%20Reg%20White%20Paper.pdf
http://www.pentadyne.com/site/our-products/specifications.html
the solution is currently existing
powerful flywheel systems storing
vast amounts of electricity during off peak times
while also synchronizing the grid connections–
storing 100 times the electricity
of battery equivalents during
off peak hours for use during normal or high usage periods.
–the mature viable 20 year old flywheel is well hidden
and is permitted to appear in inefficient
“hybrid” systems that dilute
their effectiveness.–
the flywheel acts as storage precisely the way they operate those old oil wells
which produce five barrels a day-
and oil is stored in a tank to be picked up
by a tanker truck once a week. –
flywheels can be emptied
into the grid when needed
or continuously for load leveling–
Flywheels are the perfect solution for
all green electricity from wind solar tidal
or even any minisystems–
Too bad
this info will never get past this page —
and dont bother trying to invest in these
20 year old proven technologies–
because usa just keeps deliberately
undermining them by throwing money
and publicity at “new”
distracting dead end “research” with
plenty of propaganda and contracts
that drains off any potential
investors from these currently viable flywheel
systems.(even though the usa military has already
been using these flywheels on their bases and in
Bradley armored vehicles for the past 15 years)
You engineers haven’t heard of flywheels?
I am not at all surprised (have a talk with swiss and dutch engineers)–
But flywheel
obscurity is a testament to their effectiveness –
because media only publishes
the garbage solutions.
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!
Some of our big DIY stores sell little wind turbines that you can stick on your house and feed into your electricity supply (always remembering to engage a properly qualified electrician, obtain planning permission and ensure that the installation complies with Building Regulations and is approved both by your electricity supply company and by National Grid; woe betide you if you fail to fill any of the seventeen forms correctly). They cost around £1,000-£1,500 and when whizzing at full power can just about squeeze out enough energy to boil an egg.
The absurdity of wind farms is that they cannot possibly provide a cost-efficient supply for a national grid, for reasons set out in detail by others above. The whole scheme is trying to run before it can walk. This is a technology in its infancy, still at the early stages of research and development. It certainly should be researched and developed because you never know when the big breakthrough is going to come (if it ever does) such that both generating capacity and storage facilities are viable as a serious and affordable source of electrical juice.
In the meantime laying square miles of concrete to support multi-million pound (dollar, euro, yen, take your pick) loss-making equipment is sheer madness.
On the way to my weekly (subject to the weather) round of golf I pass by the Ford factory at Dagenham, a town a few miles east of London. Ford built two massive windmill machines in the grounds. When first constructed it was estimated that the value of the electricity they generate would take more than 200 years to turn a profit.
The whole thing is a gimmick. More windmills just means more gimmicks. Very expensive gimmicks.
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:
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
Mike Odin,
Why make separate fly wheels which require expensive electrical to mechanical and later mechanical back to electrical conversion? Why not just convert all the windmills into perpetual motion machines which produce a fixed amount of electricity regardless of wind conditions?
“Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics”
Homer Simpson
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.
Magnus A (11:42:14) :
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.
FACTS:
Specially designed for medium wind speeds, the ENERCON E-82 wind turbine – with the new rotor blade design and tower versions up to 108m hub height – guarantees excellent yields in the 2 MW category, even at inland sites.
Rated power:
2,000 kW
Rotor diameter:
82 m
Hub height:
78 – 138 m
Wind class (IEC):
IEC/NVN II
Turbine concept:
Gearless, variable speed,
variable pitch control
Rotor
Type:
Upwind rotor with active pitch control
Direction of rotation:
Clockwise
Number of blades:
3
Swept area:
5,281 m2
Blade material:
Fibreglass (epoxy resin);
integrated lightning protection
Rotational speed:
Variable, 6 – 19.5 rpm
Pitch control:
ENERCON blade pitch system, one independent pitching system per rotor blade with allocated emergency supply
Drive train with generator
Hub:
Rigid
Main bearings:
Dual-row tapered/single-row cylindrical roller bearings
Generator:
ENERCON direct-drive synchronous annular generator
Grid feeding:
ENERCON converter
Braking systems:
– 3 independent blade pitch systems
with emergency supply
– Rotor brake
– Rotor lock
Yaw control:
Active via adjustment gears,
load-dependent damping
Cut-out wind speed:
28 – 34 m/s
(with ENERCON storm control)
Remote monitoring:
ENERCON SCADA
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.
~ charles the moderator
Maybe it’s time to get that Mustang GT convertible!
/Mr Lynn
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?
simon abingdon (13:40:57) :
And what if this happens? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqEccgR0q-o
But wich is preferable?
Maybe not doctored, then; just seriously foreshortened by the very long lens!
/Mr Lynn
When a Utility buys electricity from a wind farm a ‘capacity value’ must be calculated in order to protect the ratepayers. Capacitcy value represents the per centage of nameplate capacity that can actually be utilized. Google capacity value and pdfs relating to the determination will show up. Typically the capacity value is only 5 to 10%. This is the number wind farms do not want you to see. Therefore a one megawatt tower is really supplying only the needs of 100 homes not the 330 that assumes the power can be taken when the wind blows (capacity factor).
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!