By Steven Goddard
In Wednesday’s Guardian, their lead environmental story made this bold claim about The Whitelee Wind Farm:
Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, which is already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs
There was no discussion in the article about how Glasgow would handle extended periods of cold and calm winds, such as was often seen this past winter.
If the wind isn’t blowing, the turbines aren’t spinning and no electricity is being generated. This tends to happen on the coldest days, when the electricity is needed the most.
The flaw in The Guardian’s logic is a failure to acknowledge that Glasgow needs a consistent power supply 24x7x365. The fact that Whitelee has a lot of windy days and a high annual energy potential, does no good on the cold, calm days. I’m going to try to help The Guardian out with their logic using a few analogies they should understand.
- On average, there is lots of ice in the Arctic during the year – but that doesn’t stop The Guardian from being concerned about the possibility of a few ice-free days.
- Penguin chicks may get plenty to eat most of the year, but during the times when they don’t, many of them starve to death.
- Getting a pay check nine months a year would not pay the bills for the other three.
- Having toilets available only five days a week would not be satisfactory to most people.
- Having only five days a week without being in an automobile crash would not be satisfactory to most people.
- The rainy season in Australia may produce floods, but that doesn’t stop animals from dying of dehydration during the dry season.
- Having your watch functional 90% of the time would not be adequate.
- The fact that a restaurant is not responsible for food poisoning on most nights, may not make you want to eat there.
- Being careful on the edge of the Grand Canyon 90% of the time may not be enough.
- Practicing safe sex 90% of the time is not recommended.
It would be disastrous for Glasgow if they did not have the ability to obtain 100% of their energy from conventional sources on any given day of the year, when the wind isn’t blowing. If The Guardian is attempting to propose that Glasgow could cut off their supply of conventional electricity sources, they should just come out and say that. The implication is both clear and incorrect. “already powerful enough to meet Glasgow’s electricity needs”
Is The Guardian part of the Climate Industrial Complex?
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Now if the excess electricity could produce, say, hydrogen which would fuel a conventional power plan on windless days, that would be something. But I don’t believe we have mastered Hydrogen production and storage, have we?
Once again may I plead for wind farm output of electricity to be quoted as megawatthours per year.
Sorry, Steve;-)
But shouldn’t that read 24 x 7 x 52 + a bit?
Anyway, I liked the analogies they’re really good!
I also liked this from the Beeb. Those wind farms can kill almost anything it seems! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8060969.stm
(Hope the link works but if not go to BBC News front page & go to Science & Environment.)
AtB
Whoopie I was first!
While I don’t know the specs of the turbines being used at the Whitelee Wind Farm, typical commercial wind turbines need a wind speed > than 6 mph just to get the blades to start turning, and a wind speed > 20 mph to achieve their rated performance. If this is true of the Whitelee turbines the wind graph shown above suggests that that wind farm will provide, on average, only a small percentage of it’s rated capacity and then only for short periods of time.
Suppose you could buy a car that didn’t need gasoline, or other fuel.
Would you pay $100K for a wind-powered car just so you could save on gasoline? Oh yes, the car goes faster and slower depending upon the wind speed and doesn’t run when the wind doesn’t blow. So you also buy conventional car for those days. And the wind-powered car also needs twice as much maintenance as a normal car and needs expensive overhauls every 15,000 miles or so.
Who in their right mind would buy this car? But that’s what we are planning to do with electricity.
What I have come to expect from the Guardian, the paper that runs George Monibit’s fantasist global warming blog.
i dont think people understand wind turbines enough.
not only are they inefficient and un reliable for base load power, they need wind speeds of at least 8-10 mph to even work. thus making them completely obsolete for 90% of the time period that graph was taken in.
now it seems to me that that kind of power wouldnt even be able to supply a hundred people for a whole day much less a whole city. People need to learn that the only way wind will be effective is as a supplemental power source to reduce costs on consumers
But the Guardian knows that thanks to global warming / climate change, there aren’t going to BE any more cold days! Therefore there’s no reason to plan for them!
That and the magic batteries that will be developed any day now are more than enough reason for Glasgow to bet it’s future on this plan. What could go wrong?
I have long maintained that wind and solar energy will be limited by the desire to meter it. Wind and solar work just fine in isolated areas where some electricity on an intermittent schedule is better than no electricity.
Due to their intermittent nature they just do not lend themselves to utility scale deployment. Now if we had a way of storing the electricity that might become a different story. Currently, the only way to do that reliably is the pump/storage reservoir. There is a distinct shortage of those on the great flatland.
Sentinels of the new age – the anti-industrial revolution.
You can’t operate a business – ‘power permitting’. If you must depend on the vagaries of weather, you move your business to a location where there is reliable power.
I have often wished a reostat could be hooked up to the lights and camera’s during a congressional meeting on wind power. Then run a few days based on the actual wind speed. Watching the lights flicker on and off would change a lot of these idots minds.
Think back to the half hour of no electricity in the original movie The Day the Earth Stood Still
Seems to me some lessons are hard to learn.
I think Glasgow should go ahead with its wind powered scheme with the following provisos:
No back-up diesel [or other] power for any elected officials.
No back-up diesel [or other] power for government buildings.
No back-up diesel [or other] power for government employees.
No back-up diesel [or other] power for any environmentalists, etc.
Individuals not in the above groups could have private generators.
Other allowed back up power would be for hospitals, doctors, and other emergency uses.
Feel free to add more provisos.
I think stories like this gain credence is that the public at large generally not understand how electricity is produced and used. The general impression I get from a lot of people is that electricity is made via powerplant, windmill, solar panel …ect and stored in some manner and is there when you need it. Kind of like a giant battery.
Once this misconception is corrected, these supplimental energy sources lose their appeal.
Great analogies though it won’t stop them from spewing garbage. You have the best site on the web keep it up.
A devastating attack on a straw man, Goddard.
Won’t they be surprised when they complete the project only to find they hadn’t taken into account calm days, I sure hope they have lots of warm clothing.
It is fine to point out the limitations of green energy. hypotheses about climate changes, and scientific methodologies and conclusions scientists make.
Will there not be a cumulative decrease in C02 emissions overtime with this project and others like it? Like Spain’s and Germany’s wind farms and solar projects?
Solar has a significant contribution to make. Middle Eastern oil producers realize its potential.
Wave energy has good potential and will contribute to sustainable energy especially in UK, Ireland, and other countries and it is becalmed less than wind power.
Together, the alternative energy sources are our first steps towards sustainability. I don’t believe coal or oil will ever be completely replaced as desirable as that may seem. Coal and oil use will probably always be necessary.
The more sustainable our energy sources the better. Better for our planet, our environment, and our and our children’s futures.
Strawmen don’t have a home at WWUT.
The Boy of John
Batteries not included.
This reminded me of an article I saw earlier this week, “Wind farm ‘kills Taiwanese goats'”.
http://article.wn.com/view/WNAT94E034B2283A4F0FE613A4619C8BDC13/
I don’t know that Windmills are really goat killers, but can you imagine any other large scale projects being undertaken without extensive consideration of their impact on their surroundings?
MikeEE
just to give everyone some perspective….
a wind turbine with 20m long blades only has 2.7 kw of wind energy hitting the blades and any given time with an 8 mph wind speed. not that much.
I have read that to replace one megawatt of fossil fuel generated electricity it requires 4 megawatts of wind powered turbines. This would consume 60,000 acres or 88 square miles of land for every megawatt.
Using the State of Maryland as the example, 58% of the state’s land area would need to be used to construct wind turbines to replace the state’s 65 megawatt consumption. I assume the population would need to relocate to the othe 42% of the state, since this assumption is that the towers are located as compactly as possible.
Most of the State’s conventional power sources still could not be replaced due to periods when the wind does not blow. We should hook Al Gore’s house up to a wind turbine and see how he likes it.
Please explain:
The flaw in The Guardian’s logic is a failure to acknowledge that Glasgow needs a consistent power supply 24×7×365
Should’nt this be 24×365 or 24x7x52 ?
Or is this simply 24 hours a day?
7 days a week?
or 365 days a year?
Wind speed needs to be a minimum 13 mph to generate electicity.
Experience is a great learning process but very expensive as we will find out once this tax swindle has run its course, but what else can one expect when politicians think they know more about science than the scientists.
I know what would really help the Guardian’s case… If they would just commit to being powered only by the Whitlee Wind Farm.
They could rightfully brag about being 100% green-powered and not having to rely on fossil-fueled plants for the 75% of the time the farm produces no power.
They could publish only when the wind blew.
They could stay warm or cool only when the wind blew.
They could eat food from their canteen fridge only when they were sure the food hadn’t spoiled.
The could editorialize why they could only print during the random, unpredictable times that there was enough wind to turn the blades, but isn’t it just great how easy it is being green!
Here is a national windpower output curve from Denmark a few years ago. Remember this is the combined, large area, multi-hundred windtower output curve. Also, remember this is why Denmark has a massive grid energy exchange with Norway, Sweden and Germany to blend the output of Nuclear, Hydro, Natural Gas and other AE’s just to provide some semblance of ‘smooth, reliable’ power. Denmark utilities have also requested a halt to ne windpower as trying to control the variability is quite problematic as they pass the 30% windpower contribution level.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/denmark%20wind%20power%20output/Nick_Rouse/Danishwindpower.jpg
Europe’s largest wind farm is big enough to power one city, except when the wind doesn’t blow. How many other cities the size of Glasgow are there in Europe? Excuse me if I’m not impressed.