Indianapolis wind power contract canceled

IPL figured out they’d have to have conventional back-up of 80% of the windmills capacity. Why not just build the conventional and not drive their load managers nuts?
==============

Good decision. In free markets, no reason needs to be given. I doubt EDF will give the real scoop.
I had looked this up earlier and found the French utility relies on a lot of subsidies and peddles wind turbine energy with some very bold promises. I will look up their performance.

Good riddance! We have a major wind turbine farm just west of where I live in Illinois, and a group of residents are suing over health effects.
I viewed an online movie of the “turbine flicker” effect (strobe-light effect) that is generated, and realized that this might trigger seizures. BTW, I have epilepsy and am sensitive to flashing light triggers.
Pleas see this if you are interested: http://www.magasbakony.hu/szeleromu/Harding_et_al_Wind_turbines_flicker_epilepsy.pdf

E.M.Smith (18:13:40) :
Not taking an issue with your point, but I wonder if we really lose in that trade with China. A given set of Uber name brand tools costing $1000 (made in America) might be $100 in a comparable set made in china. If we receive a useful good, the money isn’t wasted. Mfg industry is diminished, but inflation is mitigated. Don’t have any wisdom to share on it, but I really wonder if we’re losing.
There is another idea as to why they cancelled, however: Someone ran out of Koolaid, and they actually did the math. 🙂

If these fools think that the same number of people would have survived this year’s NH winter had we gone solar and wind then they are not being genuine. Maybe this is how they plan to reduce the world’s population.
We should all thank Anthony Watts, Steve McIntyre and others that these scammers are being finally bought to book. They want to make billions from lies and they now realise the jig is up.
We’re almost there. Just 90 years to go. :o(
Windfarm problems:
http://www.globalsubsidies.org/en/subsidy-watch/studies/wind-farms-criticized-costly-inefficient-report-renewable-energy-group
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/feb/26/sciencenews.renewableenergy
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/05/23/wind-turbines-inefficient/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3608480/Wind-farm-claims-are-so-much-hot-air.html

What did they expect? The economics of wind power were available to everyone before this contract was let out.
IPL made their decision on the basis of “looking” green. They didn’t care what it would cost. They’d just pass the cost on to the users.
Even more bizarre was WA state’s decision to mandate that all power was to be 20% renewable when over 90% already is hydro power.
Oh, yeah, and they didn’t count hydro as being renewable.

E.M.Smith (18:13:40) :
Being that I am an investor, I have to put up with sinophiles quite often. And, oh, how they’re so quick to put out the propaganda that China is “light years ahead of us” because of all the wind, solar, and hydro dams they’re supposedly buidling. I’m aware of the one dam they built in the big river, but beyond that… I think all the talk of solar and wind is hype. Everyone and their grandmother knows by now that India and China sunk Coppenhagen even before the feel-good spend-fest began. They just want us to burn our bridges.
And for all that coal we’re sending them, there’s recall after recall after recall. Such a waste. But that’s the point. Just keep pumping up the debt level, whilst repossessing as much of the producution as possible.

Do you have a link to Michael J. Trebilcock’s paper?

For those who would like some wind performance data to crunch, visit this site:
http://reisi.iset.uni-kassel.de/pls/w3reisiwebdad/www_reisi_page_new.show_page?page_nr=353&lang=en&owa=&owa_own_header=0
It points to wind infeed data in continuous 15-minute raster for the Big 4 German Grid operators (e.on, 50 Herz [formerly Vattenfall], enbw, and RWE.
The sites are in German and the data formats vary somewhat, but all can be imported to excel for analysis. Some have occasional missing data, but in the recent years there is a pretty complete record for all the grids. Data in “.csv” files are actually separated by semicolons and dates are in year-month-day format.

My reading suggests that investment in wind power has a business plan which ends when the government subsidies have been paid.
There is no expectation beyond this.
p.s. Wind power was brilliant and cost effective before engines were invented. How else would our forebears have powered the their war, trade, and explorative vessels other than by sail? But come the engine…

I agree with with Professor Trebilcock assessment of Danish Wind Power Assessment. Wind generated electricity is a “BIG SCAM”. The main reason for Denmark’s pushing of Wind Power is because of Vestas(a Danish Company –good paying jobs), which has been, and maybe today is the world’s leader in wind turbine design and production. I wonder what the Danish Policy will be when China takes over the global wind turbine business, and drives Vestas out of the wind turbine business.
For the interested, a couple of good references are the series of analysis by Glenn Schleede (He is retired and out of the financial analysis), and the 2005 Wind Energy Report by Eon(German Utility), which can be downloaded from the web eon-netz(english)

Here is an interesting report discussing just “one of the many” reasons that wind does not work.
http://www.windaction.org/faqs/26050
This is the easiest place to look at the output of a large scale operation. Ireland. The maximum output is about 1100 MW, probably about 700 turbines. Click the previous button to see the output. As you can see, just this week the output was less than 50 MW or less than 5% for quite a few hours. “Backup” is not really the correct term to use, because most of the time the output is less than 75% of its’ capability.
http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/windgeneration/
My nuclear plants which makes this computer works, has an output of 2400 MW, 24/7, only shuts down for maintenance twice per year or less.
It would take 4,000 2.5 MW turbines with yearly output capacity of 25% to equal that the output of that nuclear plant, which is on about 60 acres of land. And even then it would not replace it, because the output is completely erratic. Wind turbines for commercial electricity are a fools idea.

For all the wind freaks out there: can aby tell me when the last wind powered warship was built by ANY nation, and why they stopped ?

Another component that isn’t mentioned is that industries looking for cheaper resources including cheaper power will move off shore to places that don’t have such high energy rates which will essentially transfer the carbon output to those countries and the country with the green energy achieves economic suicide with no reduction.

Michael J. Bentley (19:28:27) :
Moved here from Vancouver in the 90’s. Can’t move back north now as I’ve invested in iron and gunpwder that aren’t allowed up there. Colorado is OK, but Wyoming looks better. All I need to do is find a good position in the water biz and I’m gone -too many loons here.

Readers may wish to comment on the very latest related blog by Paul Hudson of the BBC on this very topic!

Rascal (20:11:47) :
”For all the wind freaks out there: can aby tell me when the last wind powered warship was built by ANY nation, and why they stopped ?”
Last US Navy Wind powered ship was, as I recall the USS Constellation…
Steam was coming on by then, and everything changed with the screw propeller…

Doug in Seattle:
Didn’t they tell the folks up there that hydroelectric produces carbon dioxide and dreaded methane when the dams flood the forests and create ombotrophic bogs? Such a convenient way to turn a stable carbon sink into our favorite atmospheric gasses.

“enXco is considering its rights and remedies” suggests that they think they may have a claim for breach of contract. Such an action would no doubt raise the question of how the plaitiff represented his product to persuade the defendant to enter the contract. If these included science which has been since discredited by Climategate, interesting questions might arise, such as where the duty of diligence lay, whether it was breached, and how. Could be an interesting source of legal precedent, if it ever happened – which, regretfuly, I doubt.

Heh.
One less taxpayer’s ‘money sinkhole’.

Windpower would be more viable if it could be tied directly to an energy-intensive industry that could adapt to random and intermittent batch processing. The industry would also need fairly low capital costs for production equipment since utilization won’t be anywhere near 24/7. Along with that it needs to have low personnel requirements because people directly involved in production will be twiddling their thumbs more days than not.
Additionally, it should have very cheap inventory costs (no air-conditioned buildings, etc) because the random nature of production will require much larger inventories of inputs and outputs to meet customer schedules.
Making Portland cement or aluminum come to mind, but I think a better application might be running rock crushers to make gravel. The input is rock whose storage costs are zero, the output is gravel whose storage costs are zero, and you could hook the crusher to the windmills with a drive shaft instead of expensive electric generators and motors.
You could probably adapt the technique to do other batch operations, such as grinding wheat into flour.
Hey, haven’t we been down this road in centuries past?

What it all boils down to is that a wind turbine generates no power when the wind is not blowing. And since the wind can and does bounce from zero to max or anywhere in between anytime the gremlins in charge feel like it while steam plants cannot just be turned on and off, but must be carefully warmed up or cooled down over a considerable time period, balancing a mix of them is a nightmare.
To my mind, unless and until we get a compact, efficient, and economical way to store large amounts of power, the only practical thing to do with wind farm output is pump water back up hill behind power dams.

Era of plenty!
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/era-of-plenty.html

Wouldn’t it make more economic sense to try and generate power with the waste heat from Al Gore’s mansion?
If you put a tent-like structure over it with the top leading to a chimney and the sides open, the airflow could drive a small turbine.
Another idea is to put smaller, less-invasive windmills at the ends of airports, gathering power from the exhaust of jetliners bound for climate meetings as they start their take-off runs.
Every little bit helps.

heresy101 (21:20:18)
Thanks for an insight into the real world. All this alarmism about wind energy is disturbing, coming from a bunch of sceptics who should know better.
I know more than I want to about the subject as my step-father was chairmain of the BWEA (British) and set up the EWEA (European), so I know it is a practical solution. It is marginally cheaper than nuclear I understand, and there are ways to handle the load balancing. Solar seems poor in comparison yet.
The large cost, as some have mentioned, is mitigated by very low maintenance costs. The main cost of wind is the interest on the finance for building it, effectively. The cost therefore depends on the interest rate, oddly enough.
I am not going to get involved in an argument, however, as I am sure there are many far more opinionated and learned than myself.

The project received the approval of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) on January 27, 2010.
So far, so good — next sentence, please.
The IURC’s order was consistent with similar past orders. IPL has purported to unilaterally terminate the power purchase agreement on the basis of this order without providing further specific reasons.
A permit to begin construction is not an order, and no company would terminate an agreement with another based on a permit to begin construction.
Something is missing from this equation…

From the Danish Think Tank Cepos, Wind Energy, the Case of Denmark:
http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf

when my company started publishing Wind Engineering (journal on the technological aspects of wind power) in 1977, long before ‘green’ was fashionable, the Central Electricty Generating Board scoffed that wind could never make a serious contribution to national power needs.Quite right. No one then was claiming that. Then, correctly, the focus was on renewables as site specific -if you live on a windy Welsh hillside you’d be crazy not to have a turbine, just as if you’ve got a 1000 unit pig farm you’re crazy not to have an anaerobic digester to turn poo into power. And over 30 years later it seems to me still that renewables offer excellent local solutions but the idea that they can play a significant national role is fanciful – unless of course its politically expedient to adopt a ‘solution’ which is less efficient and more expensive than alterntives. The best policy option would be a national solution by default, by encouraging thousands of tiny local solutions. But serious progrss in battery technology is needed for that to move forward.

“JER0ME (23:42:38) :
[…]
is a practical solution. It is marginally cheaper than nuclear I understand, and there are ways to handle the load balancing. Solar seems poor in comparison yet.”
The only way i know of is pumped storage energy. Are there others?
“I am not going to get involved in an argument, however, as I am sure there are many far more opinionated and learned than myself.”
This makes your argument (or the hint at an argument) look very weak.

In U.S., Many Environmental Issues at 20-Year-Low Concern
Worry about all eight measures tested is down from last year
by Jeffrey M. Jones
PRINCETON, NJ — Americans are less worried about each of eight specific environmental problems than they were a year ago, and on all but global warming and maintenance of the nation’s fresh water supply, concern is the lowest Gallup has measured.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126716/Environmental-Issues-Year-Low-Concern.aspx
The truth is now out, the global warming scandal has not only discredited those who deserve to be discredited: Climate forecasters, but the effects have spread out to other and real environmental problems. In the end all this evil lying campaign plugging planetry disaster to get environmental issues in the news is going to do is to make the public less interested in helping the environment, totally predictable and there are other things far too important to let the rubbish on global warming get in the way!

From what I read and saw few months ago, China is keeping a firm hold on rare earth materials for its own uses and strickly limiting supplies to the rest of the world.
Interesting vid. “You buy a Prius hybrid car and think you’re saving the planet.”

As a wind energy professional (from Denmark), I am quite intrigued to read through the argument in this tread. Most arguments are not based on real knowledge of wind energy, on updated information or knowledge of how the electricity grid work.
Wind energy is not THE SOLUTION to become independent of gas and oil, but it can be part of such a solution.
Another thing to keep in mind is that no grid operator converts electricity production til 100% wind power over night.
heresy101 (21:20:18) has a good and informative post.
JimInIndy (21:44:14). The amount of steel used for a turbine varies with manufacturer, tower height and most importantly nominal effect. I’d say that 250 tones is about 1,5-2MW turbine. Steel in itself is a material and does not have a carbon footprint, so you first question is not valid. The second question is, because here we’re dealing whit how much energy it takes to produce the machine (and the steel and other materials that goes into such a thing). Depending on the site, between 3-8 months to generate as much energy as went into building it.
An argument often heard is that it generates energy as the wind blows. That is of cause correct, but large operators have found out that if they know how much energy their turbines produces just a day in advance, they can sell the energy for a higher price. Hence they operate with wind forecasts, and these are about 90-95% reliable (predicting wind speed is a lot easier than to predict weather as a whole).
But what to do when the wind does not blow? Obviously there are several ways to get around this. A small amount of hydropower can regulate a lot of windpower or provide intermittent power until conventional plants start up. Conventional power plants with short startup time and where the cost of fuel is the major part of the price plays well with wind power, such as gas turbines. Nuclear has very low fuel costs and high investment costs as with wind power, hence if these dominate the production mix, they do not play that well together. Lastly transmission grids with higher capacity across states can also play a role to level out the energy production (see the supergrid some companies are promoting in Europe), and at the same time provide a real free energy market across borders.
The cost of a power plant is not interesting, but the cost pr. produced kWh is what matters.
Solar is expensive still, but plays rather well with wind and other sources as it produces energy when most needed (daytime). Geothermal is also viable in places where the underground is hot enough or for heating. Wave power and other renewable sources are still in their infancy.
Wind power has a high investment and low operating costs. That means that if the turbine is produced in the country, the money we pay for our electricity for the most part stay here. For fossil fuel plants, a high part of the electricity price is made of up of the cost of fuel, and this of cause goes to the country where that have been bought.
I hope this clears up a few things.
Troels

bill hughes (00:36:19) :
Absolutely agree. I think a lot of people are unduly harsh on wind power, but it’s not surprising when politicians/environmentalists push it as a complete solution. It’s a local solution.
There are a lot of technical limitations that the majority remain ignorant of. I’ve petitioned my local politicians and the local paper to stop following the hype of wind power. SC is currently following the notion that off-shore wind power can be a significant source of energy, but the practical considerations just don’t make it feasible.
I received a retort from the Clemson University Restoration Institute: Clemson recently was praised for its push to implement a wind energy partnership in South Carolina.
I can foresee wind power offsetting a total of 10% energy. But it is not a cost saving in the long term in either jobs or capital expenditure. As noted, you still need a regular energy generation to backup this 10%, even if its not used. Additionally, yes, ‘green’ jobs are created – this simply means the maintenance costs and manpower required are greater per megawatt than any other energy production source: saying it creates jobs is actually a bad thing in this case because these jobs don’t create revenue (contrast with, say, a retail store or factory).
I foresee my states energy future in building windmills for export to other states (tee, hee, hee!) up until they realize the emperor has no clothes and quit buying the things, of course.
As an engineer, I do see windmills as pretty cool machines: the design and construction can be pretty high tech. But then, so are space shuttles, warp drives and time machines. But this is no reason to go out and plonk them everywhere you can to please an ignorant populace.

Our forebears would regard this as ridiculous. There were very good reasons to move up from using wind power for windmills, windpumps, sailing ships etc. We regarded the industrial revolution as progress – but not these Greens; oh, no.
The UK government is trying to roll out small-scale hydro schemes on every stream in the country: 36000 of them. So every stretch of water will be dammed, fish imperiled, but landowners will get generous subsidies. Every unit of electricity generated will net the landowner around 8 times the wholesale rate for electricity produced by conventional means, courtesy of the UK taxpayer. That’s some expensive electricity, expensive taxes, and ecological damage.
What will be the maximum contribution to the UK’s electricity requirements, for tens of thousands of installations and grid connectors, and phenomenal cost? According to government figures, maximum 0.5% . A lot less when there’s a dry season. Lets call it ‘nothing’, shall we?
Now that is insanity, or it is religion. Just like the wind turbines, these will merely be highly visible shrines and offerings to the Green goddess. They are useless religious symbols as they have no instrumental value and require daily provisions of offerings from taxpayers to propitiate the wrath of the goddess.

” Troels Halken (02:29:32) :
[…]
Hence they operate with wind forecasts, and these are about 90-95% reliable (predicting wind speed is a lot easier than to predict weather as a whole). ”
Maybe for times when there is little wind. On stormy days, you can never know the exact moment the wind suddenly strikes and sets thousands of wind turbines across North Germany in motion. A giant power surge sweeps across the grid and the fast reaction gas powered plants will have to shut down as fast as they can exactly in that moment or your grid is toast. Coal and nuclear are thermal base load, they could never react with the speed needed, you don’t want Xenon poisoning in a nuclear plant…
So your 90-95% forecast precision, i think that’s a red herring.

To Grant (20:52:33) : You say “Ummm- shouldn’t someone say something”
I thought about it. Dalton McGuinty is my MPP. However, our Ontario government is on record that it wants to destroy all our nice cheap and efficient coal fired generating stations by 2017, or whatever the most recent date is. It might just be worthwhile Ontario wasting $7 bn, so as to convince our politicians that, at least with current technology, clean coal is still best for electricity generation. Cleaning up the real pollution (not CO2) from the coal fired stations is only about $1.5 bn.

Can windturbines deliver electricity during storms?
To my recollection, it is during storms most blackouts occur.
So if all or most of electricity is to come from windturbines, how vulnerable will society be??
Just asking.

JimInIndy (21:44:14) :
1) What is the carbon footprint of 250 tons of steel?
2) How long will it take for a turbine to generate enough energy (@~12% productivity, based on Irish and Spanish wind field experience) to replace itself with another 250 tons?

——–
Also
3) Coal or oil powered stations kept running in case the wind dies down.
4) The electricity used to get the turbine started!
5) All the other resources used to produce the wind turbine

Power generation could be a great deal cheaper. The science and technology to be far more efficient and produce 18 times the current output is available.
Subsities, politics, manufacturers profit, all conspire to hide this technology.
This technology has passed engineers and CEO of a Hydro Electric producer in Manitoba, Canada.
Current science has not realized that when dealing with a circular motion and speed, density changes of the mass and stored energy is created in the material. This changes with the speed of rotation.
This is changing the center of balance in the material to compress mass at a molecular level.

@ Person of Choler (19:25:25) :
hey, thanks for that link … 🙂
I was trying, up to present in vain, to get some electricity-from-wind data for Belgium during the low wind months december, january, february … but nobody of the producers, nor the disributor was eager to “show off” and make the data available …

Well maybe they will find new contracts in the future

JustPassing (02:09:50) :
From what I read and saw few months ago, China is keeping a firm hold on rare earth materials for its own uses and strickly limiting supplies to the rest of the world……………
The YouTube vid is very informative.
We had OPEC, now we can expect REEC [Rare Earth Exporting Countries]controlled by China.
The whole thing is starting to REEK!
The video does a good job of making China look bad environmentally.

The problem with most wind cost studies is that the problems and costs do not become apparent until one tries to integrate a significant amount of wind.
ISO New England has a good study for adding 23% wind energy by 2030 (does only half the 50% CO2 reduction typically required by 2030) –go to iso-ne.com and search for “econ 2030”.
23% wind requires 4200 circuit miles of dual 500-765 kv transmission encircling New England (a region about 400 miles long). The transmission capacity required by the intermittent wind is 6-12 times the present single 345 kv backbone. The transmission will likely encounter much opposition as the dual 500-765 kv transmission lines encircle the suburbs of Boston and Hartford and go through the mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine and the coastal region of Maine.
The cost of adding 23% wind energy is:
1. 12000 MW of wind generation- about 5-8000 towers $36B 100,000+ acres
2. 4200 circuit miles- mostly dual 500-765 KV transmission $25B 100,000+ acres
3. 5000 MW of pumped storage $20B 5 mountaintops
4. 3000 MW Canadian DC transmission links $7B
5. Total $88B
6. Cost per kWh: 30 cents per kWh or 3-4 times present generation costs
Since most pumped storage ponds can only store 8 hours of electricity, additional load management is required in the form of adding electric cars and electric heat:
2.5 million electric cars at $20k premium $50B
And $5+ B for smart grid.
And conversion to electric heat in Maine- Cost?
The same job could be done with 3500 MW nuclear (2-3 units) on existing sites with less emissions for $20B or ¼ the cost (or 1/7 the cost if you include the car premium).

Wind “energy” is a pathetic fraud. Obscene subsidies for a weak, intermittent and unreliable source of energy that really isn’t “green”. In time, it will be looked at as one of the biggest mistakes of our era.

Yea! Good riddance. Wind power and the unsightly monstrous sometimes-waving-arms has been mostly a boondoggle. And yet there is a sadness when we must recognize that the most important reason is that the U.S. does not need new power — we don’t produce much. (See E.M. Smith 18:13:40) Time to change that.

If the wind don’t blow!
And the blades say no!
How is the electricty going to go? go? go?

Here’s a new type of home-generated wind power called a Spiralairfoil Wind Turbine:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100118/FRONTPAGE/1180301
Here’s one in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vSD8z4fzNg&NR=1
Spiralfoiol home page: http://sites.google.com/site/spiralwindllc/
Looks interesting anyway. Remains to be seen how cost-effective it might be.

Suddenly the politicians in southern New England are balking when the electricity rates the wind farm developers want is 24 cents per kwh (and going up 3 percent per year for a decade) compared to the 9 cents per kwh currently supplied by natural gas, coal, and nuclear. And those numbers don’t include the addition delivery and other charges of about 6 cents per kwh. Not so attractive any more…

heresy101 (21:20:18) :
I think you are underestimating the Capacity Factor of Combined cycle gas plant to make the argument for wind turbines, 30% is too low.
http://www.ceere.org/rerl/about_wind/RERL_Fact_Sheet_2a_Capacity_Factor.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor
Wind farms 20-40%.
Photovoltaic solar in Massachusetts 12-15%.
Photovoltaic solar in Arizona 19%
Thermal solar power tower 73% (predicted for 2020)
Thermal solar parabolic trough (without thermal storage) ca. 15%
Nuclear 60% to over 100%, U.S. average 92%.
Base load coal plant 70-90%
Combined cycle gas plant, about 60%
Geothermal plant, worldwide average 73%, demonstrated 90%
Hydroelectricity, worldwide average 44%

Have Ya’ll seen this from NOAA?
Stratospheric Water Vapor is a Global Warming Wild Card
January 28, 2010
A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
Observations from satellites and balloons show that stratospheric water vapor has had its ups and downs lately, increasing in the 1980s and 1990s, and then dropping after 2000. The authors show that these changes occurred precisely in a narrow altitude region of the stratosphere where they would have the biggest effects on climate.

JT (06:26:33) :
The capacity factor is not of much interest, but price pr. kWh is.
You can say that for most conventional plants the capacity factor is rather high, I’d guess about 90%. I wonder why the wiki states is as 60% for Combined Cycle, but I guess that it is not because of the technology or because they require more maintenance than other plant types, but because they are often used as backup capacity.
Power plants where the fuel is limited, as in wind and solar the case is obviously different.
Troels

Another wind farm was “put off”, i.e. cancelled, last month:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/feb/17/avista-pushes-back-reardan-wind-farm/

” Richard S Courtney (04:15:31) : ”
Richard, your paper contains a very good critic of wind power IMHO. But i think there’s a mistake in the section about solar power. Maybe you could explain how you compute this.
“For example, using direct solar energy collectors to
replace a single 2 GW coal-fired power station in the UK would cover 23% of the UK with the
collectors.”
Insolation tops 1000W/m^2 under ideal circumstances, but let’s just say that due to nighttime and clouds we end up with an average insolation of 200W/m^2 of visible light – just a wild guess by me. Let’s further assume a PV efficiency of 10% so we get on average 20W/m^2 electricity production.
To replace 2GW we would then need 100 Million m^2 or 100 km^2.
I end up with a very different estimate from yours… where is the mistake?

OT but I am hoping to see the PNS thread re-opened with some caveat about not discending into religious debate. The processes by which decisions are made in the absence of both completeness of fact and analysis is germaine to the decisions being made regarding AGW and have the potential to change the human world in dramatic ways. History and religion alike provide examples which may inform the debate. Adult standards of tolerance and reasonable discussion should allow for these to be tabled without discending into religious rancor. Decisions being proposed in regard to AGW have the potential to change human history in dramatic ways. Understanding the mechanisms by which those decisions may be arrived at is as important as understanding the science.

I wonder what the cost to the power company was, per kWH? Ever wonder why wind power advocates never talk about how much cheaper wind generated electricity will be? Is that a self answering question?

” JER0ME (06:10:56) :
[…]
But having said that, there are many many ways to store energy, or indeed create potential energy. None are very efficient. Pumping water up hills works well, although very inefficient, but the infrastructure is already there to both do it”
I am not out for a personal attack, Jerome, i myself am always interested in the economy of things because i think the cash a technology costs or makes is a very good objective way to rate it against other approaches. I have no ideological problems with any technology. I want to see how good it works. And that means, what does it cost.
Pumped storage, contrary to what you say, is among the most efficient ways we have to store energy.
“Taking into account evaporation losses from the exposed water surface and conversion losses, approximately 70% to 85% of the electrical energy used to pump the water into the elevated reservoir can be regained.[1] The technique is currently the most cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy on an operating basis, but capital costs and the presence of appropriate geography are critical decision factors.”
from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage
And again, contrary to what you say, the very problem of pumped storage is that the infrastructure that is there – at least here in Germany – is not sufficient for our needs; we would simply need to blow off some mountain tops to build more of it, and blowing off mountain tops would be so unacceptable to the population here that not even energy companies would dare to even mention it.
So we have different opinions or information there, but i’d like to thank you for your answer. After all, being wrong is not a sin, and if anyone around here proves me wrong, i’m always happy to learn. Thank you.

Going from the housebuilder’s bibe 1 tonne of steel requires 7.5MWH. 1 tonne of concrete requires 0.5MWH. They assume 5MWH is approx 1 tonne of CO2.

I have been watching half hour power statistics for the UK over the past three months and it seems that over that period wind has provided less than one percent of the demand, a good proportion of the time it rounds out at 0.0% to one decimal place.
Meanwhile, France is drawing an average of about 1,800/2,000 MW across the DC link and the Irish interconnector is drawing on average about 500MW.
So every day for the last few weeks the equivalent of the output of five UK 500MW turbine-generator units is being sold-off so that the French and Irish can preserve their own plant from wear and tear at the expense of the UK’s ancient plant, remember most of the UK plant dates from late 1960s/early 1970s.
At 14:30 UK time, 16 March 2010, the French are drawing just over 1,500 MW and over the last 24 hours, wind has provided 5169 MWh or 0.5% of the demand.
So UK consumers are paying through the nose for the piddling amount of wind juice, and at the same time wearing out UK power plant to benefit the French.

” DirkH (07:24:04) :
[…]
Pumped storage, contrary to what you say, is among the most efficient ways we have to store energy.”
I made a mistake here – i should have said “Cost effective” instead of “efficient”. If we needed to optimize total efficiency, we could use for instance supercaps, that would have an efficiency of close to 100%, but it would become a rather big mountain of supercaps to store a few GWh and rather expensive as well.
Sorry for any confusion caused…

Joe (05:03:02) :
Power generation could be a great deal cheaper. The science and technology to be far more efficient and produce 18 times the current output is available.
Subsities, politics, manufacturers profit, all conspire to hide this technology.
(…)
Weren’t you the one who said at an earlier story that wind turbines could be 18 times more efficient? I spent quite some time looking for wind efficiency numbers online, which only left me impressed with how “breezy” the numbers being used actually were, summing to the Green assertion “Well it has to be better than fossil fuels, whatever the numbers are.”
You’re starting to sound like those people who were saying Detroit is sitting on car battery technology that can yield lifetimes of many decades instead of (hopefully) around only five. Please supply some links about these “18 times” claims before you drift further into “conspiracy crackpot” territory.

@JER0ME
‘But it is possible, it is just another technical challenge.’
Yes, of course. It is also possible to ship tourists to Mars and beyond, it’s just a technical challenge…. because f all about the economical feasibility.
Why is it that pro green energy people always claim the possibility of green this and green that, but it always seem to be someone else that has to do it and make it so and preferably with someone else’s money?
And why not also factor in land lease cost, cost for subduing the people in the mediate vicinity, giving the city it’s “fair” share of the profits, reusing old almost closed down coal or oil power plants because other green nuts throws a legal fit if more water power is mentioned, et cetera…. in the next cost benefit analysis, i.e. basically the same stuff that goes in the cost benefit analysis of nuclear power plants.

Ralph (07:53:25) :
“>>>“windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.”
Windmills grind corn.
Windelecs generate electricity.”
Ralph, what part of the word ‘ECONOMICALLY’ don’t you understand?

Actual energy generation figures for the UK are fairly well hidden. But if you visit:-
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
and go to “Generation by Fuel Type (Table)” at the left side, you will get a snapshot of the current (last 5 minutes), last half hour and last 24 hour figures.
This is quite neat but you need to take a screen capture of this and print it for the next step.
Now go to “Generation by Fuel Type (Graph)” and click on Current / Historic under the graph at the lower left.
Thius opens up a spreadsheet of the last three months and you can download a csv file (top right). You can save it as an Excel file if you prefer. You now use your screen capture to identify which fuel type is in each column.
You now have a spreadsheet which identifies how much energy we use in the UK per half hour period (i.e. periods 1 – 48 every day) which comes from Gas / Coal / Nuclear / Wind / Hydro etc.
I have all this saved to my hard disc since mid November. I guess it must be archived somewhere on the web but I haven’t found it.
I have analysed the figures for the three winter months, December / January / February. (Remember this was the coldest UK Winter for a generation). The way I did it was to work out the percentage of total in each half hour period for Gas / Coal / Nuclear / Wind and for the rest.
You can then produce some nice charts showing just how much wind actually generates rather than how much Big Wind, the greenies, the incompetent BBC and the lying politicians pretend. (“This latest wind farm will supply all the electricity needs of Glasgow” etc. etc.)
Turns out that the absolutely top share of generation from the 2,700 installed wind turbines, in just one half hour period, out of a total of three months, was 3.69%.
But for a total of 237.5 hrs (10 days), the share was less than 0.1%! The share was 0.55% or less for half the three month period! For more than 90% of the time the share was less than 2.0%. If you turn it into a chart you get (you guessed it) a hockey stick.
And that’s not all. Because it tends to be more windy in the middle of the night when electricity use is at a minimum, the above figures overstate how much “useful” wind generation there is.
But, as is now well known, our Government (the pretend one in Westminster, not the real one in Brussels) has committed to spending £100,000,000,000 over the next ten years in building 6,000 offshore wind turbines. The bill going to UK households and businesses. The Regulator has admitted that this (plus all the other madcap schemes) will raise domestic electricity bills to £5,000 per year by 2020. Around 100% of the existing state pension! That should see off a few pensioners!
They claim that the 6,000 turbines will deliver “more than a quarter of the UK’s electricity”. (Not to mention that it “could” create 70,000 jobs.)
Obviously this isn’t just an exaggeration. It is a bare faced porky pie.
But the opposition political parties think it is magic! They promise to do even more and even faster!

There is a lot of discussion about the “power not flowin’ when the wind’s not blowin’.” I attended a coal conference last year where Arizona Public Services (APS) demonstrated a unique solution to that problem for their solar demonstration plant.
During the day, collected solar energy is used to fuel a hydrolysis reaction, generating oxygen and hydrogen, which is then stored. At night, the gasses are fed to a conventional IGCC system as a supplemental fuel. There is also a tie-in with an algae farm nearby to generate additional biomass which is fed to the gasifier.
When asked if all of this was cost-effective, the APS presenter stated, “Of course not. But we’re having to do this to meet government mandates.”
‘Nuff said

If the other figures in this blog are correct my back of an envelope calculation the payback time for a 100% operating windmill would months not years in repaying the energy required for the steel. That may make it years in real use, but it would almost certainly repay the energy required in its lifetime.
1.5MW windmill would take 52days to repay 250 tonnes of steel at 7.5MWH per tonne. At 10% average load that is comfortably under 2 years, and probably on a par with photovoltaics. Clearly there would be other emissions but I suspect if your only concern was c02 reduction a windmill would be a postive. One would also suspect that most of the steel was used to get the turbine high enough, so if after 15 years the turbine needed replacing, the steel and concrete could remain.

Ralph: “Wind power will destroy technological societies.”
Alternatively, you could turn this around and say that a society that has to resort to wind is in pretty dire straights.
That is why I find is amusing to listen to people who say: “renewables will never be cost-economic”, because they are living in a world of make believe and fail to grasp the simple truth that as fossil fuels run out we will increasingly have to turn to renewables (not for eco-PR but because we don’t have a choice). So, it is pretty easy to work out what will happen to the cost of energy: it will rise until renewables are cost effective. And a society that has to use renewables is a pretty much basket-case economy.

On the Spencer light thread, someone posted this 1 minute plus clip from Algore. Algore is fearfull of our fragile electric grid. This tilting to wind mills will do nothing to make the grid more robust.
http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=Xd8zSUkU4z
Algore wants to draw attention to recent heavy rains in New England. Of course he doesn’t remember their cry was coming droughts. Actually the wind turbine schemes are not only expensive, but the wind farm folks want others to invest in the gathering grid and maintain it. A grid that is idle when the wind is is very wastefull.

heresy101: “In our case, we have hydro power that can follow load at about double the cost of the wind power.”
I’m having trouble understanding how hydro power can cost 2x wind power without subsidies.. Help me out here..

Henry chance (06:57:02) :
“It takes 5 tons of coal to produce each ton of the 200 tons of steel in a tower. The nacelle is 50 tons and means 250 more tons of coal.”
I never checked the calculation of energy used myself, but lets see if it fits the bill or I have dubious information. To make it easy we assume the turbine is a 2MW and 250 metric tons of steel and do the calculation in co2 (not that i matters, but is seems easy).
250 tons of steel means that we need to burn 2 times the amount in coal as far as I can see (0,5 if an electric furnace is used according to Tokyo Steel, where did you get 5 tons from?), e.g. 500 tons. It’s of cause more, as we also need to machine the parts, paint them and a lot of other stuff, but the melting of the steel is by far the most energy intensive process. That alone gives us 1430 metric tons of co2 with coal of 78% carbon.
The turbine being a 2 MW on a normal onshore site with a capacity factor of 0,22. For each kWh is produces, it saves 966 g of co2 compared to coal. So it has to produce electricity equivalent to 1.430.000 kg / 0,966 kg = 1.480.331 kWh before it has made the energy for producing the steel. If the turbine makes 0,22*2.000kW*1h it produces 440 kWh pr. hour and takes 3.364 hours to produce the same energy as went into producing the steel. Or 140 days or a little more than 4 months. This leaves little over 3 months to produce the energy needed to make the rest of the stuff that goes into the turbine. All in all that does not seem so far off.
Troels

@ Ralph (08:42:33) :
Ah heck, I used to watch Good Neighbors on PBS (that’s the US title, The Good Life back in the UK). Mid to late 1970’s, and they were talking about apparently random power cuts back then. Will the UK be backsliding on the power supply improvements since then? There were improvements, right?

That´s really good news. That´s a signal reason and common sense is returning to the US, thanks to the big influence of Anthony´s WUWT (40 millions hits in any minute from now-that´s a lot, just compare it with msm-).

Kadaka 10 10 23
…..No

Again, Denmark;
http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf

Doug in Seattle (19:01:46) :
What did they expect? The economics of wind power were available to everyone before this contract was let out.
IPL made their decision on the basis of “looking” green. They didn’t care what it would cost. They’d just pass the cost on to the users.
Even more bizarre was WA state’s decision to mandate that all power was to be 20% renewable when over 90% already is hydro power.
Oh, yeah, and they didn’t count hydro as being renewable.

Bingo! These utilities are regulated. All they need to do is get approval from the regulators for a project and approval to pass the cost on to consumers. The utility doesn’t care power costs because consumers don’t usually have a choice.
You can be sure every time some regulatory or legislative entity mandates green or renewable power, the utility will also get approval for a rate increase.

Troels Halken (04:34:34) :
“this simply means the maintenance costs and manpower required are greater per megawatt than any other energy production source: saying it creates jobs is actually a bad thing in this case because these jobs don’t create revenue (contrast with, say, a retail store or factory).”
I think you should tell Siemens, GE and all the other companies that provide O&M servies for the wind turbines, that O&M of wind turbines does not generate revenue, cause that will be new to them.
Do you really think that companies does something for nothing and then you expect other people will believe that? Just how stupid do you think people are?

GE isn’t doing this for nothing. GE has lobbied heavily and continues to lobby heavily for subsidies, tax breaks, mandates, etc. Without government interference, their business plan falls apart.

Here’s a link to answer the question of installation and operating energy versus production payback for various energy sources. Wind turbines range from about 2% to 16% of their total energy produced needed to create the installation.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html
I live a few miles from one of the major US wind farms, Tehachapi Pass. It’s still growing, and there’s now a transmission line being run to the Castaic pumped storage lake near Los Angeles. In the summer, the difference between daily maximum and minimum grid demand (all of California) is almost a factor of two, at about 48,000 MW peak in the afternoon and 26,000 MW at night.
“Wind farms supply energy, not power”

A C Osborn
I was doing an order of magnitude. I didn’t factor in a lot of things, material transport, power distribution etc etc – or volume of energy that could not be used because it had to be bought elsewhere because of false wind predictions. I just don’t believe you would ever be able to demonstrate that it would use more c02 than it produced. Frankly the c02 would be based on the type of fuel in the country of origin and a lot of other things, an order of magnitude is all you are going to get. The order of magnitude makes it hard to argue that extra c02 would be produced by installing windfarms, so I would stick to the economic argument. There are cheaper ways of reducing c02.

Veronica (07:23:21) :
We all know that many of the sources of renewable enegy are sporadic, and nobody has ever said they are the answer to an ecologist’s prayer. Even here in the UK, sometimes it just isn’t windy and often it isn’t sunny, but I don’t see why that means we should rubbish these energy sources.
While what you say is true, it isn’t that, so much that most people are railing against. It is that those who want to supply and implement wind machines (sic) are simply lying to us. We (the people) are inferring a reduced cost, elimination of dirty coal, oil and nuclear, plus being completely renewable.
You cannot displace the large quantities of energy required today with wind. We could displace perhaps 5-15% of our consumption, even though we may necessarily need backup sources. It will also consistently cost more (maintenance, personnel, etc.)
The Denmark study is pretty much a best case scenario, since the Scandinavian hydro plants can mate with wind power as an energy storage device. Many places around the world do not have such luxury.
I do think the manufacturing impact is an (almost) moot point, since everything we do has a negative environmental impact, and dismissing wind power because the manufacture and placement of wind turbines is environmentally unfriendly is a bit facetious. The costs, however are a factor.
Most significantly, though, is the true running impact: it isn’t all tea and crumpets.

Personally, I don’t have a big problem with wind contraptions, but then I’ve never had to live by them.
Although I’m all for a flat rate pay for what you use, how about electric companies offer a tiered fee structure? They buy and install these turbines, then people have the option to sign up for ‘renewable’ energy produced by these turbines – since every one wants to be green, there will be lots of customers willing to do this (right?).
When the wind blows, their cost is low, when it doesn’t the cost is high.

Re: kadaka (08:09:34)
Next to last sentence should have ended with “…around only five years”, add the “years” on the end.
Although apparently the fine readers here are familiar enough with car batteries they knew better, as it’s gone unmentioned.
One of society’s new skills for the internet age, automatic fill-in-the-blank reading. Works well in conjunction with the automatic spelling-correction and substitute-the-correct-sound-alike-word reading skills.

So besides not being reliable enough, a major problem with wind power generation is it is most productive at night, when demand is low.
Therefore balance it out with solar, which generates during the day. Problem solved.
As can be clearly seen, in the Green Logic World this makes perfect sense.

mmmmmmm…..
Seemed to have woken a few people up. Perhaps I should just make sarcastic comments and leave it at that next time.
@DirkH I had no idea pumping water was up to 70% effective. I certainly did not mean it was the least effective, just that it was not very effective. As I understand it, there are just not may effective ways to store energy, pumping water up hills seems to be pretty good. As pointed out by another, unless you happen to have your wind farm on the fens, where there is a lot more wind, but then the National Grid should mitigate that issue (although at a loss of energy again).
Others have asked why we will have to face this issue? Well, until we get solar in space, and solve the transmission problems (yet another challenge), get cheaper nuclear or tap those ‘millions of degrees’ of heat Al Baby tells us is there, we will always face the end of fossil fuels. The supply is limited, by its nature. Sure we don’t fully know how limited yet.
So we will face some kind of challenge. We have to, that seems to me to be obvious. As I have been informed on another thread, the market will probably solve the issue as soon as fossil fuels become more expensive, be that through misguided taxation or rarity. But challenges we will have to face, whatever happens.
Oh, and I certainly didn’t say that wind was the only answer. Frankly I am amazed that so many statements I did not make have been attributed to me over this one small and minor comment. I seriously pity those who have message of import and substance, as I can see how easily whatever they say can be misrepresented. Add that to minor mistakes in writing being completely misinterpreted, and Chinese whispers are the only possible result.

sorry, re last post, head of the research department at CERL (the main department).

Troels Halken (09:44:20) :
Henry chance (06:57:02) :
“It takes 5 tons of coal to produce each ton of the 200 tons of steel in a tower. The nacelle is 50 tons and means 250 more tons of coal.”

I never checked the calculation of energy used myself, but lets see if it fits the bill or I have dubious information. To make it easy we assume the turbine is a 2MW and 250 metric tons of steel and do the calculation in co2 (not that i matters, but is seems easy).

250 tons of steel means that we need to burn 2 times the amount in coal as far as I can see (0,5 if an electric furnace is used according to Tokyo Steel, where did you get 5 tons from?), e.g. 500 tons. It’s of cause more, as we also need to machine the parts, paint them and a lot of other stuff, but the melting of the steel is by far the most energy intensive process. That alone gives us 1430 metric tons of co2 with coal of 78% carbon.
The turbine being a 2 MW on a normal onshore site with a capacity factor of 0,22. For each kWh is produces, it saves 966 g of co2 compared to coal. So it has to produce electricity equivalent to 1.430.000 kg / 0,966 kg = 1.480.331 kWh before it has made the energy for producing the steel. If the turbine makes 0,22*2.000kW*1h it produces 440 kWh pr. hour and takes 3.364 hours to produce the same energy as went into producing the steel. Or 140 days or a little more than 4 months. This leaves little over 3 months to produce the energy needed to make the rest of the stuff that goes into the turbine. All in all that does not seem so far off.
Troels

Trolls. You are either not doing you homework or are not educated.
You are yammering about the energy used for smelting. People that are clueless on energy shine when they don’t know what they are talking about.
Recipe for steel.
Coal or Pet coke plus iron ore PLUS heat equals high carbon steel, slag and ash.
Ore, coke and limestone are fed into the top of the furnace. The hot air blast and, if PCI is installed, the pulverised coal, are injected through nozzles into the base of the furnace. The pulverised coal injected in this way is used as a less expensive source of carbon and fuel. The molten iron or hot metal are periodically tapped from the bottom of the furnace and taken directly to the Basic Oxygen Furnace. Steel scrap and more limestone are added, and oxygen is blown onto the liquid metal, which is 93-95% pure iron at this stage. The reaction with the oxygen raises the temperature to 1600-1650°C and oxidises the impurities to leave almost pure liquid steel.
Blast furnaces with PCI require 350-400 kg of coke, made from 525-600 kg of coking coal, plus 100-200 kg of cheaper PCI coal – around 700 kg of coal for each tonne of hot metal produced. Furnaces without PCI use more coke, also equivalent to some 700 kg of coal, but all of it the more expensive coking coal. As each tonne of steel uses approximately 90% hot metal and 10% scrap, about 630 kg of coal is used to produce 1,000 kg of steel.
Here is where an electric arc furnace can provide the heat source. It can also be high grade coal.
Limestone is
CaCO3
calcium carbonate.
These wind folks don’t follow chemistry or electrical engineering.
You do not need to be very strong in education to sell wind turbine energy sources to city commisioners, farmers and politicians. Taking ore thru the Bessimer and LD process to make lower carbon steel uses a lot of coal or pet coke coal substitute. The heat source is where non chemistry people get confused. I know the greenie weenies think wind turbine power is low carbon but they are blind to the steel making process.
Obviously shooting O2 into the molten product to ignite the molten carbon mixed with the 1,700 degree iron ore gives off mind boggling amounts of CO2. When Joe Romm talks about dirty coal and clean wind energy, he is ignorant about how poluting and dirty the process is to make steel for the towers.
I will do another post on the economics of down time and maintenance factors and the hidden costs of keeping wind turbines running.

Small Advanced Nukes, reprocess the fuel.

Troels Halken (04:34:34) :

“this simply means the maintenance costs and manpower required are greater per megawatt than any other energy production source: saying it creates jobs is actually a bad thing in this case because these jobs don’t create revenue (contrast with, say, a retail store or factory).”
I think you should tell Siemens, GE and all the other companies that provide O&M servies for the wind turbines, that O&M of wind turbines does not generate revenue, cause that will be new to them.
Do you really think that companies does something for nothing and then you expect other people will believe that? Just how stupid do you think people are?

Probably less stupid than you for your previous statement that STEEL is a material resource with ‘no carbon foot print’. (Not that that actually means anything)
Steel is produced from iron ore, requiring 1st a coking plant where coal is converted to coke, then a blast furnace where the iron ore is converted to steel, the grade of which is determined by the amount of coke used in the process.
I worked in a steel works BTW.
DaveE.

kadaka (08:09:34) :
You will not find any reference to this turbine technology. I was the “crack-pot” that submitted this technology to Manitoba Hydro which did not go past the engineers the first time as it was thought to be too delicate for hydro power.
This technology is actually an inverted turbine so that water is split by a slightly concave cone that has blades that turn energy from a verticle to horizontal plane at an agle of optimization. This center is fixed and does not move but it splits the energy and directs it at all 360 degrees. A turbine with 180 blades on the circumference of the circle picks up all the energy working together for the maximum amount of torque. I slightly modified this design when I discovered all the math and science as to why this is so powerful and why the current turbine are actually only 2% efficient at harnessing energy from water. I used “for every action there is an equal opposite reaction” as a guide and angles of deflection to get the maximum energy and efficiency. I could only achieve 78% efficiency of actually harnessing energy due to having to have some space for water to go to after using the energy. I resubmitted this and went past the engineers, CEO and right to the board. Although they were impressed with the technology, they are not in the manufacturing but would be interested when the technology is manufactured.
I was also the smuck who submitted it to a German manufacturer who is the world supplier. The company stated that although the technology was extremely interesting, the company is content with the current customer base.
This was 4 years ago and I still bug the Canadian and American government periodically.
Learning from this turbine allowed me to understand rotation and how density of any mass when moving compresses and holds energy.
Here is why the current turbines are terrible at picking up energy. As they rotate, the mass or center of balance moves on a molecular level.
Take a wheel with spokes. On these spokes add a light spring on the spoke. Next add a weight on the side toward the center. When the wheel rotates, the spring compresses with the weight moving it forward. The faster it moves, the more compression and stored energy. When the wheel is allowed to relase on it’s own, the store energy keeps the wheel moving untill all the energy is used up.
Why is it not patented? I did a patent check to see if anything was like this and there is not. I was also advised not to for two reasons. One China does not abide by patent laws and two India has been known to put blanket patents around a product in case of any new products or modifications.
Now add this to our understanding of what the theories say how our planet slows and what had energized it. Also works on the sun too.
So now every physicist and scientist try to ingnore what I have, which is a big piece of science is incorrect.

Andrew F (19:08:45) :
Interesting thread. I’m learning lots of useful info. Thanks to Troels, Henry and other experts for their comments.
OK
We are a long ways from break even. I can offer the numbers of cubic yards to create the base of the turbine for concrete. The steel reinforcement and weight are going very high since the towers are getting taller and heavier.
Building a ROAD to each tower and preparing a surface to raise the million pound crane is a of of dirt work. More earthmoving equipment.
http://blog.climateandenergy.org/2010/03/15/newton-ks-wind-turbine-base-manufacturing-possibility-of-400-jobs-by-2014/
He said the Atlas CTB uses only 250 cubic yards of concrete, compared with standard tower bases that use more than 500 cubic yards of concrete, but Tindall’s design is even stronger.
Palumbo said the Atlas CTB starts at about $200,000, but customers can recoup their investment over a relatively short period of time from increased profits. And by building up instead of out, they can reduce the amount of land needed for wind farms.
Lot of money, steel and concrete on the ground. That means 100 truck loads of cement. Lot of diesel fuel to drive 40 miles into the country.

Joe (19:17:43) :
I do also have to ask if youve built one? It seems to me youve got your design running backwards… as you take energy from the flow of water it slows… but the area increases if you going outwards with the turbine, and the slower flow will work against the quicker speeds of the outter edges of the blades slowing it, causing drag… maybe im imaging it wrong from your description… but it seems to me you are describing a compressor/pump more than and expander.

FYI, Denmark import-export in realtime:
http://www.energinet.dk/Integrationer/ElOest/ElsystemetLigeNu/energinet1.swf

Re: Joe (19:17:43)

Take a wheel with spokes. On these spokes add a light spring on the spoke. Next add a weight on the side toward the center. When the wheel rotates, the spring compresses with the weight moving it forward. The faster it moves, the more compression and stored energy. When the wheel is allowed to relase on it’s own, the store energy keeps the wheel moving untill all the energy is used up.

Sounds like a speed control mechanism as applied to a flywheel. Works off the twirling ice skater arms-in arms-out model. On spin-up the arms (weights) are inward, you build up rotational speed. More energy gets stored (increased angular momentum), arms start moving outward, limiting the rise in angular speed. We’ll assume the springs don’t hit maximum compression (end of travel for the weights). On spin-down the arms move inward, allowing the angular speed to be maintained while angular momentum is lost. Finally the arms are completely inward, and the last bit of angular momentum goes away as the wheel slows to a stop.

(…) This technology is actually an inverted turbine so that water is split by a slightly concave cone that has blades that turn energy from a verticle to horizontal plane at an agle of optimization. This center is fixed and does not move but it splits the energy and directs it at all 360 degrees. A turbine with 180 blades on the circumference of the circle picks up all the energy working together for the maximum amount of torque. (…)

Ah, got it, sounds like you’re driving a squirrel cage fan attached to a generator. Normally the fan is driven by a motor, and the air sucked into the center where it is flung outwards by the blades and collected by the housing. For your design the cone diverts the flow coming into the center outward into the blades, generating torque that turns the fan and thus the generator it is attached to.
I have to wonder how you calculated water turbine efficiencies. For example, among impulse turbines the Turgo operates at around 87% efficiency in real world use. For reaction turbines, a common Francis turbine is cited as 90% efficient. With designs such as these, the outflowing water has very little energy left.
So if you’re going from water that is rushing into the turbine, to water that basically has to be pushed away from the turbine, how do you get 18 times more efficiency than that?

JEROME
Sorry, I don’t wish to seem argumentative. But you say….’on the fens, where there is a lot more wind’
Can you support that statement please? Operational figures for local Wind Farms on the Fens suggest they are operating between 24 and 26% Annually. I believe national average load figures for Britain are in the region of 29.4%? The last monthly figures for an operating Wind Farm Sept 2008 were 16.6%. My own daily records, taken from BBC windfeeds over 18 months locally suggest the wind speeds regularly are very low. And observations of operating Wind Farms daily, reveal them standing idle, very often. (Yesterday for instance.) What we do have though, on the fens, is wind sheer. Which, I understand leads to increased noise. Perhaps explaining some high profile noise complaints from local residents who’s houses are too close. Leading to concerns from many local residents who now find themselves threatened by new developments, equally close, but with larger machines. A proliferation problem (unregulated as to proximaty distances) that BWEA are eager to encourage. But for residents to complain, or object is to invite unfortunate, and less than polite comments. (Sometimes from people who are driving this process, and profiting from it.)