In a statement made last Friday by EDF Energies Nouvelles (French Green Power Company), a power purchase agreement was terminated without explanation by Indianapolis Power and Light Company regarding the supply of wind energy by enXco, a local EDF company. The contract was unilaterally terminated by IPL, and more than 10 days later, EDF has acknowledged it to the market.
The IPL wind power project web page is here
From the press release see here
======================
PRESS RELEASE
March 12th, 2010
Termination of the Lakefield PPA by IPL
On March 1, enXco, the US subsidiary of EDF Energies Nouvelles, received notification that the US utility Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPL) would terminate the power purchase agreement related to the 201 MW Lakefield wind project currently under development (southwestern Minnesota).
The project received the approval of the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) on January 27, 2010. 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.
enXco is considering its rights and remedies within the framework of the PPA. In addition, the Company is currently analyzing several options, including re-marketing the project to one or several other utilities.
Consistent with EDF Energies Nouvelles policy, construction has not yet started.
The 2012 operational objective of 4,200 MW net and 2010 objective of EBITDA will not be impacted by the Lakefield project evolution.
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big h/t to Ecotretas
Page 1
PRESS RELEASE PRESS RELEASE
Paris, March 12, 2010 Paris, March 12, 2010
Termination of the PPA by Lakefield IPL Termination of the Lakefield PPA by IPL
On March 1, enXco, the U.S. subsidiary of EDF Energies Nouvelles, received On March 1, enXco, the US subsidiary of EDF Energies Nouvelles, received
notification that the U.S. utility Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPL) notification that the US utility Indianapolis Power and Light Company (IPL)
would terminate the power purchase agreement related to the 201 MW would terminate the power purchase agreement related to the 201 MW
Lakefield wind project currently under development (southwestern Lakefield wind project currently under development (southwestern
Minnesota). Minnesota).
The project received the approval of the Indiana Utility Regulatory The project received the approval of the Indiana Utility Regulatory
Commission (iurc) on January 27, 2010. Commission (IURC) on January 27, 2010. The iurc’s order was consistent The IURC’s order was consistent
with similar past orders. with similar past orders. IPL has purported to unilaterally terminate the IPL has purported to unilaterally terminate the
power purchase agreement on the basis of this order without providing power purchase agreement on the basis of this order without providing
further specific reasons. further specific reasons.
enXco is considering its rights and remedies within the framework of the enXco is considering its rights and remedies within the framework of the
PPA. PPA. In addition, the Company is currently analyzing several options, In addition, the Company is currently analyzing several options,
including re-marketing the project to one or several other utilities. including re-marketing the project to one or several other utilities.
Consistent with EDF Energies Nouvelles policy, construction has not yet Consistent with EDF Energies Nouvelles policy, construction has not yet
started. started.
The 2012 operational objective of 4.200 MW and 2010 net objective of The 2012 operational objective of 4,200 MW net and 2010 objective of
EBITDA will not be impacted by the project Lakefield evolution. EBITDA will not be impacted by the Lakefield project evolution.
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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.
Tons on wind disasters here – just scroll through two years of posts.
http://www.palmerston-north.info
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 ?
re: Benjamin (19:00:31) :
“In other Indiana news… For the first time in ever, private sector employment has fallen lower than the government sector…”
No, the article you refered to said “…workers in Indiana plants numbered 430,800 in January, while government at all levels, including schools and publicly owned hospitals, employed 442,800 workers.” There are lots of private sector jobs that are not “workers in Indiana plants.”
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.
Sorry about the reference, change eon to e.on. About the e.on database (Person of Choler 19:25:25) this data is based on 24 hour future forecast, and actual wind power produced. The forecast is about 90% accurate. However one must evaluate the forecast with the requirements of grid reliability 99.99%.
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.
“A consortium led by Samsung C&T Corporation and the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) will invest $7 billion to generate 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar power. These projects will triple Ontario’s output from renewable wind and solar sources and provide clean electricity to more than 580,000 households. ”
“Thanks to today’s announcement, we will be delivering more green energy for Ontarians to use — and more green energy products for North America to buy. With this step, Ontario is becoming the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America.”
– Dalton McGuinty
Premier of Ontario
Ummm- shouldn’t someone say something…
Readers may wish to comment on the very latest related blog by Paul Hudson of the BBC on this very topic!
For those who are doing the analysis, think in terms of supply, and demand. The major defect of wind generated electricity is the SUPPLY side variability of wind power. This variability can further be subdivided in predictable, and non predictable variability. The risk of predictable variability is expensive to the grid, and the risk of non predictable variability is very, very expensive to the grid. For a one day forecast the predictability is about 90%. For a three day forecast the esimated predictabity drops to about 40-50%. For a month ahead forecast, the predictability drops to less than 10% (think weather forecast).
The demand side variability is predictable to about 99% for day ahead, 3 day ahead, and one month ahead!!
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…
The aging of wind turbine systems is more than 5 times faster than the expected depreciation. It is ridiculous. And if you have ever been any where near a wind farm, you realize that everyone involved was paid to destroy the planet as well as the locality. Talk about pollution. Visual, mental, sonic, etc. Move every one of the proponents to a close house. Make them stay there….for life. Which will be short indeed. Suicide is the better option.
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.
As a utility resource planner, wind is not perfect but is economic in most cases, even without the subsidies. Wind has a capacity factor of 30% on an annual average which is very close to the projected CF when we negotiated the contract. Our production curve varies from 6% CF in winter to 50-60% in summer. The annual MWH are very close to the 30% for the last six years. Scheduling is day ahead so by the real time interval the wind may not be there, or generating greater than scheduled. In our case, we have hydro power that can follow load at about double the cost of the wind power. Load following means that the hydro needs to be ramped up, or backed down, in real time to meet the wind output. The biggest issue of our wind is that it drops generation during the hottest part of the afternoon; which isn’t a problem for us because we don’t peak at that time.
Combined cycle natural gas plants have a capital cost of $1,200 to $1,500 per kW. At a capacity factor of 30%, the $3,000 per kW capital cost of wind (without subsidies) is in the ballpark of combined cycle without the cost and risk of natural gas prices. A 7,000 heat rate (very efficient) combined cycle will range in gas cost from $35/MWH to $90/MWH (at NG prices ranging from $5-13/mmBTU over the last few years). With the cost of the wind being free, load following by hydro, combined cycle, or other quick ramp up resources usually pencils out.
Having said all this, the issue of how much wind a balancing authority (ISO) can handle is under serious review. In the Pacific Northwest, there are apparently times that 33% of the generation is coming from wind! There are real issues of integrating this amount; but it doesn’t mean that wind is not a viable resource. Boone Pickens plan of replacing imported oil with natural gas and using wind to fill in the gap was not that crazy of an idea.
While global warming is a crock of …, renewable resources that utilize wind, geothermal, landfill gas, biogas (not ethanol), and solar have a place in weaning the US off of oil and making the balance of payments positive. After geothermal capital costs are paid off, the 90% capacity factor is comparable to nuclear in output and costs without the issues of security and disposing of the waste. There are even times that solar at its high capital cost pencil out if you need afternoon energy and want to avoid transmission costs.
Finally, this contract may have been canceled for reasons unrelated to the wind. Our contracts have off ramps to back out without penalty if the counter party isn’t meeting the terms of the contract.
It makes me weep to see energy cost stupidity repeated. We were doing detailed economic analyses in the mid 1970s that had about the same ratio of electricity costs as today’s, from hydro to nuclear to coal to oil to LNG … then the big gap to solar, wind, wave and other ideas that were restricted by the physics of inherent energy density.
Two main changes. Gullible people became prepared to pay hugely for “green” labels, as if that made any more difference than a label can make. Second, the greens who did not like competition worked for years to push up compliance & social costs of efficient production methods like nuclear, to the stage where they now believe their home-made propaganda.
It’s simple, as always. Blame the green ideology. It’s usually wrong. If it had a chance of being right, conventional industry would have made it mainstream decades ago.
Regarding the head article here, EDF is the main operator of France’s huge nuclear power operations. My guess is that they make windmills with green labels for suckers who do not do due diligence. That would be the French way – to have an industrial joke, while demonstrating the cost benefits of nuclear.
On basically the same subject, I posted this today:
http://algorelied.com/?p=3904
A Bonneville Power Administration (in the Pacific NW) admitted that wind farms are “creating emissions”. Basically, because the coal plant has to be left idling (like a car idling at a red light waiting for a green), just in case the wind dies down.
“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.
Anticlimactic (20:03:35)
I’ve had a similar question, and have been waiting for a thread like this to pose it for our better informed friends. Months ago a TV “public service” ad touted wind turbine manufacture as a great “green jobs” source. It said a single post-and-turbine assembly took 250 tons of steel. That’s a LOT of steel.
My question (for passers-by with engineering background) is a two parter:
1) What is the carbon footprint of 250 tons of steel?
2) How long will it take for a turbine to generate enough energy (@ur momisugly~12% productivity, based on Irish and Spanish wind field experience) to replace itself with another 250 tons?
Heh.
One less taxpayer’s ‘money sinkhole’.
Finally a subject I know something about since Lakefield is very close to where I live. Having been involved in local economic development in SW Minnesota for years I do know a fair amount about the windpower out here on the prairie. Most of these projects are dependant on two of the issues mentioned above, goverment subsidies and goverment mandates. I am not familiar with the State of Indiana policies on “green power” but many states have them. Similiar to the make believe benefits of cap and trade some states mandate green power in order to look good to the Greenies in their states. Most states have absolutely no hope of ever meeting green power mandates. Except for North Dakota, which has all the wind you could ever want and a substantial chunk of the coal reserves in the US. Ironic huh?
These projects normally are used to meet state mandates even though not one single watt of it is likely to ever make its way to IPL. Chances are IPL found a cheaper way to meet its needs. Maybe everybody gets a free curly Q light bulb, who knows.
It might have been local issues too, so I wouldn’t be too quick to blame the developer, there are just too many factors to look at in a deal like this. One thing that comes to mind is the uncertainty that surrounds a upcoming powerline project called CapX2020. The project proposed to run a new power line from Brookings County SD to Hampton MN. At least one power company has pulled out of the project which would have brought power from a COAL fired plant on the east border of South Dakota to the east border of MN.
I have been told by managers of the local windmills around here (and there are hundreds already) there are issues with stepping up voltage enough to supply a major powerline. Not sure of the reasons but it is another issue that seldom gets mentioned when ever the issue of the grid comes up.
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?
I have forwarded this post to my Ohio state legislators for consideration. My opinion is that no public funds should be used for wind/solar as they can only be counted on as supplemental power, on a municipal scale.
Transmission/maintenance costs of wind/solar farms, and other costs, seem to make them undesirable.
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.
Add-On to JiminIndy 21:44:15
The carbon dioxide budget for the concrete footings for wind turbines should also be added. The footings weigh about 500 to 1250 tons per turbine. Portland cement has a large co2 budget (heat of cooking of limestone, and release of CO2 conversion from limestone to quick-lime).
Era of plenty!
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/03/era-of-plenty.html