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.
================
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.
I am from Spain, so i can speak a bit about wind-power. Here we have more than 16,000 windmills (and growing). everywhere you go, you can only see wind-farms.
our energy bill has grown about a 50% in only 4 years, and is more to come, thanks to all this “green energy”.
Don’t follow our example, it is an economical suicide.
We have days on summer where wind only produces 100MW (when the demand is more than 30.000MW)
Sorry for my english
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.
@DirkH,
Well, I did say I was not out for an argument, and I did say there were many more opinionated than myself. Case in point, I feel.
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 and take advantage of it, so overheads are low. Others I know of involve springs, although poor results have been had so far.
No it’s not easy. No it’s not simple. But it is possible, it is just another technical challenge. I have seen proposals to melt salt to store energy in solar farms, for example. We will have to face such challenges in any case, so it is wise to consider them rather than just dismiss them out of hand.
Still not looking for an argument!
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…
“Joe (05:42:54) :”
Joe, the crucial factor is matching generation with consumption. Yes, inverters are available, but the “energy loss” is massive converting DC to AC. For a fully “independently mains-grid system” to be deployed, in-home, would require fullscale change, ie, a (At the time I looked into it in NZ) NZ$12,000 fridge. Just the fridge! Let alone lights and heating.
So, where do we get our energy from?
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%
Joe (05:14:34) :
Cut in wind speed in the range of 3-4 m/s, max production is obtained between 10-15 m/s depending on type and design and cut out is 25 m/s.
brc (05:46:53) :
Sorry for using the word carbon footprint, as that is misleading. I should have used energy in stead. There are several ways to do the math, as you can contribute the energy used for processing each component of the turbine or all the energy used for all the components. The figures I provided above take the energy used for manufacturing all components and assembly and erection on the site.
Steve Keohane (05:56:47) :
See my comment to brc above.
BR Troels
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.
JER0ME (06:10:56) :
No it’s not easy. No it’s not simple. But it is possible, it is just another technical challenge. I have seen proposals to melt salt to store energy in solar farms, for example. We will have to face such challenges in any case,
Why will have to face such challenges in any case?
Are you saying that Wind power will be the only technology left to provide power?
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
Emilio (05:58:53) : , thanks for the real life experience and I think your English is very good.
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/
@Patrick Davis The efficiency of converters is not as bad as you make out. The Outback Power 48V to 120V DC-AC inverters run at 93% efficiency. Yeah, you lose some. But then you lose some any time you have a transformer anyplace or wire connecting things.
” 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?
Great thread. Input from Denmark and Spain and real case histories
Input from engineers and utility people. Also several posts have a falsehoood or more.
The carbon footprint of a tower is massive.
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. It takes 20 semi trucks to transport a 1 million pound crane to a site to erect a tower. The towers come on another 10 oversized semi trucks. I saw one recently that had over 40 wheels to support the weight of a section of tower.
I appreciate the post above that tells us it takes 8 months for a turbine to generate the power that was expended in it’s own construction.
I learn something every time i read informed posts. One post above mentioned the voltage coming out of the turbine was too low to go into the grid. That means even more energy wasted in transforming the power to higher voltage.
Moving electric on long distance lines loses 15% of the power every 50-60 miles.
A train load of coal is the same weight at delivery if it travelled 200 miles from Wyoming or 2,000 miles.
The massive blades for the turbines are fiberglass. They create tremendous pollution in the course of molding the blades. The polyester resins also come from petrol products. It takes another set of oversized load trucks to ship the blades. Of course these oversized loads also require pilot cars with flashing lights ahead and behind the loads.
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.
Troels Halken (06:34:10) :
There is such a thing as max capacity that can take any amount of wind speed as this type of turbine has a housing that generates a blow back to any wind speed. This causes excess winds to funnel around when the max volume is reached.
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?
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.
What we actually need is large scale electricity storage capacity. Once that “transforming technology” (great pun I did there!) is in place, all of these sources will make a lot more sense. I don’t know how long that might take.
Wind farms might need oversized trucks to transport the blades, like, um, once each, and they might even be ugly, but if you use Google images to look at Didcot Power Station, my local blot on the landscape, you might think there are worse things to be looking at than windmills.
” 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.
Pofarmer
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.
At 50,000 feet the air is very thin, and so cannot contain much water vapour. Therefore 10% of a small amount must be very small indeed, and so maybe here is where we can look for anthropic ‘fingerprints’
Don’t suppose anybody has correlated this with the increase/decrease in high-altitude flight by the Military, plus Concorde, etc?
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.
Troels Halken (06:34:10) : Sorry for using the word carbon footprint, as that is misleading. I should have used energy in stead.
Thanks for your response, I am not sure I understand the difference in what you are saying. To my thinking, it is the energy use in manufacturing and transport that is the carbon footprint. What do you see as a MTBF in the field for these systems? What is the operating vs. downtime over the life of of a windmill, not lack of operation due to lack of wind? TIA
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.
>>>Michael J. Trebilcock, professor of economics at Toronto
>>>University, says Denmark’s wind power is a con:
And so does Dr Hugh Sharman.
http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/DocumentLibrary/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
In his report on the Danish ‘wind carpet’, he claims that Denmark has never used any of its wind energy, because it is too variable. Denmark sells it to Scandinavia instead, as it can be integrated more easily with instant hydro power.
He also details the massive gaps in wind production, including 54 days in 2002 with less than 1% power, and 18 weeks with less than 10% power in 2003.
Try running a 24/7 society with that kind of power system.
.