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.
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>>>“windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.”
Windmills grind corn.
Windelecs generate electricity.
.
Troels, You’ve already been called out on the steel doesn’t have a so-called carbon foot print statement.
I have an extremely hard time believing that a single wind turbine can deliver enough energy to process and fabricate all of the steel, copper, concrete, etc in a 250 Ton (not metric tonne) wind mill in 3 to 4 months. Actually I’ll go out on a limb and say that I doubt that a windmill could ever generate enough power to do that in it’s serviceable lifetime. I’m not aware of any wind powered steel mills steel production being as energy intensive as it is.
Also windmills don’t appear to be as low maintenance as you suggest. They’re mechanical just like any other rotating assembly.
Two potential problems with wind power…
1) Texas leads the nation in wind power production. The growth of wind power is displacing natural gas-fired plants rather than coal-fired plants…
If fossil fuel or nuclear operators can’t deliver their promised power, they have to foot the bill for buying replacement electricity. If the wind generators can’t deliver, the backup cost is spread among all of the utilities.
This process is resulting in a decline in the gas-fired generation capacity as the wind capacity grows. Wind, with its subsidies, is the cheapest source when the wind blows; so it is the preferred source. Coal and nuclear are the next cheapest. Then comes natural gas, particularly older gas-fired plants.
If the goal is to deliver the “greenest” energy, wind should be displacing the dirtiest source: coal. If the goal is cheaper energy, wind power should not be subsidized.
Wind power is very well established in this state. I don’t have a problem with it having been subsidized while it gained a foothold… But at some point the playing field will have to be levelled or we will be displacing a relatively green power source with wind and not displacing our least green source.
2) Noise pollution…
Wind power will increasingly become an important component of our electric generating capacity; but it is not a panacea.
If the goal is “green” energy, wind power should be displacing coal rather than gas.
If the goal is “cheap” energy, wind power should not be subsidized.
We should use more wind power when it becomes an economically viable alternative and not before.
It used to be innovation took place without government mandating it. Today, significant portions of the world’s population seem to believe innovation can only take place through government mandates and subsidies.
Build a better product or create a better service and nobody will need to be compelled to use it.
” 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…
>>>A given set of Uber name brand tools costing
>>>$1000 (made in America) might be $100 in a
>>>comparable set made in china. Don’t have any
>>>wisdom to share on it, but I really wonder if we’re losing.
We are not losing if that is true trade (50-50 trade), and we keep plenty of high technology in the West. But if China takes over all production, and all the science and technology to make that production, then we become a Third World Nation and China rules the world.
USA may be ok at present, with major high-tech industries. But the UK is slipping fast. We no longer do heavy industry, and we don’t know what electronics are, nor how they are made. Computers? Sheer magic, apparently, because we cannot make them.
Put it this way, if China (and other technology producers) stopped shipping to the UK, because we are not paying our trade bills (and we are not), then the UK would become an outpost of the Amazon rainforest with a few neolithic tribes hanging on in the New Forest and the Scottish Highlands.
.
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.
“Potential climatic impacts and reliability of very large-scale wind farms”
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053-2010.pdf
Wind farms may increase global average temperature by 0.15C by 2100.
@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.
>>>If one assumes the Danes know and accept the cost of the
>>>alternative energy, then having it is a GOOD thing IMHO.
>>>Especially with oil prices on the way through the roof.
No it is NOT a good thing – that is the whole point. If you have to provide backup power stations for each wind farm, you have just doubled your power infrastructure. And if the standby power station is on spinning-standby, you are hardly reducing fossil fuel demands (nor CO2 output). All you are doing is doubling or tripling the costs of electricity.
Here is the wind speeds for the Irish Sea (big wind producer area) for the January cold-snap in the UK.
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/getimage.php?from=20091228&span=6&code=5
Anything below 5kts is not producing significant power. So just when you want the electrical power – there is none.
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?
Justa Joe,
Wind turbine blades are made out of epoxy, not steel.
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!
>>JER0ME (23:42:38) :
>>I know more than I want to about the subject as my step-father
>>was chairmain of the BWEA (British) , 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.
Then your step-father knows very little about the realities of electrical generation and consumption.
OK, a scenario.
The UK is running 30% wind power as a percentage of output. A big winter anticyclone comes across the UK. Temperatures drop to -10oc, and wind drops to 2kts for four weeks (as it did in Jan 2010). The UK loses 30% of its electrical generation for four weeks.
Ok, your choice. Do you cut power to:
a. Pensioners.
b. Hospitals.
c. Traffic lights.
d. Rail and Metro systems.
e. Airports.
f. Fuel stations.
g. City centers.
h. Light industry, including food manufacture.
i. Distribution outlets, including supermarkets.
Your choice – what will it be? 30% cuts, remember.
.
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
>>Troels Halken
>>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.
No hydro in the UK – no big uninhabited hills. And if you are starting up conventional power, you have doubled your infrastructure investments and doubled the cost of electricity (triple if you have hydro too).
>>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.
You think Russia and Libya are good, stable sources of power, that will not switch us off (like Ukraine every winter)?? Plus, you have doubled or tripled your costs again
>>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.
Nuclear is a reliable base-load supply. If you have nuclear, you don’t need any windelecs.
>>Lastly transmission grids with higher capacity across states
>>can also play a role to level out the energy production
The anticyclone that reduced the UKs wind in Jan 2010 reduced the wind across most of Europe. No power to transfer, no matter how long your cables.
Wind power will destroy technological societies.
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.
I have noticed that Anu is refering to Denmark as a nice example for wind-farms. But everything isnt just black or white.
Here is a report regarding Denmark and wind-power;
(Its a pdf to be downloaded)
http://www.cepos.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/Arkiv/PDF/Wind_energy_-_the_case_of_Denmark.pdf
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.
” 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). ”
——————————-
Complete NONSENSE. Just look at the Ireland grid, which shows us output of 1100 MW of wind turbines and the forecast wind. Click previous day, take any point on the graph and you can see that a 90% correct forecast is a mere coincidence, occurring only at a few points per day.
http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/windgeneration/
Note that typically the forecast is off by at least 30% and sometimes 50%. 10 years ago utilities would have never dreamed of burdening society with the environmental and economic costs of these wasteful monsters that overall are useless in providing our society with meaning amounts of electricity. Our utilities can’t “depend on wind” and take the chance of a 50% wrong forecast, when the power output of a turbine is based on the cube of the wind speed.
http://www.nofreewind.com/2009/05/how-often-does-turbine-produce-power.html
There is a dramatic difference between power output of a turbine at 15 mph and 20 mph, and the wind speed constantly changes. Just look at any turbine output graph and any imbecile can see how hard output is to predict 1 hr in advance, let alone 24 hours.
http://www.nofreewind.com/2010/01/wind-turbine-out-graphs-part-i.html
It is the same in North Dakota, the same in Oregon, the same in Ireland, the same anywhere. It is an enormous deception that no sane person would ever purchase, with their own money, only a Gov’t would be STUPID (or greedy) enough to impose this on their citizens. Of course, they have a higher goal, they are saving the world.
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.
>>>ScientistForTruth (08:25:33) :
>>>“windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.”
>>>Ralph, what part of the word ‘ECONOMICALLY’ don’t you understand?
Errm – I was not commenting on economics. All I was doing was trying to stop people calling these monstrosities ‘windmils’. They are NOT windmills.
Windmills grind corn
Windelecs generate electricity.
.
BTW talking of windmills, one good place for windelecs is Holland.
The Netherlands use 25% of their power for pumping water out of dykes. It does not always matter when it is pumped, as long as it is, sometime. Thus the intermittency of windelecs does not matter for this function.
.
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..
>>>Veronica (07:23:21) :
>>What we actually need is large scale electricity storage capacity.
Another pipe-dream. HOW??
Pumped storage is the only viable method at present, and the largest system in Europe – Dinorwig – will only supply 5% of UK demand for 5 hours. What we need is a system to supply the UK’s power requirements for 4 weeks. Not possible, my friends, not possible. Not enough hills, and the cost would be astronomic – 2,800 Dinorwigs – do you know that that would cost??
.
Perhaps I can refer you to this article:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/renewable-energy-–-our-downfall/
.
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