Wind turbines are a poor way to harness energy – but a very good way to generate public subsidies, says Andrew Gilligan.
By Andrew Gilligan from The UK Telegraph
Published: 7:00AM BST 13 Jun 2010
From the summit of Plynlimon, in the deep country of the Cambrian Mountains, there is a 70-mile panorama of the Cader range, hill after green-blue hill stretching into the distance, from the peaks around Bala to the shores of Cardigan Bay.
It was a view that caught the breath. It still does, in a different way. The view from Plynlimon now is of more than 200 wind turbines, nearly a tenth of Britain’s onshore total, stretching across ridge-lines, dominating near and far horizons. The author George Borrow wrote a whole chapter on Plynlimon in his classic 19th-century travelogue, Wild Wales. It’s not so wild these days.
Last week’s decision by Miriam González Durántez, wife of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, to join a leading wind-farm company has thrown the spotlight on one of Britain’s most controversial industries.
Mrs Durántez’s firm, Acciona, is seeking planning permission to add another 23 wind turbines to the view from Plynlimon, filling up some of the remaining skyline not yet occupied by them.
To opponents, land-based wind-turbines – there are currently 2,560 – are, in the words of the chairman of the National Trust, Simon Jenkins, “creatures from the War of the Worlds”, industrialising the countryside, invading precious landscapes.
Supporters are no less high-pitched. At the annual conference of the wind farm trade body, the BWEA, John Prescott, Mr Clegg’s predecessor, stormed: “We cannot let the squires and the gentry stop us meeting our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children. So let me tell them loud and clear: it’s not your backyard any more – it’s ours!”
The then energy and climate change secretary, now Labour leadership contender, Ed Miliband, said that it “should be socially unacceptable to be against wind turbines in your area – like not wearing your seatbelt”.
Yet like so much else in the climate change debate, the emotions – on both sides – get in the way. Presenting wind farms as either an alien scourge or a moral crusade obscures what is surely the real question: are they effective at reducing CO2 emissions? Do the benefits they bring outweigh the costs they impose?
Read the rest of the story here:
h/t Neil Jones
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My power station is replacing its main turbines due to age. The 900 MWe turbines are being replaced with new more efficient turbines which will result in a 23 MWe increase in station output (we operate at a 95% capacity factor). Done on each unit, this is a 46 MWe increase in capacity. How many multi-million dollar wind turbines, operating at some ridiculously low capacity factor, does it take to equal 46 new MWe of emission-free electricity?
If our governments were truly in this for the environment, they’d take these subsidies and use them to upgrade the existing coal, nuclear, and natural gas powered stations, not that we need any subsidies, but we’re more than willing to do our part in this.
The only problem with this is our economies would survive and greenhouse gas levels would not go down to the levels they can achieve through economic ruin.
PS: This station also has margin for a 100 MWe power uprate for each unit, which can be done for an almost laughably low $/MWe. But, because of the government-generated weak economy, that 200 MWe of 95% capacity factor emission-free power is left for the future
Damn turbine flash can cause epileptic seizures:
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/rma/call-in-turitea/submissions/186changeappendix3.pdf
As an epilepsy patient, I know a few things about this. These things are a blight.
Jim Cripwell says:
June 13, 2010 at 12:49 pm
…..One would thought with all these facilities, and all the expertise, we would be in the forefront of using WF for pumped storage. Yet we dont have a single project even in the planning stage. I have tried to find out why, with absolutely no success whatsoever. I suspect pumped storage from WF is simply not that straightforward.
______________________________________________________________________
I think it is more of a political issue than an engineering issue. Hydro is now considered “evil” because it changes the landscape and might hurt some rare species. So instead we are stuck with useless bird slicers. Look at the mountains we have in North America. If you really want “clean” power hydro makes the most sense.
The fact that hydro and nuclear are already considered “evil” should clue you in that this is a straight scam designed to bankrupt the EU, N. America and the rest of the countries who are stupid enough to sign on. The ultimate goal is a world government with a new aristocracy pedaled as “socialism”
Euroasia and North America could be covered in an ice sheet and The Weather Clown, James Hansen would still announce it was the warmest year ever.
Well, what you need is giant gravel batteries.
Not kidding:
http://www.favstocks.com/gravel-batteries-offer-a-solution-for-renewable-energy-storage/2014342/
German article:
http://www.freitag.de/wissen/1020-leuchtender-schotter
They say 80% efficiency and dirt-cheap per kWh. My BS meter says scamsters, but who knows…
BSmeter, dead on!
Using electicity to create heat is “plane stupid”. Using pure directional energy to create low order random movement heat energy. Converting heat back to electricity is only about 30% efficient.
To propose it as a means of storing energy is either grossly incompetant or fraud.
In pumped hydro the energy is stored as gravitational potencial energy, in principal 100% recoverable. The inefficiencies come from the machines used to raise the water and reconvert the kenetic energy of falling water to electricity.
75-80% is pretty good for any real life situation.
Many pumped hydro systems are to get around one of the big problems of nuclear plant. They cannot adapt to demand. To produce less expensive power they need to operate flat out 24/7. Even when there’s no demand.
In Ireland, the capacity factor for wind has been around 30% for the last few years. However, this year,with all the extra global warming we’ve been having, the capacity factor is down around 20%! I assume it’s very similar in the UK. I think the greenies/lefties had been counting on AGW making the world windier and wetter. Doesn’t look like its gonna work out that way…still they get to keep their massive feed-in tarriffs, which effectively puts a floor under how much they earn per year.
I’ve got one word…. NUCULAR. 😉
>>> o.h
>>> Maybe an important note of interest and to be followed up; since 1990 windforce in the Netherlands decreased linear with roughly 30%. In January, Febrary and March this year there was a decrease of 50% compared with previous year. <<<
OMG! What are we gonna do when we run out of wind??!!!! It's worse than we thought !!!!
Onion says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:38 am
The irony of socialists decrying country squires is that windfarms transfer wealth from taxpayer to landowner. The PM’s aristocratic father-in-law stands to coin it from installing heavily subsidised windfarms on his land
yet another reason to eat the rich
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Prime Minister’s father in law is Sir Reginald Sheffield and he is already coining it with 8 turbines on his land in Lincolnshire, with more planned. How can we expect David Cameron to be impartial when his wife and his children stand to inherit some or all of it!!!
“P Solar says:
[…]
BSmeter, dead on!
Using electicity to create heat is “plane stupid”. Using pure directional energy to create low order random movement heat energy. Converting heat back to electricity is only about 30% efficient. ”
Thanks, i couldn’t point my finger on it but now that you say it… I just thought “How could we have missed such an efficient storage all those years?” It’s not like battery makers are not doing R&D.
Bonus round: The funniest emission-free system i ever heard of: the Natron locomotive.
German:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natronlokomotive
google translator:
http://translate.google.de/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNatronlokomotive&sl=de&tl=en
“our moral obligation to pass this world on in a better state to our children”
There is a special corner of Hell reserved for hucksters who play the mark for an easy buck by saying “it’s for the children.”
kwik says: “‘Creatures from the War of the Worlds’. Very well said. Thats what they look like!”
More reminiscent of The Tripods.
Mack says:
June 13, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Ric Werme says:
June 13, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Not at all, I was merely noting the many posts and articles where the writers clearly don’t understand the difference between watts and watthours.
No value judgment at all. Well, that and the Don Quixote reference.
Would you feel better if I sang “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha?”
Of course, getting serious about wind means that a new grid will have to be built:
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/energy-answer-not-blowin-wind
Every windmill you plug into the grid actually increases the cost of electricity. Wind farms are really just tax farms. See: http://www.otherbrothersteve.com/?p=5382
This is Not original (see over here), but is just too good not to use in a thread like this, devoted as it is to Alternative Energy.
Caveat – only works for the US, and then, only for a while.
“It’s still not as effective as harnessing the rotational energy of Grave-Spinning-Founding-Fathers.”
There is an ironic twist to wind-power, and that is that as more and more wind-turbines are installed, the demand for natural gas decreases. Thus, the price for natural gas also decreases. Yet, wind-turbines need high price for natural gas to be economically attractive investments.
T. Boone Pickens recognizes this, and has proposed a new market for natural gas: transportation fuel. This is actually not entirely new, but has not achieved a main-stream status. The increased demand for natural gas created by cars, trucks, buses, and trains would increase natural gas price, and make wind-turbines more economic.
It is also ironic that the greenies are defeating themselves as they require (or subsidize) methane capture from landfills, cattle feed lots, and other sources of bio-gas and bio-mass. This increases the supply of natural gas and reduces the price – again, working against wind-turbine economics.
There are also viable production plants that convert natural gas to gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel analogs. Shell has been producing liquid fuels from their GTL process since 1993. This technology also increases demand for, and the price of, natural gas.
Your source on this?
Not looking for an academic cite, just point me to what you looked at to come to that conclusion …
.
h.oldeboom says:
June 13, 2010 at 11:39 am
Maybe an important note of interest and to be followed up; since 1990 windforce in the Netherlands decreased linear with roughly 30%. In January, Febrary and March this year there was a decrease of 50% compared with previous year.
––––––
What, wind velocities decreasing some 30-50% from the wind farms in the Netherlands?
That is exactly what I fear. Lower winds will drastically affect the local climate and for the worse. This time not just some possible one degF warming, but real changes. Loss of evaporation could ravish our lands with decreased rainfall downwind, for it is evaporation which is throttled by the winds more than any other factor.
Solar panels or solar collectors are primary energy sources, great. They collect directly from the sun and eventually will return all back in the same way the absorbed solar radiation in the first place. I have nothing about them. A small lone windmill to furnish one cabin electricity, no problem.
These monster wind farms are a different story. They are deriving energy from a secondary and to some degree tertiary energy source within the climate mechanism. If slower wind were harmless, that would be one thing, but it isn’t harmless, it isn’t the same as collecting solar energy directly. Any good meteorologist can tell you more of the dangers ahead from retarding the winds on huge scale.
I feel these subtle secondary effects on climates will cause these to be dismantled within a decade unless mankind at a local level is willing to live with the bad consequences. This has to be the most asinine thing that mankind has ever conjured up.
I hope I’m wrong.
@ur momisugly Jim, re a citation for wind replacing natural gas.
This is, as I wrote above, the entire basis for The Pickens Plan advanced by T. Boone Pickins. If you do a search for the term “Pickens Plan” his website gives information.
But there are also sources such as this one from the Wall Street Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/08/10/blown-away-wind-power-makes-electricity-cheaper-in-texas/
and my own blog analysis of this at
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/windmills-make-cheap-natural-gas.html
Of course, if an electric utility grid has little, or zero, natural gas-fired plants, probably using coal, then the analysis would be based on coal. In the wind-available areas of the U.S., natural gas is the fuel of interest. The largest states at this time with wind-power are Texas, then California, with growth in the Great Plains states of Oklahoma, Kansas, and north of there.
@ur momisugly Wayne, re windmills causing slower wind speeds and ecological harm.
This is not an area for concern, as the amount of energy in the wind is many orders of magnitude greater than what wind-turbines extract from it. Air masses (wind) extend thousands of feet into the atmosphere – yet wind-turbines reach only a few hundred feet. The wind blows over vast areas, yet wind-turbines are wide-spread.
Aircraft pilots receive briefings on “winds aloft.” It might be interesting to do a search on that phrase. The winds aloft charts can be confusing, so here is an explanation (taken from aviationweather dot gov) :
Sample winds aloft text message:
DATA BASED ON 010000Z
VALID 010600Z FOR USE 0500-0900Z. TEMPS NEG ABV 24000
FT 3000 6000 9000 12000 18000 24000 30000 34000 39000
MKC 2426 2726-09 2826-14 2930-21 2744-32 2751-41 275550 276050 276547
Sample message decoded:
DATA BASED ON 010000Z
Forecast data is based on computer forecasts generated the first day of the month at 0000 UTC.
VALID 010600Z FOR USE 0500-0900Z. TEMPS NEG ABV 24000
The valid time of the forecast is the first day of the month at 0600 UTC. The forecast winds and temperature are to be used between 0500 and 0900 UTC. Temperatures are negative above 24,000 feet.
FT 3000 6000 9000 12000 18000 24000 30000 34000 39000
FT indicates the forecast location, the numbers indicate the forecast levels.
MKC 2426 2726-09 2826-14 2930-21 2744-32 2751-41 275550 276050 276547
This example shows data for MKC (Kansas City, MO). The 3,000 foot wind is forecast to be 240 degrees at 26 knots. The 6,000 foot wind is forecast to be 270 degrees at 26 knots and the air temperature is forecast to be -9 degrees Celsius. The 30,000 foot wind is forecast to be 270 degrees at 55 knots with the air temperature forecast to be -50 degrees Celsius.
Wind direction is coded as a number between 51 and 86 (vice 01 to 36) when the wind speed is 100 knots or greater. To derive the actual wind direction, subtract 50 from the first pair of numbers. To derive wind speed, add 100 to the second pair of numbers. For example, a forecast at 39,000 feet of “731960” shows a wind direction from 230 degrees (73-50=23) with a wind speed of 119 knots (100+19=119). Above 24,000 feet the temperature is assumed to be negative, therefore the third pair of numbers indicate a temperature of minus 60 degrees Celsius.
If the wind speed is forecast to be 200 knots or greater, the wind group is coded as 199 knots. For example, “7799” is decoded as 270 degrees at 199 knots or greater.
Wind direction is coded to the nearest 10 degrees. When the forecast speed is less than 5 knots, the coded group is “9900” and read, “LIGHT AND VARIABLE.” [end explanation]
Note that the higher wind speeds, 55 knots at 30,000 feet have extremely high potential for wind-turbine power production. What the existing wind-turbines extract from under 1000 feet and winds of 10 to 25 miles per hour is trivial in comparison.
Another article concering windmills in the UK from the Daily Telegraph. The ad hom attack on David Bellamy is interesting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/7823157/David-Bellamy-joins-march-against-wind-farm.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aGDZMpv5Y9Vo&pos=13
Windmill Boom Curbs Electric Power Prices for RWE
On windy nights in northern Germany, consumers are paid to keep the lights on.
Twice this year, the nation’s 21,000 wind turbines pumped out so much power that utilities reduced customer bills for using the surplus electricity. Since the first rebate came with little fanfare at 5 a.m. one October day in 2008, payments have risen as high as 500.02 euros ($665) a megawatt-hour, about as much as a small factory or 1,000 homes use in 60 minutes.
The wind-energy boom in Europe and parts of Texas has begun to reduce bills for consumers. Electricity-network managers have even ordered windmills offline at times to trim supplies. That hurts profit for wind-farm operators, said Christian Kjaer, head of the European Wind Energy Association, which represents RWE AG of Germany, Spain’s Iberdrola SA and Dong Energy A/S of Denmark.
“We’re seeing that wind energy lowers prices, which is great for the consumers,” Kjaer said at his group’s conference in Warsaw this week. “We as producers have to acknowledge that this means operating the existing plant fewer hours a year, and this has an effect on investors” and profit.
—
Just posting this as a counterpoint to those who are claiming that windpower causes more expensive electricity. Now, the overproduction at off-peak hours might be matched with underproduction at peak hours. This might also explain why the apparent capacity factor for wind power has been declining recently. As installed capacity increases, the utilities are taking turbines offline at off-peak hours because of the overproduction of power.
Roger Sowell says:
June 13, 2010 at 6:45 pm
There is an ironic twist to wind-power, and that is that as more and more wind-turbines are installed, the demand for natural gas decreases. Thus, the price for natural gas also decreases. Yet, wind-turbines need high price for natural gas to be economically attractive investments.
T. Boone Pickens recognizes this, and has proposed a new market for natural gas: transportation fuel. This is actually not entirely new, but has not achieved a main-stream status. The increased demand for natural gas created by cars, trucks, buses, and trains would increase natural gas price, and make wind-turbines more economic.
It is also ironic that the greenies are defeating themselves as they require (or subsidize) methane capture from landfills, cattle feed lots, and other sources of bio-gas and bio-mass
kwik says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
June 13, 2010 at 11:12 pm
Roger Sowell says:
June 13, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Obs, sorry about last post, Accidentally clicked “Post Comment”. What Sowell is describing, is that new generations of humanity is discovering “The invisible Hand” of Adam Smith.
It is very costly for us all that this will have to happen like this. Wouldnt it be better to teach the young at school in Adam Smiths philosophy, instead of Marxism?