Guest post by Tom Fuller
Something went terribly wrong with wind power. Preached to us all as a solution to climate change, it fell apart in one year. Some have blamed it all on the recession, ignoring the fact that other renewable energy sources and energy efficiency strategies have continued to grow.
I say it’s the business model. Wind power companies sell either to utilities or governments. There is insufficient pressure on them to lower costs–and indeed, during wind power’s moment of glory last year, prices went up 9%. Wind power companies are almost all divisions of large conglomerates, such as GE, or energy distributors such as utilties themselves. Wind power for some providers seems like a vanity entry into a PR sweepstakes–but there is no scope for reducing margins or searching frantically for innovative cost reductions.
And so their moment has passed, maybe permanently. While wind power tried to dictate terms to their captive clients (too often successfully), the cost of solar power and natural gas continued to fall, to the point where nobody could make a straight-faced case for wind as a competitive technology, and certainly not the offshore wind farms that are the new rage. Rage as in what customers will feel when they see their bills…
It hasn’t helped that the inefficiency of wind’s performance has been gleefully highlighted by those opposed to its expansion. If a turbine says it will give you 1 MW of electricity, you can only count on about a quarter of that being delivered. Maintenance issues are real, as are complaints about noise and bird kills. And they do take up a lot of space.
Contrast that with solar power companies. There are a lot more manufacturers, and they are increasing capacity continuously. Each new generation of fab provides 20% performance gains, and the next generation of wafers is longer, wider, thinner and less likely to break. Innovations for their balance of system peripherals come from a variety of outside companies in their supply chain, and the inexorable march to grid parity is nearing its goal.
They both get the same level of subsidies, which amount to a pittance overall. So what’s the difference?
Solar sells to consumers, too. Residential, small business, offices and plants. Solar scales down as well as up. And their customers are you and me–cranky and demanding if things don’t work, unwilling to sign long term contracts, wanting to see bottom line improvements rather than brochures showing acres of installations.
So solar will win. Not because they’re nicer guys, but because their industry is more fragmented and they have more demanding customers.
Which, I believe, is the way the system is supposed to work.
So, although government is not good at picking winners, it can identify losers, and should do so forthwith. Wind power sales have fallen through the floor this year, but the DOE should be making pretty stern announcements about price performance failures in the wind industry, and pointing out the advantages of alternatives to alternative power–not just solar.
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Re: Kum Dollison says: October 14, 2010 at 3:00 am
But ‘fossil’ fuels can be renewable. Stop wasting gas for home cooking/heating, save that for CCGT’s.
Need more gas? That’s doable, after all CO2 + 4H2 → CH4 + 2H2O. So CCS could possibly create a useful product after all, and not be wasted dumping it in the ocean or in holes in the ground.
Need more of the other gas? Also doable, South Africa’s been doing it for years with the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Couple of snags, needs H2, but then that can be made with electricity, if we had cheap electricty which windmills can’t provide. If we used nuclear, well, that’s something that could provide cheaper electricity and allow reactors to run at peak efficiency. Reactors are also semi-renewable, if the right design and fuel cycle is selected, and reprocessing included. Anti-nuclear people tend to overlook minor details like that because they prefer to tilt at windmills and take the profits we give them.
kzb says:
October 14, 2010 at 4:40 am
If I recall from the 70s it was frequently stated that the UK had 200years of reserves at current consumption. It was Margaret Thatcher who wanted to end the miners monopoly of coal power after it brought the Heat(Cons) government down with the 3-day week, (oh the endless joy of knowing in advance when you could read a book or watch tv in the evenings a week ahead). It was the then Conservatie Party who put backroom deals in place for a future Conservative government to get coal supplies from Poland (ironically heavily subsidised which was part of the UK problem in any case) so that they could never again be helld to ransom by the striking minors. However, this is what you get when you bring political ideologies into the arena of power generation, with Arthur Scargill on the one hand wanting a single-handed socialist/communist national revolution a la 1917 in Russia, & Mrs T wanting to crush the minors union in favour of nuclear power for revenge. You get back-fires all over the place & get nowhere! If the political ideology was kept away from national necessities, we probably wouldn’t be in quite the same mess engerywise today! Arthur Scargill was right in many ways, the future of the UK coal industry was under threat, for an island practically built on the stuff it was foolish, but the threat came from the wrong direction. Britain needs coal, gas, oil, & nuclear, sure keep the little windmills to ease the concience of the loony greenie nitwits to protect Gaia, but let’s not clogg up the beautiful British landscape with eyesores, oh & for the RSPB clamouring for more sea-eagles et al to be re-introduced, do a body count in 5 years time! So learn a lesson, keep political ideology out of engery production!
Apologies that should have read “Heath” not Heat.
Lets see,
1. Solar is the most expensive way to generate electricity. Solar is about 35 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour (unsubsidized), compared to 3 to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas and coal.
2. China controls the majority of the world’s supply of rare earths needed to make the panels.
3. The subsidies are not a pittance, without them neither Solar or Wind would exist in any form outside of solar calculators.
Solar Subsidies Could Reach 70 Percent
4. Governments cannot pick winners but losers can pick governments.
5. The only economically viable sources of energy are – Oil, Coal, Natural Gas, Nuclear and Hydroelectric.
“Tom” said: “You get what it says on the can –”
If your can is anything like those I pick up at the supermarket, these revealing little factoids are hidden under ingredients, in micro font, along with those nasty ‘e’ numbers and details of hydrogenated fats, that you can’t read unless you remembered to bring your reading glasses.
Yeah, Tom. Very helpful indeed.
Capacity factor relates to how often the wind is blowing and is typically 25 to 35%. Capacity value relates to how often the wind farm can match demand and be taken into the grid. This typically 1/3 of the capacity factor. Therefore energy storage is key to utilize wind power. An UAE company has announced it intends to build some sort of storage device in Mexico for wind turbines to be installed near San Diego.
My biggest concern right now is for the electric ratepayer and whether they are paying for electricity generated by wind farms that is not taken into the grid. These kind of contracts in the natural gas industry were called ‘take or pay’. It would be easy for utilities to pass on the electricity not taken onto the customer with such contracts. I suspect this is being done in California.
Kum Dollison: “Wind is cheaper than Nuclear, and Solar will be considerably less in a few years (it’s, roughly, at parity, now.) ”
Please cite a source in support of that, because the EIA figures say otherwise:
Total System Levelized cost per megawatthour:
Advanced Nuclear: 119.0
Wind: 149.3
Offshore Wind: 191.1
Solar Thermal: 256.6
Solar PV: 396.1
@Tom — I would encourage you to write up an article on wind technology. I for one would like some sort of primer on it – one which goes at least into some depth on the technologies involved. I hope/think that Anthony would be more than willing to publish a reasonably well written article.
I think wind has its place. I am not convinced that it is really suitable as a base for the grid, but as with many technologies a lot of the criticism is based upon ignorance. If we are to criticize, then it should at least be from a position of knowledge.
Wind is not power at all
http://www.masterresource.org/2010/09/wind-not-power-iii/
Solar is far from the mainstream, and we shouldn’t be subsidising it.
When it is not cost effective for a energy provider to buy solar panels with cheap credit in bulk and one installer, governments believe it is when joe blogs borrows money individually, buys it in several meters squared and pays an installer to drive round his house, install it and then put all the electrics to connect it to the grid – and come back and fix it whenever it breaks.
At the moment if you want solar panels you should have the simple type which heats water. They are cost effective and can be made pretty much out of scrap. Photovoltaics should be reserved for when they are cost effective, at which point they will probably be made into a standard roofing tile and every roof replacement will use them. Additional installation costs disappear, and you get the maximum possible power output. It will become part of the building regulations.
Solar power currently uses polycrystalline silicon. Factories to make this take years to build, cost billions and are unlikely to be required for the final solution as it will be a thin film. Governments have no business wasting our taxes on this stuff.
Was it the business plan that killed wind power or was it that it did not work and people did not want it. Was it that the free market and the laws of nature were ignored to promote wind and that investors were about to lose their shirts so they bailed.
The global warming folks are attempting to sell snake oil for profit and when it drys up they will also bail with whatever cash they can rip off.
I like the idea of small, local stuff. I live in Florida. I think that it would be cool if we could augment our air conditioning with roof top solar. It seems to me, I’m no engineer, that the peak load on A/C is almost exactly when sunshine is most available. The less sunshine, the less A/C I need.
My brother lives in Michigan. He has no A/C at all. He needs heat when the sun isn’t shining. I often use no heat throughout the winter. Just don’t turn in on many years. Some years turn it on for a couple of days. YMMV.
I have never supported the massive government subsidies for alternative power, though I have at the same time been highly supportive of the use of these alternatives. I, like Paulhan, believe the future of alternative sources is point-of-use technology. I just don’t believe these are scalable in any logically efficient way. I have watched (and been involved in) government granting projects for a number of years and can confidently say that, when the money is as massive as it is now, the only beneficiaries are the professional “scammers”.
Technologies that allow individuals to unhook are the logical future for a free society.
If anyone outside Britain wants to know where all this so-called “green” energy is heading, read this:
Fuel poverty doubles in five years
The number of households who are in “fuel poverty” has more than doubled in the last five years because of surging energy bills, according to official statistics.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8063792/Fuel-poverty-doubles-in-five-years.html
For those wondering:
East Coast to Oklahoma City = 1100 miles, give or take
Chicago to Memphis = 435 miles, give or take.
The wind is free.
Now the big point in my state is gathering grid. The wind farm wants to spend 100 million and deliver juice at the wind farm. The state is flat broke and doesn’t want to spend 75 million on power lines gathering current to take to the city.
Like we know the wind turbines turn at 25% of rated capacity. Some with the power lines. They would be unused 75% of the time.
Would you buy a car if you were 100 miles from a gas station?
Google have just spent $5 billion investing in off shore wind energy infrastructure
I agree that wind power has been oversold and is not reliable. However, the same is true for solar power. Installations only produce significant amounts of energy for about 8 hours per day and only when and where the sun shines. So it suffers the same lack of reliability. Moreover, all the figures that I have seen still show solar being significantly more expensive than wind with little chance of catching up in the near future.
The Annual Energy Outlook 2010 with Projections to 2035 from the U.S. Energy Information Administration sees strong growth in wind but says “solar technologies are too costly for widespread use in wholesale power applications”.
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity.html
I agree that in the long term there is hope that solar power will become more economical than wind, but that will take decades of incremental improvements.
richard verney says:
October 14, 2010 at 6:16 am
“However, a lot of CO2 is used in the production, transportation and installation of wind farms. In particular, vast amounts of concrete are required as foundations. When this is taken into account and the additional power used to heat lubricating fluids in extreme cold and/or to back power the units when wind levels are inappropriate, there has been no saving of CO2 emissions.”
____________________________________________________________
Depends on their size /efficiency, placement and how they’re decomissioned but in general you’re assertion seems to be at odds with some pretty thorough research on the topic.
http://www.assemblywales.org/cy/sc_3_-01-09__p8__further_evidence_from_bwea_cymru_on_carbon_reduction_via_land_use.pdf.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VMY-4VJ4B7D-1&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1498297994&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b670109a095a74e805f1061c687b9e3d&searchtype=a
“John Knowles says:
October 14, 2010 at 4:56 am ”
The problem with wind was that at the time it was the best method of doing each of these things. It has never met expectations in simply generating electricity due to its unpredictable nature, which unlike solar is (fairly) constant during peak load times. I am not saying solar is perfect, but its better for the power grid as it is structured now. Wind power would take huge upgrade to infrastructure to be competetive.
That being said, wind power works out good for what it used to do years ago, that is pulling water uphill and doing work at a slow pace. If the water does not need to go uphill quickly, then wind power does the job very well, but for all other uses today, it simply can not compete. If all the money being wasted on subsidies was spent on a hydro-electric/wind system the benefits would actually be something skeptics might consider as, well that is somewhat ok…but as it is now, its just wasteful to put wind towers all over the place due to how inefficient they are at simply producing electricity.
@pjp
For an excellent primer on wind technology I recommend:
‘The Wind Farm Scam’ by John Etherington. The first fifty or so pages describe the technology in enough detail for the interested layman to understand its many disadvantages and why it can never be a satisfactory bigtime power source.
The author was an academic who specialised in Ecology and the application of ‘intermittently available renewable electricity generation’. The pity is that not enough policy makers have read and understand this book. Otherwise (I hope) they wouldn’t be chasing rainbows.
Kum Dollison;
“Wind is cheaper than Nuclear, and Solar will be considerably less in a few years (it’s, roughly, at parity, now.)”
—————————————
Wind is cheaper than solar? Maybe we should power our nuclear powered aircraft carriers by sail then.
I can’t buy into the article’s premise that wind is a loser because of issues with who wind’s clients are or its scalability issues. The average Joe isn’t going to purchase a nuclear power plant (or coal plant), but nuclear power plants are darn good producers. Also the assertion that subsidation of these “alternative” energy sources amounts to a pittance.
Another issue with wind is that there just isn’t that much more to learn about how to build propeller blades, or geartrains, or any of the other mechanical bits that go into wind-turbine manufacturing as we know it.
The only way to squeeze cost out is cheaper materials or cheaper manufacturing, both of which will increase O&M cost down the road.
Until we get to some flavor of wind-driven power generation that doesn’t involve spinning blades driving a generator we’re not going to see significant improvements in cost.
PV solar technology is still advancing.
Also the assertion that subsidation of these “alternative” energy sources amounts to a pittance are far fetched.
Tom says:
October 14, 2010 at 5:13 am
“…….Don’t get me wrong: Wind is unpredictable. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow, and sometimes it doesn’t. Blaming windmills for that is stupid. You ought to ask, instead, if wind energy is cheaper than other forms, both in £ and GHGs, how much you are about either of them, and then which energy supply you are going to use. There is an almost constant refrain in skeptic circles that “in Europe, when the wind blows it forces spot energy prices negative!” Like somehow this is a bad thing? When the wind blows, wind energy is so cheap that the spot price is effectively zero (negative once subsidies come into operation). This directly lowers your power bill……….”
=======================================================
Almost Tom,
No one blames the windmills, they blame the people implemented the idea before it was useful. Yes, wind is free. No, it isn’t anywhere close to being free when harnessing the energy.
First, consider the cost of making, building and installing the windmills. Consider the life expectancy of the windmills. Understand, that for every windfarm constructed, one also has to make, build, install and maintain a gas(most expensive form of traditional generation) fired generation plant to be able to generate when the wind doesn’t blow or the wind blows too hard. Further, consider the duality of the transmission lines that have to be built installed and maintained. All of this must be considered when discussing cost of wind generated electricity. The subsidies part of the discussion is a non-starter, because we pay for the subsidies, also.
In the end, even when the wind blows, wind electricity costs more than traditional generation and as I stated earlier, it will continue to be so until we figure out how to store AC power.