Would generating more electricity from wind really help poor families or the environment?
By Pastor Jay Dennis From CanadaFreePress.com
We Americans are often told we must end our “addiction” to oil and coal, because they harm the environment and Earth’s climate. “Ecologically friendly” wind energy, some say, will generate 20% of America’s energy in another decade, greatly reducing carbon dioxide emissions and land use impacts from mining and drilling.
These claims are a driving force behind the cap-tax-and-trade and renewable energy bills that Congress may try to ram through during a “lame duck” session – as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s economy-threatening regulations under its ruling that carbon dioxide “endangers human health and welfare.”
It is true that we are commanded to be good stewards of the Earth and resources God gave us. We should conserve energy, use it wisely, and minimize harmful impacts on lands and wildlife. But we also need to safeguard our health and that of our neighbors, preserve jobs, and help poor families build wealth and improve their standard of living. I want all children, not just mine, to have a better future.
Heaven knows I’m not an engineer. But Robert Bryce’s readable book, “Power Hungry,” has opened my eyes and helped me appreciate what it really means to be good stewards – and why we depend on hydrocarbons for 85% of the energy that keeps our homes, businesses and communities running smoothly.
Bryce points out that we are no more “addicted” to fossil fuels than we are to food, housing and clothing. It’s simply that fossil fuels give us more abundant, reliable and affordable energy, from less land, than any alternatives we have today. They enable us to have jobs, hospitals, cars, schools, factories, offices, stores – and living standards better than royalty enjoyed a mere century ago. As fossil fuel consumption increases, so does agriculture, commerce, mobility, comfort, convenience, health and prosperity.
Oil, natural gas, coal and gasoline also give us huge amounts of energy from small tracts of land. One oil well producing just ten barrels a day provides the energy equivalent of electricity from wind turbines on half of Delaware, according to Bryce.
Wind-based electricity is unreliable. It’s available only when the wind is blowing enough but not too hard. It can add to our electrical grid, but can’t be depended on to power a business or operating room. And no factory or city can get by just on wind power – not in my lifetime, anyway. Wind as a primary or dominant energy source is simply a mirage.
Wind turbines actually generate electricity only seven hours a day on average – and 2 hours a day on sweltering Texas summer days and frigid Minnesota winter nights. That means every watt of wind power must be backed up by gas-fired generators that kick in every time the turbine blades stop turning.
And that’s just the beginning.
Wind turbine farms need ten times more steel and concrete than a nuclear, coal or gas power plant for the same amount of electricity. You also need thousands of tons of raw materials for the backup generators and the thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the electricity to cities hundreds of miles from the wind farms. All these materials have to be dug out of the ground someplace.
Read the rest of the story here.
Somewhere in the long list above, Jack explains the need for storage for wind power. He is, of course, correct, but then tries to use batteries as the storage idiom. There is already a well known storage method for storing excess energy. Near my home is Racoon Mountain, a pumped storage facility on the Tennessee River near Chattanooga. It seems to me that pumped storage is the ideal method to store and release the energy produced by wind energy. Right now, pumped storage is used to store excess energy from base load facilities whose output is difficult or costly to vary. In the same way, pumped storage can be used to smooth out the vagaries of the wind in large or small wind farms. With this plan, the utility can manipulate the power production using the water flow from the dam to meet demand without having to cope with the erratic distribution of wind power on the system.
Some caveats: you must have a ready supply of water and you must have varied terrain to make empoundments for water storage. All the rest is standard stuff.
My thoughts.
On the continuum of the various rechargeable battery chemistries from Pb-Acid – NiCd/NiMh – Li-Ion – Zinc Silver; Zinc Silver offers a tad more energy density than Li-Ion at a far greater expense (Ag isn’t cheap). It isn’t an answer for anything related to Making so-called alternative energies viable. As of now it is suitable for small consumer electronic devices or specialized money is no object applications.
When will the so-called greens realize that the world can’t actually function on wishful thinking?
Pastor Jay Dennis says lots of reasonable things.
————–
So let’s put his logic in the form of a parable.
————–
There was a bunch of kids riding down a hill in a Billy cart. They were having lots of fun. The hill was getting steeper and steeper and they were going faster and faster. One of the kids who had slightly better eyesight than the others says I’m not sure but I think this road ends in a T junction on a maim highway. He said maybe we should put the brakes on a bit and even go down a side street. If we keep on going down this hill eventually we will be going so fast we will go out of control. And the others kids said no we are having too much fun. Why don’t we just put our hands over our eyes.
The end.
From the article:
“Bryce points out that we are no more “addicted” to fossil fuels than we are to food, housing and clothing.”
I have two nits to pick with that quote. First, there’s preliminary evidence that at least some petroleum is abiotic in origin, although the evidence is far from conclusive. That’s why I prefer CONG (coal oil natural gas) over “fossil fuel”.
Second, the word “addicted” is partially accurate. Take cars. These ubiquitous beasties are both tools and toys. And the borderline between the tool category and the toy category is quite gray. Let’s face it. We Merkins are in love with our cars.
Some Southern Californians, who will never ever drive on a snowy highway or on a deeply-rutted dirt road, commute to and from work in large 4WD SUVs, when a Honda Accord would work just as well. Why do they make that choice?
Some SUV drivers enjoy sitting a bit higher than in a well-engineered mid-size car. For many, it’s a fashion statement. For others, it’s about the perverse satisfaction in knowing that in a head-on collision, the Honda Accord driver would be toast. But enough SUV-bashing.
Moving on. If we had more localized population density in our urban areas (at constant population), public transportation would be more economical, and more people would choose to use it. Commuters would save money. The famous LA smog would decrease. (I remember walking to school on some purplish-brown days, and it hurt every time I took a breath of air.) And most people would be better off.
We could incentivise localized density with European-style petrol taxes. Oh, silly me. I keep forgetting that taxes are bad bad bad. The increased revenues (another bad word) could be used for public transportation directly, and for increased security at Park-and-Rides, so that more people would feel comfortable in using public transit, or in carpooling, with less fear of their cars being broken into.
We could implement Georgist property taxes, in which urban land is taxed, but the buildings sitting on the land are not taxed. In general, this would encourage more productive use of the land. People who live in condos would have lower property taxes than people who choose to live in single-family detached houses having the same floor space. This would incentivise greater localized density. And yes, Georgist property taxes could be revenue-neutral.
With respect to cars and taxes, we have a Tragedy-of-the-Commons type of situation, in which people as individuals make rational choices that are increasingly dysfunctional for society as a whole, as petrol price continue to rise in the long term.
Why? Because we’re in love with our cars, which we view as extensions of ourselves. This love affair is adding to our economic insecurities, as is our dependence on imported oil, and the increasing cost of drilling deeper.
Many of us are in denial about the magnitude of the problem. If the big bad gummint would just get out of the way, laissez-faire economics would solve all of our energy problems. Yeah, right.
I use the euphemism “love affair”. But some love affairs are also addictions.
“Wind turbine farms need ten times more steel and concrete than a nuclear, coal or gas power plant for the same amount of electricity. You also need thousands of tons of raw materials for the backup generators and the thousands of miles of new transmission lines to get the electricity to cities hundreds of miles from the wind farms. All these materials have to be dug out of the ground someplace.”
And that means more mining. Mining is at best, a controlled mess. And we all know the environmental lawmaking mindset that brings wind power is not going to long tolerate mining here. They tolerate it where it has little controls, and therefore is nothing short of a big mess. Out of sight, out of mind.
Michael ,
There’s nothing really that remarkable about Zinc Silver batteries. All of the various chemistries have their respective pros & cons. That’s why even the Pb-Acid battery still exists and hasn’t been displaced by the newer chemistries.
Zinc Silver is impressive in energy density vs the other chemistries, but it gets killed in capacity/dollar, which seems like that would make it uniquely unqualified for large scale storage. If my goal is to store huge amounts of energy package size is much less of a concern than cost.
Larry Fields,
——————–
How about we let people live where they want and drive what they want? I don’t see how the all in all modest differential in mpg of your beloved Honda Accord vs. a SUV will impact global reserves of oil significantly. We’ll eventually run out at some distant point in the future anyway.
The “Tragedy of the Commons” is a crock, as far as justifying gubmint action; gubmints are the very worst abusers of the “Commons”. Not least because they arrogate to themselves the power to define what are “Commons” in the first place.
As far as transportation goes, the electric car solution is much more likely to work than many here are positing; there are advances in LiIon storage which will boot energy density 5-10X, and charging speed and safety just as much. (MIT and Stanford, e.g., have major technologies in hand which are compatible with current plant and methods).
For some hot-off-the-presses news on what may be providing their juice at about 1/20 current costs within 4-10 yrs, here’s a brief Webinar.
typo: “boost energy storage”, not “boot”! 😉
A comment on wind storage-
Pumped hydro plants in the US are good for 8 hours storage at full output plus or minus an hour or two. While 8 hour storage helps, most wind variation is seasonal or due to 5 day droughts of wind. The reservoir would have to be enormous to be an effective wind storage device that takes excess generation from the winter months and stores it until summer when the wind is at less than 1/3 output.
Amen!
“Wind turbines actually generate electricity only seven hours a day on average”.
SIMPLE!
SOLUTION: BUILD 3 OR 4 TIMES THE NUMBER OF WIND MILLS SO THAT THE MAXIMUM OUTPUT OF THE WIND MILLS IS EQUIVALENT OF 1 WIND MILL WORKING 24/7.
Re Michael October 20, 2010 at 5:57 pm and George Carlin clip about worry.
http://musicdb.laadhari.com/Monty-Python/Im-So-Worried/189468-lyrics.html
“Oil, natural gas, coal and gasoline also give us huge amounts of energy from small tracts of land. One oil well producing just ten barrels a day provides the energy equivalent of electricity from wind turbines on half of Delaware, according to Bryce.”
This statement made my bullshit detector ring like crazy. 10 barrels of oil contains about 14000 kWh of energy. A wind turbine at full speed produces 3000 kWh in one hour. That means that one wind turbine produces the same as 10 barrels in aproximately 5 hours. So unless delaware is a lot smaller than I thought this statement is way off.
Peter Sørensen says on October 20, 2010 at 10:42 pm
How often do they operate at full speed?
Correct Pastor Jay, historically most countries abandoned windmills as a power source long ago. Reason – they are unacceptable as a reliable source of power.
Almost inevitably power systems that host large numbers of windmills must install significant numbers of inefficient open cycle gas turbines to pick up load when, inevitably, the wind does not blow or blows too hard. The implication (in addition to the very expensive cost of wind power generation) is that efficient base load combined cycle gas turbine generation or modern super critical thermal generation, operating without windmill generation, would have resulted in a lower overall CO2 emission level (if that really has much significance). Also, often ignored, there is very heavy premium to pay in transmission network costs to accommodate small unpredictable remote sources of wind generation.
@LightRain says: October 20, 2010 at 10:25 pm
“Wind turbines actually generate electricity only seven hours a day on average”.
SIMPLE!
SOLUTION: BUILD 3 OR 4 TIMES THE NUMBER OF WIND MILLS SO THAT THE MAXIMUM OUTPUT OF THE WIND MILLS IS EQUIVALENT OF 1 WIND MILL WORKING 24/7.
I don’t think you’ve got it. (And shouting won’t help.)
If something doesn’t work, four times as many of them still won’t work.
During August in the UK our 3,000 hugely subsidised wind turbines went for days on end (continuous periods of up to four days) producing no useful power whatever. In between these becalmed periods the contribution they made to our total electrical energy consumption was derisory. Perhaps half of one percent.
Richard Sharpe.
How often do they operate at full speed?
When well sited 7 hours per day. So one wind turbine produces the same or more as the 10 barrels per day well. And I dont think one windturbine fills up half of Delaware……… They arent that big yet.
“Split atoms, not birds!”
That is brilliant!!!
Been Looking for a new bumper sticker for my ’66 ‘Cruiser since my
“John Galt, Dagney Taggert – President 2008” is a little outdated.
Sorry for the post that contributed nothing to the discussion.
Jack says:
October 20, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Why isn’t the industrial storage of electrical energy a national priority?
I think because probably the chemical means of storing energy have peaked. One hears now and then of better batteries but the jump needed for megawatt storage is not there.
What has been studied is waters storage. Pumping up water behind the reservoirs of existing hydroelectric plants when the energy is plentiful and not needed. Inefficient, but at least in the right direction.
Larry Fields says:
October 20, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Many of us are in denial about the magnitude of the problem. If the big bad gummint would just get out of the way, laissez-faire economics would solve all of our energy problems. Yeah, right.
I use the euphemism “love affair”. But some love affairs are also addictions.
When I was in college fifty years ago the following was making the rounds: Dinosaurs became extinct according to evolutionary theory because their brains were too small for their size and they could not control the body. Man evolved with a large ratio of brain to body mass and thus is successful. Man+car have the same ratio of brain to body mass as the dinosaurs. Therefore man will become extinct.
I
>>Fossil fuels … enable us to have jobs, hospitals, cars,
>>schools, factories, offices, stores – and living standards
>>better than royalty enjoyed a mere century ago.
Let’s get back to basics here.
Each barrel of oil contains 100,000 man-hours of work. So fossil fuels represent a ‘slave economy’, where oil and machines are our slaves.
In the Roman Empire, the largest proportion of the population were slaves, who did the donkey work. But the British (led by Wilberforce) complained about slavery being inhuman, and so we needed an alternative source of ‘work’ to maintain our standards of living. Oil and coal and the machines they ran were those alternative slaves. (Had Rome banned slavery, they may have begun the industrial revolution in the 1st century AD. Everything was there for it to develop, but slaves were too cheap.)
Conclusion? Unless we can develop a new ‘slave economy’ with a new energy source that is at least as good and as flexible as oil and coal, our standards of living will decrease and our lives will become measurably harder.
.
Wansbeck says:
October 20, 2010 at 4:41 pm
They’ll be even better when painted purple:
This seems to be another unscientific study. It says fewer bats are killed in winter, that’s probably because in the UK they’re hibernating. Insectivorian birds mostly migrate south from the UK in winter.
Then Butterfly-bush (Buddleia)has purple flowers, lavender has flowers verging on purple, heather,thyme,lilac and many other plants with blue-purple flowers seem to have survived despite being unable to attract insects for pollination!
My water supplier is planning to install two wind turbines near my house. I have objected to the planning permission request. I hope to be able speak at the council meeting: I’ll store this article in case I get the opportunity to make a statement.
Dave says:
October 20, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Swaffham in Norfolk, UK, has had a wind turbine for years. At windy times, it provides more electricity than the town needs.
It is a 1.5MW turbine in a town with population of 3130 households. When eastenders finishes and they turn the kettles on, that’s just under 500w per household. So no, it does not produce more than the town needs, ever.
Phil