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.
I favour giving wind turbine generation a chance to evolve. If you had tried to do an economic evaluation of oil or coal from its early infant technical development, into the future, you would convince yourself depending on oil or coal wasn’t economically or even technically viable. Getting Oil out the ground is not easy or cheap.
A fully evolved and developed wind energy solution may give a much better economic and environmental return on investment than it does at present, but it needs to be economically challenged, and not economically subsidised.
UK power consumption
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
Generation by fuel type (graph)
About half of that capacity is due to be shut down during the next ten years.
Friends:
The Pastor is right.
If wind power were sensible then oil tankers would be sailing ships.
And it is plain daft to assert (as e.g. from Lazy Teenager does at October 20, 2010 at 8:45 pm ) that we need to avoid using fossil fuels.
The use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture. And there is no foreseeable shortage of fossil fuels.
Firstly, the reserves of oil were ~40 years supply throughout the last century and will be ~40 years supply throughout this century. This is because oil companies need a planning horizon of ~40 years. So, if an oil company has less than ~40 years of reserves it pays people to look for more, but if it has ~40 years reserves then it does not pay anybody to look for more.
Secondly, in the extremely unlikely event that insufficient new oil resources were discovered then synthetic crude oil (i.e. syncrude) would be made from coal. Indeed, when Germany was blockaded in WW2 and South Africa was emabagoed because of apartheid (so were prevented from obtaining sufficient oil) then they each made their oil from coal. But they used old technology.
The UK government owns the novel Liquid Solvent Extraction (LSE) process, and since 1994 the LSE process has been capable of making syncrude from coal at economically competitive cost to obtaining natural crude oil. If and when the great economic benefits of Brent crude cease then the UK could obtain subsequent income from licensing the LSE process. (I was one of those who worked to develop LSE and UNESCO commissioned a paper on it from me).
The surprising economics of LSE derive from two factors:
1.
LSE removes the need for expensive blending of crude oils so refined products match market demand. Oil refineries need to output e.g. an amount of petroleum and an amount of benzene that each match market demand otherwise there is disposal cost for an excess product. So, for example, this provides Brent Crude with high value because the result of blending it with cheap Saudi crude provides an appropriate blend. But LSE can be tuned so the syncrude can be a mix of petrocarbons that match market demand (and can be adjusted to match varying market demand) when LSE syncrude is refined.
2. Disposal of sulphur-rich refinery ‘bottoms’ has disposal cost. LSE consumes ‘bottoms’ so turns them into profitable product.
There is sufficient coal to power the world for at least 300 years. So, if there were to be a shortage of oil then adoption of LSE would resolve that problem. But there is no shortage of natural crude oil (and there is very likely not going to be one). A switch to LSE would incur infrastructure costs so there is no incentive to do it now. And, at present, the UK benefits from the high value of Brent crude so UK government has good reason to keep the LSE technology to itself.
But in the extremely unlikely event that natural crude oil ran short then a switch to syncrude would certainly occur (as it did in Germany and South Africa) and it would have little costs (because of LSE technology).
Nobody can know what fuel(s) will be needed in 300 years time. 300 years ago the major transport fuel was hay for horses. It would then have been easy to show that we needed to protect against using too much hay and, thus, to argue that transport and other technological developments should have been hindered. But hay is not used as a major fuel today.
If the arguments to protect against using too much hay had been accepted 300 years ago then that would have prevented developments which have provided many benefits including reduction (and in some cases erradication) of pollutions and diseases.
So, for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must oppose those who today say we should inhibit uses of today’s fuels. There is no “bunch of kids riding down a hill in a Billy cart” such as Lazy Teenager asserts: there is the human race working to develop a better world for all human kind. Anything that attempts to stop that development is evil: it is against both Man and God.
Richard
Vanadium Redox Flow batteries are well worth a look. They can be adapted to large scale utility level (indeed, this is the only way they are used at the moment, at Kansai Power). Their energy storage density is low, but this doesn’t matter so much at the utility level. My own favourite is Zinc-Air batteries, but these are vapourware at present.
The point some people are missing is that energy storage makes sense even if there were no renewables. If it is done at the sub-station level, it means we need never have another brownout. Some people and companies will pay a small premium for a guarantee like that.
It also means that generating plants can work at full capacity 24 hours a day, meaning most of the time, only the most efficient plants need be working. The difference in price between energy generated at nighttime and peak day time is huge, so there should be somewhere in the middle of that where the cost of storage can be offset by the market.
Until we crack the energy storage problem, trying to generate electricity from renewables, unless it is something like hydro, is putting the cart before the horse, IMV. That’s why fossil fuels are so useful, all that energy stored passively until we decide we need it and flick a switch. That’s what we should be trying to emulate.
UK John:
At October 21, 2010 at 2:46 am you say:
“I favour giving wind turbine generation a chance to evolve.”
Say what!?
How many more centuries do you want?
Wind power has been used for centuries. Wind energy powered most of the world’s shipping for thousands of years. Primitive wind turbines powered pumps (notably in the Netherlands and England) and mills throughout Europe for centuries.
There are a number of types of wind turbines. They are divided into Vertical-Axis and Horizontal-Axis types.
Vertical-axis windmills to mill corn were first developed by the Persians around 1500 BC, and they were still in use in the 1970’s in the Zahedan region. Sails were mounted on a boom attached to a shaft that turned vertically. The technology had spread to Northern Africa and Spain by 500 BC.
The horizontal-axis wind turbine was invented in Egypt and Greece around 300 BC. It had 8 to 10 wooden beams rigged with sails, and a rotor which turned perpendicular to the wind direction. This type of wind turbine later became popular in Portugal and Greece. Around 1200 AD, the crusaders built and developed the post-mill for milling grain. The turbine was mounted on a vertical post and could be rotated on top the post to keep the turbine facing the wind. This post-mill technology was first adopted for electricity generation in Denmark in the late 1800’s.
The technology soon spread to the U.S. where it was used to pump water and to irrigate crops across the Great Plains. During World War I, some American farmers rigged wind turbines to each generate 1 kW of DC current
Perhaps you think the steam engine needs “a chance to evolve”? It is an infant compared to wind power.
Richard
LightRain says:
October 20, 2010 at 10:25 pm
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.
————————–
Spoken like a true ‘environmentalist’ let’s take the most expensive and unreliable source of power generation and make the capital (and recurrent) costs 3-4 times greater with negligible increase in reliability. Heck, it’s not my money.
>>LazyTeenager says:
>>October 20, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Your moniker demonstrates why you have no clue about this subject whatsoever. Now run off and do your homework, this time….
.
The UK average capacity factor has been around 28% in recent years for wind turbines.
Whitelee wind farm covers 55 sq km, for a 322 MW wind farm. Rough figures and you can expect 2 MW per sq km as your average output. Half of Delaware is 3200, so if the winds there were as strong as where wind farms are in the UK, then you could expect 6.4 GW as your average output.
Which suggests the error in your quote is about 900,000%.
Pastor, in a blog where skeptics lurk, mentions of God and Heaven may reduce your credibility…in case you weren’t aware.
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.
Averages don’t mean much when dealing with power systems.
If the power drops out completely — as it does with wind then you have — nothing — no lights — no nothing.
See the paper here…
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
Note the graphs show that wind power can drop out completely across Ontario (625+ turbines). It turns out that wind power is highly correlated in the area from Windsor (Detroit) to Montreal Ottawa (Eastern Lake Ontario).
If you look at other posts on that blog you will find that even if you use the median — a better measure of “average” output that you still come to the conclusion that wind must be backed 100% by more “normal” power supply facilities.
One of Richard Wakefield’s blog posts suggests rather strongly that Wind Power simply allows us to export a equivalent amount of power. In other words — it is completely discounted by IESO the supply operator.
Cheers
The way things are going I won’t be surprised if the UN doesn’t come up with a resolution to build windfarms in each of the ocean gyres, at the reasonable cost of only $4million per windmill, and that every nation on the planet will sign it (with the exception of the poor Chinese and Indians, and a hundred or so more of the poor), and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Not only does zero wind cease wind generation, so does excess of 45mph winds. Optimum wind speed comes in at about 33mph. It simply isn’t viable.
As the pastor points out, given the use of resources necessary to build these things and the remaining dependence upon foreign resources……..its a giant waste of money.
Strangely enough, I’ve found a relevant article on MSNBC!!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39759042/
Pascvaks says:
October 21, 2010 at 10:25 am
The way things are going I won’t be surprised if the UN doesn’t come up with a resolution to build windfarms in each of the ocean gyres, at the reasonable cost of only $4million per windmill, and that every nation on the planet will sign it (with the exception of the poor Chinese and Indians, and a hundred or so more of the poor), and we’ll all live happily ever after.
—…—…—
And then we will send all of that power – which will all disappear as useless and unused, but VERY expensive heat used up in line resistance loads after 900 miles transit distance from each windmill’s location – to the closest shore via 1000.00 dollar per meter undersea cables stretching across all that vulnerable coral and underwater etiologies to a shore-based transfer station (which will also be prohibited as ecologically damaging) and then inland over ecologically-opposed land-lines to ?????
Mike said on October 21, 2010 at 8:33 am:
Puh-lease, if a reader is of the mindset where they think they think someone’s mere mention of God and Heaven must automatically render that person unable to fully understand science, to that reader the credibility was likely lost as soon as they hit his title, “Pastor.” To such readers, I suggest they research the life of the scientist Gregor Johann Mendel, Father of modern genetics.
😉
Richard S Courtney says:
October 21, 2010 at 3:24 am
LSE… coal to syncrude
====
How does the quality of the coal and its sulfur content effect the syncrude process?
‘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”.’
So what is the magical infinite source of raw materials for abiotic petroleum, anyway?
The finite resource is finite, guys, turn off the reality distortion field.
Thanks Pastor from an Australian protestant. Unfortunately in both your country and mine, leadership in many things, including churches, is now in the hands of the 60s-70s generation. Many are still addicted to the erratic views of that era.
“The finite resource is finite, guys, turn off the reality distortion field.”
That’s like saying dirt is finite. Technically true, but a useless bit of information in the absence of context. The amount of gas, oil and coal that can be extracted from the earth is simply a function of how much it costs to do so and what price the market is willing to pay. If “alternatives” can’t compete at $80 or $100 or $150 oil, maybe they’ll be able to compete at $200 or $300 oil, but I’m willing to bet that there will be plenty of oil at $150/barrell.
Sure, the economy will suffer if prices get that high through market forces, but why artificially impose a higher cost on energy and cause the same harm by government policy?
The Energy Returned On Energy Invested for wind power facilities is 0.29.
An EROEI of < 1 is unsustainable.
Wind power is a fraud that enriches developers and land owners at the expense of taxpayers and electric bill payers.
John from CA:
At October 21, 2010 at 2:27 pm you ask me a question concerning LSE syncrude that I mentioned in my post at October 21, 2010 at 3:24 am. Your question is,
“How does the quality of the coal and its sulfur content effect the syncrude process?”
This is two questions, i.e.
1.
How does the quality of the coal affect the product of the LSE process?
2.
How does the sulphur content of the coal affect the product of the LSE process?
I will try to answer each question but only in the general terms allowed by the Confidentiality Agreement by which I (and all others who worked on the project) are bound.
The process uses an ebulating bed at elevated temperature and pressure to dissolve both the coal and the added hydrogen (obtained from coal by a ‘water gas shift’) in a liquid solvent. Upon changing the conditions, and in the presence of zoolite catalysts, the dissolved components come out of solution in the form of the syncrude product. The solvent is then cycled back to the start of the process for re-use.
The catalyst encourages the hydrogenation of the carbon to form hydrocarbons which are the syncrude product.
The temperatures and pressures of the solution formation and the conditions at which product is ‘dropped’ from the solvent affect the hydrogenation process to alter the proportions of light, medium and heavy fractions in the product. Simply, the maceral content of the coal feed and the process conditions permit the product to be ‘tuned’ to match market demand.
In general, the lower the quality of the coal then the easier it is to ‘tune’ the product to match market demand by adjusting the process conditions. Anthracite is almost pure carbon so hydrogenating to obtain controlled proportions of light medium and heavy fractions is most difficult (and other elements than the carbon of the coal and the added hydrogen are few). At the other extreme, lignite (or brown coal) is very impure and the impurities can be ‘tailored’ into the product or induced to precipitate seperately as required. Fortunately, the lowest quality coals are the cheapest.
Sulphur is one of the items that can be precipitated seperately, and it can be recovered as marketable elemental sulphur. Thus, the sulphur content of the syncrude product can be reduced to zero and provide a profitable sulphur byproduct. So, the syncrude differs from natural crude because the syncrude can contain little or no sulphur as required, but natural crude contains sulphur which accumulates as refinery ‘bottoms’ that have disposal cost.
I hope this very limited answer is sufficient.
And I stress a the point I made in my post that you are questioning. The LSE process provides an ‘insurance’ against oil supply shortages. In the extremely improbable event that crude oil were to exhaust as a resource, then the LSE process could overcome the shortage. But much, much more importantly, crude oil suppliers are constrained from setting a long-term or medium-term policy of low output (with resulting high prices and high profits for them) by the incentive this would provide to establish unfrastructure for LSE production. Hence, the existence of the LSE technology limits the maximum long-term price of natural crude oil.
Richard
“It is true that we are commanded to be good stewards of the Earth and resources God gave us.”
If he means in part, “Go forth and multiply, and fill the earth,” fortunately I have made every effort to get a full quiver full. Some of the more important natural resources being brilliance, humor, and good looks.
John for CA:
In retrospect, I think I should have pointed out that the LSE process is demonstrated. We built and operated a demonstration plant for the LSE process at the Point-Of-Ayr in North Wales. So, the ‘tuning’ I described is proven at large scale.
Richard
Richard S Courtney says:
October 21, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Hence, the existence of the LSE technology limits the maximum long-term price of natural crude oil.
=====
Thanks for the great response.
One last question, given the generally lower cost of high sulfur lignite coal, a strategic LSE processing facility at or near the coal mine, and the cost of the LSE process to produce a barrel of oil, is $50 to $70 a barrel achievable before the return on the sulfur which can actually be converted to electricity to power the plant?
Richard S Courtney says:
October 21, 2010 at 3:36 pm
…
I found the answer:
http://www.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/42_1_SAN%20FRANCISCO_04-97_0308.pdf
Coal liquefaction plant with a 10% nominal rate of return: break-even oil price is around $35/bbl with coal priced at $60/t.
I noticed the Illinois high sulfur coal had been tested which isn’t mined because of EPA restrictions.
So in theory, a clean coal power plant / refinery built at or near high sulfur coal fields could use the LSE process to not only eliminate sulfur dioxide emissions, without the need for a flue gas scrubber since there aren’t any in the syncrude cake, but also reduce the cost of fuel for the plant while acting as a refinery and selling various grades of LSE syncrude fuels.
This seems too obvious to ask by why isn’t at least one of these in each of the US states that have huge concentrations of high sulfur coal?
Brian H says:
October 20, 2010 at 9:18 pm
“As far as transportation goes, the electric car solution is much more likely to work than many here are positing.”
Fantastic. So, it should be able to compete on its own and we don’t need to subsidize it? But, to reduce CO2 production, you still need alternative sources of energy.
Peter Sørensen says:
October 20, 2010 at 10:42 pm
“A wind turbine at full speed produces 3000 kWh in one hour.”
That’s like saying “an automobile at full speed runs at 180 mph.” Some do. Not many.
Peter Sørensen says:
October 20, 2010 at 11:13 pm
“When well sited 7 hours per day. So one wind turbine produces the same or more as the 10 barrels per day well.”
Well, this source says a barrel of oil stores 6.1 giga-Joules, or about 1700 kWh, so 10 barrels would be about 17,000 kWh, so you need a 2.4 MW windmill to generate that in 7 hours. I think that’s a fairly sizable windmill.
According to this, the US consumes 4 trillion kWhr of electricity per yer. Assuming each of your units generates 17,000 kWh/day, you need 644 thousand of the beasts, in ideal locations of course. This source says you need more than 12 acres per MW, so about 30 acres per one of your units. Thus, we need upwards of 18 million acres, or more than 28 thousand square miles. (Of course, that’s a lowball number from the link, and it could be three times that).
Delaware is about 2500 square miles. This is somewhere between the size of Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey all together. And, that’s assuming it is all “well sited”.
Now, if our cars are also going to run on electricity, well, we consume about 140 billion gallons of gas per year. There are about 0.13 giga-Joules in a gallon of gas, so that is about 17 giga-giga-Joules needed, or about 4.7 trillion-kWh. So, we’re going to need to more than double the amount of land for your windmills to about 60 thousand square miles. So, we’ll take Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, as well as Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, as well as Rhode Island and Delaware. Completely covered with windmills, and the winds better be steady 7 hours a day every day.
And, then we need somewhere to store the energy when the windmills aren’t blowing. We’ll probably need just about the entire Eastern seaboard for all of it. And, of course, we’re going to need a lot of materials for that, probably more than our entire production of some metals over decades. Then, lubricants, transmission lines, constant maintenance… this is not a small project, you understand?