From Viv Forbes of Australia’s Carbon Sense Coalition comes this new document intended as “a submission to the Australian Senate Enquiry into Wind Farms” on the extraordinary costs of wind power generation both economically and environmentally:
Wind power is so dilute that to collect a significant quantity of wind energy will always require thousands of gigantic towers each with a massive concrete base and a network of interconnecting heavy duty roads and transmission lines. It has a huge land footprint.
Then the operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of the wind’s energy can be captured.
Finally, when they go into production, wind turbines slice up bats and eagles, disturb neighbours, reduce property values and start bushfires.
Wind power is intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. To cover the total loss of power when the wind drops or blows too hard, every wind farm needs a conventional back-up power station (commonly gas-fired) with capacity of twice the design capacity of the wind farm to even out the sudden fluctuations in the electricity grid. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.
The entire document is 30 pages long.
Can I suggest that rather than just read and comment on the document, perhaps some talented WUWT readers could help Viv by doing some fact-checking or provide some further concrete examples of how wind power will cost the Earth.
Viv’s email address is in the doco (as they say in those parts)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dave Springer: “But it isn’t just laying around and does take an inordinate amount of time and effort to produce it. Then you have the depleted fuel disposal problem to deal with and proliferation concerns.”
Utter silliness. The cost of enrichment is relatively small, less than 1 cent/kWh over the life time of the reactor.
Proliferation concerns from DU? Surely you’re kidding me.
Proliferation concerns from oxidized uranium fuel? Surely you’re kidding me. All this shows is that you have no idea how nuclear weapons are made and how hostile nuclear power reactors and their fuel are to being used in this fashion.
Fuel disposal problems? What problems? Industry has fully funded it. It’s purely the fault of government indecision that prevents the industry from getting on with it.
To W. Falicoff: the Alsema paper contains a lot of rubbish. First, it is based upon a lot of assumptions about energy input and production. None of these values have been shown in practice even under laboratory conditions, let alone real ones. Second, the study completely ignores environmental degradation which commences as soon as a facility is installed. Third, this paper is a mere literature review. It adds no new research or findings of its own. It merely does recalculations of the findings of others.
So no, it’s conclusions are not conservative. They are highly exaggerated.
From W. Falicoff on February 16, 2011 at 10:38 am:
http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/copernicus/2006-0308-200117/98054.pdf
Excerpt from the abstract:
Critical Flaw, pg 6:
Thus between current (1997) and future (2007) systems, that 500MJ/m^2 goes away. Also:
Note: Table 4 has correct values of 700 MJ/m^2 current for supports, 500 for future, text is wrong as 500 is given for both 3.5 kg for supports and 2.5 kg for frames.
So energy used for supports goes down, while that for frames goes away.
Except… Here is info gathered from a maker of framed and frameless panels with my calculations based on surface area (ignoring thickness):
http://www.lumossolar.com/
The frameless are about a third heavier per unit area than framed. I doubt the mass of the roof supports have become less than for framed, might even be more. Where has the author accounted for the energy used for whatever is making those frameless panels stiff enough to survive without a frame, that has made them considerably heavier than framed?
Plus, as practically a side note, there is another reason why framed might be preferred over frameless. Framed panels can generally be taken apart and repaired, glass or cells replaced and broken connections fixed etc, if nothing else the cells can be salvaged. Frameless, with the cells sealed away and bonded to the backer, not so much. With that, framed is far more readily recyclable. Frameless looks headed to the landfill.
Colin
Perhaps the following paper K. Knapp; T.L. Jester, “An Empirical Perspective on the Energy Payback Time for PV Modules.” Solar 2000 Conference, Madison, WI, June 16–21, 2000. will meet your standards:
http://www.ecotopia.com/apollo2/knapp/pvepbtpaper.pdf
Considerable strides have been made in the lowering the manufacturing costs (and energy) associated with producing PV cells in the last decade since Knapp et al wrote their paper. Also the long term efficiency of PV technologies has risen.
I follow the long term tests on PV and CPV and certainly there is a small degradation of systems over time (partly due to dust, dirt buildup, something which is handled be regular cleaning in plants). But the numbers I have seen are not significant to say
that the payback numbers in the papers I have cited are off the mark.
Even I have to admit that Green Energy is not always a total failure. Here is one heartwarming story of how Ontario has found green energy that is cleaner, meaner and greener than even Wind and Solar Power….
From the Wind Concerns Ontario Site…
Read and enjoy! Swallow your coffee and set down any sharp objects first…
http://windconcernsontario.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/breaking-news-province-set-to-unleash-new-untapped-source-of-%E2%80%9Cgreen-energy%E2%80%9D/
The Province of Ontario announced today a “green energy” initiative to rival all others, including wind and solar.
W. Falicoff: One of the things ignored is loss through reflection and refraction effects produced by light surface scratching. The losses from such effects are extremely high over relatively short periods of time, and they are permanent.
Second, I don’t accept the assumptions regarding solar input. Actual atmospheric conditions produce insolation much less than that assumed in these papers. These numbers, as best I can tell assume direct sunlight. Under indirect sunlight, production drops to about 20-25% of nominal.
Third, the payback does not include the underutilized T&D costs from low capacity factors.
Fourth, maintenance costs are not included. Given the infrastructure involved vs. energy produced, these will be high.
Fifth, none of the studies include the opportunity cost for land use. Given the enormous surface area required, these, along with environmental damage will be very high, unless confined to buildings such as roof tops. In this case, the question becomes irrelevant, as building footprints alone limit solar to a trivial fraction of electricity production.