Wind Power FAIL

Again, for all the nay-sayers on wind-power. It works, where properly located and where properly designed. California’s Banning Pass (near Palm Springs on Interstate 10) is a prime example. It has worked in California for decades. Note that the wind-turbines here generally don’t contend with ice or snow. At least, not yet. Stay tuned on that one.
One can click on this link to see the variations in wind power for the day in California.
http://caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html This graph is updated daily.
Or, click here to see the daily MW generated by the several forms of renewable energy in California. Wind on 1/16/2011 produced just more than 4 percent of the total power.
http://www.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf
Wind does not create undue stress on the natural-gas fired power plants here. Greater stresses are created when 30 million people turn on the lights at roughly the same time each morning, and when automatic systems turn off millions of street lights when the sun rises. See the red “blip” at approximately 5:15 a.m. on the System Status link above.
Wind is also not intended to be a replacement for fossil-fueled power because “everyone” knows that wind is intermittent. Only when wind is coupled completely to an energy storage system will that type of power be reliable.

Wind is being pushed in the same way that perpetual motion machines were:
They ignore the throughput calculations.
For the reverse analogy, look at the energy consumption required to run a prop-driven airplane. Add in the cost to design, build and maintain that airplane.
For the windmill producing power, it’s a loss.
For the airplane, it’s all about accomplishing specific travel at an acknowledged high energy cost.
That’s not to say that using a windmill to accomplish a specific task is a bad idea (grinding your grain).

Here in Ontario, where ‘Green’ is king courtesy of provincial legislation, wind power must be dispatched prior to other generation. This lunacy leads to interesting times whereby we spill water at Niagara and pay importers (export at a loss) to take our power in an effort to maintain reliability. We have a chance to change government here in October of this year and, hopefully, it will invoke changes to ensure: that adequate base load and peak generation is installed; that the grid is reliable and can manage, contain and recover from contingencies; that power is produced at least cost. That is all, as a taxpayer and consumer, that I require of the government. In this environment, renewable energy may be implemented as micro projects for farm, home and business which is, given the technology, its appropriate domain.
And pigs will fly (Sigh).

In the UK the idiot Coalition Government is aiming for 50% renewables [mainly Wind as Solar is a joke in cloudy/wet Britain] All that subsidy should be going into Thorium Power. Instead we will have a landscape covered in pathetic Green Gargoyles that will have bankrupted the National Grid long before 2050!
So say the WWF and Greenpeace and a few other fundraisers [raising funds for their execs]

Mark Luedtke says:
February 17, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Wind power isn’t hopeless. It just doesn’t make economic sense today. It has problems for two reasons: it’s new and it’s subsidized by the government. People who risk other people’s money don’t bother to be as thorough as people who risk their own money in a business venture. At some point in the future, wind power might make economic sense, but it doesn’t now.
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It is very unlikely to make economic sense in the future since it suffers from a number of fundamental flaws. First and foremost, the unreliability and variability of wind. Second, that in relative terms, wind has little force meaning that it is necessary to have large scale farms and even then, only modest amount of energy (even when all going well is produced).
Further, unlike many other industries, there is unlikely to be much in the way of benefit of scale resulting in cost cutting. Additionally, it is relatively unlikely that there will be substantial increase in eficiency of the blades/generators.
Outside subsidies, these things will never make sense. They will never result in any significant reduction in CO2 until such time as an efficient energy storage device is produced. There is absolutely no sign that the later is on the horizon any time soon.

Roger Sowell you should read, Chas says:
February 17, 2011 at 9:34 pm

I wonder if this global rush to install failing windmills at taxpayers’ expense has anything to do with the subconscious desire to crush all those Don Quichotes out there…
It reminds me of a thievish Russian tycoon buying up some patently ugly modern art at Sotheby’s for 40 million dollars. He does it not only because he can but because it’s an ultimate insult to those honest, hard-working people who appreciate rare beauty but cannot afford it. This gives our primitive mountebank a satisfaction above any other pleasure: it is this satisfaction, not some repulsive run-of-the-mill Picasso that he is paying for.
There are sometimes amazing coincidences between literature and real life (though Sherlock Holmes would have a different opinion).
In his classic SF books written in 1960s, the blind visionary and all-American native genius, Jack Vance, invented a secretive interplanetary organization that took upon itself a responsibility for deciding, what science and technology would be beneficial to the humanity, and what breakthroughs would be dangerous, since most of the humanity hasn’t grown up enough to handle such things. Inventors of dangerous things would mysteriously disappear, their publications would not be found in libraries or databases, and those who would attempt to re-create such inventions would be dealt with quickly and ruthlessly…
Half a century ago, Jack Vance named this cosmic thought police… IPCC.

B.O.B. says:
February 17, 2011 at 6:08 pm
“Where I come from, a new $200 million industrial wind farm development was recently announced in the newspaper. Fifty new jobs for up to twenty years, don’t you know. We don’t need the power, so the $200 million, plus cost to hook up to the grid, plus return on investment to the promoter will simply get added to our our energy bills, like some big credit card.”
Where I live (Texas) we have twice as much wind power as France.
France has ten times as much nuclear power generation as Texas.
The average cost of electricity in Texas is $0.12/kwh
The average cost of electricity in France is $0.19/kwh
Any questions?
all of Canada. Average cost of electricity in Texas is $0.12/kwh which is 10% below the national average. Average cost of electricity in Canada is

Dave Springer says:
February 17, 2011 at 11:08 pm
RACookPE1978 says:
February 17, 2011 at 11:12 am
Oopsie.
A second part of the (numerous) failures of wind power’s inability to maintain generation output over time is the effect on the conventional very large power plant machinery: The turbines, generators, boilers, pumps, motors, and the extreme loss of machinery lifetimes due to excess cycles.

I cannot point you to a paper. What I can do is point out that IESO ignores wind power when it schedules its power generation in Ontario.
This has been noted by several technical people that study power generation and wind power contribution in Canada.
Have a look at one guest post here…
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
See the reference to the original paper/study at the end of the article. Note that there are links to where raw data can be downloaded. All the claims can be verified against the data by using a spreadsheet or a simple program. The original paper was reviewed by power engineers and technical people.
Note that the graphs show that the Exported Power is always more than the Wind Power. Why? Even with weather modeling you can’t get output predictions for wind power exactly right… So the solution is to ignore wind power in the scheduling. Ontario always has a surplus now. The wind power contributes to the surplus at a rate of $125.00 – $195.00 per MWH (WHOLESALE RATE) cost to the Ontario consumer. This is the range of the FIT (Feed In Tariff) rate. So we pay up to eight ties the value of the power that is subsequently sold at the going wholesale rate…
This power is then sold to all of you wonderful folks in the good ol’ USA at a rate of (typically) $25- $45 per MWH. Sometimes we PAY you to take the power allowing you to shut down your generation facilities! Such a deal. We are subsidizing the power companies that then charge you $$120 to $200 per MWH.
Use the power ourselves? How? It is truly surplus power due to the scheduling algorithm which ignores contribution of wind power (and Solar Power for that matter).
I am not criticizing the decision to schedule in this manner. The wind power in Ontario is highly correlated. The output level changes across the entire province in synchrony — often with little warning. The article should make that very clear!
I suppose we should feel grateful for this opportunity — but we do not.
Google Wind Concerns Ontario and read a great deal of discussion on this and other related matters.
Cheers! …and I hope that helps people understand the frustrations in dealing with “Green Energy” — which I now refer to as “Black Energy”.

racookpe1978 says:
February 17, 2011 at 11:24 pm
““I” do not need ANYBODY else’s “peer-review” by any so-called self-interested “paid scientist” to validate the numbers and machinery destruction ”
Yeah, that’s about what I figured. Thanks.

The anti-green sentiment on this blog is more knee-jerk reactionism than cold sober analysis. It’s like anything and everything that ecoloons embrace is automatically loony. Even a blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn. In science and engineering things should be judged by their merits not by their political or religious associations. In fact it’s a well known logical fallacy called guilt by association. It’s hard to claim the high ground when this kind of behavior is so dominant. It’s no different than the CAGW camp who also automatically judge things by political and religious associations rather than by fact and reason.

I haven’t read all the postings previous to this contribution so maybe someone else has already made a similar comment. As an aeroplane pilot I am rather familiar with the effects of ice or even frost on aerofoils. Even a barely discernable layer on the wing will adversely affect lift. I’ve spent many an hour or so on a cold morning de-icing before take-off. Apart from ice, the wings get dirty and need regular cleaning to maintain efficiency. Wonder how much regular attention the aerofoils of wind generators get and at what cost.

Henry chance says:
February 17, 2011 at 3:19 pm
“Paint them black and the sunlight can warm them.”
Sorry that won’t work I’m afraid. The blades are composite and need to be protected from heat and UV hence they are painted white. Same as gliders and composite aircraft.