This seems like a candidate for the FAIL blog, hence my caption.
Here’s the story:
“We can’t control the weather,” Julie Vitek said in an interview from company headquarters in Houston, Texas. “We’re looking to see if we can cope with it more effectively, through the testing of a couple of techniques.”
She says the conditions in northern New Brunswick have wreaked havoc on the wind farm this winter.
“For us, cold and dry weather is good and that’s what’s typical in the region. Cold and wet weather can be a problem without any warmer days to prompt thawing, which has been the case this year.
“This weather pattern has been particularly challenging.”
Full article here
h/t to a whole bunch of WUWT readers, “TomRude” being the first.
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Bill,
Subsidies do not “help reduce the cost of energy.”
They are part of the cost.
Sure they do. Just like borrowing to pay interest reduces the debt.
@Ian L. McQueen says:
“It is my understanding that turbines are turned slowly when there is no wind in order to prevent the shaft from taking a “set”. ”
A large Indian gas powered generating station built by Bechtel, the subject of possibly the largest ever international private law suit, suffered from this fate. Realising that the increase in natural gas prices made the project econmoically unviable by the time it was commissioned, they refused to pay for it and the generators sat from some time while the gov’t of India rushed through laws forbidding payment. The generators, which can be turned by hand, large as they are, cannot sit for long in one position. No one bothered. They soon became hopelessly bent, never to run. Bechtel eventually won the suit ($500m) but the station still hasn’t run as far as I heard.
It seems the wind machines are all in this league with the major difference that they are at present hopelessly uneconomic from the get-go.
Dudes, just wipe those blades down with RainX, after that the ice comes off easy. Sometimes you need less Engineers and more Duct tape & Bailing wire people.
@nofreewind on February 18, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I invite you to have a look at the SONGS (San Onofre Nuclear Generating System) and its power output. Absolutely zero. Has been that way for quite a while, too, while they replace one of the steam generators.
Wind power works when the wind blows. This is nothing new, and nothing to get all excited about. Nuclear doesn’t work so well when the pieces wear out and have to be replaced.
Yeah. Just like you can with a nuke, you can schedule the wind for down-time and make arrangements for the next windmill up the road to pick up the load. Or schedule the wind down-time to coincide with a water release driven by irrigation needs. Or a lot of stuff.
Is “dispatcheable” a word? (Speell chooker doesn’t think so.)
I agree with Alex, they are indeed part of the cost of production.
No, and neither is “dispatche”; try “dispatchable”. It’s a trade-specific term:
Duh. Neither does anything else. Especially wind turbines; they burn up or explode if the repair dudes don’t climb that 150-250 foot ladder with tools and parts and a few meals and a chamber pot in time. And nobody knows how long they’ll last; the first couple of generations went about half as long as expected, with wide variations.
Pricey, fussy, unproductive garbage tech on stilts.
Recently found (and promptly lost) some interesting official statistics on a group of wind farms in the UK (northern Scotland, obviously from the name) called Caithness Wind Farms.
Since commissioning (around ten years ago):
Nearly 1000 accidents.
73 deaths.
Anyone got any equivalent statistics for other wind farms..? These are onshore – offshore ones might prove quite ‘illuminating’…
Texas Wind Power: Reality vs. Hype (despite burdensome state mandate, only a 1.2% share projected for 2014)
by Robert Bryce
August 24, 2009
http://www.masterresource.org/2009/08/texas-wind-power-the-numbers-versus-the-hype-despite-mandates-1-2-share-by-2014/
“The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when, and where, and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.”
– William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question (1865), p. 122.
———————–
Conclusion
The growth of windpower capacity in Texas is not the result of consumer choice and natural economics but mandates from the Texas legislature. And despite all the hype, the reality is that the Lone Star State will continue to rely on the same fuels for power generation that it has relied upon for decades: natural gas, coal, and nuclear.
David says: February 18, 2011 at 4:34 am
Have they learnt nothing….
Do they think….
It is a big mistake to assume the British political class suffers from either of these maladies…. they just know what is best for everyone… the concepts of learning and thinking simply do not apply in this context.
Why Wind Won’t Work?
– it’s Weaker than Water.
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/why-wind-wont-work.pdf
Executive Summary.
Wind power is very dilute, and thus a large area of land is required to gather significant energy. Wind energy needs a wide network of roads, transmission lines and turbines which degrades any area containing wind farms. It has a huge land footprint.
The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.
Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network.
Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.
The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.
Wind farms are promoted as a way to decarbonise energy generation. This is supposed to reduce global warming. There is no evidence that there is any need or benefit in chasing this rainbow.
There is no justification for continuing the complex network of subsidies, mandates and taxbreaks that currently underpin construction of wind farms in Australia. If wind power is sustainable it will be developed without these financial crutches.
The best, secure, grid is one with multiple generation points using various generating technologies. Windmills do add redundancy. In event of a grid disaster (CME?), every generator will be required to restore our power grid. We were able to restart the grid in ’65 because of a couple of CTU (jet engines) installed at a coal station by Sarnia, Can.
They were able to power up the coal station, which powered up another nuke, which got everyone else going. Now everyone has them, but mixing generation sources, increases security. However, the mix must be correct. It is mainly government subsidies, for wind generation which is distorting a healthy mix.
Having said that, I have 200 windmills surrounding my farm. My land is the only land for miles where one does not have to stare at rotating windmills. I am beginning to feel like the little old lady who owns a tiny house in the middle of Manhattan skyscrapers. So far, I have been able to keep them off my land. I think armor piercing rounds, in my cupboard, may have been the reason? GK
Naysayers should look at the reality. Wind is not “hard to predict.” Oddly enough, we DO know how to install wind measuring devices (anemometers) a few miles ahead of the wind turbines so that it is no surprise when the wind-power output changes.
Here’s a link to California’s Energy Commission levelized cost data for 2009 installation for several types of power generation. Note the very low cost from wind, onshore. One can download the pdf at the link below, for more details.
wind, onshore class 3/4 — $77 per MWh (average)
wind, onshore class 5 — $70 per MWh (average)
Note that the only system with lower levelized cost is an upgrade to an existing hydroelectric plant, at $65 per MWh.
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/levelized_costs.html
What is truly instructive, however, is the CEC’s information on nuclear power costs in the pdf’s graphs. The new nuke has a levelized cost of 31.4 cents per kWh ($314 per MWh) for 2018, based on a Westinghouse AP1000 of 960 MW capacity. (see Figures 13 and 14). This is consistent with what I have written on the extremely high costs of new nuclear power.
Also, for a visual depiction, see Figure 11 for Baseload Technology, and Figure 9 for Conventional Technologies cost comparisons. The new nuke is almost off the charts in Figure 11, and is easily twice the cost of natural-gas fired combined cycle technologies shown in Figure 9.
link to the pdf document:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CEC-200-2009-017/CEC-200-2009-017-SF.PDF
Roger Sowell says:
February 18, 2011 at 9:19 pm
@nofreewind on February 18, 2011 at 1:40 pm
I invite you to have a look at the SONGS (San Onofre Nuclear Generating System)
Talk about Cherry picking. No mention of the fact it has been producing 2200 MWe. year in year out since 1984. Show me a wind farm that has got any where near that.
RoHa says:
February 17, 2011 at 3:57 pm
“Am I the only person left who knows that the past tense of “wreak” is “wrought”?
[Reply: Too esoteric. We’re still trying to get folks to correctly use lose/loose and effect/affect. ~dbs]
Wow, I’m glad to know you guys were even trying. Maybe you could add “practise” (verb) and “practice” (noun) to the list. I don’t hold out much hope though, considering 93.6% of Americans under 55 can’t discern between “then” and “than.”
@A C Osborne.
No, they don’t produce year in and year out. They are brought down and taken off-line at regular intervals, just like any other piece of machinery. They are also forced to shut down any time the regulatory agency says to.
Nuclear plants must be cherries, then. Show me any one of them that doesn’t have to replace a major component, and is down for weeks or months to accomplish that. And, they remove a full 900 to 1200 MW from the grid when they go down. Not like a wind farm, where there are dozens or hundreds of wind turbines with one or two out for routine maintenance. This is an inconvenient fact that nuclear proponents like to gloss over, that there must be full, 100-percent backup capacity (usually by natural gas power plants) for that nuke.
What say you as to the published costs of new nuclear plants? 31 cents per kWh is not what this country needs. Ever.
According to this article, “…six of 104 [nuclear power plant] units were offline.”
That is during the heart of one of the most bitter, coldest winters we have had for a long while. Right when we need the power the most, nope, the old nuke is not available.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-14/u-s-nuclear-plant-output-falls-as-southern-shuts-alabama-unit.html
These things shut down all the time. This particular story just happened to be at the top of the search list today.
6 of 94 nuclear plants down?
Overall, over ALL times of the year, over ALL recent years, over ALL kinds of weather and over ALL temperatures, the capacity factor (actual delivered power divided by nameplate rating (the maximum amount of power that can be produced) for nuclear plants is 90%.
So if 6 nuclear plants are down for refueling outages and repair outages? About right. That IS what can be planned over the long term.
Now. Windpower.
Hmmmn. 10,000 MegaWatts of wind power HAS BEEN already installed in Texas. (That is, already paid for by current and future taxpayer subsidies.) But, during a recent crisis when every kilowatt that could be generated was needed, wind delivered less than 1800 Meg’s. Which is actually UNDER the real-world, real-time delivered capacity factor of 23%. (In the UK, things are worse: There, wind delivers 15 – 18% of its installed capacity. Except during cold spells. Then wind is 1 – 2% deliverable in the UK.)
Earlier in the Texas power crisis? When wind power was NOT needed but when it was displacing conventional plants that should have been already warmed up and with their piping hot and flowing? Well, then, when wind power was NOT needed and excess power WAS available from conventional generators but when the winds were at their maximum? – THEN wind power “only” could deliver 3800 MegaWatts! Wow! At its “best” times, wind can only really deliver 38% of its installed power. Gee.
So? Pay for and install 5 times the amount of generation power you think you need. Then, maybe, just maybe, you might get some of the power you really need. Some of the time.
Slacko says:
February 19, 2011 at 11:52 am
“Wow, I’m glad to know you guys were even trying. Maybe you could add “practise” (verb) and “practice” (noun) to the list. I don’t hold out much hope though, considering 93.6% of Americans under 55 can’t discern between “then” and “than.”
————————
You must be a pedant of British extraction (like myself), but you are a careless one. It is “accepted” American usage to spell both the noun and the verb with a c.
What’s horrible is your mistaken use of the transitive verb ‘discern’ where you should have used an intransitive, such as ‘discriminate’, a direct object to make sense of your verb or the transitive ‘differentiate’, which has the semantic value that would impart meaning to the sentence, as long as your prepositions were adjusted accordingly.
@RACookPE1978 on February 19, 2011 at 12:29 pm
Yup. That’s exactly how wind power works at this time. And, it won’t get any better until somebody figures out an economical way to store the wind power that is generated, then release it back when and as it is needed. Of course, you being a PE you will understand that there will be some loss from the storage and re-generation. That loss could be as much as 50 percent. Thus, instead of an effective capacity factor of 38 percent, it would be on the order of 20 percent.
A similar problem was solved with flooding rivers, having too much water when we didn’t need it, and not enough when we did. We build dams and reservoirs behind them to store the water until it was needed. However, there isn’t nearly as much loss involved – only evaporation and perhaps some seepage. Someday, we will figure out how to do the same with wind power: store it and retrieve it with little loss.
In the meantime, it is quite unfair to blame wind for the recent troubles in Texas. If they had done their winterizing properly, no problems would have occurred. Texas has cold winters and the people know how to deal with them. Somebody dropped the ball this time.
How does this compare to nuclear power maintenance downtime periods in length?
Can you do a NUCLEAR FAIL story next time they are off the grid? Just to be fair. And no I don’t care if it is planned or unplanned, just whether they are producing power.
Andy
From AndyW on February 19, 2011 at 4:44 pm:
Like when the hair-trigger safety systems execute an automatic shutdown if there might be a possibility of any sort of radioactivity release, even a puff of steam? Which leads to days of safety inspections before the nuclear plant is allowed to be restarted?
Strangely enough, there are no equivalent systems for wind turbines. Indeed, it’s been repeatedly shown how they can be destroyed rather quickly, torn apart and disintegrated, by the energy source they are trying to harvest. Thus it’s not a fair comparison.
Perhaps you should complain as to how nuclear plants are not as tolerant of insignificant hiccups while running as wind turbines. Maybe you could get them to back down those safety measures just a bit, to keep those plants up and running and supplying the grid. Because keeping the grid supplied as much as possible as long as possible is what’s most important, and nuclear plants should be at least as reliable an electricity source as wind turbines, right?
☻
[Reply: Too esoteric. We’re still trying to get folks to correctly use lose/loose and effect/affect. ~dbs]
When you’ve sorted that one out, can you turn your attention to correcting the misuse of amount/number and fewer/less?
Yes, I know, I should get out more …