Wind Turbine power output is increased ten-fold by careful spacing, and direction of rotation, when compared to existing best practices.
Click image for video surveyGuest post by Roger E. Sowell
Summary: A new study from CalTech shows that wind-turbine spacing, location, and direction of rotation can increase average power output per acre (hectare) by ten-fold, compared to existing best practices. Professor John O. Dabiri of California Institute of Technology (CalTech) published a paper describing the impact on power production of spacing, location, and direction of rotation on vertical-axis wind turbines.
For images and video, see http://dabiri.caltech.edu/research/wind-energy.html
A preprint of the paper is available at http://dabiri.caltech.edu/publications/Da_JRSE11.pdf (675 kB)
VAWT (vertical axis wind turbines) that are spaced approximately 4 diameters apart, with adjacent VAWTs rotating in opposite directions, yield a ten-fold increase in power output per unit of land area, from 2 – 3 Watts per square meter of land, to 21 – 47 Watts per square meter when compared to modern horizontal-axis wind turbines.
This has great implications for new wind-farm projects, especially the economics and environmental impacts. It does not, however, address the Achilles heel of wind power, the intermittency of power production and the need to time-shift power production by some economic means of grid-scale storage and discharge.
From Dr. Dabiri’s paper:
Abstract
Modern wind farms comprised of horizontal-axis wind turbines (HAWTs) require significant land resources to separate each wind turbine from the adjacent turbine wakes. This aerodynamic constraint limits the amount of power that can be extracted from a given wind farm footprint. The resulting inefficiency of HAWT farms is currently compensated by using taller wind turbines to access greater wind resources at high altitudes, but this solution comes at the expense of higher engineering costs and greater visual, acoustic, radar and environmental impacts. We investigated the use of counter-rotating vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) in order to achieve higher power output per unit land area than existing wind farms consisting of HAWTs. Full-scale field tests of 10-m tall VAWTs in various counter-rotating configurations were conducted under natural wind conditions during summer 2010. Whereas modern wind farms consisting of HAWTs produce 2 to 3 watts of power per square meter of land area,
these field tests indicate that power densities an order of magnitude greater can potentially be achieved by arranging VAWTs in layouts that enable them to extract energy from adjacent wakes and from above the wind farm. Moreover, this improved performance does not require higher individual wind turbine efficiency, only closer wind turbine spacing and a sufficient vertical flux of turbulence kinetic energy from the atmospheric surface layer. The results suggest an alternative approach to wind farming that has the potential to concurrently reduce the cost, size, and environmental impacts of wind farms.
in the UK we have the highest demand in the winter (little air conditioning). The coldest weather is often during periods of low pressure when the wind speed over most of the country can be too low for the windmills to produce any power. These conditions can last for several days at a time. What size of pump storage scheme would we need to keep the lights on? I would be interested if anybody could work this out and give an estimate of the capital cost of bulding it and how much of the country would need to be flooded.
Alexander Feht says:
July 17, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Roger Sowell says:
July 17, 2011 at 2:23 pm
If you object to such financial assistance for wind-turbines, are you also outraged over all the other forms of government assistance?
One word, Roger:
Yes.
Although my immediate reaction was to agree with Mr. Feht, we are, as Hayek said in Road to Serfdom even when talking of pre-WWII England, too rich a country to allow our citizens to go without food and shelter. That is certainly true of modern life in developed countries today.
But, Roger, you lost me when you justified all the subsidies, tax breaks, etc., for wind power simply because we do it all the time. When the inputs exceed the outputs, we are immediately poorer as a society. Those in favor of subsidies in the case of economic problems like energy production always argue that we aren’t measuring all of the outputs, i.e., that we need to take into consideration the progress that will eventually be made only because of the subsidy, progress that would not have been made in its absence.
But people like you never take into account the progress lost because of not only wasted resources, but misdirected resources. Had nuclear progress not been impeded in the 1970’s by panicked politicians, all of this might well be moot by now. Or perhaps not. But I would much rather put my faith in free markets, and entrepreneurs responding to the price signals in those markets, than in the political class when determining where private resources should be directed.
Tax dollars, i.e., private resources confiscated by governments, should be directed at protecting the citizenry, including protection in the form advocated by Hayek, and should not be used to attempt to pick winners in the economic sphere. Adopting this stance would enable the expenditures of government at all levels to be cut dramatically, perhaps on the order of 50 to 75%. The amount of resources left in private hands, were that done, would solve our energy problems, to the extent we would even have them then, in a generation. (This last is hyperbole, but has at least as great a chance of proving correct as a politician does picking the right power sources to subsidize with our money.)
@Rod Everson, I will respond more completely this evening.
>>Ron Todd says: July 18, 2011 at 7:32 am
>>in the UK we have the highest demand in the winter (little air conditioning).
>>The coldest weather is often during periods of low pressure when the wind
>>speed over most of the country can be too low for the windmills to produce
>>any power. These conditions can last for several days at a time. What size
>>of pump storage scheme would we need to keep the lights on?
You mean ‘high pressure’. And in Jan-Feb 2010, the UK was without wind for 6 weeks, not several days.
If we had 25% of UK electricity from wind power, we would need about 1,000 Dinorwig plants, to keep the lights on in Britain. And many more, if we wanted to go to an all-electric economy.
Dinorwig, by the way, is a 2gw pumped storage facility, and thus a very substantial investment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_power_station
This was my analysis of wind power, for the Sunday Times.
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Summary:
I would like to give a quick summary in advance. Professor Mackay has written an in-depth study of the nation’s energy demands and supplies, that is commendable in many respects. It is relatively clear and easy to read, if plagued by too many changes in units of energy; which makes comparisons between chapters difficult.
However, despite Professor Mackay slaughtering some well-established Green sacred cows, the report is nevertheless spoiled by a bias towards renewable energy and contains some highly misleading statements that border upon deception. The claim, for instance, that ‘electric vehicles are up to five times as efficient as fossil fuelled vehicles’, is disingenuous in the extreme. As is discussed later, this statement compares apples and oranges, and does not take the current electrical supply system into account whatsoever. Following my complaints, Professor Mackay has apologised to The Sunday Times if this statement appeared misleading. So was it misleading? Well, it was certainly misleading enough to confuse the reporters in The Sunday Times, who wrote glowing reports about the efficiency of electric vehicles based upon this very statement (as was admitted in an email to myself by the Sunday Times reporter).
There are, however, a number of other points in the book that I regard as misleading. Strangely enough, most of the these assumptions and arithmetic roundings tend to be in favour of renewable energy, producing a rather rose-tinted view of this industry. Here is my analysis of some of the data used, that appears unduly biased in favour of renewable energy.
Glossary of terms
kts – knots. 7 knots = 8mph.
gw – gigawatt of power (a rate of power delivery) 1gw = 1,000 mw.
gwh – gigawatt hour (an amount of energy delivered over one hour).
mw – megawatt of power 1mw = 1,000 kw.
kw – kilowatt of power 1kw will power a 1-bar electric fire.
windmills – wind machines that grind corn.
windelecs – wind machines that produce electricity.
kwh/day/person – (for the entire population) a strange unit used by Prof Mackay.
One kwh/day/p is equivalent 2.5gw (although one unit is an amount and the other a rate, they are still comparable).
Analysis of wind energy:
Professor Mackay says that between October 2006 and February 2007, there were 17 days in the UK below 10% wind-power output (p188). This is a peculiar period to take into consideration – just the winter months. In comparison, the number of days below 7kts (or 10% wind power) for the Liverpool Bay in 2006 was 46 days, and in 2010 there were up to 70 days without power (see dataset below). Windelecs (wind turbines) do not produce any worthwhile power below 7kts.
Professor Mackay then chooses Ireland as the foundation for his wind calculations. Why Ireland? As anyone who has lived there will know, Ireland is appreciably windier than the S.E. coast of England, where some of the largest arrays of windelecs will be based. The following charts outline the difference between these regions. In short, Ireland often lies outside the reach of European anticyclone weather systems, and so does not receive the long windless weeks that the south east of England occasionally does.
http://www.windatlas.dk/Europe/landmap.html
http://www.windatlas.dk/europe/oceanmap.html
Extrapolating from this false comparison with Ireland, Professor Mackay makes the assumption that the maximum duration without wind and thus without wind power in the UK will be just 5 days (p187, 189). All his energy storage assumptions, for power supplies from wind, are based upon this duration of outage. But this is an outrageous assumption that flies in the face all all experience. These are the wind charts for Liverpool Bay for January / February 2010.
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=jan2010
http://coastobs.pol.ac.uk/cobs/met/hilbre/sadata_met_month.php?code=5&span=feb2010
The blue line is the sustained wind speed, and anything less than 7kts not supplying any worthwhile electrical power. Here we see more than a month – a full 40 days – without any significant wind, and so without any significant wind-inspired electrical power. This is the duration of outage that we need to store up electrical energy for, to prevent rolling blackouts across the country, and this makes a mockery of Professor Mackay’s energy storage assumptions.
Electrical production assumptions (wind):
Professor Mackay assumes that average UK electrical consumption is 40gw or 960gwh/day (p188). This is an underestimate, as our actual average consumption is 1055 gwh/day, or an average consumption of 44gw (2008, 2009 figures).
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/source/electricity/electricity.aspx
For his primary energy calculation, the professor assumes the UK should install 33gw of windelecs, running at a 30% load factor (or efficiency) which will give us 10gw of actual wind power generation, on average (p189). This, it is said, represents 25% of our total current electrical energy requirements, and is a component of the UK government’s present energy policy.
The UK presently just has 5gw of installed wind power. If the average turbine is 3mw (they go up to 7mw), this 33gw of installed capacity would represent about 11,000 large windelecs of 3mw each, a six-fold increase on the present tally of windelecs. (see similar calculation on Mackay’s p62)
http://www.bwea.com/statistics/
Professor Mackay has assumed a 30% load factor for windelecs (the difference between theoretical power, and achieved power, p189), but this is an over estimate. The average load factor in the UK is about 27%, while in 2010 the UK windelec fleet only generated 24% of installed power. Let’s assume 25% as an average load factor, which is rather less than the professor’s 30%.
http://www.ref.org.uk/publications/217-low-wind-power-output-2010
In addition, Professor Mackay’s average electrical demand for the UK (now revised to 44gw) is just that, an average. Since demand can considerably exceed this average, the actual generating capacity (not including wind power) in the UK is now about 80gw; so we have a 45% contingency against demand and supply fluctuations. In reality, demand fluctuations are less than this. Much of the UK’s electrical demand in December 2010 was in the range of 45 – 55 gw, peaking at 60gw on the 20th December, which is just 25% more than the average figure. These seasonal peaks would still have to be catered for in a substantially wind-powered nation, so let’s assume that we could get away with a total generating capacity of just 66gw.
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/sys_06/default.asp?action=mnch3_8.htm&sNode=4&Exp=Y
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Demand+Data/
So in the real world, with real word data, we would actually need the following: To generate 25% of our total electrical supply with wind, you would need 16.5gw of wind output (66gw divided by 4). But since wind power is only 25% efficient, you would actually need 66gw of installed wind capacity (at a 25% load factor, giving 16.5gw average output). Thus we have already risen from Professor Mackay’s estimate of 11,000 windelecs (33gw) to the more realistic figure of 22,000 windelecs (66gw), assuming a 3mw capacity each. And yet this vast array of windelecs will still only generate enough energy to cover 25% of our current electrical demand.
The electric economy:
But this is not the end of the problem. Professor Mackay then goes onto to suggest methods of further reducing fossil fuels by going towards an ‘all electric’ economy.
Currently, electricity represents only a small slice of our total energy demands. According to the DTI, electricity represents just 9% of the total energy the nation uses, and thus the UKs total energy demand (in equivalent electrical units) is 490gw (current electrical consumption of 44gw x 1110%). Professor Mackay uses a 312gw equivalent in his calculations (his 125kwh/day/person) which seems a bit light to me.
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file11250.pdf (chart 1.2)
In this same DTI report, transport represents 26% of energy consumption (chart 1.3), and road vehicles represent about 70% of this slice (chart 2.1). So road vehicles currently represent 18% of total UK energy demand (or 88gw equivalent). But in an ‘all electric’ economy the energy consumption of the electric vehicles would be just half the current figure, as there would no longer be the 50% losses involved in generating electricity at the power station, and so the ‘all electric’ equivalent would be a road transport consumption of just 44gw. The professor similarly assumes that all transport (less aviation) consumes 45gw (his 18 kwh/d/p).
Professor Mackay then goes on to use a significant amount of electrical power for space heating in our homes and offices, adding another 44gw to the electrical requirements. This conversion makes a deal of sense, as pumped heating systems can double or treble this electrical power requirement into, say, 100gw of actual heating.
Thus the total electrical demand for the UK, in the ‘all electric’ economy, becomes 44gw for general electricity, plus 44gw for transport, plus 44gw for heating – or a total of 132 gw, which represents a tripling of our electrical demand. Note how, in an ‘all electric’ economy, the total energy requirement has reduced from the original 490gw (or 312gw) to this much lower figure of 132gw. This is because electrical energy is more efficient for transport and heating, if we do not have to burn a fossil fuels in a power station to create the electrical energy in the first place. This would equate to about 180 gw of total energy, if we also include the extra efficiencies derived from pumped heat systems. But since the professor’s total energy consumption assumption for the UK was a bit light in the first place, I think it wise to increase this total electrical energy requirement in the same proportion, from 132gw to 190gw.
But remember that this is an average power consumption, and does not allow for seasonal variations. Professor Mackay does not have much to say about seasonal variations in energy demand, above a passing reference to ‘heating a rock’ (p201). But not all seasonal demand variations are due to space heating, it is about longer nights with more lighting and watching television, and cooking hot dinners instead of eating salads. And there are many factories that simply cannot insulate more, as the hangar doors are open more than they are shut, as anyone who has worked in industry will know. And wielding a spanner that is at -5oc is simply not possible. Humans cannot work like that, we do need extra heat in the winter. As we saw above, to allow for the cold winter months, we actually need another 50% of power supply as a contingency (we currently have about 80% extra electrical power as a contingency). The following graph is of seasonal gas demand in the US, which clearly shows a 50% increase in the winter. This contingency would increase our electrical generation requirements from 190gw to 280gw.
http://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/feature_articles/2010/ngyir2009/fig02.gif
But this would have a similar knock on effect to our generating requirements, with more than three times our current electrical capability being required, to sustain an ‘all electric’ economy. Professor Mackay gives a number of differing solutions to this huge electrical supply problem, most of which are not practical. Getting reliable solar energy supplies from North Africa is one of those impracticalities, as is discussed below. Using coal very inefficiently (so-called clean coal) is another peculiar suggestion. Why would we want to make coal power half as efficient as it is today? Doubling coal consumption for the same electrical output defeats all of the very promising efficiencies we have just outlined for the ‘all electric’ economy – it is nonsensical in the extreme.
To be practical about this, we need to delete the naive suggestions for electrical power, which range from solar-desert, biofuel, wood, wave power, clean coal and photo voltaic. Without going hugely nuclear, for the moment, plan ‘D’ in the professor’s list of options looks the most viable – with it retaining a large amount of nuclear power (p208). But after deleting all the impractical power generation suggestions and retaining (or increasing to) 50gw of nuclear power, you would need to increase the supply of wind power to a massive 230gw.
If this were the case, then we would need to increase our requirement for 3mw windelecs from 14,600 (11gw, factored) to over 300,000 (230gw, load factored from 920gw). If we wanted to install these windelecs over 20 years, that would represent the construction of 15,000 new windelecs a year, or 1,250 a month. This is simply not possible; it is pipe-dream engineering.
Even Professor Mackay has discounted this idea, not simply due to the engineering impossibilities, but also on the intrinsic wind power capabilities of the UK. Looking at the available land and sea areas, the professor assumes that the maximum wind generation for the UK would be 170gw (at an average 3w/sqm of turbine area for offshore wind and 2w/sqm for onshore, p60). But even that represents 225,000 of these huge 3mw windelecs. And large though this amount may be, it still represents a 50gw shortfall in our generating capacity, which will have to be made up from some other energy source. Plus, as the professor has noted, some of the maintenance bills on these offshore windelecs are becoming downright untenable.
Storage assumptions:
But that is not the only construction requirement. The problem, as we have already touched upon, is that the wind stops blowing for days on end; and so we shall need a storage system to allow for wind outages, otherwise we will be plagued by long-term blackouts and the UK will cease to function. Everything we depend upon in our 24/7 technological society would come grinding to a halt without electrical supplies. Whether it is domestic heating, cars, road systems, rail systems, supermarkets, factories, water systems, gas systems, it all depends on electrical supplies. And those dependencies are not always obvious. Petrol pumps depend on electrical pumps, so there would be no petrol and traffic at a standstill. Traffic lights would fail, causing further gridlock. Failed fire suppression systems in office blocks would demand that all office blocks are evacuated. Failed air traffic control systems would ground all aircraft. Supermarkets could not operate if they had no stock control and cash register systems, and the food trucks were stuck in the road gridlock or short of fuel. etc: etc: Our interconnected and technological world would simply fall apart.
So we do need backup electrical supplies, for when the windelecs are idle. But how much? In his calculations Professor Mackay suggests a maximum outage of 5 windless days, and a storage system supplying 25% of current electrical power (10gw) – the figure derived in his initial calculation. The calculation here is 10gw x 5 days x 24 hours = 1,200 gwh of pumped storage capacity requirements, to act as a backup power supply.
The largest pumped water storage system in the UK is Dinorwig, in North Wales, and this stores 9gwh of power. Thus you would need 1,200 divided by 9 = 130 Dinorwigs, to backup five windless days, as the professor mentions (p191). But Dinorwig was the UK’s biggest and most expensive power supply project, a gold-plated government construction that no private company would ever contemplate. And we must build 130 of these, or their equivalent, to cover for 5 windless days. Professor Mackay suggests several lochs and locations in the highlands of Scotland for these pumped storage systems; but you can just imagine the Green outcry to desecrating these unspoiled natural environments.
But that, of course, is not the true calculation. As we have seen, the wind can go off line for up to 40 days. So in truth, we would actually need 10gw x 40 days x 24 hours = 9,600 gwh of pumped storage capacity, or 1,060 Dinorwig equivalents, just to cover 25% of our present electrical requirements.
But that is not all. Professor Mackay has gone on to suggest the ‘all electric’ economy, as we have just seen. In the scenario I have just discussed above, this would require the maximum possible wind capability of the whole UK to run, which the professor estimates at 170gw of wind power. Thus we would have to multiply the requirement for pumped storage systems by 17 (from 10gw to 170gw), resulting in a requirement for the equivalent of 18,000 Dinorwigs. I’m afraid that that is pipe-dream engineering. It cannot be done. It is akin to embarking on 180 Apollo moon projects, all at the same time.
Please also remember that January 2010, the month without wind, was one of the coldest months on record – the very time when we will require maximum electrical power. This is especially so if a significant amount of our heating and transport were to be powered by electricity, as the professor is suggesting. I would respectfully suggest that had Professor Mackay been in charge of energy production and transport policy in January 2010, hundreds of thousands of people would have died in Britain, especially among those who are old or infirm. Is this what we want for our future?
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I am delighted by this blog’s embrace of the vital and inevitable transition from fossil to non-fossil energy. This study and the comments have been stimulating and constructive.
I see this has partly degenerated into the nuclear power debate…of which I am a distinct supporter for the very simplist and very basic of reasons.
In essence, it doesn’t matter how you look at it, from any and all resources, minerals, food, fossil fuels, even so called renewable energy – humans will necessarily rape this planet unless some far advanced energy technology can be found and bloody soon. Several billion people need feeding, clothing and keeping warm and they need that TODAY. There is no extolling the rights or wrongs of it – it is simple fact ! Unless one is of a persuasion that we should invoke mass genocide/suicide or murder, or even simply neglect our fellow (poor) man – there is no other option but to continue to ‘use’ the planet and its resources as our NEEDS dictate. (Or else we have no option but to reduce our needs?)
On the presumption that world domination by a particular power/country is ‘off the cards’ these days – what are our realistic choices?
1) we can carry on as we are and continue to damage the planet environmentally whilst we burn FF and wait for some new clean power tech to arrive – but of course, we run the risk that it doesn’t appear (and THEN we’d have to go nuclear!)
2) we can use our past nuclear experience and invest in future ‘better’ nuclear to provide a long term provision into the future whilst allowing the time for technology to advance. In addition, as a relatively clean power (ignoring the waste aspect) nuclear provides the opportunity for environmental improvement in a far greater sense than continued FF use does.
3) we can invest in renewables at unbelieveable rates in the ‘hope’ that they come good? (though this still requires raping of the planet for resources – and of course, we don’t know the long term effect of actually withdrawing energy from the climate system) The exponential rise in energy demand, coupled with need for land, for example, for food production, etc, kind of suggests that this is a non achievable utopia without an awful lot of sacrifices elsewhere?
I suppose there is a 4) – which is to turn everything off and return to the stone age – literally and completely, Accepting that any deaths on the way are mere natural casualties!
In my humble opinion, we simply have no choice but to continue to develop nuclear power – if for no other reason but to provide an essential ‘backup’ should other technologies fail now or in the future. I suppose that is the alarmists precautionary principle working against them? Whatever is decided, the world still has a bit of choice at it’s disposal but as each day passes, the practical availability of those choices will reduce. I guess it’s a bit like spread betting – we need to spread our bet as much as possible, and at the moment I do see nuclear as the favourite! I would sooner see slower ‘carefully considered’ nuclear technology developed now rather than panicky, hasty and likely untried technology in 50 years time? For example, can you imagine the likes of a minor oil based country of today suddenly in a panic for energy for its people and then building half a dozen Chernobyls in a hurry ?!!
Rod,
I enjoyed your comment and agree with your approach to government, so I wanted to pick your brain. There is an idea, supported by the intersection of those who accept fossil carbon as having dangerously imbalanced the carbon cycle long ago (50ish years) and those who demand efficiency in regulation (that is, directed–not indirect–action, and action that allows market–the biggest, most player-populous markets–to apply themselves). The concept (if not the proposed implementations–there are many proposed bills to choose from) is that of the fossil carbon fee and tax cut. A fee is applied to fossil carbon emission (I say the most low-overhead and cheat-free way is via a fossil production and import fee based on C content) that raises every year. (Foreign products that are fossil-energy-heavy could be assigned a fossil-fee-compensation-tariff that would be completely WTO legal.) At the same time, taxes are reduced in a universal way (that’s a politically difficult part to work out) every month, in an amount equal to the fee collected (this would start very, very low, so getting there’d be time to get good numbers worked out in the first year.)
In this way, money is kept in the economy, while beginning to put the real cost on fossil energy, and reducing the cost on everything (anything) else, be it nuke, sequestration, renewables with smart distribution and storage, decentralization, efficiency, anything. (Sequestration would be reimbursed the fossil fee and that taken out of the tax-cut total; however, I’m almost certain sequestration would lose out as not technically and economically viable compared to the others.)
What are your thoughts on the concept? How might the concept be optimally implemented?
Rod Everson,
Charity is not a government’s business, and Hayek is not an ultimate authority.
Hu McCulloch says:
I remember reading about “egg beater” windmills 30-40 years ago. A big practical advantage then was that the generators are at the bottom, where they don’t need to be supported and are easy to service, rather than at the top.
Having a static generator is also likely to mean mechanically simpler and fewer parts which are likely to need servicing.
But the major drawback with wind power remains. That is that the power delivered is intermittent and unpredictable. Throughout history waterwheels have been used because their ability to deliver power which is reliable is more important than the higher initial capital costs compared with wind.
For centuries wind was the standard way to propel ships. Yet the inventions of Richard Trevithick, Charles Parsons and Rudolf Diesel revolutionised ship propulsion within a comparativly short time.
Oh dear! As usual when windpower is mentioned, the troll infestation is immense.
There are too many to deal with them all, but I mention a couple.
Not content with having destroyed one thread, the anonymous “Ralph” has another go here. I commend that everybody refuse to engage with exceptionally toxic troll whose assertions consist of selected sentences from newspaper articles he has googled, personal insults, and nothing else.
The anonymous “Bystander” makes trivial points that are usually examples of classical logical errors. However, in this thread he has made one point that is correct and I was mistaken.
I wrongly said:
““I have never never cited – or mentioned – any plant at Alholmens””
He is correct that I did cite it as an example in the link I provided. I apologise for that error.
However, my failure to remember that does not alter my point that I proved by quoting David Tolley.
Richard
Excellent post Rod – demonstrating the foibles of wind power and the secondary (i.e. storage) problems it creates for any grid where ‘constant’ power is required. I just wish the greens would become more realistic in their claims…….without realism, we run the risk of making serious mistakes.
KR:
Thankyou for your comments to me at July 18, 2011 at 6:43 am and July 18, 2011 at 6:50 am .
I have two responses.
Firstly, I do not know why you think I am against nuclear power. On the contrary, I am in favour of it as I have repeatedly said in many places including on WUWT.
But nuclear power is even less good at load following than conventional coal-fired PF power stations, and this is why the nuclear plants provide base load in the UK.
Secondly, you assert that gas turbine pants (burning natural gas) can start up quickly so they could be used as back-up for wind turbines at times of long (i.e. days or weeks) outage of wind turbines.
Your assertion is correct but has two problems.
Combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants burning natural gas are much more efficient than plants that only use gas turbines, but they cannot provide a rapid start-up. So, you are suggesting a more expensive and less efficient supply of gas-fired power solely because it can provide back-up to wind turbines.
Importantly, a CCGT provides much cheaper electricity than wind farms, and even a pure gas turbine plant produces cheaper electricity than windfarms. I would be interested to know why you suggest building gas-fired power stations for them to stand idle so wind turbines can operate to produce more expensive electricity. What is wrong with only building CCGTs and using their cheaper electricity?
Indeed, it is cheaper to operate CCGTs and to place them on standby when windfarms generate instead of building pure gas turbine plants that shut down when the windfarms operate.
As I said, windfarms produce no useful electricity, they only displace thermal power stations that continue to burn their fuel and, therefore, to produce their emissions whilst waiting for the windfarms to stop operating.
Richard
anderlan says:
July 18, 2011 at 10:51 am
The concept of a direct C tax – increasing over a time period may appeal in principal, as it would surely ‘force’ alternative energy investment R&D – but in practise I can see that all that would happen is that some big corps would ‘cash in’ by producing cheap electricity and selling it at just under the continuing fossil fuel producers price! In other words, a bit like the private Toll bridges where they collect a ‘toll’ to recover the investment outlay and running costs, but then continue to collect tolls even after many years (usually increasing them instead of reducing them to cover basic running costs after the capital cost have been met!). The free market would likely find a way to take advantage, I am sure – just like it has with the subsidised ‘green’ industry!
I am a self employed engineer, so not really a businessman! but if I was gonna make and sell something, I’d look at the current market, make whatever the ‘product’ I chose at reduced cost (if possible) and then sell it the most I could get for it but usually just under my competitors price! I am not satisfying shareholders – but big corps are, and need to look at the profit margin ALL the time. I cannot see in your suggestion, that the free market could provide a fair solution for consumers!
Nuclear promised cheap electricity – which I guess it delivered for a while, but then H&S and Enviro regulations became more stringent and costs rose (especially decommisoning – nobody foresaw decom costs to be so high I don’t think)….and then of course, add in the NIMBY’s and you have got yourself a perfectly good method of electrity production that is ‘not wanted’, and yet a few million wind gensets are ok?….or flooding vast areas for hydro is ok?, etc, etc… At some stage, practicalities need to come into the equation.
Richard S Courtney
“What is wrong with only building CCGTs and using their cheaper electricity?”
How about minimizing the total level of greenhouse gas production? Limited fossil fuel resources ring a bell?
Yes, yes, I know you have asserted that human greenhouse gas production has no real effect on the climate – in which assertion you are in the _distinct_ minority. Most folks who (like me) have run the numbers feel minimizing greenhouse emissions is important.
I will point out that I do not think that wind power can replace 100% baseload – but up to about 20% of total grid power it makes economic sense. Beyond that the power swings look to be far more expensive (in backup, storage, etc.) than they are worth. I’m far more interested in concentrating solar power (molten salt backup), which looks to be a much better source than wind power, although for the UK neither alternative makes a great deal of sense as local sources. The UK has too little available land or sunlight, and wind is limited – I would guess a combo of nuclear and imported electrical as a future supply.
>>Richard S Courtney says: July 18, 2011 at 11:51 am
>>Not content with having destroyed one thread, the anonymous “Ralph” has
>>another go here. I commend that everybody refuse to engage with exceptionally
>>toxic troll whose assertions consist of selected sentences from newspaper
>>articles he has googled, personal insults, and nothing else.
The difference between ‘Troll Ralph’ and Richard, is that Troll Ralph actually worked in a mine, and has experience of mining, whereas it would appear that Richard has never been further north than Watford.
In addition, Troll Ralph actually produced copious evidence that the UK’s fractured geology played a great part in the demise of the UK coal industry, whereas readers just have to have ‘faith’ with Richard, because he produces no evidence whatsoever. Richard still has not explained why fractured coal seams, the very fractured coal seams that brought the Selby pit to a premature close, would be beneficial to the coal industry. Care to finally explain, oh one of great faith but little evidence?
And if you had read my posts on wind turbines, I was actually supporting your arguments. But I did suggest that you explain yourself more clearly, because you have a habit of simply repeating yourself and shouting ever more loudly. Clearly, you have nothing to deliver to these threads but abuse and conflict.
.
Side note WRT wind power:
Single locale data doesn’t really mean much for either solar or wind power – siting multiple smaller sites across even a few hundred kilometers will provide much higher continuous and less interrupted power than putting all those units into a single site, as it becomes _considerably_ less likely that all will be disabled by weather simultaneously. If wind production were spread across the UK and Europe with decent inconnectivity, downtimes for the grid would be extremely rare. Calmer weather in the southern UK compensated for by high winds off Scotland, for example (the Scottish windmills often getting shut down by _too much_ wind).
Also note that average power for a wind facility is perhaps 1/3 peak capacity, all you can depend upon for the long run, due to wind variations. Both advocates and critics need to keep that in mind to avoid incorrect expectations.
So grid interconnectivity becomes a requirement for larger scale renewables – minimizing power swings and interrupts.
@ur momisugly Richard S Courtney says “As I said, windfarms produce no useful electricity, they only displace thermal power stations that continue to burn their fuel and, therefore, to produce their emissions whilst waiting for the windfarms to stop operating.”
Repeating the same bad assertion based on a premise shown to be faulty only shows that you are uninterested in the actual topic at hand here.
A more honest and accurate analysis would be to indicate that wind power needs to be intelligently integrated into an overall system of power generation. Using hydro-power or gas stations for stand-by is both viable and probably necessary at a much bigger scale than currently done today.
I don’t know if my last comment got posted or not – trying again.
Keep in mind that single location numbers are _not_ useful for judging wind or solar power. Even a spread of a couple of hundred kilometers between small groups of generators will provide a higher on-time percentage than having those same generators at a single site, as weather is far less likely to block all of them. Spread them across the UK and Europe, and downtime should drop to a low percentage of total time (I would have to run the numbers in detail, though…).
A distributed grid is part of the requirements for renewable resources.
Ahh, yes, a cleaner pig, a prettier pig, an ever-so-much nicer pig. Here’s the lipstick…
… and many actually think she can fly…
Is it just me or does anyone else see that those who oppose wind power act as if no technological improvement in wind power will ever take place; yet whatever their power of choice is, it always seems to be an infant technology that given enough time will be cured of all of its technological deficiencies?
davidgmills, it’s just you. No form of power has ever been “cured of all of its technological deficiencies.” There is no free lunch.
But for excellent reasons of physics, wind power must remain completely uneconomic on any reasonable industrial scale. 1 square km, a million square meters, can easily hold a conventional 1-GW plant. That’s a kilowatt per square meter, 300 times the best HAWT figure quoted above and 30 time the inflated estimate the authors give for VAWT. And the conventional plant will produce the power 24/7 for half a century.
Give me a break.
davidgmills,
You are welcome to experiment with any power source of your choice, and to improve it to your heart’s content — but not on my account. You play with it — you pay for it.
Re the Richard S. Courtney contention that wind power does not produce any useful power, because back-up power plants must be running.
This paper should be enlightening:
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/49019.pdf
Title: Operating Reserves and Wind Power Integration:
An International Comparison, October 2010, by Milligan et al,
Presented at The 9th Annual International Workshop on Large-Scale
Integration of Wind Power into Power Systems as well as on Transmission
Networks for Offshore Wind Power Plants Conference
Québec, Canada; October 18-19, 2010
Abstract—”The determination of additional operating reserves
in power systems with high wind penetration is attracting a
significant amount of attention and research. Wind integration
analysis over the past several years has shown that the level of
operating reserve that is induced by wind is not a constant
function of the installed capacity. Observations and analysis of
actual wind plant operating data has shown that wind does not
change its output fast enough to be considered as a contingency
event. However, the variability that wind adds to the system does
require the activation or deactivation of additional operating
reserves. This paper provides a high-level international
comparison of methods and key results from both operating
practice and integration analysis, based on the work in
International Energy Agency IEA WIND Task 25 on Large-scale
Wind Integration. The paper concludes with an assessment of the
common themes and important differences, along with recent
emerging trends.”
>>Bystander
>>A more honest and accurate analysis would be to indicate that wind power
>>needs to be intelligently integrated into an overall system of power generation.
Wind power can never be economically integrated into a power grid.
If you use pumped storage as a backup, your would need the most expensive backup system in the history of man – enough pumped water to cover for 40 days of wind outage. That would increase electricity by approximately 20x its current price. Try selling that to the electorate.
If you use gas turbines, you may well end up using more fossil fuel than not having any wind turbines. As Richard pointed out, the combined cycle plants are much more efficient than straight gas generators, but they cannot be used as variable backups. So in using straight gas turbines to backup wind (and UK generators have asked the government to build 17 of these), you may well end up using more gas than if there was no wind power whatsoever !!! And where does that gas come from? Algeria? Are you joking?
In what way, therefore, is wind power useful to any nation?
(Apart from Scandinavia or Switzerland, who may be able to eek out their hydro power during the seasons more effectively.)
,
KR:
You do not dispute the facts and arguments I gave you in response to your assertions and (at July 18, 2011 at 1:38 pm ) you reply to my question that asked:
“What is wrong with only building CCGTs and using their cheaper electricity?”
by asking me:
“How about minimizing the total level of greenhouse gas production? Limited fossil fuel resources ring a bell?”
So, it is clear that you agree my points but think the “total level of greenhouse gas production” and “limited fuel resources” are important.
This is an example of the common ‘warmist’ ploy of changing the subject. (It is not quite as egregious as the ‘warmist’ ploy of ignoring all evidence presented and repeating an unfounded assertion: a ploy that is ably demonstrated in this thread by Roger Sewell and Bystander).
You recognise that my argument is true and cannot be rationally refuted so try two other ’tacks’.
But both are as spurious as your original arguments.
Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are a trivial contribution to total green house gas emissions. For example, nature emits 34 molecules of CO2 for every molecule of CO2 emitted by the total of human activities. Anyway, as I explained, use of windfarms makes no significant reduction to the anthropogenic emissions and may increase those emissions.
And, for all practical purposes, fossil fuel resources can be considered to be infinite. There is at least 300 year supply and probably more than 1,000 years supply. Nobody can know what – if any – demand ther will be for fossil fuels 300 years in the future.
And you assert;
“I will point out that I do not think that wind power can replace 100% baseload – but up to about 20% of total grid power it makes economic sense.”
That assertion is silly twaddle. The 20% windpower is a pointless waste of resources that increases costs of electricity supply. That makes no “economic sense” of any kind.
Richard