There's a reason the modern age moved on from windmills

There are some problems with the assumptions used in the study. The results over-estimate the inefficiencies. There are, without question, significant inefficiencies, but the study has been seriously criticized for the assumptions and this takes away from the utility of the study.

Good luck changing the whole windfarm ethos in UK, when all the main parties suport it, and so does the media. Even evil right-winger Murdoch supports Cameron and will never go against the Prime Minister in his propaganda media.
There’s too much money involved, and I doubt this whole expensive fad will ever go away.

Wind, geothermal, and solar power generation are most effective on-site and at a small scale. It works quite well if your goal is to stay off the power grid or are in a location where electrical power is not available (and there are several areas in NE Oregon where this is the case). On a larger scale, the inefficiencies multiply and the environmental footprint enlarges, overwhelming advantages. That this escapes environmentalists and green power advocates speaks to their rose colored glasses. That it became a part of large power generating company speaks to their willingness to swallow knowledge in order to gain subsidies. Money trumps truth and belief trumps facts.

It’s interesting that proponents of CAGW are quick to throw pull out the precautionary principle, but those sharing their beliefs are not willing to do so when it comes to issues like wind and solar energy.

Edit note:
The “conclusion” is quoted twice in the posting, at the top and bottom.

We will hear, once this report is accepted, that skeptics had nothing to do with this realization. But at the same time, we will be told that the problem is actually the fault of skeptics.

There is a reason why T Boone Pickens, who controls lots of Natural Gas, is a big supporter of Wind. They are co-dependent on each other.
At its root, wind is both a maintenance headache – lots of and lots of big structures that must be maintained – and has a very low ROI – unless the wind blows ALL THE TIME.

The Superfund cleanup program will be the final chapter of wind and solar panel farms. And yes, it will come out of our pockets. The government has become the biggest credit card carrying 16 year old I have ever seen.

Pamela Gray says:
January 10, 2012 at 6:25 am
You are spot on Pamela. I have no problem with wind, solar and geothermal used locally and for specific sites where they make economic sense. For large scale use, they are not economically viable without huge subsidies.

Anyone using a hand-held calculator and in possession of a rudimentary understanding of “capacity factor” and the effects of “energy density” on “capital costs” could have reached conclusions similar to those in the subject report years ago. Further, it can be easily demonstrated that there is no conceivable solution to either the “capacity factor” or “energy density” problems for both solar and wind generation. That brings into focus the following disturbing questions:
“Have the government institutions of the advanced nations of the world no concern for the economic survival of their citizenry?”
“Is it possible that entire civilizations are periodically destroyed by bizarre fads and fashions?”
“Has a cat got a tail?”

It’s probably worth mentioning that wind power is not cost-effective TODAY, relative to conventional non-renewable power sources (gas, coal, nuclear, etc.).
Since non-renewable fuels are, by definition, finite in quantity, as they are gradually depleted they will become increasingly scare (and more expensive to extract), and their prices will almost certainly rise in the long-run under almost any demand scenario.
If fuel prices increase materially, then wind power MAY become cost-effective at some point in the future. Even this is not certain, as rising energy prices will inevitably increase the cost of building and maintaining windmills, diminishing any relative gains in cost-effectiveness.
The hope that wind power MAY become cost-effective in the future is inadequate justification for public funding and subsidies. (That said, private investors are entirely welcome to do whatever they want with their money, but without the benefit of taxpayer subsidies, guarantees, or bailouts.)

Postdated Memo to Chris Huhne, UK Energy Minister and wind enthusiast:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“There are some problems with the assumptions used in the study. The results over-estimate the inefficiencies.”
The left loves to scold the rest of us about “sustainability”, yet not a single one of their schemes is ever economically sustainable. But worse than that, because many of their scheme cannot pass the smell test, they must be forced on the rest of us using armed agents of government. So, we are not free to decline using technology that sucks our limited economic resources dry in a way that precludes us from investing in proven technology that is far more cost effective.
But polite people know to not mention that when we allow government to dictate that we also imply the use of coercion and deadly force. We can only say that experts have decided, or the panel has ruled, or the law is such and such. We have ruled, legislated and regulated ourselves into a corner- we have consumed, dissipated and used up our limited economic resources in a way that wastes them far faster than we can create new resources. The result is that we not only will not have enough power for our industry and our homes, but we will be left struggling to pay the interest on the debt left by this foolish adventure into Statism.

PG&E rate payers have been subsidizing this nonsense for 3 decades.

My goodness. Wind does not work well? Whodathunkit?
http://ontariowindperformance.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/chapter-3-1-powering-ontario/
Maybe the problem is everywhere… The drop-outs, the high cost, subsidies, the inefficiency.

Well, wind power advocacy was never about green energy, but rather about making certain people with government connections a lot of money.
BTW, let me know when the wind power advocates go off the grid with their own private wind turbines…[LOL]

Energy experts warn that unwarranted support for wind-power is hindering genuinely cleaner energy

This quote illustrates a great lesson — when government picks winners and losers, better solutions are overlooked, often deliberately.

D. W. Schnare says:
January 10, 2012 at 6:03 am
There are some problems with the assumptions used in the study. The results over-estimate the inefficiencies.
Not when you look at how capital is invested or how gas turbines work.
A high efficiency combine cycle gas turbine running in baseload mode can get as high as 60% efficiency, drop that down to load following peaker duty and you are down to something in the neighborhood of 45%.
But if you are only doing peaker duty then is probably isn’t economic anymore to install a combined cycle gas turbine, so you install a simple single cycle peaker turbine instead. So now your efficiency is in the high 30% range.
To make an analogy
If I take the bus to work twice a week and my car three times a week my incentive to invest in the most fuel efficient car is 40% less then the incentive of someone who is taking their car 5 days a week. So the fact that the bus runs twice a week doesn’t save 40% of the fuel, because I have less incentive to purchase the most efficient vehicle.
That’s ‘market forces’ in the real world works.

Its like deja vu all over again.
Wind power feel out of favour when the steam engine came along for very good reasons.
And renaming windmills to ‘wind turbines’ in the hope of fooling us that something has changed is stupid. Nothing about the fundamental problems of wind power has changed one iota. No matter how many prayers to Gaia the greenies offer up. Nor how much of our money they are prepared to sacrifice.

Ethanol is a crime against humanity,worse than DDT suppression. Cheap food has disappeared and world order is at stake.

Shhh, don’t tell the loons in Indiana and East Misery (Missouri for those who wouldn’t have caught that.) We’ve got them convinced they want to buy all of the energy coming from our whirly gigs and pinwheels out here in Kansas. They’re going build us a HVDC transmission line! http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/kansas-to-export-wind-fantasy/
I think if we keep a lid on all of this, we can still scam people for a few $ billion here and there!

My problems with wind power is that it is a fragile source of power and aren’t particularly environmentally friendly. Turbine generally don’t last 5 years before they experience a gear box failure, lightning strike, or other failure. A major storm can take out a regions entire wind generation capacity. This subject was the topic of conversation on another blog yesterday and it was pointed out that lightning is such a major issue that it causes many insurance companies to pull out of insuring the turbines in Germany:
http://www.nachi.org/wind-turbines-lightning.htm

According to a German study, lightning strikes accounted for 80% of wind turbine insurance claims.
During its first full year of operation, 85% of the down time experienced by one southwestern commercial wind farm was lightning-related. Total lightning-related damage exceeded $250,000.
The German electric power company Energieerzeugungswerke Helgoland GmbH shut down and dismantled their Helgoland Island wind power plant after being denied insurance against further lightning losses. They had been in operation three years and suffered more than $540,000 (USD) in lightning-related damage.

“and yet it is not effective in cutting CO2 emissions”
Why haven’t we been able to put to rest the useless notion that a minuscule rise in CO2 is bad???
We must stop making irrational and important decisions based on CO2 !!!!

higley7 says: The “Green Jobs Revolution” is all about creating busy work with no product; a society of janitors and repairmen.

While I agree with your sentiment in general your example of janitors and repairmen totally fails to illustrate it. The better example would be “a society of insurance salesmen and hedge fund managers”. Those are truly the types who truly produce absolutely nothing at all. Repairmen are simply second tier manufacturers whether it’s a new roof for your house or solenoid on your washing machine. There’s not much difference between producing something new or restoring something that already exists – both have more value than what you started with.
Less so with janitors but their service is far more essential than insurance. If there were no janitors then ~somebody~ else would have to do the work or we’d all eventually end up in a big pile of ****. If there was no such thing as insurance – life would would go on for most and they might be a little more careful about it as well. Insurance took the place of charity but charity always did a better job at helping those who really need it.

How ironic. A non-profit “think tank” decries wind power economics on the same week that arch-capitalist Warren Buffet lays down a huge business bet in the opposite direction:

Warren Buffett increases wind energy bet
Hanuary 6, 2012
Warren Buffett’s energy company MidAmerican Energy Holdings will build 176 turbines in Iowa by the end of the year, an investment that will push its wind power capacity to 2,284 megawatts, the most of any investor-owned U.S. utility.
Today’s announcement comes a year after MidAmerican Energy — a unit of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) — helped lift the wind industry out of stagnation with plans to build 258 turbines in Iowa, which would add 593.4 megawatts of capacity. Those wind-generation projects were completed at the end of 2011.

Hmmm … working the numbers, it appears that Buffett’s Iowa wind turbines are sufficiently reliable and profitable, as to induce Buffett to triple his 2011 investment in Iowa wind power. WUWT, indeed?
So, whom should WUWT readers heed? Ruth Lea’s skeptical “nay” or Warren Buffett’s nonskeptical “aye”?

What a fallacy to imply that wind power would consume more fossil fuels than without it. And to say not to use it because it’s not always available. Next, you’ll say solar is no good because it doesn’t provide electricity at night. Appropriate use where wind, sun, and waterflow is local and plentiful will and should offset the use of dwindling oil supplies which need transportation.

” You can make windmills with steel, but you cannot make steel with windmills”

A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 9:40 am
“So, whom should WUWT readers heed? Ruth Lea’s skeptical “nay” or Warren Buffett’s nonskeptical “aye”?”
Ahh yes, the corrupt Mr Buffet. The man who makes the brunt of his money off of capital gains rather than a salary, then complains that his income tax is lower than his secretary… who is salaried.
Lying sack of [expletive deleted] comes to mind.

“Hmmm … working the numbers, it appears that Buffett’s Iowa wind turbines are sufficiently reliable and profitable, as to induce Buffett to triple his 2011 investment in Iowa wind power. WUWT, indeed? – A Physicist”
There is no doubt that Buffet’s Iowa wind turbines are profitable FOR HIM. Our concerns should be with the rest of us. I live just across the border, in Southern Minnesota, a place ripe with the folly of wind turbines and our power bill would shock the average consumer – that is WITH all of Buffet’s generous subsidies.
Face it, “sustainable energy” is not economically sustainable.

Let us not forget that Holland’s windmills were employed in processes where intermittent power availability was ok. You pump water out of swamp land, or grind grain into flour. when the wind blows. If it doesn’t blow, you do something else that day. Wind is great when urgency is low.
Moving a commercial ship with with wind (a windjammer) only works when the wind blows in the general direction of your travels. Wind doesn’t blow or blows in a headwind, you loose money.
To generate electricity 24/7/365 at 60 Hz frequence locked to the grid is asking wind to do precisely what it is most ill suited.
Wind could be used for pumped storage of hydropower, but the places where you have wind and sufficient reservoir capacity are few, and irronically, hydropower is not considered a renewable under Califormia Law.

The 19th century economist Bastiat wrote about “That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen”. He used the example of a broken shop window. Passers-by see the destruction and conclude that it is not so bad because it creates work for the glazier who will repair it. But they are only looking at the immediate and visible effect of the breakage. They forget that the money that the shopkeeper must now spend with the glazier would still have been spent somewhere. The glazier’s gain is balanced by some other tradesman’s loss, but that loss is “Unseen” and therefore forgotten.
In fact there is a net loss. If the window had not been broken the shopkeeper would have had a window plus whatever he might have brought with the money that must now be spent on repairs. After the repair is done he will only have a window.
The “70,000 jobs” promised by Dr. Edge are “That Which Is Seen”. Like the work for the glazier, the new jobs are a visible benefit to a particular group of people. But somebody has to pay for all those extra workers so the price of electricity goes up. Consumers are forced to spend money on electricity that they had intended to use for something else. The turbine installer’s gain is balanced by someone else’s loss. But the gain is concentrated and visible. There are new workers and factories for politicians to be photographed with. The loss is dispersed among all the thousands of busineses that lose some of their trade so it remains “That Which Is Unseen”.
There is also a net loss in this case. If wind power was not used the consumers would have electricity plus whatever they wanted to buy with their remaining money. If wind power is used they must give up some (or all) of those things in order to have the same amount of electricity. Wind power offers all the economic benefits of a broken window.

“A physicist” asks
So, whom should WUWT readers heed? Ruth Lea’s skeptical “nay” or Warren Buffett’s nonskeptical “aye”?
Answer: Ruth Lea is showing how wasteful and uneconomic it is for the country, the ordinary taxpayer – addressing public morality, in a sense. Buffet is looking at how lucrative it is for him and his shareholders personally.
Buffet is doing it because he can cash in on huge amounts of taxpayer grants and benefits. Without that he would not touch it. Four years ago it was reported
“Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy should be able to deduct from taxable income its entire $386 million capital investment in its 360 megawatt (MW) “wind farm” in Iowa during the period from 2004-2010. Assuming marginal tax rates of 35% for federal and 12% for Iowa corporate income tax, the depreciation deductions would reduce tax liability by $181 million during the period from 2004-2010. That is in addition to the roughly $300 million in tax benefits over 20 years from the project due to the federal Production Tax Credit, ($175 to $195 million) and forgiveness of Iowa property tax ($130 million)”
The Production Tax Credit, the Federal subsidy, has steadily increased to 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour. Not to mention the guaranteed markets and guaranteed higher prices mandated by law for selling all those electricity units. And the rest.
Buffet is not looking at the economic cost for the country, he is looking for the bucks he can make at the expense of the country. Sure, it’s a LEGAL scam, reaming the backside out of the American people.

@a physicist:
“Hmmm … working the numbers, it appears that Buffett’s Iowa wind turbines are sufficiently reliable and profitable, as to induce Buffett to triple his 2011 investment in Iowa wind power. WUWT, indeed?”
this is another fine example of pretzel.logic.
sufficiently reliable waste of money is what you left off in your speciousness.
you are abusing language when you give loot or plunder the name ‘profit’,
did warren buffet tell you why he salted the mine? or was that a divine revelation that you heard from a cloud?
you can’t get a word out that isn’t contrived to deceive. my question is not if, but why are you such a liar? at least jon lovetz was endearing. you’re just foul.

ScientistForTruth, please let me urge you to attempt for yourself the simple strip-mines versus windmills energy balance calculation … and, uh … report the results here on WUWT?
This calculation may help you to better appreciation of why Iowa’s farmers purely love windpower. `Cuz they’re no fools, these Iowa farmers, eh?

A Physicist,
The utility I work for is one of the bigger producers of wind energy. We have invested in it for two reasons;
1) A government (state) mandate for renewables (which excludes hydro)
and
2) State and Federal subsidies and tax incentives.
Since we have exceeded the mandated percentage, as a bonus we get to sell the excess to California at premium rates. So for our rate payers it isn’t a bad deal – if you ignore the lost opportunity costs of the govt subsidies & tax revenue. I can’t speak for Californians however.
That said, wind generation isn’t the panecea some seemed to have expected. Turns out peak wind generation coincides with peak hydro. During peak hydro, it is not unusual for generators to be asked to idle their facilities (includes the nuclear plant in the region) so that water can be run through the turbines. (There are federal restrictions limiting releases through the spillways to protect fish.) In exchange, the transmission authority provided free replacement power, so no one loses revenue. Except, as it turns out, wind energy producers. The federal government pays them for each kilowatt produced, on top of what they get selling the electricity. The transmission authority gave them special treatment by putting them at the bottom of the curtailment list – ie they were the last to be forced to shutdown. Want to guess what happened? They sued because they were not given “negative” rates – paid to accept free electricity.
This might explain why Warren Buffit is bullish on wind energy. Where else do you get tax breaks to build something and then paid to sell your product? With more states adding renewable mandates, you also have a guaranteed market.

I noted in an earlier post that since Wind plated capacity reached 4006Mw, for the first tome I have seen the OCGTs in use generating power.
Why use OCGTs?
Because like the primary stage of a CCGT, they can be ramped up to full power in ~15mins from cold.
The combined stage of a CCGT takes upwards of an hour to reach capacity, The OCGT buys you time to reach full efficient capacity with your CCGT.
DaveE.

Re:A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 9:40 am
“So, whom should WUWT readers heed? Ruth Lea’s skeptical “nay” or Warren Buffett’s nonskeptical “aye”?”
If you understood tax credits and accelerated depreciation, you wouldn’t ask that question. Buffet will never turn a profit operating those wind machines. However, he will make very large, up-front profits by avoiding taxes on his other activities over the next five years simply by virtue of his investing in windmills. After that five years is past, he couldn’t care less what happens to those windmills. His avoided taxes on other, actually profitable, endeavors will be several orders of magnitude larger than his capital investment in windmills thanks to financial “leveraging”. Those taxes that one of the world’s richest men will thus avoid must eventually be made up for by the likes of you and me.

“Critics were enraged at the decision, saying it would wreck miles of beautiful countryside, need vast public subsidies for years to come and have [a price] that would be too expensive for most”
A comment about wind farms? No, a comment about the new High-speed rail (HS2) announced in the UK this morning. Quote was taken from the front page of this morning’s Metro.
It is funny how the green brigade can use these words against a transport infrastructure project (which may or may not be a good idea) but not use them against wind farms when they are applicable.

If coal mining was unprofitable it would be subsidized by the U.S. Government.
Comparing the cost of coal to wind energy is impossible without talking of storage and availability. The coal is always there, ready to go. How do you place a price on that obvious value?
Why would anyone strip-mine their farm for a one meter seam of coal? I’m not an expert in coal extraction but you wouldn’t strip the surface unless the coal was only a few meters underground. And if that was the case you’d have stockpiled a few years supply of coal before the concrete on your wind turbine pad had even dried.

…….
iowaFarmArea -> theSizeOfTheFarmIsIrrelevant,
iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2, iowaCoalSeamThickness -> 1 meter, iowaCoalEnergyDensity -> 2.0 kW hour/kg, iowaCoalDensity -> 1506 kg/m^3};
paybackTime// ReplaceRepeated[#,windPowerEnergyRules]&//
ConvertToSI[#,year]&// (Round[100*#/year]/100.0 years)&//
Print[“Iowa wind power versus strip-mine-the-farm payback time = “,#]& ………
====================================================
Dude, you do realize that’s simply a bunch of gibberish, right?
Gleaning what I can from your word salad, you’re not making a proper comparison anyway. Watts do not equate with watthours.
Why is this so hard for warmists to understand?

From A physicist on January 10, 2012 at 10:13 am:

Question: If we leased our farm to Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings how long would it take Buffett’s windmills to generate electrical energy equal to the all the electricity that could be generated by strip-mining the entire farm, and burning its coal?
Hint: My answer is one of the following (but you should check it yourself!):
(a) One year (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
(b) Ten years (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
(c) One hundred years (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
(d) One thousand years (meaning, coal mining is debatable)

Answers c and d are nonsensical as the turbines won’t last that long. For one hundred years the wind farms will have to be rebuilt at least three times.
By your wording, if it took one hundred years for Buffett’s windmills to make the electricity the coal would generate, coal mining would still be economically senseless. Yet that coal could be burned just about as soon as it’s dug up, the energy would be available now when it’s needed, rather than waiting 100 years for all the electricity you needed one hundred years ago. You know, you don’t seem to understand economics much.

A physicist said:
Background: Our family’s Iowa farm is underlain by a coal seam, at shallow depth, that is one meter thick (yes really, and during the Depression our family mined that seam).
Question: If we leased our farm to Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings how long would it take Buffett’s windmills to generate electrical energy equal to the all the electricity that could be generated by strip-mining the entire farm, and burning its coal?
Hint: My answer is one of the following (but you should check it yourself!):
   (a) One year (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
   (b) Ten years (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
   (c) One hundred years (meaning, coal mining is economically senseless)
   (d) One thousand years (meaning, coal mining is debatable)

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: Answers c and d are nonsensical as the turbines won’t last that long. For one hundred years the wind farms will have to be rebuilt at least three times.

Kadaka, your argument is good and correct, but none-the-less it is moot, because the (incredible!) answer is that in Iowa, wind-versus-stripmine energy breakeven arrives in just one year.
And this is why Iowa’s farmers just love Buffett’s windfarms.
You’ll find mighty few Iowa farmers with anything good to say about Ruth Lea’s white paper, compared with Warren Buffett’s cash payouts ! 🙂

Here’s an alternative problem for Physicist to work on:
How much money would Buffett be throwing down a black-hole if we ended the subsidies, mandates and tax breaks for wind power?
Remember, Warren Buffet is a big Obama supporter. Maybe the 99%-ers are right — all that money does buy you some dandy politicians!
~More Soylent Green for Everybody!

Wind energy on itself is not a bad thing, it lead to a very prosperous time for the Netherlands which we call the “Golden Century”, but yes it was that we did not need windpower constantly, but given the efficiency of those wooden windmills we still needed quite a lot of them for indeed milling water to keep our feet dry, milling grain and stuff. Sawing wood into planks, using windpower kicked of shipbuilding during the 16th and 17th century making that small collection of provinces called the states of holland a global naval player and economic powerhouse.
Still too much wind and a failing brake and this will happen (note: this is a watermilling type, the grainmills are a lot taller and the woodmills are usually build on top of large shed),
http://youtu.be/7lkRI3CLpg0

Well I am on record for some fairly opinionated statements; which I will defend: –
1/ We get NO “heat” from the sun.
2/ It should be a felony offense to use electricity to heat.
3/ Most energy is used to heat, so solar energy should be gathered and stored and used as “heat”.
Hey Mate ! what the hell happened to #1 ?
Ooops !
So there is the secret. Theoretically, in principle, if not yet in practice, it is possible to convert 100% of the solar electromagnetic radiation energy that arrives at the earth surface (1kW/m^2) into ELECTRICITY. Well gimme a break Mack; of course there’s always going to be a little bit of slippage.
So what about those cheese mixers/ wind turbines ? They don’t run on electricity do they; they are supposed to put out electricity, not use electricity to make wind.
Wind is made from “heat”; and we don’t get any of that from the sun (#1). We get damn good electromagnetic radiation from the sun, and we immediately waste most of it, by burying it in the oceans and rocks and stuff, so we end up with just a few dregs of waste “heat”, which messes with the atmosphere and eventually makes WIND for our turbines.
A wind turbine, is basically a gas turbine engine. You have a working fluid (air) which you HEAT; Pacific ocean does that for us Californians out of what is left when it gobbles up all that nice solar EM radiation energy and simply wastes it. The heated wind comes whooshing through the Golden Gate, over San Francisco and Berkeley, and thousands of acres to the rotor of our turbine, and it exits out the back as a cooler waste exhaust wind after having dropped 1/2 mv^2 of kinetic energy in the rotor, into more thousands of acres of open unusable ground.
You can’t use the Gosinta or Gosouta ground for high rise sky scrapers, because that would mess up the streamlined wind flow. You can grow rabbits on it though.
Give a little thought to the Carnot efficiency of this gas turbine engine, and try to decide whether the energy losses from the sunlight are 99% or maybe 99.9%. Well whichever, this is a very INEFFICIENT use of that original beautiful, pristine electromagnetic radiation energy which we received from the sun, and simply wasted.
Yes we get NO “heat” from the sun; we simply make all we have, right here on earth by wasting the EM radiant energy, instead of convering it, in theory or in principle; or as best we can into electricity, using the Photo-electric effect.
The only thing that matters in solar energy, is conversion efficiency (to electricity), and wind turbines are a long winded round about way of doing that. It is inherently impossible, no matter what, to convert 100% of “heat” into electricity, so even the finest solar boiler steam turbine type solar energy plants, will always be limited to something in the 40% range; and not really even that, because you have space between the reflectors, so they don’t shadow each other, so in reality the conversion is nowhere near 40%, as you can’t use the land in between the mirrors for anything.
Wind energy is suitable for occasionally stirring cheese, or pumping water, when you have both water, and wind.

One aspect of these relative value calculations that never gets much mention is the very significant transmission line losses between generation and end user. This makes a certain amount of sense since the losses are pretty much the same for all sources, depending only on the distance between generator and user. But it is potentially a large positive for modern high efficiency gas generation because, unlike almost all of the other alternatives. they can be done with a small enough footprint and level of environmental innocuousness that they can be deployed directly in areas of high population and high usage thereby eliminating much of transmission line losses from their total cost.
Large wind farms and photovoltaic plants are on the other end of this factor. Most must of necessity be deployed at considerable distance from end users and when you add the transmission losses that result along with their already dismal production ratios the negative verdict on their ultimate utility is strongly reinforced.

A physicis says:
iowaFarmArea -> theSizeOfTheFarmIsIrrelevant,
iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2,
iowaCoalSeamThickness -> 1 meter,
iowaCoalEnergyDensity -> 2.0 kW hour/kg,
iowaCoalDensity -> 1506 kg/m^3

Russ in Houston asks: 350 W/m2? Really? 24 hours per day? 7 days a week?

Yes, that is indeed the Iowa wind-power number, Russ, averaged 24/7 as per your question.
To see that it’s a reasonable number, ask how yourself “How much electric power would I need to run an electric fan powerful enough to make the wind blow 24/7, at some moderate speed, within a 1×1 meter column of air, 50 meters high?”
Gee, maybe Anthony should have titled his post: “There’s a reason the modern age moved on from coal”.  🙂
So, Russ, what is your next question?  🙂

It’s a whole lot simpler than that, Alan.
Iowa’s average wind energy potential is (about) 350 Watts per square meter. And under one square meter of our Iowa farm, there’s enough coal to provide 350 Watts of electrical power for exactly … one year.
So over any time span longer than just one year, Iowa wind power makes a whole lot more energy sense than mining that Iowa coal. Not to mention, Iowa’s farmland doesn’t get destroyed!
===========================================================
Oh…… .my…….. goodness…….. that’s the dumbest…..
YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!
First of all, energy potential and energy realized are two entirely different things.
Secondly, and again, you are confusing energy and energy over time!!! STOP DOING THAT! It’s that sort of expression that confused people into believing this babbling bs.! But, worse than that, you’re starting in the middle of the equation! Its the force that does the work that generates the energy.
I would have thought someone purporting to be a physicist would have known this. Physl, once you’ve gotten your head around what I’ve just shared with you, you can then come back and I’ll explain how windmills work. Their energy output doesn’t correlate with average anything. So, even disregarding your confusion of energy potential and energy over time, you’re still wrong. I think you’re going for a record on the amount of levels a person can be wrong on, in just a couple of simple statements.

A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Coal energy density is not your wikipedia figure of 2kWh/kg; that figure is given for a coal plant with 30% efficiency. The correct figure is around 5 times the figure you have used.
Your wind energy potential is just that; potential. To extract all that potential your windmill would have to have a blade swept area around an order of magnitude greater than the area of your farm.
Good luck with that.

A physicist says: So, Russ, what is your next question? 🙂

Russ in Houston asks: I have already asked it. 1 KW hour = $0.12 retail. How long does the windmill have to turn before it is paid out?

Yer question ain’t hard to answer, Russ. Let’s take a one-section farm (one square mile). What’s the annual dollar value of the energy in the wind potential of that Iowa farm? And how many windmills will that annual dollar value buy?
————————————–
windPowerEconomicsRules = {
  farmRevenuePerYear -> 1 year * iowaFarmArea *
      iowaMeanWindPowerDensity * iowaRetailPowerPrice,
  mile -> 5280 * 12 * 2.54 cm,
  iowaFarmArea -> (1 mile)^2,
  iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2,
  iowaRetailPowerPrice -> 0.12 dollar/(kW hour)
};
farmRevenuePerYear//
  ReplaceRepeated[#,windPowerEconomicsRules]&//
    ConvertToSI[#/(10^6 dollar)]&//Round//
Print[“Iowa wind power = $”,#,”,000,000 per square mile per year”]&
Iowa wind power = $954,000,000 per square mile per year
————————————–
Now, it’s true that windmills placed too close together start stealing each other’s wind. Nonetheless, that nine hundred million dollars per year leaves plenty of economic headroom, eh?
So, Russ, maybe Warren Buffett ain’t so dumb to triple-down his Iowa windpower investment, eh?

“A physicist”: “Seriously, there’s not a single farmer in Iowa who wouldn’t appreciate that Warren Buffett’s energy company is offering a terrific deal.”
Yea, for farmers, who just love subsidies. Yea, I think the farmers in Iowa just love all those subsidies for ethanol as well. They are in on the scam as are all those who own vast tracts of land that they can prostitute to perpetuate the scam. Of course, Buffett has to throw you a few crumbs to keep you sweet. But look at the bigger picture – you’re reaming the backside out of your country. Taking bribes to destroy your nation’s inheritance and its capital.

Reply to Pete-in-Cumbria.
Sorry to spoil the concept but modern air separation does not produce CO2 as a by-product. Intake air is drawn through molecular sieve beds which trap CO2 and moisture. The beds are regenerated alternately and the captured gases are vented back to atmosphere.

Romney is the same as Obama going back to ENRON..
First Wind Secures $376M For UT Project
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/04/22/first-wind-secures-376m-for-ut-project/

From A physicist on January 10, 2012 at 12:59 pm:

Iowa’s average wind energy potential is (about) 350 Watts per square meter. And under one square meter of our Iowa farm, there’s enough coal to provide 350 Watts of electrical power for exactly … one year.

You had previously said that seam was 1 meter deep. So now you’re talking about a cubic meter of coal.
From A physicist on January 10, 2012 at 11:18 am:

iowaCoalEnergyDensity -> 2.0 kW hour/kg,
iowaCoalDensity -> 1506 kg/m^3

By this chart you have selected the density of solid anthracite coal, which is such a “premium” coal it is not generally used for electricity generation. Anthracite has an average heat content of 29 mega-joules per kilogram. Your cubic meter of coal would yield 29*1506=43,674 Mj. Figuring with an electrical plant efficiency of 30%, that would be an electrical yield of 43,674*0.3=13,102Mj. Converting joules to watt-hours, that’s 3639 kW-hrs of electricity from that cubic meter of anthracite coal.
Now I could use your figure of wind energy potential of 350 W/m^2, except I realized you didn’t know what you were talking about.
The map you linked to shows “Wind power density at 50m”. It is explained here thusly:

A quantitative measure of the wind energy available at any location is called the Wind Power Density (WPD) It is a calculation of the mean annual power available per square meter of swept area of a turbine, and is tabulated for different heights above ground.

So if you had a turbine whose blades swept an area of one meter mounted 50 meters off the ground, then you’d get about 350W.
By your statements, your numbers, by saying the acreage didn’t matter, it’s clear you were thinking that was 350 watts per square meter of flat ground.
Thus your calculations, subsequent statements, your defense of wind power in comparison to coal… Are meaningless. And your “knowledge” is revealed as seriously flawed.

A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 2:16 pm
James Sexton says: … So over any time span longer than just one year, Iowa wind power makes a whole lot more energy sense than mining that Iowa coal. Not to mention, Iowa’s farmland doesn’t get destroyed!
James Sexton says: … Oh…… .my…….. goodness…….. that’s the dumbest….. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! … I think you’re going for a record on the amount of levels a person can be wrong on, in just a couple of simple statements.
Well, James, at least you and I agree on this: someone’s calculations are goofy. 🙂
And my bet is, those goofy calculations are Ruth Lea’s. `Cuz definitely I trust the economic common sense of Iowa farmers — as verified by my plain, simple, and easily checked calculations — much more readily than I trust the long-and-fancy arguments in Ruth’s oh-so-complicated white paper.
============================================================
Physl, I haven’t seen any calculations. I’ve just seen silliness on your part. your 350w/m2 doesn’t mean anything. That’s just blowing wind. As far as trusting Iowa farmers, aren’t those are the same people who told us ethanol didn’t cause food prices to rise? Kansas farmers like the windmills as well, they get paid nice lease payments. It doesn’t have a damn thing to do with energy or ROI. I haven’t looked at Lea’s calculations, yet. But, I’d say they’re closer to reality than whatever you’re trying to state. But, here are some truths……
your 350w/m2 doesn’t mean anything. What’s the efficiency of turning it to real electricity?
The wind blows at varying rates. Typical wind generators have a fairly narrow band of wind speed in which it operates at optimal efficiency.
The density of coal doesn’t mean much either, because your not discussing how it get converted to useable electricity, either.
Lea is absolutely correct in that redundant gas generators are necessary to back up the windmills and they must be kept idling.
Because of wind variability, electricity providers can’t use it in the base or peak load equation. This alone renders wind energy essentially useless.
Coal is used only for base load generation. Comparing wind to coal is laughable. If we were to use wind for base load, we’d have to use exactly the same amount of coal we’re already using.
Utilizing gas to back up wind increases demand for gas. This increases the cost of gas for everything including cooking and heating. Given the newly found abundance of gas, we can thank wind advocates for ensuring natural gas prices stay higher than what they would be without wind. Thanks.
Well, there are countless more truths. Physl, here is a sincere offer. I’ve got some simple primers about our energy issues, here in the states(they would also apply abroad). If you were to wish to understand why wind and some of the other quixotic ventures are costing us, and dearly, pop by. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Here are a couple that address difficulties which I haven’t touched on here….
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/a-primer-about-residential-energy-generation-and-net-metering/ http://suyts.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/acdc-and-typical-talking-points/

A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 2:38 pm
iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2,
Now, it’s true that windmills placed too close together start stealing each other’s wind. Nonetheless, that nine hundred million dollars per year leaves plenty of economic headroom, eh?
So, Russ, maybe Warren Buffett ain’t so dumb to triple-down his Iowa windpower investment, eh?
—————————————
Reality check time.
Average usable/recoverable power density?
Wind farms run 20-150 acres per megawatt of installed capacity. Some engineering firms use 60 acres per megawatt for prelim calculations.
Square meters per acre? just over 4000.
Average efficiency of a wind turbine? just under 25%
Math time, 25% of a MW equals 250,000 watts and 60 acres times 4000 m2 equals 240,000.
So now tell us how many delivered watts per square meter you have, and how many years it takes to offset that insignificant coal seam your folks were sitting on.
And that, is the reason that windmills are dead if the subsidies are killed.

A Physicist said: Now, it’s true that windmills placed too close together start stealing each other’s wind. Nonetheless, that nine hundred million dollars per year leaves plenty of economic headroom, eh?

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: Your calculations, subsequent statements, your defense of wind power in comparison to coal… Are meaningless. And your “knowledge” is revealed as seriously flawed.
ScientistForTruth says: If you think available wind power revenue (even ‘potential’ revenue) in Iowa could be anything remotely like one billion dollars per year from a one square mile farm.

Lol … You two fellahs musta overlooked my little caveat that I posted earlier … reminding folks that Iowa windmills placed too close together will start stealing each other’s wind.
Definitely I stand by my main number, which everyone can check for themselves, and is easy for the public to remember: one square mile of Iowa windblades yields, each year, one billion dollars worth of electric power.
How closely one wants to space those blades depends very strongly on how eager farmers are to lease their land for windmills; the more eager the farmers are to lease, and thus the cheaper the leases, the more widely it pays to space the windmills. And Iowa’s farmers are very eager to lease.
That’s the simple-to-understand engineering reason why Warren Buffett is tripling-down his windpower bet, and that’s why yearly US windpower generation looks just like a big ol’ Hansen/Mann hockey stick.
It seems to me this trend can’t be stopped.

“A physicist” doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 350 watts per square metre mean wind power density has got nothing whatsoever to do with real estate – this relates to the area swept out by the rotors.
Just think about it and do a sanity check – since the wind is produced from solar insolation, which at top of atmosphere averages 350 watts per square metre, and at ground is around 200 watts per square metre, and around 2% of this flux ends up as available wind power, this gives a limit of around 4 watts available wind power per square metre of real estate. Real wind farms extract around 1 watt per square metre of real estate. I very much doubt that Iowa achieves an average of better than 2 watts per square metre of farmland.
“A physicist”‘s calculations are thus at least two orders of magnitude adrift.
His ‘one year payback’ compared to coal becomes a few centuries etc etc. Thus, no-one (without massive subsidies) is going to invest in wind power when it has a payback of a few hundred years compared to readily available alternatives, and the service life of the investment is around 15 years. Obviously, our forefathers weren’t stupid in moving from wind powered mills and wind powered ships to coal powered – there was a very compelling economic case. Wind is still wind and coal is still coal, and wind will never be economic.
Don’t waste any more time on this ‘physicist’. He hasn’t a clue.

Ralph says:
January 10, 2012 at 6:04 pm
This is the trouble with physicists………….
=====================================================
He’s not a physicist. All of the ones I’ve ever known would easily spot his logical flaws and flaws in his physics, which are many. Further, most, in spite of their enormous egos acknowledge proof against their winsome posits.

“A physicist says:
January 10, 2012 at 2:38 pm
————————————–
windPowerEconomicsRules = {
farmRevenuePerYear -> 1 year * iowaFarmArea *
iowaMeanWindPowerDensity * iowaRetailPowerPrice,
mile -> 5280 * 12 * 2.54 cm,
iowaFarmArea -> (1 mile)^2,
iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2,
iowaRetailPowerPrice -> 0.12 dollar/(kW hour)
};
farmRevenuePerYear//
ReplaceRepeated[#,windPowerEconomicsRules]&//
ConvertToSI[#/(10^6 dollar)]&//Round//
Print[“Iowa wind power = $”,#,”,000,000 per square mile per year”]&
Iowa wind power = $954,000,000 per square mile per year
————————————–”
I’m no physicist, but it looks like your formula converts miles into centimeters — Not Meters. So you’re off by a factor of 100 there.
Then you multiply the iowaMeanWindPowerDensity (in Watts) times the iowaRetailPowerPrice (in Kilowatts). So you’re off by a factor of a thousand there.
$954,000,000 / 100,000 = $9,540 per square mile per year.

Reg Nelson says: I’m no physicist, but it looks like your formula converts miles into centimeters — Not Meters. So you’re off by a factor of 100 there.

Reg, that’s a reasonable concern, however the near-end routine “ConvertToSI” converts all non-metric units to metric units.
So the final result is correct: each square mile of Iowa windblades can catch one billion dollars worth of wind energy per year.
To be sure, one square mile of windblades is a lot of windblades … and that’s why Iowans are manufacturing a lot of windblades.
Which is mighty good news for Iowans, eh?

How I wish everyone would wake up to the fact that an atmospheric greenhouse effect is a physical impossibility, as Prof Claes Johnson’s “Computational Balckbody Radiation” proves. No one has proved Johnson wrong, so there is no basis for assuming carbon dioxide has any warming effect. Backradiation from a cold atmosphere cannot warm a warmer surface.
I didn’t think I’d ever quote DeWitt Payne in support of my case, but there’s a new post of his on SoD* which reads …
“If you have an IR absorbing gas in a cell and put a black body emitter at the same temperature as the gas at one end of the cell, you won’t see absorption or emission lines or bands regardless of path length. You only get absorption if the emitter has a temperature higher than the gas.. ”
… and thus gives a real life example confirming Prof Johnson’s conclusion, namely that only radiation with frequencies above a cut off frequency (determined by Wien’s Displacement Law and proportional to absolute temperature) is absorbed and converted to thermal energy. In other words, the only warming comes from direct incident solar radiation.
Let me also quote two subsequent posts on the same thread by a certain “Jack Frost” whom you will no doubt recognise.
(1) ” … The cut off frequency determines whether absorption and subsequent warming can occur, as obviously does for SW radiation. The cut-off falls approximately between the spectra of SW absorption and LW emission and, as you know, the spectra barely overlap for this very reason.
There is no proof of the contrary in any standard physics documentation. There are just wishy-washy “explanations” of the assumed greenhouse effect, none of these backed up by any proof whatsoever that radiation from a cooler source can warm a warmer surface.
It simply doesn’t happen in nature, which is why the GHE is a physical impossibility.”
(2) “Have you ever really thought about why radiated heat transfer is always from warmer to cooler bodies?
What is the actual mechanism that determines this? How does one body “know” that the other is cooler or warmer? We can easily construct examples in which the intensity of radiation from the warmer body is less than that from the cooler body, eg a polished silver warm body and a black cool one. So why doesn’t the cooler one warm the warmer one if the radiation intensity from it is the greater?
The ONLY answer lies in what Prof Johnson has proved.”
* http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/31/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation-part-three/#comment-15206

W/ms should be W/m2 (Watts per square meter)

Erinome says:
January 10, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Of course, fossil fuels also are not “economically viable without taxpayer funded subsidies.” Both direct payments (about $4 billion last year in the US) and, mostly, indirect, via the damaging pollution it dumps into and onto the property of others and of the Commons. Without this massive subsidy — a form of socialism, really — fossil fuels would not be (so-called) competitive. A recent paper by Nordhaus finds that power generation by coal causes more damage than value added….
========================================================
Lmao! Ok sis, start quoting Nordhaus. Are you really comparing the $4 billion tax easement to the uncountable subsidies to renewables? That’s a riot. How much, in direct payments have gone to alternatives? $4 billion seems like a pretty good bargain from any perspective. While I agree this is a form a socialism and it shouldn’t be necessary, you comparing the $4 billion to the hundreds of billions thrown at lunatic alternatives make me wonder how steady of a grasp on reality you have. The DOE gave $65 billion away last year alone on fantasy sources of energy! Now, consider the returns.
If you want to speak of science, specifically delineate the “damage” coal causes. I put cheap, reliable, abundant electricity above any fantasy any day, all day. You can have refrigerated food, or, you can fantasize about it. You can have light at night, or you can fantasize about it. You can have air-conditioning in the heat of the summer or you can fantasize about it. (This includes air-conditioning of hospitals) You can have refrigerated medications or you can fantasize about it. (If you don’t think that’s a big deal, just go to an electrified hospital and ask) …… I could and probably should go on, but if you’re too dense to understand what I’ve just stated, there isn’t much point in going further.
The point would be, read the damned report. Think for yourself for just a second and understand what the hell you’re advocating. Here’s a reality. With or without alternative energy, this world requires carbon based fuel for our energy. Every delay on this reality kills people.
Consider the contrast. We could, if we collectively chose to, deliver technology and money to a place which had no electricity. We could show them how to burn coal transfer that power to energy. Suddenly, these people would have what we have.
Or we can show them how to plant pinwheels and sun catchers and they can have electric, sometimes. Of course, sometimes still spoils food, the medicine still turns to being ineffective or poison. Planning, of course, is impossible. What person advocates such a thing?

“At a public inquiry, some self-righteous councillor told them they had no right to object, since millions of Bangladeshis would drown in floods unless we all converted to wind power.”
Why doesn’t someone at these public inquiries shout out the truth and shout down the clown… and make such words the laughing stock of the town. At most we are speaking of about a millimeter or two a year, if any, and people are going to DROWN? Man has managed just fine the slow encroachment of the seas over the last 10,000 years. If the water is getting over your soles, move, and cuss your ancestors from moving to that damn low laying island in the first place. T’aint my fault. Go beg to the charities, I give, but not to my government.

GregS says:
January 10, 2012 at 12:20 pm

“iowaCoalSeamThickness”
Mr. A Physicist misses the obvious. Why would anyone mine coal in Iowa when they can buy coal from the Powder River Basin for less?
Perhaps, he is seeking a government subsidy for mining coal where it is not economical… that certainly would be consistent with his worldview.

True, but “a physicist” hasn’t provided enough information about the coal to make an informed decision. Having helped mine a few million tons of the stuff myself, I have to ask:
1. What is the stripping ratio? (overburden depth /coal thickness, along with material type)
2. What is the quality of the coal? Give it to us in BTU/ton. (this will help determine the value of the coal)
3. What’s the market for coal in the region?
4. What’s the access to a major haul routes in case it has to be hauled significant distances to market.
5. What’s the areal extent of the coal? Are we talking acres or sq miles?
6. What’s on top of the coal–are there buildings that obstruct the extraction, or farm land that must be reclaimed? Are their right-of-ways that can’t be touched and impede the mining operation?
Some of these same questions can be asked about this “sure-fire” wind farm, which value can’t be ascertained without specific answers, even if Buffet thinks it’s a wonderful idea (why would he let a fantastic investment like this out of the bag unless he’s somehow making money betting against it).

James Sexton, can I use your words when I get into such an argument? That is one of the best responses I have ever read. And, sorry to hear of your aunt, I have one still here at 97 years old and I thank every day for the electricity that allowed her to live so long.
Coal has lifted mankind out of the gutter of life, kill coal right now and you are a killer, literally. We need something like thorium reactors now and need them fast.

It is so ironic that we are reminded of how bad coal is almost daily by so-called environmentalists who want to tell us how bad off we are today. Over half of the power in the US is still generated by coal. And yet we have cleaner air today then we have had in over 100 years. This fact often escapes these fanatics who have lost the plot.
We have the longest life-span today then ever before. Our healthcare is better then it has ever been in this country. I could of course go on about how great life is compared to 100 years ago, but I think unless someone has stuck their heads in the sand, we could probably all agree on this. And if you do not agree, go read up on the Copper Wars in Montana and how a lack of environmental regulations (which is ironically how China does it today) was done back 100 years ago…..
And the only thing you hear about is how bad we are poisoning our planet and how the costs of coal are going to kill us all. And how bad mercury is. Of course Mercury is perfectly acceptable inside the house around children in lightbulbs which can break and cause a toxic episide, but coming out of a smokestack….no way man!
But if you look at the facts, coal has gotten the US to where we are today. Sure, oil, nuclear and other power sources have provided a secondary source of power over the last century and have helped us out as well. But over the last 100 years, the US has risen from a back-water country to the number one world power with everything I listed due to coal as our primary power source and that is true today just as it was 100 years ago.
Progress has been made and the most ironic thing of all of this is that if you look at pollution levels since 1900 to today, you can not even pick when the Clean Air Act was first passed or further passings were done or when the EPA was first installed. The air pollution by any regard has been heading downwards since around 1900 at a downward slope as our society has moved up in progress.
Some may herald this as an achievement as we moved from burning wood and other stuff to coal as the main reason that our society has flourished and gone from a society where the average life is now double what it was 100 years ago. While others cry about mercury, acid rain and other evils that they claim exist instead of looking at our society with optimism and hoping to achieve more through progress and putting their own work into making society better.
Society does not get better by these leeches. They will drag us down and eventually progress will grind to a halt. Who will want to make a better invention if there is no motivation or no reward for doing so? Communism and socialism do not work. Any example from the 20th century can show us this.
Our only hope is to remember the lessons of the past and move forward. Obviously, obsolete technology that is romanticized like wind power is worthless and not even worth discussing.
People did use this form of power for themselves. Look up wind turbines in the 1930’s in rural settings. These were used and were MORE EXPENSIVE by orders of magnitude back then even then say coal. They were a luxury and were installed and used with expensive batteries for people who could afford to build them to power their homes where no power was available.
It was sure nice to have the extra money to do that, but these “expensive luxuries” died out as the grid expanded and covered most of the US. Now wind power is so sporadic to be all but useless except in very limited locales where as before the GRID DOES NOT COVER IT.
As I have said once and will say again, unless you want to pay the additional money to pay for your own power to be from solar, wind etc, shut up and do so. Let us choose what we want to use.
I don’t want you forcing your beliefs on me. So don’t force yours on me. I want the cheapest form of power, and I don’t want to pay higher taxes to do so.
I don’t want Warren Buffet and other billionaires getting tax breaks to put these monsters up. If you believe this is right, well go ahead and keep believing that is the right path. Your religion is obviously set in stone. Just don’t shove your religion down my throat. I won’t shove mine down yours.
Because the second you start that….turnaround will come about.

Erinome: You say: “Arguments like Johnson’s have been debunked …” I call your bluff. Read what Johnson’s argument actually is regarding the cut off frequency as determined by Wien’s Displacement Law, and show me just one single “debunking.” There has been absolutely none in over 6 months, my friend, because it is true physics – what happens in the real world. You’ll find links on my page here: http://climate-change-theory.com/RadiationAbsorption.html which is a “preview” of a chapter in my book soon to be published.
What does NOT exist is any proof whatsoever that radiation from a cooler atmosphere can warm a warmer surface. I suggest yuo get your facts right before arguing physics with myself or Professor Claes Johnson.

‘A physicist’
“Definitely I stand by my main number, which everyone can check for themselves, and is easy for the public to remember: one square mile of Iowa windblades yields, each year, one billion dollars worth of electric power.”
Total and utter rubbish. If you stand by that number, even after the debunking I and others have shown then you are disgracing the title of physicist.
You can check it out yourself simply by looking at acreage and average (not peak) power output from installed wind farms. As a rule of thumb for coarse comparison one can work on the basis of 1 watt per square metre of real estate employed. That’s the order that wind farms actually achieve.
One square mile is approximately 2.6 million square metres, so one square mile of windfarm in Iowa can be expected to produce 2.6 megawatts of electricity. I’m sure there would be a lot of power generation companies interested in getting a revenue of one billion dollars a year for generating a mere average 2.6MW, and I’m sure you can see that the prospect is so ridiculous as to be untrue. This power output is only sufficient to run a small town of a few thousand homes. Do you think that a small town could be fleeced with 1 billion dollars per year in electricity charges? Each home charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for electricity per year? Get real.
If you stand by your number then, sir, of one billion dollars of electricity per year from one square mile of Iowa, and are promoting that ‘easy for the public to remember’ number then there is a word for you, and it’s not physicist.
Stop peddling falsehoods.

WHY IS BRITAIN BEING BLANKETED IN WIND TURBINES? …A FEW FACTS
1.) The Prime Minister’s father-in-law is getting over £3m a year in subsidies for putting up a few bird shredders on his farm.
2.) Wind turbines need backup sources of electricity generation called “spinning capactiy” for those occasions when the turbines can’t operate, thus negating any argument that increasing the number of bird shredders decreases our dependence on fossil fuels.
3.) The costs of generating electricity in Britain can be summed up like this:
a quantity of electricity priced at £1 which has been generated from coal from conventional power stations costs £22 when generated from wind turbines.
What is being done to address this situation? …why putting up more wind farms of course!

wayne says:
January 10, 2012 at 11:10 pm
James Sexton, can I use your words when I get into such an argument? That is one of the best responses I have ever read.
======================================
Yes, and thank you.

The windmills aren’t the real problem. Rather, it’s the cranes. This problem can be overcome by the Tethered Aerostat Crane system which is described at http://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/15955

A physicist says: “Definitely I stand by my main number, which everyone can check for themselves, and is easy for the public to remember: one square mile of Iowa windblades yields, each year, one billion dollars worth of electric power.”

ScientistForTruth says: Total and utter rubbish. If you stand by that number, even after the debunking I and others have shown then you are disgracing the title of physicist.

I’m happy to show my calculations, ScientistForTruth. Keep in mind that I’m computing the power generated by one square mile of windblade area, without regard for whether those windblades are close or far apart. Moreover, this time I’m putting in an efficiency factor of 1/3, to cover downtime, generator losses, etc. So check for yourself:
—————-
windPowerEconomicsRules = {
  revenuePerYear -> 1 year *
    generationEfficiency *
    windBladeArea *
    iowaMeanWindPowerDensity *
    iowaRetailPowerPrice,
  generationEfficiency -> 1/3,
  mile -> 5280 * 12 * 2.54 cm,
  windBladeArea -> (1 mile)^2,
  iowaMeanWindPowerDensity -> 350 W/m^2,
  iowaRetailPowerPrice -> 0.12 dollar/(kW hour)
};
revenuePerYear//
  ReplaceRepeated[#,windPowerEconomicsRules]&//
    ConvertToSI[#/(10^6 dollar)]&//Round//
Print[“revenue from one square mile of windblades = $”,#,”,000,000 per year”]&
revenue from one square mile of windblades = $318,000,000 per year
———————
Note the the now-assumed efficiency of 1/3 lowers the revenue to “only” three hundred million dollars per year, per square mile swept by windblades.
Gee, no wonder Warren Buffett thinks this windpower business makes sense.
ScientistForTruth, do you have any further questions?

Veblen’s Theory Of The Leisure Class explains why efficiency and cost calculation are irrelevant to the AGW movement and why my poor Mr.Watts will never get a rational discussion by it’s proponents no matter how much science we read here. Remember,not only can global warming not be disputed in polite society,but apparently any possible remedy cannot be questioned either.Try telling a alternative medicine believer about double blind studies; it won’t work.Try telling a progressive that their bird shredders waste energy? Who cares.They don’t even accept money and cost as a marker for efficiency.

[crossing my fingers; this is my first attempt at using HTML tags on this blog, using Ric Werme’s guide]

MichaelEdits says:
January 11, 2012 at 7:18 am
The windmills aren’t the real problem. Rather, it’s the cranes. This problem can be overcome by the Tethered Aerostat Crane system which is described at http://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/15955

I’d love to see how this makes sense. According to the link a “Tethered Aerostat Crane” is basically a hot air balloon. Windfarms are located where there is wind. Balloons tend to move when there is wind. One major requirement for cranes is positional stability. Another is lifting capacity. In both respects under windy conditions, balloons fall flat. If not balloons, how about aerial cranes (helicopters)?
The largest lift capacity in the world is the Russian/Soviet Mil V-12 : 231,485 lb (105,000 kg). This design was deemed a failure and only two prototypes ever built; none flying today so scratch that. The replacement was the Mil Mi-26 : 123,455 lb (56,000 kg) and still in service. The largest US-built helicopter is the Sikorsky CH-53E : 73,500 lb (33,340 kg).
Details here
OK, according to another site (here), the specs on the current generation wind turbines are:

In the GE 1.5-megawatt model, the nacelle alone weighs more than 56 tons, the blade assembly weighs more than 36 tons, and the tower itself weighs about 71 tons — a total weight of 164 tons. The corresponding weights for the Vestas V90 (1.8MW) are 75, 40, and 152, total 267 tons; and for the Gamesa G87 (2 MW) 72, 42, and 220, total 334 tons.

So the Mi-26 could lift the nacelle and the blade for the GE model in two separate operations, but not the tower. Nothing else flying today could lift the nacelle, and the US Sikorsky could just barely lift the blade under ideal conditions. Nothing flying today could deal with the weight of the Vestas V90 or the Gamesa G87.
It looks like part of the cost of major wind power deployments is the development of new super-lift helicopters, preferably ones that run on biofuels.
Somebody want to calculate how big a hot air balloon would be required to lift 56 tons? And how much fuel would we have to burn to maintain the necessary volume of hot air?

Alan Watt:
the crane gang is pretty cagy about heavy lifts. for the enlightened, doing a lift with a helicopter is the really neat way to go but the traditional riggers shy away from it like the plague.
they like to build roads up the hill to the site and then if its a fairly light lift put xxx number of boom extensions on the crane and then put it up there.
if its a heavy lift then they gather several of the biggest truck cranes they can get and put them all on the load at once.
bear in mind that truck cranes are rated at xxx tons lifted ten feet out from the centerpin of the machine and so if you are trying to pick a load 100 feet out then you can only get 10%of the rating.
as a result of the lifts needed for erecting windmills the crane builders have been building some truly monster machines lately.
one thing that must be taken into account is that helicopters are much more unstable than standard cranes, if the wind comes up in the middle of the lift helicopter pilots have a tendancy to drop the load to save their skins.
helicopters are fast. my company wanted to move a huge antenna from one building roof (140 feet up) to another about a mile away (180 feet up). the job was to be done at 0900 on a saturday morning. we had people on both buildings at 0855 and the helicopter showed up at 0856. the job was done and the helicopter flying away at 0915.
c

From A physicist on January 11, 2012 at 9:11 am:

I’m happy to show my calculations, ScientistForTruth. Keep in mind that I’m computing the power generated by one square mile of windblade area, without regard for whether those windblades are close or far apart. Moreover, this time I’m putting in an efficiency factor of 1/3, to cover downtime, generator losses, etc. So check for yourself:
…
revenue from one square mile of windblades = $318,000,000 per year
———————
Note the the now-assumed efficiency of 1/3 lowers the revenue to “only” three hundred million dollars per year, per square mile swept by windblades.

Decided to double-down on stupid, eh? At least you’re admitting your earlier mistake of misusing Wind Power Density as if it related to ground area instead of area swept by the turbine blades.
1 mi² = 2,589,988.110 m² (ref)
http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost

The costs for a commercial scale wind turbine in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million, per MW of nameplate capacity installed.
Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3.5 Million installed. Wind turbines have significant economies of scale. Smaller farm or residential scale turbines cost less overall, but are more expensive per kilowatt of energy producing capacity. Wind turbines under 100 kilowatts cost roughly $3,000 to $5,000 per kilowatt of capacity. That means a 10 kilowatt machine (the size needed to power an average home) might cost $35,000-$50,000.

With those nice strong Iowa winds, the Vestas V80-2.0MW wind turbine looks like a good choice. “Swept area: 5,027 m2”
For your square mile of swept area, 2,589,988.110 m² / 5027 m² = 515.2. You would need Five Hundred and Fifteen Vestas V80-2MW wind turbines to get (very close to) that square mile of swept area.
From “Just an engineer” we get:

Wind farms run 20-150 acres per megawatt of installed capacity. Some engineering firms use 60 acres per megawatt for prelim calculations.

Using the 60 acres per MW installed figure, which you have used before, your square mile of swept area would consume 61,800 acres, which converts to 96.6 square miles.
So that would be your $318,000,000 per year divided by 96.6 square miles, yielding $3.23 million per square mile. With 1 mi² = 2,589,988.110 m², each square meter of ground would yield just $1.27 a year from wind power.
As I previously calculated, that coal under a square meter of your farm, one meter deep, would yield 3639 kW-hrs of electricity. At residential pricing of $0.12 per kW-hr, that cubic meter of anthracite coal is worth about $437 of electricity.
The coal converted to electricity is worth 344 years of wind power electricity. Looked at another way, each cubic meter of that coal is worth now what you’d get from 344 square meters of ground with wind power installed on it over a year.
That’s the real economics. It makes far more sense to dig up coal and burn it in a power plant for electricity than it does to put up windmills.
BTW, if Iowans are having such great success with wind power, why do they pay so much for electricity? The figure used here is $0.12/kW-hr for residential. Here in Pennsylvania, our local supplier PPL is charging only $0.07769 per kW-hr currently, when the rates change for the next 3-month period on March 1, residential is estimated to be only $0.07299. Of course, Pennsylvania hasn’t bought into the “promise” of “free wind energy” or renewables in general, we primitives just keep burning some coal and splitting some atoms for our dirt-cheap electricity…

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says: [after a lengthy calculation] … each square meter of ground would yield just $1.27 a year from wind power.

LOL … $1.27 per square meter?
Kadaka, please get back to us with an estimate of the annual value of the corn/soybeans that can be grown on one square meter of farmland.
Oh yeah … and please let us know whether you still think Warren Buffett and those Iowa farmers are making a foolish investment?

Mike P. says:
January 11, 2012 at 9:28 pm
The study is flawed because it compared apples (wind) + rotten oranges (old gas fired technology) to fresh oranges (gas turbine technology).
===========================================================
Mike, they can’t. The newer gas turbines are for base load. In other words you can’t use them to back up the wind. One must use the old gas tech. The reason is because the old tech allows for quick alteration in the output, whereas the newer tech cannot. I believe that was one of the many points the study was trying to make.

“A physicist”
You goofed. You hijacked this thread with ridiculous and false calculations based on real estate, and since I’ve pointed it out that you confused swept area with real estate you’ve tried to wriggle out of it without admitting it. But you can’t. You said:
“Iowa’s average wind energy potential is (about) 350 Watts per square meter. And under one square meter of our Iowa farm, there’s enough coal to provide 350 Watts of electrical power for exactly … one year.”
So you were talking about real estate. The 350 watts per square metre relates to swept area, not real estate. In real estate terms it is around 1 watt per square metre for wind farms. By the way, physicists know that watts as a unit of power don’t have a capital ‘w’ when spelled as a word, unlike what you have written. That’s a very telltale sign, methinks.
So, as I said at the start, you haven’t got a clue. As I and others have shown, you are between two and three orders of magnitude out in your calculations, whether revenue or payback.
You goofed big time. To keep coming back and trying to justify your ignorance makes you look ridiculous.

The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. ~ Albert Einstein.
Warren in Minnesota says:
January 10, 2012 at 6:43 am
“@Pamela Gray:
Wind, geothermal, and solar power generation are most effective on-site and at a small scale. It works quite well if your goal is to stay off the power grid or are in a location where electrical power is not available (and there are several areas in NE Oregon where this is the case).”
Who is going to make our global scientists understand an easy point.
Generally speaking, they are quite right of course, but there are many exceptions around the world that should be considered in place. Formulating, fixing and expanding a package to the whole world without any chance for the exceptions is not acceptable for such a community.
%4 of energy consumption in US houses and buildings is for warming the water. This or part of that can be given by solar cells. What is the problem?
Japanese produce electricity from an even small water fall to light a short alley. Small business plans are as important as the large scale projects. There are many reasons that make something feasible in somewhere, that it never can be feasible elsewhere.
It is obvious that all other resources are BABY energies. At the time being and for the near future at least, they can never be able to compete with fossil based fuels (FBF). As soon as any reliable source of energy can provide us all our requirements economically, there would be of course no chance for (FBF) anymore.
And about subsidies; Governments are responsible for many things against the people. Mostly in new fields the government should provide the requirements that private sector can dare to step forward and start a new business. The instrument here are TAX Exemptions, Low Taxation Rates and Subsidies. After some times and when the market can handle itself, the legal instruments are no longer extended. Same as a baby until the time that he/she can go on individually. These baby energies would never be a real threat but they may have some positive consequences and at least they can provide us some (%) of our energy demands, something is better than nothing.
Almost all the friends here in this debate, are not positive to windmills. Mostly want to cut the subsidies from this ORPHAN. I have a simple question; really do we have anywhere else, that receives subsidy and you never talk about it? I heard in DC there are subsidies on electricity or something else. The records are in recent WUWT posts (R/P, Nothing is sustainable.. ) Now let’s agree together NO SUBSIDY ANYWHERE. The market can find what to do, this is fair.
I saw the photo of the old windmill at the top of the post. It worked for many years satisfactorily. They! did not have enough studies on windmills. Apparently the first result is that we cannot have any expectation on large scale production form windmills, but it does not mean that it is dead, still there are locations that have necessary conditions to go on, and if somebody likes to follow up without any subsidies, what is the problem then? Who knows what would happen tomorrow? Robert Hirsch said Oil is going to be $500/b. More Hirsch On Peak Oil. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGHpWOSsDZk&feature=share
Somebody said here, windmills are against birds!! What sort of argue is this? ASTUTE! Man-kind is killing more, isn’t it?
One more thing; For those that would like not to be mislead-ed:
1) The most effective power plants (GAS-LIQUID FUEL) generators output is %46;
2) Steam or Gas turbines single cycle output is max %25-%33;
3) Steam or Gas turbines combined cycle output is max %43;
all depends on weather conditions and altitude from free sea levels, let’s make %10-%20 less and take the safe factor of %80 of the above max outputs. This is to clarify that DON”T THINK here we are in LAS VEGAS! with our hero the FOSSIL.
And again:
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. ~ Albert Einstein.

Someone calculated Iowa wind power = $954,000,000 per square mile per year.
This converts to $89,437,500 for a 60 acre area.
Wind turbines need to be spaced 3-7 blade diameters apart.
Using a GE 1.5 MW 77 m (rounded to 80 m) blade diameter costing $2 million we have:
80.0 x 3 = 240 m is the closest placement possible
240 m is 57,600 sq m
57,600 sq m is 15.7 acres
60 acres / 15.7 = 3.8 equals number of turbines on a 60 acre area (round to 4)
1 GE turbine generates 1.5 MW peak power. Assume 25% average power 24/7 365 days per year
1.5 x 0.25 x 8,760 hours in 1 year = 3,285,000 kWh in 1 year
Assuming $0.12 per kilowatt hour (not a subsidized rate) gives $394,200 per unit or $1,576,800 in yearly gross revenue for a 60 acre wind farm (not exactly $89 million).
Cost of 4 turbines is 4 x $2 million = $8 million.
Years to recover initial purchase is $8 / $1.576 = 5 years.