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From Inderscience Publishers , something sure to make greens go “See, I told you!”, except for that little fatal mistake at the end. Read on.
Wind turbine payback
US researchers have carried out an environmental lifecycle assessment of 2-megawatt wind turbines mooted for a large wind farm in the US Pacific Northwest. Writing in the International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing, they conclude that in terms of cumulative energy payback, or the time to produce the amount of energy required of production and installation, a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit within five to eight months of being brought online.
Wind turbines are frequently touted as the answer to sustainable electricity production especially if coupled to high-capacity storage for times when the wind speed is either side of their working range. They offer a power source that has essentially zero carbon emissions.
Coupled lifecycle cost and environmental assessment in terms of energy use and emissions of manufacturing, installation, maintenance and turbine end-of-life processing seems to be limited in the discussions for and against these devices. “All forms of energy generation require the conversion of natural resource inputs, which are attendant with environmental impacts and costs that must be quantified to make appropriate energy system development decisions,” explain Karl Haapala and Preedanood Prempreeda of Oregon State University, in Corvallis.
The pair has carried out a life cycle assessment (LCA) of 2MW wind turbines in order to identify the net environmental impact of the production and use of such devices for electricity production. An LCA takes into account sourcing of key raw materials (steel, copper, fiberglass, plastics, concrete, and other materials), transport, manufacturing, installation of the turbine, ongoing maintenance through its anticipated two decades of useful life and, finally, the impacts of recycling and disposal at end-of-life.
Their analysis shows that the vast majority of predicted environmental impacts would be caused by materials production and manufacturing processes. However, the payback for the associated energy use is within about 6 months, the team found. It is likely that even in a worst case scenario, lifetime energy requirements for each turbine will be subsumed by the first year of active use. Thus, for the 19 subsequent years, each turbine will, in effect, power over 500 households without consuming electricity generated using conventional energy sources.
Haapala, K.R. and Prempreeda, P. (2014) ‘Comparative life cycle assessment of 2.0 MW wind turbines’, Int. J. Sustainable Manufacturing, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.170-185.
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The mistake, or some might call it an inconvenient oversight:
Thus, for the 19 subsequent years, each turbine will, in effect, power over 500 households without consuming electricity generated using conventional energy sources.
The problem here is the assumption that a wind turbine is the equivalent of a conventional coal or nuclear power plant. It isn’t, and as we know wind is not a constant thing:
“My biggest fear is if you see 20 percent wind on your system, and then it comes off at a time period where you don’t have resources to replace it — that’s going to, could, result in a blackout situation,” he says.
If there was not a backup power source that could be controlled 24/7/365 for those 500 homes, they would be in the dark when the wind falls below minimum levels needed to operate the wind turbine.
For example, a popular wind Turbine, the Vesas V90-2.0 2 megawatt turbine says in the technical specifications:
4 meters per second is equal to 8.9 miles per hour. By my own observation, I can say there are quite a number of days where wind is lower than that at ground level and even at tower height. Today for example, there is quite a number of areas with low or no wind in the United States. The blues are the low wind speed colors.
Source: http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/03/26/0900Z/wind/surface/level/equirectangular=-96.36,44.28,879
As we have seen before, when power is needed most, we can’t always count on the wind to blow at a level that will keep a wind turbine producing, requiring another power source to back it up. Thus, it is a blatant fallacy to claim:
…each turbine will, in effect, power over 500 households without consuming electricity generated using conventional energy sources.
Scott Wendt says:
The comparison is invalid.
You forgot ‘QED’. ☺
I’ve spoken to greenie believers about wind power subsidies and their answer is always the same: “Oh, but look at all the oil company subsidies”. That’s as far as they can take it.
Matthew R Marler says:
June 18, 2014 at 11:26 am
” It might still be the case that a wind turbine is uneconomical for a small isolated village, but it is not as easy to steal and resell a wind turbine as liquid fuel and the electrical wires and pylons of the grid.”
___________________________
http://www.france24.com/en/20140528-france-metal-organised-thefts-wind-turbines-copper/
I work in the power industry, and within the last year visited a site where 8 new GE LMS-100 gas turbines had been installed as backup generation in the midst of a huge wind farm in California. Those turbines are simple-cycle, which means that their 1000-degree, CO-2 rich exhaust vents directly to atmosphere. Also, the parasitic load for the turning gear (turbine rotors must turn constantly to avoid bowing from their own weight), lube oil pumps and heaters, and other auxiliary systems can amount to as much as a thousand home’s worth of energy per turbine. That parasitic load is 24-7, BTW. I understand that China is installing lots of wind turbines in their northern provinces, backed up by new coal generation. I have spoken with people that build and test those plants; they come with the normal emissions control systems, which are commissioned for testing. Once the owners take over the scrubbers and precipitators are shut off and never run again. Would someone explain to me why this is a sensible approach?
@ur momisugly Chris4692
The figures for each state are percent of total kWh sold in a recent year. Iowa will soon pass 30 percent as Buffett installs yet another set of profitable wind turbines. Low electricity prices, yet substantial wind energy.
Texas has more than 12,000 MW of installed wind capacity. Their state’s demand is large so even 12,000 MW gives them only about 9 percent of all grid power sold. Texas will soon pass the 10 percent mark.
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“Wind turbine drawback period claimed to be within 8 months”
(I fixed the typo in the headline.8-)
richardscourtney says June 17, 2014 at 11:19 am
…
Wind is innately the most efficient form of motive power for shipping because ALL the collected wind energy acts to push the ship without mechanical loss.
One may be overlooking reality here; all practical sailing is not downwind, therefore, the ‘sailing’ losses involved when tacking into the wind must be considered.
.
re: knuckledragger says June 18, 2014 at 12:48 pm
…
Once the owners take over the scrubbers and precipitators are shut off and never run again. Would someone explain to me why this is a sensible approach?
Wow. That reduces costs (operating manpower, material, energy and maintenance) considerably. Not the most ‘honest’ though …
.
Roger Sowell:
Your argument that “wind must be good because they are building them” is flawed because of government interference in the market.
The state of Iowa has its own production tax credit (PTC) and kicks in 1.2 cents per KWH on top of the federal 2.1 cents per KWH. There are other incentives as well designed to lure permanent jobs into the state.
The “business” decision to build wind turbines is biased by the PTC and because the utilities are mandated to have a minimum percent of renewable energy. When the PTC are rumored to not be renewed the orders for more new turbines go away.
The production tax credits sunset after the years, we’ll see how many old turbines continue to spin. Repair and maintenance becomes very expensive after the profit margins sunset.
Scott Wendt and Matthew R Marler:
I am replying to your responses in this one post. I intend no insult to anyone by this: I do it for convenience of onlookers because we are discussing one subject.
Scott Wendt, thankyou for your posts at June 18, 2014 at 11:13 am and June 18, 2014 at 11:33 am. The latter is intended as clarification of the first and says
Sorry, but I fail to understand how the ship having “a volumetric displacement” is relevant. At issue is the amount of power which can be collected from the wind, at what cost, and with what reliability. An individual ship’s sail can be larger than the blade area of an individual wind turbine.
If a single sail provides little and intermittent power so is uneconomic, then then a single wind turbine will also provide uneconomic power for the same reason. Adding more wind turbines does not change that.
So, I see no reason why you assert “The comparison is invalid”. Please explain.
(I do understand that hypothetically one could build giant wind turbines with blade area larger than a tall ship’s sail, but none exist and none are likely to exist).
Matthew R Marler, at June 18, 2014 at 11:26 am you say
Thankyou.
Now please explain why and how you think windpower could be economic and reliable for electricity generation when windturbines suffer the same issues of economics and reliability that exist for sailing ships. All we have had from you is arm-waving that in some way they are different, but it seems you don’t know how they are differeent. Scott Wendt was willing to try and imagine a significant difference but you have yet to try.
And you assert to me
Alan Robertson refuted that nonsense in his post at June 18, 2014 at 12:00 pm where he provided this link which reports you are plain wrong.
http://www.france24.com/en/20140528-france-metal-organised-thefts-wind-turbines-copper/
And at June 18, 2014 at 11:33 am you assert
Absolutely not!
I bluntly refuted that idiotic assertion in my post at June 17, 2014 at 1:01 pm because I have made a specific statement and I continue to PROMOTE IT.
I have no need to defend it because the only attempt to refute its applicability is from Scott Wendt whose assertion I do not understand (and I suspect he does not understand it, either).
Richard
@ur momisugly J Philip Peterson at June 16. 2014 at 6:49 pm
Re wind turbine payout.
Wind turbines do not have a single payout period. As with most any project, the payout period depends on installed costs and annual revenue.
Where the wind is good and steady, and wind turbines are installed on flat or gently rolling ground (as in Iowa), payout periods are around 10 years.
An 8 month payout period is not reasonable with existing economics:
With installed cost of $2000 per kW
Annual capacity factor of 33 percent
Sales price of 7 cents per kWH,
Payout period is 10 years.
As to nuclear power, it could never pay off the investment at a sales price of 7 cents per kWh.
Severance has an excellent article on the economics of nuclear power plants. Note that Severance’s costs are low by 5 years of inflation, and did not include costs for withstanding the impact of a large aircraft on cooling systems and fuel storage areas.
http://www.nirs.org/neconomics/nuclearcosts2009.pdf
I wrote in detail on this at
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-truth-about-nuclear-power-part-three.html
_Jim:
Yes, you are right in your post at June 18, 2014 at 1:49 pm.
Thankyou for correcting me
However, one could replace sails with windturbines connected to drive screws although – as you rightly say – that would reduced the mechanical advantage of sails.
Again, thankyou.
Richard
re: Roger Sowell says June 16, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Finally, wind is “so expensive,” many of the US nuclear plants are giving up and calling it quits. They simply cannot compete with wind or natural gas-based power. See links below.
Thanks, but no thanks. Based on previous ‘encounters’ with you, it is known your figures are suspect and your intentions are purely anti-nuclear, without good reason.
One may search WUWT using this string entered in a Google search bar:
. . . “Roger Sowell” nuclear site:wattsupwiththat.com
and see previous refutation of your work.
.
Iowa has so much excess wind power that Alliant Energy is also building gas turbines.
“Alliant Energy’s Interstate Power and Light Co. secured the final permit on Monday from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources for its proposed $700 million, 650-megawatt natural gas-fired plant in Marshalltown.”
– See more at: http://thegazette.com/subject/news/alliant-energy-gets-final-marshalltown-plant-permit-20140416#sthash.Tl8gOjVY.dpuf
@ur momisugly Jim, June 18 at 2:09 pm,
My published articles on Truth About Nuclear Power contain documented facts. There are presently 21 published out of 30 articles in the series.
There are more than 100 documented facts in those articles showing nuclear power is unsafe and uneconomic.
If you care to refute any or all of them, l’m sure WUWT host would publish the refutation.
Many people do not know the truth about nuclear, which is why I am writing those articles.
@ur momisugly richardscourtney
There are many reasons why sailing ships do not haul commercial cargo anymore.
1) Economy of scale – You can’t make sails big enough to move huge sailing ships because they would either capsize or would never move. You’re fighting volumetric (x^3) increases in weight with x^2 increases in sail area. (If sails go too high, or too wide, masts break or the ship capsizes.)
2) To move big, economic cargo ships you need powerful engines burning energy dense fuel.
3) Wind is too diffuse.
4) Wind is too intermittent.
5) Wind is inefficient because it is not always blowing in the direction you want to go. (Placing a wind turbine on a ship is the most inefficient way to use the wind.)
You weaken your position when comparing wind farms to oil tankers. It is worse than an “apples to oranges comparison” for the reasons I mentioned. Mainly, a stationary, land based wind farm does not have the constraints that a ship, or any moving item has. They both share #3 & #4, but 1, 2 & 5 are huge factors that only apply to the ship.
You need to find a new analogy.
Scott Wendt:
I see you have dropped your ‘effect of displacement’ argument in your post at June 18, 2014 at 2:41 pm. I admit to lack of surprise.
Instead, you now provide a shopping list of reasons why oil tankers are not sailing ships.
Only your point number 1 is specific to shipping but not windfarms and it is not valid because sailing ships did exist.
All the other points in your list apply to wind turbines.
Thankyou for supporting the illustration albeit inadvertently.
Richard
To ‘counter’ Roger Sowell (who seems to, and can apparently afford to, spend his professional life ripping nuclear power) one might also visit Rod Adams’ excellent website http://atomicinsights.com/ .
Roger Sowell’s vendetta against all things nuclear could possibly be one of the biggest mistaken directions he ‘sends’ or directs people, with subtle spin also put on the economics and all meant to shy ppl and industry away from any consideration of nuclear.
The total ‘cost’ picture including hedging against future fuel price spikes in natural gas you will NOT hear from Roger, since, his intent is not to educate, but to forcibly direct and distract. Any serious consideration of nuclear energy should avoid taking a peak at his site or his material until one is able to fully differentiate between ‘the wheat from the chaff’.
.
@richard…
The effect of displacement is wrapped into both 1 and 2 … I’m sorry you don’t see that. The bigger and heavier your ship’s power plant (or sails), the bigger the ship has to be to in order to float (displacement), let alone still carry cargo. Sailing ships pretty much reached their maximum size before steam made them obsolete. Of course, they did exist, and still do, but they only make money in tourism, recreation, etc.
Someone could build a fleet of sail powered oil tankers, but they would be small, slow, delayed often and need a proportionally bigger crew … that is what I mean by economy of scale.
I’m sorry you don’t understand my points, I don’t know how to else to explain them. I provided a list, in order of importance, to try to better explain why it is a bad analogy. You mistook that as a sign of defeat (why?).
I’m trying to help you make a better argument … I’m on your side opposing wind farms. Your ‘oil tanker’ analogy distracts because it is a weak analogy. There are too many other reasons why they don’t make wind powered oil tankers.
@ur momisugly Jim, re Adams and nuclear.
Mr. Adams is the chief cheerleader for the nuclear bandwagon. I have crossed words with him before, and he is the worse for it. For those who don’t know, Mr. Adams’ stated preference for power generation is a small, modular nuclear plant in every neighborhood. He clearly wants to increase electricity prices by 10 to 20-fold, which is exactly what would result if he had his way.
I prefer to keep electric prices as low as possible, so that the poor and those just barely scraping by will not be punished by outrageous power prices.
Jim also brings up the recent lame excuse for the nuclear apologists: nuclear as a hedge against future price increases in natural gas. That is almost a winning argument, except that whenever natural gas prices have increased, savvy oil and gas men go drilling and find more and more. This brings the prices right back down again. On an inflation-adjusted basis, natural gas price in the US is today about half of what it was 34 years ago.
Meanwhile, nuclear power plants just keep getting more and more expensive. They keep having massive meltdowns, so that more and more safety precautions must be installed – increasing the cost still more.
The Truth About Nuclear Power series lays all this out, and much more.
Scott Wendt:
Thankyou for your explanation in your post at June 18, 2014 at 4:11 pm which at last explains your point that I was failing to grasp.
It includes
Aha! I now ‘get it’. You are talking about costs of “a proportionally bigger crew” needed to operate a ship’s sails but not needed to operate wind turbines.
Sorry, that is an error. Modern “sails” could be windturbines connected to drive screws with electronic controls similar to those of windfarm turbines. But you are saying the sails must be nineteenth century technology and not twentyfirst century technology. You are comparing ‘chalk and cheese’ as a method to argue the ‘chalk is inedible’.
And the very many needed small oil tankers is a precise analogue of the very many needed wind turbines to provide power equivalent to output of a single power station.
If windpower were economic and reliable then oil tankers would be sailing ships.
This is comprehensible to both numerate and innumerate people, it is true, and all your arguments about it emphasise its truth. It needs to be shouted because it can be understood by anybody.
Richard
Just for fun, I Googled ‘super tanker engine’ and found one that was 90,000 hp. That is equivalent to 67,000 kW or 67 MW. If someone tried to power a tanker with 3 MW wind turbines, they would need the output of 22 (!) running at maximum rpms.
It’s not an error, at east not my error. Sails are pretty efficient at capturing the energy in wind and using it to move sailing ships, as long as the ship is going downwind. Converting wind energy to electricity that would then power the ships’ screws would be terribly inefficient. (The reason you need 22 turbines.) Nuclear powered and other steam powered ships do not make electricity first, they use steam turbines to drive the propellers. This is yet another problem with, and distraction to, your analogy. There is a reason why there are no moving vehicles powered directly by wind turbines, so why do you think it’s a good idea to suggest making the very first one?
Also, trying to connect 22 wind turbines to directly drive 1, 2 or 22 propellers would be an engineering nightmare. There are too many reasons why a wind powered tanker is a bad idea. It’s your choice to keep shouting it, but I fear people ignore your analogy because they don’t want to spend hours listing and explaining the reasons it doesn’t apply.
Did anyone read the article? The “payback time” was in reference to the amount of energy necessary to create the components, assemble the components, and transport, site, erect and connect the turbine. It is not the payback time for the approximately $3Million cost of installing a 2MW rated turbine.
Real world numbers of onshore wind farms in west Texas and other places, compiled by NREL and Stanford University among other places, show a capacity function on a yearly basis of ~30% of rated capacity.
This means that the 2MW turbine is actually a 600KW turbine averaged across all 8760 hours in a year. Thats 5.256 10E+6 kWh — over 25 years that is 131 Million Kilowatt Hours.
Cost per kWh =
$.023 — 2.3 cents much lower than a new coal fired plant or high efficiency NG plant.
Stanford showed that interconnected wind farms can be used as dependable baseload power. —
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf