![wind-turbine[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/wind-turbine1.jpg?quality=83)
The Financial Times reports that the USA is experiencing the weakest wind speeds for 40 years, which is having a dramatic impact on wind energy businesses.
According to the FT (subscription may be required);
US clean energy suffers from lack of wind
A lack of wind is making the US clean energy sector sweat, with consequences for investors from yield-hungry pensioners to Goldman Sachs.
Electricity generated by US wind farms fell 6 per cent in the first half of the year even as the nation expanded wind generation capacity by 9 per cent, Energy Information Administration records show.
The reason was some of the softest air currents in 40 years, cutting power sales from wind farms to utilities. The feeble breezes come as the White House is promoting renewable energy, including wind, as part of its Clean Power Plan to counter greenhouse gas emissions.
“We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months,” David Crane, chief executive of power producer NRG Energy, told analysts last month.
Read more: http://on.ft.com/1N73bQP
In my opinion this once again demonstrates how useless wind power is, as an energy solution for an economy which requires a reliable, biddable supply of electricity.
It might one day be possible to create an affordable energy storage solution which can provide economical backup for the entire electricity grid for a few hours, or even a few days. But an energy storage solution which can hold enough energy to supplement the entire country’s energy needs for months, or even years, on one charge, is utterly implausible.
If this becomes a trend, someone will blame it on CO2.
The did already back in 2009 (and maybe earlier…this is the first article I found).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-may-mean-slower-winds/
Did you look for Climate Change may mean stronger winds? Bet you can find that too.
We know that CO2 is the all-powerful mystery gas the heats and cools the air, while bringing floods and drought to the heathen. (depending on location. Past actions may not be indicative of future responses).
I don’t know about the USA but here is one of their superb models.
Here is a paper that says windspeed will speed up then slow down each year in Nebraska.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0038-092X%2896%2900076-X
Jimbo!,
Damned good to see you again.
I know we don’t know each other from a bar of soap but where the hell have you been?!
Eh? Eh?
Compiling your lists into a publishable format I would hope……
Jones
They (warmers) are all over the map = 360 degrees off ares coverage.Here is another:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n3/full/nclimate2106.html
***** Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades,,,,,,,,, ********
Recent intensification of wind-driven circulation in the Pacific and the ongoing warming hiatus.Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing.
***** Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades,,,,,,,,, ********
> The[y] did already back in 2009 ….
The article says:
Nice to see that they have readers who don’t like SA’s innumeracy:
Here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-may-mean-slower-winds/
Sara Pryor measured wind in 2009 and murmured something like: „The wind will blow weaker“.
A year later http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8167.full.pdf?with-ds=yes she murmered there that it might be not so. The difference: A very, very diverse output of models.
>>Here is a paper that says windspeed will speed up
>>then slow down each year in Nebraska.
Is there one saying it will get warm and then cold each year?
Just wonderin’. Sounds like easy money, if you can get it.
R
Well I would blame it on Kevin Trenberth’s isothermal Earth model. With every point on earth at the same Temperature (288 K), how are you going to get winds ??
Well I suppose you could apply fossil fuelled electricity to all of those big electric fans, and make some wind that way. And you can point those fans in any direction, so you could make the wind blow any way you want to.
Well maybe. Good luck on getting two people to agree on which way the wind should blow. They can’t even agree on what is the best temperature for the earth, so what would we set it at if we could ??
Almost always when I comment on K & T, I point out that if the energy budget was as described in that cartoon, we would not get weather as we know it.
Not enough butterflies flapping their wings.
They said it was renewable but it is obvious we are using it up faster than it is being replaced.
OK I’ll get my coat.
It correlates with a weaker sun
Was not the whole point of wind power to harness the extreme weather wrought by CAGW?
The whole point of the huge push for wind was the wind industry’s false claims that it would significantly reduce CO2 emissions, which they claim is causing climate change. As wise old Solomon said, “All is vanity and chasing after the wind.”
Industrial Wind vs. Rural America, Electricity Markets – Master Resource
https://www.masterresource.org/windpower-problems/industrial-wind-vs-rural-america-electricity-markets/
The graph below further illustrates the lack of wind out west how the EIA data for calculating levelized cost of electricity is distorted.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=22452
This graph clearly shows that the average monthly or yearly capacity factor is not 35% which EIA use for their levelized electricity calculations and comparisons for wind turbines vs conventional options like coal and nuclear . Using the 35% factor instead of 20- 25% lowers the cost per kwh and makes it look more competitive when in fact it may not be so.
Cost of wind power is determined almost entirely by wind speed, except that more is not necessarily better – too high a wind speed and the windmill must shut down to protect itself from destruction
and too low a speed and blades are parked and use grid electricity to slowly rotate to prevent bearing and shaft distortion. so when not generating they actually are a parasitic draw.
its always been my opinion that smaller (ie household size) units should have been where the research went to augment the grid and help the individual household.
dmacleo
September 5, 2015 at 8:16 am
Smaller wind units have been tried in the UK. At a price of £45.000 the payback period ROI was longer than the lifetime of the average house. Reliability was poor, output was varied and delivery of power was insufficient to go off grid. Hence one has to pay the standing grid charge, maintenance charge and borrowing costs = loss of money. W>ind just doesn’t work where ever you put it.
I heard they were also quite annoying due to constant noises. Whooshing of the blades, humming of generators…all way up high so the sound carried and spread way out.
California’s wind resources and generator output tends to peak during the summer at a time when electricity demand in the state is also relatively high. However for more northern regions like Ontario, the winds are stronger during winter/spring/fall when the winter peak heating demand occurs ,but the winds are out of sync in the summer being at their lowest levels when the electricity peak demand due to AC’S occurs for the summer . More back up for wind energy are required during the summer period..
“Because wind is an intermittent resource, it can not be counted upon in California to meet the peak loads on the hottest days of the year. […] The wind typically does not blow on the hottest days of the year so the wind generation production is usually less than 10% of its nameplate capacity at the time of the summer peak load.” (California ISO integration of renewable resources report , August 2007).
“Typically during the summer months, the CAISO simultaneous peak demand occurs during hour-ending 1700. As shown in Figure 7, the actual wind generation for the period of the July 2006 heat wave averaged less than 200 MW during the hour of system peak demand.”
Haven’t looked at more recent CaISO reports, but I doubt they’ve changed.
There is another cheat in the EIA levelized cost of wind. They assume 30 year life for everything. The actual life of wind turbines is between 20 and 25 (sources vary). The actual life of CCGT and coal is at least 40. Posted on this over at judith Curry’s a few months ago. Redid all the calculations correctly. Wind is about double CCGT or USC coal.
If you also read the IER report called WHAT IS THE TRUE COST OF ELECTRICITY
Electricity from New Wind Three Times More Costly than Existing Coal
WASHINGTON – Today, the Institute for Energy Research released a first-of-its-kind study calculating the levelized cost of electricity from existing generation sources. Our study shows that on average, electricity from new wind resources is nearly four times more expensive than from existing nuclear and nearly three times more expensive than from existing coal. These are dramatic increases in the cost of generating electricity. This means that the premature closures of existing plants will unavoidably increase electricity rates for American families.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/what-is-the-true-cost-of-electricity/
ristvan
Now, we do know that trains are the most efficient transportation.
Including ONLY “operating costs” (and excluding maintenance AND construction AND demolition AND true “how long will it operate?” AND “How much total pollution and energy and money (with interest!) does it cost to construct, build, and continuously generate electricity for the entire life cycle of this turbine?” ) means that I should demand the federal government must build me a train to go from my house to hardware store, to the baseball field for my grandkid’s games and to the grocery store and battery store and cleaners to carry me around all day.
Wait. CA democrats already did demand that, didn’t they?
If the wind speed drops to just half of the design wind speed, you only lose 87.5% of your power level.
Only, WOW what a bargain.
Now apply that to the equatorial Pacific and voila! A super el nino.
I still cannot fathom why Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors are being ignored.
Natural Gas power plants are much less expensive per KW than liquid fluoride thorium reactors ( which don’t even exist).
It is always about money.
Because they’re nuclear reactors.
Thorium can’t be used to make bombs. The nuclear weapons program was designed to take advantage of the economies of scale that mass uranium-based nuclear power would create. I read it on the internet thingy so it must be true.
Actually nuclear weapons have been made already using thorium… by the US.
Molten salt reactors better than Thorium reactors and can burn nuclear wastes – will never run out of fuel.
Far more prolliferation resistant when powered by uranium than Thorium
Transatomicpower.com and Terrestrial Energy
… @ur momisugly arthur4563
many thanks for that link !
let everybody download the whitepaper on their site, and have every specialist in the world try to shoot holes in that one !
(and just Greenpeace’s “radiation kills” is not good enough a hole … it should be REAL holes)
Because cheap, reliable electricity is not the goal of Big Green.
Its a political movement as simple as that. A solution would defeat the chance of the outcome.
The watermelon movement.
Because we employ worthless politicians.
Because there is a sefrious risk that they could actually work, thus bringing down CO2 emissions without damaging in the economy.
“Because there is a serious risk that they could actually work, thus bringing down CO2 emissions without damaging in the economy.”
*dingdingdingdingding* And we have a winna, folks!
Because a lot of research is still needed before they are proven technology, let alone before they become cost effective.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Thorium/
[Snip. David, please use your real name. ~mod.]
Because YOU never tried to build one!
H2 from electricity plus CO2 to make methane, then store it underground = technically plausible year scale energy storage.
Economically ludicrous, though.
Careful, someone might decide to subsidise it… 🙂
Right, you can store it that way, but even if you used fuel cells to turn it back into electricity (probably the most efficient way to do it), you lose half the energy at that step.
A wind shortage! There was plenty of that during the much warmer 1930’s hot weather cycle.
Of course, when we descend into the sort of weather we had during the Little Ice Age 1970’s, there will be lots and lots and lots of wind at least for those of us living east of the Mississippi.
California has lots of hot air, it is blowing on TV. Can’t harvest that!
I have calculated there is a direct correlation between the number of wind turbines (increasing) and the speed of the wind (decreasing) therefore i conclude that wind turbines slow down the wind and should be banned …save the wind, save the wind….
You can store energy to supply the country for long periods of time. It’s called the strategic reserve.
I should have said “rechargeable”, as in a battery… 🙂
The CEO of a major wind power utility never anticipated that winds could be changeable?
If idiocy was a professional sport, this guy would be in the major leagues.
Looks like the wind industry blew it.
Groan…
A comedian with gusto.
He said breezily about the draft paper.
…We never anticipated a drop-off in the wind resource as we have witnessed over the past six months…
I’ll bet that independent experts covered that possibility – but the wind company would have been stupid to have ‘anticipated that drop-off’ to the extent of putting it in their projections – after all, their grants were dependent on projections that they could provide 100% of the USA’s energy at some point…
Cause and Effect. As the higher latitudes become warmer the polar\equatorial delta T – hence delta P decreases. Since the forces driving air masses decrease, then it logically follows that wind driven phenomenon will decrease. Why are so so-called climatologist surprised when observations confirm exactly such an effect occurring?
Unfortunately, for us all – cooling will reverse this effect and weather will become more severe. We will be completely confounded due to the misdirection and fraaud, aiming to the repressive policies hoped for, in Paris. Resistance must defeat this coup. GK
OMG…..the wind changes speed! The horror! And the sun comes up in the east. How do these clowns keep getting away with calling themselves “Scientists”?
Headline: “Global Warming Causing Gentler Wind – Kite Manufacturing Jobs Threatened”
Once again the claim that batteries can save unreliable power generators : batteries STORE ENERGY, THEY CAN’T MAKE ENERGY. Where is the power coming from to charge those batteries? When they are depleted and require recharging, you can’t count on the wind to both power the grid and recharge the batteries.
“The Financial Times reports that the USA is experiencing the weakest wind speeds for 40 years, …”
What can I say? Seven years of Obama has taken the wind out of our sails.
Enjoy
http://dilbert.com/strip/2011-03-29
Hilarious 🙂
LOL….
Makes me sad because it is true…
But then….
LOL
http://earth.nullschool.net/
There is an earth wind map and yes, the winds this fall are definitely less than normal. Not the only hurricant-type rotation in the Atlantic Ocean west of Africa. Antarctica has high winds, with a tad of this pushing on England which is having a very cold early fall.
Well living here in England I wouldn’t describe it as very cold. High temperatures are currently around 18 C and lows dropping to 6-7 C overnight which is not that uncommon. The coldest place was Tulloch Bridge in the Scottish Highlands
As always, what are they referring to when they say “windmill capacity” ? Are they talking nameplate capacity, which is meaningless , but usually used by wind proponents to exaggerate the amount of power their windmills can produce (by 200%), or are they talking some estimated average actual power production? Which, as can be seen here, can also be very optimisitic.
Windmill capacity is the amount of grain that can be milled in an hour.
Wind turbine capacity and nameplate rating are the same.
“Capacity” is capability. “Performance” or “Output” is what actually comes out the other side.
They’d be whining even if the wind were stronger than usual; too many windmills would be shut down to avoid damage. The wind, like Goldilocks’ porridge, has to be ‘just right’.
Don’t worry. Once Trump’s elected we’ll have all the wind we’ll need.
blockquote>We never anticipated – David Crane
Says it all about “Renewables”
If you look here http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx and download the wind history, you will see how volatile wind production actually is.
All you need to do is put the URL in plaintext in a comment and WordPress will make the link. This will work better:
http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx
For similar stuff from New England ISO, visit http://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/
Currently renewables are providing 7% of the region’s power, of that amount:
54% wood (NH and ME are the most forested states in the country by percentage of land)
44% trash (mostly hate mail to Tom Brady and the NE Patriots)
1% wind (a lot less than I expected, I guess that high pressure system has moved in.
1% solar (about as good as it gets)
44% trash (22% hate mail to Tom Brady. 22% love letters from NE fans).
US “clean energy” suffers from a lot of things, but mainly affordability and usefulness. Now with a lack of wind, mother nature is just kicking them while they are down. Ma Nature can be cruel.
There was another article in WUWT that mentioned (quite rightly in my view) that the Earth’s atmosphere has a finite amount of energy. If a wind farm then removes some of this energy to turn the blades and generate electricity, then there will be less energy downwind and any wind turbines there will run more slowly. Could this be part of the problem?
“In my opinion this once again demonstrates how useless wind power is, as an energy solution for an economy which requires a reliable, biddable supply of electricity”.
Totally agree with you Eric, I have said many times that the developed world is totally dependent on computers and hours or even minutes with no power will destroy Western economies. Forget CO2,, the major worry is a Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun which will destroy the world’s computers.
Fortunately there is an upper limit to what a windmill can extract from the wind: 57% max, theoretical. Below a certain speed there is no practical power to be had. The zephyrs of truth are gentle but immutable.
One of the nearby wind places says:
Its turbines can produce electricity at wind speeds as low as 9 mph. They reach their peak of production at 31 mph and shut down at constant wind speeds above 56 mph.
https://pse.com/aboutpse/Facilities/Pages/Wild-Horse.aspx
@John F. Hultquist
“Its turbines can produce electricity at wind speeds as low as 9 mph”
Yes but how much can they produce at 9mph?
If george e. smith
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/05/renewable-fail-weakest-us-winds-for-40-years/#comment-2021825
is right, then at 15.5mph they will be producing 12.5% of the nameplate rating.
There will be a wind speed (presumably just below 9 mph) that has sufficient energy to turn the blades & the mechanism, i.e. to overcome the machine’s resistance, but not enough to generate any electricity. So at 9mph I would not be surprised if it was generating at well below 1% of the nameplate rating.
And bear in mind that electricity generating plants with moving parts (of whatever type, gas, coal, nuclear, hydro) use several per cent (AFAIUI, often 10%) of their nameplate output internally. So with the wind at 9mph I would expect this plant still to be taking electricity from the grid.
REPLY to James at 3:43
You are correct. As noted, the peak is at 31 mph. During a tour some years ago the guide said at at near 6 mph they become users of energy from the grid. I don’t recall ever seeing how much and wonder if this is subtracted from the amount reported as generated.
My computation may not be correct on the power versus wind speed.
We know that the flat plate pressure due to incident wind goes as the square of wind speed. In the case of a moving vehicle ( aeroplane/car etc) the drag would go as the square of the air speed, so the power would go as the cube of the air speed.
And that was the factor of eight drop I referred to (7/8 of power lost at half wind speed.)
But there is a difference with wind turbines. Their rotation velocity is absolutely constant, when producing output electric power.
So it might be just a square function, so only 75% power loss at half speed.
In any case, it is NOT a favorable output versus wind speed characteristic.
The perfect use for wind power is driving one of those 18 or so blade farm windmills, that mechanically drives a reciprocating long stroke pump to pump up some water to keep the cattle water trough full. When the wind blows, it pumps some water. When it doesn’t , then it doesn’t pump water; but overall, the cows do usually get water.
Wind turbines are economic parasites, environmental killers, and monstrous eyesores.