![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.
Try this link.
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2015/09/02/us-clean-energy-suffers-from-lack-of-wind/
The FT article is also at this more available site – http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/01/financial-times-us-clean-energy-suffers-from-lack-of-wind.html
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/19/renewables-industry-fury-at-new-wind-commissioner-appointment/#comment-1968338
The Capacity Factor of wind power is typically a bit over 20%, but that is NOT the relevant factor.
The real truth is told by the Substitution Factor, which is as low as 4% in Germany – that is the amount of conventional generation that can be permanently retired when wind power is installed it the grid.
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/eonwindreport2005.pdf
(apparently no longer available from E.ON Netz website).
Re E.ON Netz Wind Report 2005 – see especially:
Figure 6 says Wind Power does not work (need for ~100% spinning backup);
and Figure 7 says it just gets worse and worse the more Wind Power you add to the grid (see Substitution Factor).
Same story for grid-connected Solar Power (both in the absence of a “Super-Battery”).
This was all obvious to us – we published similar conclusions in 2002.
Trillions of dollars wasted dollars later, the rest of the world is waking up.
“Wind power – it doesn’t just blow – it sucks!”
And this is why wind power does not result in any meaningful reduction in CO2.
Whilst I am not saying that it is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions, the raison d’etre for wind is not that it produces reliable energy, or cheap energy, but that it reduces CO2 emissions. If it fails on this objective, as it does (because of the need for conventional fossil fuel backup generation), then there is simply no point at all to wind farm generation.
Any school child would appreciate that due to the intermittent nature of wind and the need for conventional fossil fuel back up which back up is not burning at its most efficient due to the ramp up/ramp down nature of the back up power being extracted, wind power does not solve the CO2 issue, and therefore merely adds to the cost of energy production with no other benefit (indeed, it causes problems to grid stability) so leaving aside the price, it is a negative on that ground as well.
When this edifice crumbles, the politicians will have a hard job explaining to the electorate why they supported wind when it was obvious that it would put up the cost of electricity and would not in any meaningful manner reduce CO2 emissions.
It is one thing for a politician not to understand the science of AGW, and to be guided by scientists, but quite another not to appreciate the misguided nature of the policy response given that any 14 year old school child would readily appreciate that wind power does not significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
Wind speed is dropping, even as more turbines are going up.
Can’t help but wonder if there is a relationship there.
Never anticipated…Right!! This is what happens when technology is driven by lefty agenda rather than by hard-nosed engineering. Haven’t we already also read here that adding more windmills reduces efficiency of the existing ones.
Don’t forget, you have to electricate the transportation sector to make any real difference.
Very easy to do for railroads, long distance haulage by electricity has been occurring for more than a century. Downside is high capital cost to put up the wires.
More of an issue for over the road transport. Short distance haulage of people and cargo by electric vehicles has been around for a century, but only recently has it been practical to make a car run more than 100 miles between charges.
A real challenge for aviation. Short haul (under 500 miles) may be possible with further development of Li-S batteries, long haul requires hydrocarbon fuels. Liquid hydrogen generated by electricity might work for long hauls, but I won’t live long enough to see that come into being.
Also a real challenge for ships, though LH2 would be easier to graft on a ship than an airplane (much easier to put an optimally shaped dewar on a ship than a plane.
Yeah, if you leave the H2 in gaseous form, you could store it in a bladder that would provide extra lift. Actually, I think the Germans tried that before WWII;-)
From Wattsupwiththat in 2013:
Rethinking wind power – Harvard study shows it to be overestimated
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/25/rethinking-wind-power-harvard-study-shows-it-to-be-overestimated/
Quote:
Each wind turbine creates behind it a “wind shadow” in which the air has been slowed down by drag on the turbine’s blades. The ideal wind farm strikes a balance, packing as many turbines onto the land as possible, while also spacing them enough to reduce the impact of these wind shadows. But as wind farms grow larger, they start to interact, and the regional-scale wind patterns matter more.
Could it be that the windmills themselves may be the cause of lack of wind further downwind?
lol, that would be the joke of the century.
The coast wind speed will significantly increase, if I understand what is currently happening to the sun and how solar cycle changes affect planetary climate. The current reduction in coastal wind speed which is if I am correct, is also the cause of the blob of higher temperature water on the surface of the ocean off of the west coast of the US and Canada is a transient condition which is caused by the current abrupt change in the sun which causes there to be temporarily long lasting high pressure systems on the west coast of North America which reduces coastal wind speed.
It appears, based on the extraordinary current changes to the sun (there is now obvious quarter by quarter changes of almost all solar parameters, this is an observational fact not a theory) and based on the correlation in time with past abrupt solar cycle changes, with past abrupt climate changes, that we are going to experience an abrupt change in climate due to the abrupt onset of the cooling phase of a Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle.
Paleo data indicates that during the cyclic Dansgaard-Oeschger events the jet stream speed increases which increases the amount of dust (factor of 10 more dust during the Heinrich events) that is deposited on the Greenland ice sheet (analysis indicates that the dust is coming from China). The wind speed over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans has started to increase which along with increased cloud cover in the same regions is the reason for the sudden appearance of large anomalously cold regions on surface of the two oceans. This is the same reason for the sudden cooling of the Southern Ocean and high sea ice in the Antarctic.
What has held back the cooling and is the reason for the sudden temporary reduction in Antarctic sea ice are solar wind bursts from a never ending stream of low latitude coronal holes on the surface of the sun.
The solar wind bursts are caused by the strange phenomena on the surface of the sun that is called a coronal hole. The solar wind bursts cause a space charge unbalance in the earth’s ionosphere which in turn causes a electric current flow to flow between high latitude regions of the earth to the tropics. This charge movement in high latitude regions and in the tropics causes a change in cloud cover, cloud lifetimes, and cloud albedo in both regions.
As the effect of a solar wind burst lasts for 5 to 6 days, a train of long lasting coronal holes on the surface of the sun which continues to produce a string in time of wind burst has a larger effect on the global electric current movement and planetary cloud cover/temperature than a single very large sunspot generated wind burst.
It appears based on correlation in time and correlation of the strength of periods when there are persistent, regular wind bursts caused by coronal holes with El Niño events and vice versa when there are not with La Niña events , that the solar wind bursts are the primary cause of the El Niño/ La Niña cycle.
There are still a steady string of coronal holes in low latitude regions of the sun, however, the coronal holes in low latitude regions have started to abruptly shrink.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-13/surging-jet-stream-winds-hinder-u-s-bound-flights-from-europe
Comments concerning the sun and cause of coronal holes:
Curiously what causes coronal holes to appear on the sun and the location where they appear is not known.
The coronal holes’ rotational speed unlike the rotational speed of sunspots and the rotational speed of the ‘surface’ of the sun, does not change with the solar latitude at which they appear.
At high latitudes on the sun the coronal hole rotational speed is 40% faster than as compared to the rotational speed of the surface of the sun and sunspots at that same latitude which provides support for the assertion that cause of the coronal holes is due to something that is happening deep within the sun which is extraordinary as this indicates something deep within the sun is producing the ‘coronal hole’.
The surface of the sun is a plasma (ionized gas). Higher latitudes of the sun rotated 40% slower than the equatorial region of the sun. Sunspots which float on the surface of the sun rotate at the same speed as the plasma on which they float. As noted in below paper coronal hole rotational speed does not change with solar latitude.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/763/2/137/pdf
Now that we’re past many sensible comments:- Why don’t you build some giant fans, say 500 feet in diameter, and aim them at the turbines?
Just run ten of the wind turbines in reverse and point them at one of the others. Should work.
Seem to remember a cartoon about this very idea – it looked like a fabled perpetual motion machine….very funny.
No, no; you’ve got it all wrong. The solution is to make mobile wind turbines, self-powered of course, that are able to move to where the wind is blowing.
“Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind.”
I suggest this, entirely tongue-in-cheek of course, only to show that the full potential of the Green Idiocracy is yet to be reached.
It is a well-known maxim that nothing can be made fool-proof because fools are too ingenious. If, for example, we happened to find ourselves on a planet with abundant natural fuel, some moron or group of morons would devise some scheme, some plan, some argument to prevent us from using it.
The whirligigs are monuments to morons.
It must be time for a song:
Catch the Wind – Donovan – 1965
Great singer. I actually went to a concert by him circa 1968. He talked between songs. He was completely incoherent.
The great Cannabis Generation hero who was innocently busted naked and on drugs, and who innocently attacked the police officer.
These events generated so much sympathy for the poor little rock star that it helped with re-classifying cannabis as a soft drug, without any studies being completed, and without even knowing what receptor it acted on the brain, or knowing any of the longterm psychotic effects – which were violently displayed in hashish users in Middle Eastern countries in the 30’s.
However, Donovan gets credit for admitting that they all went running to swami gurus so that they wouldn’t seem to be just pushing sex and drugs. Remember the photo ops with the Natives?
You didn’t really deserve that Steve P. Just overlook it just this once. It’s not really directed at you.
I didn’t notice any indignation here on my recent post featuring the song “North to Alaska,” where I mentioned that crooner Johnny Horton was killed by a drunk driver in 1960, at age 35, just when his career was taking off.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/02/quote-of-the-week-obamas-climate-claim-in-alaska/#comment-2019694
All the statistics & studies show that it is drunk drivers, not stoned drivers, who are among the great dangers on the highway.
I recently watched “The Silencers,” with Dean Martin and the fabulous Stella Stevens. The booze flowed as the couple cruised down the highway in Matt Helm’s trick station wagon. Dino was a great singer too, and made a 2nd – or was it 3rd? – career of portraying the lovable lush. Drunks were commonly portrayed on the silver screen as laughable, but harmless, and of course it’s OK to be drunk if you’re saving the world, and – how to say? – cozying up to the likes of the stellar Stella.
And it’s not just on the highway where booze poses a threat to life. According to the CDC: “Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2006 were estimated at $223.5 billion, or $1.90 a drink.
http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm
Meanwhile:
Marijuana Drastically Shrinks Aggressive Form Of Brain Cancer, New Study Finds
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/marijuana-brain-cancer_n_6181060.html
“The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February, 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
[…]
The ominous part is that this isn’t the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research…”
http://www.alternet.org/story/9257/pot_shrinks_tumors%3B_government_knew_in_%2774
NBC News: Marijuana Compound CBD Fights Cancer; Human Trials Next
“If this plant were discovered in the Amazon today, scientists would be falling all over each other to be the first to bring it to market” ~ Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at the University of California San Francisco.
https://patients4medicalmarijuana.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/nbc-news-marijuana-compound-fights-cancer-human-trials-next/
The problem with demonization and all propaganda is that the myths and false beliefs linger on, ‘same as with glorification. I don’t know anything about Donovon, other than the fact that he was a good singer who made some good songs.
I played “Catch the Wind” because I thought it tied in well with Eric Worrall’s post, and I thought a few of the brighter minds here might recognize it as a pretty good anthem for those of us who are skeptical of the value of wind turbines.
But no, ‘can’t let a chance go by to dis the evil weed with anecdotal evidence.(Wiki: “.. It was quickly shown some claims were false”). I’ve been around drunks and stoners. I’ve never seen potheads get into fights, but I’ve seen plenty of fights, violence, and verbal abuse where the booze flows. Booze gives people a false sense of bravo and invincibility. Pot makes them introspective, and cautious.
I’m not recommending anyone try booze or pot, but if you’re going to make an issue of it, at least tell both sides of the story.
Now, back to the wind.
And Zeke, I appeciate your post
Zeke- September 5, 2015 at 3:08 pm
My post was already in moderation before I saw it, so please don’t think I was disdaining, or trampling on your olive branch.
Opinions may vary, but we are all in this together.
Peace,
-sp-
++Steve P
Your original post was insightful and worked great with the column by Eric Worrall. Hypocritical to the end, I listened to Catch the Wind several times and drank my psych treatment of choice, coffee.
Already been done.
There was a technology park in the UK, that was caught using electricity to power its wind turbines, just to look good and Green.
R
Wind, solar, micro hydro and wood burning generators have their place. They are the only solution in off grid locations (www.otherpower.com) but as base load the are not going to cut it until cheap, efficient, long term method of storing massive amounts of energy is invented. We’ve been putting the cart before the horse way too much.
Spot on, or when “fuel” gets too expensive, I’d vote for any party that promises to scrap all on-grid wind and solar power.
Must be Global De-Wind-ing.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
While the canonical view is that global warming will increase average wind speeds, other studies conclude it will fall. Of course, none of that matters to the real world. The real world will simply minimize Gibbs Free Energy, form dissipative systems [no matter how complex they need to be to maximize efficiency from the system and tools available], and the real world will run down. Of course, the windmills run down too.
Overall, winds blow but windmills suck.
We need to wise up and quit wasting effort building bird-bat blenders.
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/us-military-veteran-courageously-speaks-out-about-geoengineering/
On August 14th, 2015, there was a major event in Northern California that was organized for the purpose of exposing and halting global climate engineering programs that are decimating our planet and the entire web of life. Numerous experts spoke out at this event including former government scientists, a former defense industry technician, former military personnel, a prominent Northern California Neurologist, and a CEO for one of the largest environmental and engineering consulting firms in the world. Approximately 1000 people attended this event. Mario Ramirez is a US Navy veteran who has shown tremendous courage by speaking publicly about the tyranny that is rampant within the ranks of our own government and military. I have great respect for Mario, he is setting an example of honesty that will help to compel other honorable armed services personnel to step forward and tell their story
Fred, I took a look at the videos and it seems that there is a chemtrail theme there.
” “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. ‘
Well duhhh! That would be your problem right there Dave. You just didn’t think it through, did you? Got a diesel backup?
Morons.
Call me cynical, but I would want to see the production and particularly the maintenance records for the whole installation before accepting the explanation “The wind went away” from the CEO.
A few numbers from KELN (Ellensburg, WA) over the last few hours:
35 mph; gust 47
32 mph; gust 43
33 mph; gust 45
37 mph; gust 45
Wind started about 5:30 PDT Friday evening. See the ramp-up results here:
http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx
5 minute updates on wind power, and others as BPA balances things.
John
Thanks for the earlier link to PSE’s Wild horse. For those who do not know PSE was building wind farms in Eastern Washington before there were subsidies because of the high cost of natural gas and the pipelines being near capacity. Natural gas generation was here to backup before the first wind farm. The BPA links show that using hydro to balance works great.
Wind farms in Eastern Washington are built in dryland wheat fields or shrub steppe habitat and do not endanger birds. Very good for the local economy.
I use the link BPA to predict good times to go sailing on the Columbia River when going from no wind to good sailing. 35 mph; gust 47 is not good sailing.
REPLY to Retired at 8:35
When PSE’s Wild Horse was being built one of the blades was damaged and they have it next to the visitor center – about belt-high and horizontal. At the nearest tower visitors can go into the base and see what is there – no climbing the ladder. They also have a solar array – fixed. Inside the visitor center there are lots of displays and, also information about the shrub-steppe environment. Much of that was done by the students and instructors at Central Washington University. All this makes for an informative tour.
Suggest to Obama piping in wind using Keystone XL is a good idea. At least it will be built.
Intriguingly, as someone who lives off the grid in the UK – I have been exempted from access to the generous subsidy payments which have relied mainly upon a person “selling” electricity back to the grid at several times the wholesale market price.
Back in 2011, the subsidy for solar PV installations was set at 43p/kWh for 25 years (inflation adjusted and backed by govt. bonds). This means that anyone who jumped on the bandwagon at the time is now receiving TEN TIMES the market rate for their measly intermittent output.
Admittedly, such people are also payed for electricity which they use themselves, so I could potentially have drawn some trivial income from that aspect of the deal.
BUT – how ironic that in an off-grid situation where Solar PV would have made some genuine economic sense – the principle source of subsidies is not available.
Fifty years ago you’d see cotton planted that was never tended or harvested. They called it subsidy cotton. Now you see these big wind farms where most of the windmills are not turning — subsidy wind power.
It’s very simple:
YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENERGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES.
Mostly because you can’t smelt ores to make new worthless wind turbines.
Kind of hard to make cement without the coal/coke providing the temperatures needed.
http://www.municipality.guysborough.ns.ca/sites/default/files/Pictures/imagejpeg_2_0_0_0.jpg
Tis foul shame and waste of cement, which it can never ever produce.
…peak wind?
This looks really interesting …
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540991/meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactors-get-a-safety-check-in-europe/
Some remarkable implications for reliable power in there. Also some remarkable implications for the renewables scene.:)
Very interesting – write it up, send it to Anthony as a new story.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/submit-a-story/
Reachers do not build nuke plants. For the record, LWR nuke plants with containment building are safe even if the fuel rods are damage.
If you want to read about something really interesting that works very well, checkout the fleet of US reactors that provide 20% of US power. What are the the Chinese building lots of? LWRs!
A couple of former MIT grad students have formed Trans Atomic Power. Yes they have a web site. And yes, 10 years is about right. The NRC charges more than $400/hr for approval. Kind of adds up after a few years.
Wind turbines need wind.
Solar needs sun.
Who’da thought?
Solar, Wind and all energy generation technologies are as useless as the proverbial mammaries on a male bovine without storage so that energy can be delivered on demand. So lets look at the indicative storage technologies.
We could start by considering the energy storage density of various fuels or devices, the higher the density the more compact the energy store and vice versa. The lower density storage means the biger size of storage device and thus the more capital required leaving aside the level of technology and associated cost profile.
Units are in MJ/Kg
Uranium (in reactor) 80.6 x 10^6
Methane / NAt. Gas 55.5 ( less than one miiionth!)
Diesel 48.0
LPG & Kerosene 46 ish
gasoline 44 ish
Ethanol fuel 26 ish
Coal 24
Methanol 20 ish
Wood 16 ish
Lithium ion battery 0.36 – 0.88 i.e ~1% of Diesel – gasoline
Alkaline battery 0.67
Nickel-metal hydride 0.29
Lead Acid battery 0.17 i.e ~0.35% of Diesel – gasoline
Bit of a no brainer as to what is prospective – and what is not.
“Solar, Wind and all energy generation technologies are as useless … without storage ”
That is not how it works it works for supplying electric power. We only produce what is needed. Having more capacity than needed is a very good thing. If a windfarm is producing more power than is needed (everyspring in the PNW because of low demand and spring run off). Just shut down the wind turbines, refuel the nuke, turnoff the coal plant ect.
The windfarm owners whine a little bit about not getting subsidies. Making power is a regulated public service. If you thought you were going to get rich by overbuilding, you made a bad business decision.
Quantifying and matching “what is needed’ to what is being produced at the material time is what is at issue and whether you can actually do it economically. Having storage is just a way of being able to properly integrate systems that have otherwise poor interactive compatibility. Cars driven by IC engines are pretty much useless w/o transmissions and clutches. Its about having a viable technological package not about
one ‘sexy’ aspect of one part of a system.
You can’t readily run coal fired plants up and down with the wind and even if you could do so with appropriate response time why bother with having the coal fired plant on standby? You are still up for the standby costs, the capital cost and the maintenance costs all of which should be put to the account of the wind/solar plant. At the end of the day it still passes to the consumer’s account.
If you ant to address CO2 then go and plant shiploads of trees because there is little doubt that way too many have been cut down. They will soon such up the excess. Might bring on an ice age too but there you go.
Actually, making power became deregulated with the advent of mandatory Net Metering. As long as the Interconnect [Inverter output connected to grid] meets the utility standard — every consumer with solar panels or a wind turbine is a producer.
Yeah…. you can’t fix stupid.
Oh – how could I forget this graph? It’s worse than you think! This is the average annual wind speed at the weather observatory at the top of Blue Hill, Massachusetts. I’m not convinced by any of the suggestions why there has been such a prolonged wind decline. There is one correlation – after fairly frequent flooding of homes along the Mass coast in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was long period with very little flooding.
http://www.bluehill.org/climate/annwind.gif
That’s really interesting.
Distance is about 10 miles from BH to Beantown. Without knowing the prevailing wind direction at Blue Hill, I suppose there is the odd, slim chance that high rise construction in/around Boston has deflected/altered/blocked N wind to some degree, although I’ll quickly acknowledge that is a stretch. Maybe a role being played by UHI to diminish winds?
The big drop begins in the late 70s or thereabouts. Boston’s tallest building – 241 m John Hancock tower – was built in 1976, and there has been a lot of high-rise constuction since. The observatory itself is at 193 m.
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=145
http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?cityID=145
Further, if you go here:
http://skyscraperpage.com/
and enter ‘Boston’ in the SkyscraperPage Diagram search box, you’ll get a graphic representation of the city’s tall buildings sorted by size – orthographic drawings that are elevation views of the buildings.
“n 1962, a metal tower containing a siderostat for collecting the sun’s rays and directing them by mirrors to an optical bench inside the observatory, was erected adjacent to the west wing for studies related to the upper atmosphere. This project was abandoned after a few years. This tower, with its mirrors still present, is no longer in use
In 1981, the Metropolitan District Commission transferred responsibility for the observatory to the Blue Hill Weather Club
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Hill_Meteorological_Observatory
‘Grasping at straws, really. A much more likely explanation is a shift in prevailing weather patterns. It was climate change what done it.
Could the reduction of the wind be related to the changing solar conditions? Perhaps an indicator of an upcoming solar grand minimum. Being that modern science has never observed a GM in action, it would certainly be possible that a relationship exists. This is a time to pay close attention to shifts in natural patterns.
If the wind stops the windmills don’t work. If the wind starts they work again.