![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.
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
So is evil “carbon pollution” aka CO2, meant to cause more “extreme” higher wind speeds or lower ones?
I’m confused. I thought the “science was settled”?
Once it was carbon, “we can stop the warming!” Now it is wind, “we can make the wind blow harder!”
The only constant in nature is change. Two out of ten years hydro production is low in Washington State because of droughts based on 59 years of records. Eastern Washington is semi-arid and was a natural dust bowl before irrigation.
I see no reason why wind would not vary too. There is likely a correlation between wind and snow pack. However, we only have a few years of records for west coast wind generation. First they have to wind turbines running before we can get more data.
The weaker winds are the result of all the extreme weather, which is blowing harder winds, but canceling each other at the wind farms. It’s global warming playing its latest vile tricks on us
To my mind the term “extreme” encompasses both ends of the spectrum, low as well as high. Maybe it’s a good idea if anyone who uses the term “extreme weather” should be mandated also to add a health warning as is the case with financial products – “X may fall as well as rise”.
Damn that climate change, it stole our wind!!!
Too many wnd turbines has resulted in world wide wind speed decline.
They have altered the climate.
I will need several hundred million dollars and an unlimited amount of time to prove my theory.
Maybe you not start out stating a silly theory as a fact lest you sound like Dr. Hansen
England has run out of wind.
The levelized costs are a crock. To account for the cost of AE the cost of batteries or back up power stations needs to be assigned to AE. It is not.
In response to M Seward, “Quantifying and matching “what is needed’ to what is being produced at the material time is what is at issue…”
There is always confusion between energy for transportation and energy for power plants supplying the grid. Storage is critical for transportation, not so much for stationary power plants. I first made electricity with steam in 1971 on WWII combat ship. An automatic control valve would maintain the turbine speed to match demand. More WWII combat ships were lost at sea due to running out fuel oil in a typhoon than to Japanese torpedoes. A few later as a nuclear trained officer supervising operation of the nuke plant. The steam turbine generator worked the same way it was just bigger but we were not worried about running out of fuel in a typhoon. Later I worked at nuke plants. The steam turbine generator worked the same way it was just a little bigger still.
“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?”
BS, sure we can and do. All steam plants are designed to load follow and they do so readily. Here is how it works. Plants with the lowest fuel cost are dispatched first. Since nukes can not meet 100% of demand, they become base load plants. In France, nuke plants load follow except when demand is very high.
Next coal plants are dispatched or very efficient CCGT natural gas. Finally the most expensive oil and SCGT are fired up. Demand variations and wind generation variations are predictable.
“because there is little doubt that way too many have been cut down.”
In the US, there are a lot more trees than in 1930. There is enough waste biomass in a 25 mile radius to fire a 25 MWe power plant. An example is the plant at Kettle Falls, Washington. Waste from sawmills used to be burned causing local air pollution. It is now burned cleanly to produce electricity economically.
The most significant environmental problem in the US is forest health issues in semi-arid forest of the west. Too much wood of poor quality that causes a forest killing and watersheds destroying fires.
In the east, if you drive the Blue Parkway in Virginia or NC; you will see a subtropical jungle. A new 500 MWe steam plant that burns waste wood and waste coal from old strip mines.
There are many examples of power projects that make the environment better and provide good jobs for folk who do not like the city environment.
Set’s see, you don’t think less wind speed would have anything to do with less sun spots do you? Oh that’s right, the sun doesn’t have any effect on the weather!
A firm in Australia called Pit & Sherry calculates an index of carbon emissions in Australia. Last year they issued a report talking about how carbon emissions had risen. The American green energy zealots went ballistic talking about how horrible Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is for allowing it to happen.
But I dug into the report. It turned out that Australia had continued to expand its base of wind turbines. But despite the larger base in 2014, it still produced less electricity from win because the wind just didn’t blow enough. So the electric utilities had to use the always reliable carbon based fuels to meet electricity demand – causing emissions to rise. (page 5, second bullet point)
http://www.pittsh.com.au/assets/files/Cedex/CEDEX%20Report%20Sept%202014.pdf
The builders of these projects all around the world seem to have overestimated how much the wind will blow. Why did they get it wrong? Was their judgment clouded by taxpayer subsidies?
You flatter them by using the word “judgement”.
One thing you can be pretty sure about is that when they were doing the initial sale to governments they did not point out that the wind turbines would not deliver there nameplate capacity, but rather, on average throughout the year, they would deliver only about 20 to 25% of their nameplate capacity.
I do not think that politicians were aware of this fundamental point when they first signed up to the push to renewables. They did not realise that they would have to build (and subsidise) at east 4 times as much wind generation/capacity that they were hoping would replace conventional fossil fuel generation on a 1 to 1 basis (ie., a I GW of wind replacing 1GW of conventional fossil fuel generation).
Of course they now realise this, but it is now rather late in the day. It is difficult for them to acknowledge this basic blunder, since this is a school child error and shows how incompetent they were when listening to the green dream.
In the UK, we hear politicians claiming that we need to install say 16GW of wind to meet the UK’s forthcoming targets, But in reality they need to install upwards of 70GW because wind is on average only producing about 22% to 23% of its nameplate capacity.
There would be uproar if one bought say a car that was sold on the basis that it had a top speed of say 110 mph and in practice it rarely achieved 25mph.
The politicians have been sold a pup, the problem is how to get out of it since they are now in far too deep. It is one of the hardest things to do is to admit that one was wrong and that one was naively fooled, and didn’t take enough time to properly scrutinise the sales pitch.
If one reads the various climate reports like the CLEAN POWER PLAN , UNITED STATES CLIMATE ACTION REPORT 2014 OR THE PRESIDENTS CLIMATE ACTION PLAN , 2013 , You come away with one impression . They seem all over hyped and focused primarily on greenhouse gas reductions as the only important issue or criteria for considering planning for the future climate . It is like the car salesman who tries to sell you the car with the least emissions only. Never mind that it is the most expensive car to operate and run and you can only buy it with a government grant . or that the car is the least reliable car and unpredictable when it will run and you need a second car when the your purchased car will not run, or that it has the shortest life expectancy, or that it is affected by every wind and climate variation for performance or efficiency.
Yet this is the only car that seems to be offered ( really legislated) to the public . Would you ever buy such a car if you were given free choice.
Any child who gets a gets a kite for their birthday will tell you it will be days before the wind blows!!
Have we really and truly been measuring and recording wind strengths over a REPRESENTATIVE area of the USA for 40 years?
It sounds like an Oh Bummer/Hillary Clinton type story to me.
This why wind turbines continue to be built , not because they are more economical but because of the Federal and State tax support which can amount to 30 % as we saw with the DESRT WIND project
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/57933_eere_wwpp_federal_incentives.pdf
That is correct. Did you figure it our all by yourself? The real question is if it is good policy and is it working. There incentives for all kinds of things that may not be the cheapest alternative but may be better in the long run for the county.
Resource planning for making electricity is a 20, 40, and 60 year exercise. Governor Bush is Texas was successful while Governor Davis failed in California.
Some examples of good policy that were successful. West Texas wind farms that resulted from a very modest renewable energy portfolio standard (RPS) under Governor Bush establishing the economics of modern wind turbines. Thus the renaissance for wind. Five large nuke plants are under and many more are being prepared for construction that to various incentives under POTUS Bush and unthinkable with anti-nuke Clinton. E10 gasoline. American farmers said the could do it and they did.
Well it quite obvious why the wind-speeds have dropped in the US – there are too many wind farms taking all the energy out of the atmosphere….
Wind farms offer diminishing returns as they grow more widespread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/31/study-wind-farms-offer-diminishing-returns-as-they-grow-more-widespread
I am not sure if that deserves a /sarc or not.
Ralph
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
Renewable = Unreliable