From the “fire and ice” department, Craig Kelly writes on Facebook
The entire rationale for wind turbines is to stop global warming by reducing the amount of CO2 being returned to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
In the attached picture, recently taken in Sweden, freezing cold weather has caused the rotor blades of a wind turbine to ice up bringing the blades to a complete stop.
To fix the “problem” a helicopter is employed (burning aviation fuel) to spray hot water (which is heated in the frigid temperatures using a truck equipped with a 260 kW oil burner) on the blades of the turbine to de-ice them.
The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).
The attached picture is a metaphor of the complete insanity of the climate change debate.
In decades to come this one photo alone with sum up an era of stupidity, when rational thought, logic and commonsense was abandoned and immense wealth and resources needlessly sacrificed.
Plus I doubt it is even possible to get that thing de-iced enough that it will be in sufficient balance to not tear itself apart if the wind picks up.
so why install a turbine without blade warmers? run some wires inside the blades as they are being manufactured, and then use power from the grid to keep the blades warm until there is enough wind to power the blade heaters.
Who knows, if you say for example install 1000 turbines, you could probably advertise – “Produces enough power to heat 1000 turbines”.
Wires and heating pads on the leading edge are one way, Siemens is doing that. Hot air is another way, Vestas is do that. They point out there are big advantages in not having wires along the blade during thunderstorms. (Actually, I think they already do, part of the lightning defense.)
http://analysis.windenergyupdate.com/operations-maintenance/will-heat-be-winner-de-icing-turbine-blades
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1217693/vestas-reveals-de-icing-system
Where does the electricity come from the 80% of the time the turbines aren’t producing electricity? Oh sorry, silly question…
Why not simply coat the blades with a water repellent materials?
Where does the electricity come from the 80% of the time the turbines aren’t producing electricity? Oh sorry, silly question…
Well it is pretty silly since that this not true. I seems you are referring to 100% – capacity factor which does not represent the amount of time that the turbines are not producing electricity. It could be regarded as the equivalent amount of time that they are not producing 100% boiler-plate capacity.
I think that is usually 20%-33% pretending up on who is cherry-picking the data. I suppose you could probably cherry pick some data to match your claim of 100% – 20%.
In decades to come this one photo alone with sum up an era of stupidity,
Very often classic transmission lines come down in snow storms. That does not make them a historically stupid idea. But don’t let me spoil a good WUWT rant, folks.
Wow a defender of windmills hopes no one pays attention to the fact that his phony argument ignores the fact that wind power operates at a small fraction of its rated capacity nearly all of the time
And of course the windmill blow hard skips over the unreliable high maintenance landscape destruction part of windmills.
Hunter, it’s much worse than that. Mike ignores the repeated short term power quality problems variable sources create in any grid system with surges and sags. Energy generated varies with the cube of the speed. So small changes in wind velocity produce large minute by minute changes in energy production.
He also ignores the manufacturers’ own specifications for wind turbines. The Vestas operating manual clearly indicates that operating a turbine at 100% capacity factor will prematurely age the facility, resulting in a service life much less than the 20 years claimed.
Next, he ignores the fact that wind turbine operators only report gross generation data. Wind turbines must have excitation current from the grid to start up. Net generation is actually much less than what is typically reported.
Next, he ignores the fact that regardless of whether or not there is any wind, turbines must be turned at regular intervals to prevent flattening of the bearings. Drawing current from the grid, this again reduces considerably their net generation.
Funny thing cgh, I never read a single post from a wind turdbin enthusiast who had the remotest idea of any of the engineering concepts you mention, and Mike is certainly no exception.
Why is there never any discussion about say Germany which hasinstalled19,000 turbines
And this has not resulted in any reduction in CO2……..the same for Denmark. I thought
The whole purpose of turbines was to eliminate CO2?????
cat, there are some solutions to some of these problems. The very short term variability can be at least partially alleviated with a big capacitor bank, But it’s a large added expense, so none of them do this.
RM Flaherty, there’s been no reduction in German GHGs because of their shutdown of eight nuclear power reactors. Additional wind and solar construction cannot provide more than a very small fraction of the lost kWhs from nuclear. Each of those reactors produced about 4 TWh annually. Making up for the missing 32 TWh is mostly gas, and further down the line new lignite coal-fired plants. The remaining nine German reactors shut in the mid-2020s. Except for a trivial fraction of energy from wind, their energy too will be replaced mostly by a mix of gas and coal.
It should also be noted that Germany’s net electrical energy imports from France and Poland are rising. Just like California, Germany is at least partially exporting its electrical generation to other jurisdictions.
Because when the blades are iced, they aren’t producing electricity, so blade warmers would be a net draw on the grid. It’s bad enough the damn things are so undependable — letting them be a net draw would be too much.
“Who knows, if you say for example install 1000 turbines, you could probably advertise – “Produces enough power to heat 1000 turbines”.
That’s brilliant! Very funny! Well done.
Pfft!
Unlikely to be hot water.. more likely ethylene glycol as used in deicing aircraft wings.
They already make commercial blade warmers. Just install a set on the turbine and bobs your uncle.
http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/n-zfvgw8/mczp0fg4/products/76/images/300/kit__98095.1383427860.1280.1280.jpg
ah, but those babies need electricity
My old BMW Alpina has heated screenwashers!
So they put PV panels on the windmills to power the blade warmers. Simples.
When wind turbines are stopped in cold weather, they have to draw heat from the grid to keep the internals warmed. I would love to see the complications added of blade warmers, making these monstrosities even more expensive, maintenance intensive, and prone to breakdowns. Lovely. More of those green jobs.
That is just the claim of the greens, this kind of technology will provide more jobs, in this case to try to keep them running,
🙂
@Ric Werme
Not good enough doing just the leading edge though. The whole blade would need to be kept ice free for balance reasons.
What Mike is also ignoring, is that wind turbines USE electricity when they are not producing. They have to keep them spinning, because if they sit too long, the bearings will get trashed. Perhaps he can run some percentages on that.
“Very often classic transmission lines come down in snow storms.”
Accidental damage and hypocritical maintenance is nowhere near the same thing
” That does not make them a historically stupid idea”
It certainly makes your argument hysterically stupid.
The ultimate in stupidity !!
Ssshh!
Appears a new sport is developing for the hotblooded young!
You shoot an arrow with a fishing line couple to a heavy line the same time as a friend at a wind turbine , run like hell and watch the 2 beasts tear each other apart .
Reminds me of a story I saw several years ago. A city in Minnesota or Wisconsin had put up wind turbines. They bought them from a California company.
The various lubrication fluids used locked up in the winter.
No spin, no power.
You gotta love it. Bubble headed Californians get rich promoting this nonsense, and common sense Mid-Westerners are gullible enough to buy into it. The Californians get rich selling Junk to the people that are known for their common sense. My bet was the towns that bought that garbage were college towns full of government grant sponsored climate scientists.
What Californians get rich? The ones I know are not rich. We’ve loads of transplanted easterners, midwesterners and Canadians that all congregate in the cities, and guess where all that money is? If good ol’ Jerry would just aim his tunnels at Lake Superior, the rest of the state could go about feeding you lot like we used to.
Then there’s the LED traffic lights in Minnesota that have to have heating elements in winter. Now, they ARE still brighter and more reliable than incandescents, but the savings was not nearly what they were billed.
Writer Michael Z. Williamson observes:
Say whatever you like about Minnesota, but since they elected Al Franken to the U.S. Senate, I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the officious whiner on even the lamestream media conduits managed by the Democrat Party Audiovisual Club. It seems almost as if somebody took him down to the old swimmin’ hole and put him under with a sufficiency of cinder blocks.
(Surely that’s not true, but I can indulge my happy fantasies, can’t I?)
The biggest expense with traffic lights is not the electricity to run them, it’s the maintenance guys who have to go out on a regular basis to replace the bulbs before they burn out. LEDs last many times longer and since they are multiple bulbs, if a few burns out, the light gets dimmer, but it is still visible.
I’m originally from WI, and spent last winter there for family reasons. My hometown is the heart of cheese country. When I was a kid, all that milk was produced on relatively small family farms, and small cheese factories were scattered about both town and country. Nowadays, factory dairy farms have taken over, a couple big cheese companies make all the cheese….and a lot of former dairying families have wind generators set up in their fields.
That town was North St. Paul, MN.
Ah, but the POWER of SPIN! 😉
Writes Gunga Din:
Well, don’t blame that “California company.” With the Algore predicting that snow and ice in the temperate zone would be a thing of antiquity by 2016, how the heck could they have known that people in Minnesota and Wisconsin would be having blade icing problems?
Yeah, his internet works pretty well . .
We have a turbine within 200 yards of the extremely busy Highway/outerbelt, Imagine the damage thrown ice could do on a busy day at rush hour. Solar isn’t any better.
http://me.queensu.ca/Research/images/raking-snow-off-panels.jpg
Someday someone is going to fall off a ladder doing that and sue the solar panel company.
Best to sue the ladder and boot manufacturers as well.
And whoever forgot to fluff the snow underneath the ladder.
My point is that if it weren’t for this whole climate change nonsense, there wouldn’t be solar panels on the roof that needed clearing – but maybe I erred – he should be suing the climate alarmists for starting this whole needless movement. 😉
I get the distinct impression that pic is shopped. Not that it doesn’t accurately sum up one of the problems of rooftop solar above the snow belt.
Solar isn’t any better.
The sun and CO2 make plants and trees grow that turn into oil and coal eventually. What’s wrong with solar? SARC
Maybe I will be first to suggest anti-icing heaters in the blades, same as used on some propeller driven aircraft and also in the wings thereof.
Some IWTs have that.
No, you won’t be. Here’s a 2012 Swedish study that discusses what is ideal versus what they actually know and can do. Start around page 24. It’s laughable.
http://www.elforsk.se/Global/Vindforsk/Survey%20reports/12_13_report_icing.pdf
That study used a lot of paper and words to say… not much.
That study used a lot of paper and words to say… not much.
===============
consultants are paid by the pounds of paper produced.
@ferdberble, 4.39 pm Jan 23, That reminds of statements made years ago that computers would save the forests! ( btw I have wondered for awhile where your “ferberble” name came from?)
@ferdberple: “consultants are paid by the pounds of paper produced”
Ah, yes, the old college joke. The instructor said, “I’m grading your term papers based on quality, not quantity.”
A student asked, “And how do you measure quality?”
The instructor replied, “I weigh it on a scale.”
“ferdberple
January 23, 2016 at 4:39 pm
consultants are paid by the pounds of paper produced.”
The best analogy I have heard to describe a consultant is this;
A consultant is hired to tell you a time. They borrow your watch, read it and tell you what the indicated time is. Is it accurate? You didn’t ask for accuracy did you?! They then keep your watch and send you a bill. Cha-ching!
You must understand that here in Sweden Wind Power is very PC. It is practically sacred and can only be criticized extremely tactfully.
“That study used a lot of paper and words to say… not much.”
Big deal. A politician could use twice as many words and say nothing at all.
If we’re going to insult consultants, let me save time – have a look at our (naturally self-deprecating) “humorous” comments about me and my fellows: http://www.adrianwalsh.com.au/fun-stuff.html
I had a high school teacher who used to say that he graded papers by throwing them down the stairs. The ones that flew the furthest got A’s.
Michael 2
Too difficult to run those very, very high volt cables back up through the tower through the gears and past the drives and yaw and pitch controllers and then out through the hub and their bearings out through the blades to the heating elements. Oh. And the blades are weakened by the notches and gouges needed to route the heaters through the fiberglass and kevlar layers. Which are heavy and not aerodynamically compatible across the face and roots.
Better and safer to just shut the wind turbine down when its blades are iced up. Which is when the power is needed. 8<)
Electric deicing for aircraft propellers It’s technically doable. I leave the economics to you as an exercise.
I know there are lots of reasons it’s safe but seeing a helicopter that close to a windmill scares the willies out of me.
And the difference is the 50 meter wind turbine length and its thousands of greater mass and iced-area, compared to the 1 meter propeller blade – spinning at a higher rate of speed. the much higher speeds mean the propeller blade spins off smaller chunks of ice more easily. Kind of like trying to rotate a kitchen towel and your living room rug, or a broomstick and telephone pole.
@ RACookPE1978
“Too difficult to run those very, very high volt cables back up through the tower through the gears and past the drives and yaw and pitch controllers and then out through the hub and their bearings out through the blades to the heating elements. ”
It’s done with industry standard slip-rings.
What do you think of Vesta’s hot air deicing system? No wires, no heating pads in the blades. I can think of several problems, but if you use it as clouds are breaking up and before the really cold air advects in, it can buy you several days of production. Of course, I’d have to hate you for running wind turbines….
Ric Werme
Hot air ducted inside simple tubes within the kevlar/fiberglass blade matrix is a bit simpler for lightning protection grounding and for strength, but it needs a rotary device inside the turbine housing to allow rotation, pitch, yaw, and speed control. Possible of course, but difficult.
Windmills are NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE — and only a windmill hu$tler will claim otherwise.
(Source: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/bearings-the-achilles-heel-of-wind-turbines/ )
Windmill hu$ters like 1save can try divert attention from their sc@m all they want by talk about de-icer tech and the like, but, until there is a MASSIVE advance in bearing tech, windmills will NEVER have a positive ROI (without tax and traditional power rate surcharge subsidies).
Wow. This is the first time this has happened when I tried to access this article just now (it was accessible within the past 12 months, can’t recall last time I accessed it):
Ruth Lea in “Civitas”: http://www.civitas.org.uk/economy/electricitycosts2012.pdf)
She makes a well-researched, devastating, case establishing the fact that windmills are permanent negative ROI.
I tried adding “archive” after “uk/ and STILL “Page not found.”
Meh. Whatever. TRUTH will win, you windmill sc@mmers. The facts are already out there. Just a matter of time… until your “investment” is rusting hulk history.
Here tiz Janet.
Google electricitycosts2012.pdf
Or go to here:
https://www.google.co.id/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/electricitycosts2012.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiDuLextcHKAhVQTo4KHczdCkUQFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNEDG7ykxuxmaMJ-5AfCQu02d3gLCg&sig2=Pvssftk2w64Ijb2kW1Vcag
Mark X! THANK YOU! 🙂
It looks like the article disappeared recently; Google thinks it’s still there. Is this the same article?
JM, They seem to have a later paper they are quoting.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/Williams_SecondLookAtWindPower.pdf
commieBob! Thank you! No, but the content appears similar (just too tired of tech reading for this evening). Thank you, so much. Now, I have TWO cites in my Word file “Science for the Non-Scientist – CO2 Facts” where I only had one! Very thoughtful of you both. Sure wish you weren’t a commie, Bob, but, I’m glad you’re here.
#(:))
AND lee! WOW. THREE good cites! Hooray! Thank you, so much.
I think someone knows it’s my birthday next week! 🙂
Whee!
Alan Robertson (with ferdberple in reply) at 5:47pm also nicely address the bearing issue.
Alan R. and ferd start here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/comment-page-1/#comment-2127755
Janice and others
If you put “electricitycosts2012.pdf”, into Google search without the quotes and click on the first link, you will be able to download a copy of the document by Ruth Lea, electriciytcosts2012.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Climate Heretic
PS I have a copy if needed
Thank you, Climate Heretic.
Janice Moore et al, y’all need to put archive.org and the archive.org bookmarklet in your bookmarks toolbar (Chrome or Firefox) or favorites toolbar (IE)! It is indispensable for finding lost web pages and documents, and for saving web pages and documents for posterity before they’re lost.
I’ve put collections of bookmarks/favorites on my web site, for archive.org and several similar tools, here:
http://www.sealevel.info/archiving_tools_IE.zip
http://www.sealevel.info/archiving_tools_chrome.html
http://www.sealevel.info/archiving_tools_firefox.html
For Internet Explorer, just unzip the contents of archiving_tools_IE.zip into your c:\Users\%USERNAME%\Favorites\ folder. That should create and populate the c:\Users\%USERNAME%\Favorites\Links\archiving folder, which should appear on your Favorites toolbar.
For Chrome and Firefox, I think you can just import the bookmarks. (I exported them, but haven’t tested importing them. If the “archiving” folder doesn’t appear on your bookmarks toolbar you might need to move it there from wherever it landed.)
There are nine bookmarks:
Archive.org — “The Wayback Machine” (the biggest archiving site)
archive org this pg — finds the current page in The Wayback Machine archives
archive org save this pg — saves the current page in The Wayback Machine archives
Archive.is — another excellent archiving site; select text on the saved page to create a link directly to it
archive is save this pg — saves or finds the current page in the archives
Citebite.com — another archiving tool which permits citing a particular snippet of the save page (only minimally maintained)
Cite selection — save the current page and cite the currently selected text with Citebite
WebCitation.org — an archiving tool which can automatically email you a link to the saved page
webcite this pg — save the current page with WebCitation, and email a link
Note: For all three browsers, you should edit the “WebCite this pg” bookmark/favorite, and insert your own email address where indicated. (When you save a web page via that bookmark, it emails you a short message containing the original and saved links, which is very handy when you need to find it someday.)
Thank you, Daveburton (8:57pm), for the greatly helpful and nicely detailed archive advice. It was kind of you to take the time. I’ve saved the link to your comment!
Here you go.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150905162459/http://www.civitas.org.uk/economy/electricitycosts2012.pdf
Anyone else notice how small the copter is next to that windmill?
At first glance I thought it was a cartoon or a photoshopped pic.
That must takes lots of power to deice, or lots of that hot water they are spraying on it.
*brain explodes*
What will power those anti-icing heaters when the wind mills aren’t producing power?
Coal
Nuclear.
No, we can cover the blades & turbine housing with solar panels.
DonM — LOL. +1
The downwash from the helicopter would work just fine to keep the blades turning. They’d just add a little anti-freeze mist. Biodegradable. The antifreeze, not the windmill.
Aliens with ice scrapers?
Tie a climateer to the pole, pile wood, light?
Something that actually works?
IIRC, the first B1-B bombers did not have deicing in the wings. They lost several to icing.
Aircraft propellers spin at 1900 to 2600 RPM. Prop heat only protects the blades near the hub. There are armor plates on the fuselage to keep the ice thrown off from piercing the hull. Windmills spin at about 1 RPM. You would have to heat the whole blade. It would take tons of power.
For an ENERCON E-82 and E-70, the energy consumption of the rotor blade heating system is roughly 85 kW.
And yet their own advertising pdf file for their blade heating system claims that, without the enrgy LOST running a blade heating system in Europe – even the “running” windmills now claiming a 16-21% performance rating! – lose AN ADDITIONAL 27% to 435 of their “assumed” power output.
So, a normal windmill running in Europe (ENERCON tested their heaters in Sweden and the CZ) only generates power 16 – 21% of its nameplate rating. But apparently, even that generation “rating” is further reduced by icing between November through January into March.
We are still reading the various ENERCON heating sources available. More later.
I think they turn at more than 1 RPM. Just a sec…
In this video, chosen at random from the first ones that I could find, you can time one rotation at about 5 seconds, or 12 RPM:
Menicholas
Hmmn. Check again. I see 1 blade passing the same vertical point in 15 seconds, or 4 rpm. Careful: That is just one operation point, and your mileage will vary as wind speed changes. But there are three blades, ya know. 8<)
I was looking at the first one visible in the background at the start of the video. I just watched again, I counted to five Mississippi, slowly, for the same one to come around.
Yep, took about from .07 second mark to .12 second mark for one revolution. I think. What do I know.
That one with the red stripes is moving much more slowly…I did not watch that far the first time.
The bird chopper video below has about the same speed…five seconds per revolution. This blades are moving fast at the tips. I calculated it out once using the manufacturers specs…it was stunningly fast, because some people doubted that the blades of a “slow moving” wind turbine could be very dangerous. They are so big, the illusion of slow motion is very convincing to some people.
Pity Einstein has socialist tendencies:)
So did Jesus !!
Overreach.
No. He did not.
For just ONE example:
Jesus advocated there: 1) Liberty of contract (“didn’t you agree?”)
2) Private property (“do what I like with my money”)
3) Envy = root of Socialist’s theory
(See Matthew 20:13-15; see also II. Corinthians 9:7, “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”)
Since this is WAY off topic, I am stopping here.
Is there a source for this story please?
I suspect that the turbines were actually stopped deliberately to prevent flying ice. Would be good if you could link to more details.
A quick Google on the posted image finds this: http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/vindkraft/article3877156.ece
Thanks that seems to be the source. I wouldn’t call it ‘recent’ though as the photo is 2 years old and also says its from a test site where they are testing de-icing.
Takes 2 days of running the wind turbine to make the energy needed to de-ice it! Doesn’t seem very successful!
Or this Googled PDF link
“De‐icing of wind turbine blades by means of an helicopter opens new opportunities”
http://www.winterwind.se/sundsvall-2014/presentations-2014/?edmc=2769
John January 23, 2016 at 3:22 pm
Is there a source for this story please?
yep. read it myself a few days ago. “Go fish”.
Oh and your “I Suspect” , totally wrong.
michael
I suspect that the turbines were actually stopped deliberately to prevent flying ice.
=============
more likely to prevent flying blades as the out of balance turbine blades would make short work of the turbine itself.
https://youtu.be/8NAAzBArYdw
So sad. We know it is happening, but to see that eagle killed just because it enjoyed the air currents stirred by that murderous windmill is just disgraceful. When will these charlatans be held to account?
Question: It would appear that because these huge blades cause changes in air flow patterns the birds, particularly eagles, are attracted to wind turbines. Is that so?
And, I am appreciative of someone else somewhere in this thread pointing out that if anyone, other than wind turbine makers, built a machine that chopped up bald eagles, no matter how few, the government would have a SWAT team making a visit within hours.
I suspect that the turbines were actually stopped deliberately to prevent flying ice.
I think they stopped them to avoid what happened to the eagle to also happen to the heli.
Turbines have sensors that detect out-of-balance loading and automatically shutdown. I don’t know if the operators shut them down after sensing the loss of performance from icing or if an ice throw triggered the balance sensors.
I don’t believe birds are attracted to turbines. However, in hilly areas, turbines are installed on mountain ridges, and soaring birds use them for the thermals and orographic winds so the two are brought together. It’s important to remember that blade tips are moving at nearly 200 mph (300 kph) and are unlike any other structures flying critters encounter.
Bats do appear to be attracted to turbines, for unclear reasons. Boston Univ. researchers have some interesting IR videos showing bats flying around turbines and being hit. Most bat deaths are caused just by the low pressure zone behind the blade that damages their lungs. A lot of the bat mortality could be stopped by slightly raising the cut-in wind speed to the point where bats are grounded, but most of the turbine operating time is in that low speed regime.
http://www.bu.edu/cecb/bat-lab-update/bats/wind/video/
It appeared to me that the turbulence and not an actual strike was enough to break its wings.
Has PeTA spoken up about this? (How do I make a really big “/sarc” tag?)
Eagle, or buzzard?
Stephen, there is no doubt these turbines get some sort of special dispensation or waiver from prosecution/fines for killing large migratory birds, and birds of prey.
It is horrendous.
Then they attempt to justify it by trying to claim cats kill far more birds than windmills.
They also neglect to project what will happen to birds if and when the planned number of these choppers are built out.
Will nay birds be left after these things are coast to coast, north to south and catching every breeze? For how many years? The more I think about it the m ore outrageous it is.
But even more shocking is the utter lack of concern expressed by people who would otherwise scream bloody murder over a single bird death by any other industry.
I noted during the last election cycle the glaringly obvious selective outrage people expressed regarding things people say, wanting to have someone on the political opposition side fired or worse for any perceived slight, but not caring at all when someone on their own side made far worse comments in the same vein.
The exact same thing happens here. It reveals that many of these people and organizations do not care about the causes they harp on…it is an excuse to pursue a certain agenda against certain people.
on the subject of wasted resources… the global warming extremists will have disadvantaged the West and removed excess capital from the coffers of what,up until then, were the most generous peoples on the planet, thereby reducing the amount of future generosity which would have been spent 3-4 times more efficiently than the funds absconded by the U.N. and the bribe scientists and bureaucrats of the IPCC.
And while were on the subject of waste… how about the tragedy of burning the world’s food supply to manufacture the world’s most ridiculous fuel…ethanol. This is truly a crime against humanity and we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it happen…. with trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of barrels of oil just waiting to be fracked from the U.S. shale…. and we’re burning food that could feed the world. WHAT TOTAL CRAP these environmental whack jobs have for brains!!!
we’ll see how Ted Cruz does in Iowa in a week or so …
… for those not familiar, Cruz has spoken out against ethanol subsidies while campaigning in Iowa, massive corn grower, saying the government should not be picking winners. Iowa Governor has come out against Cruz for this – wanting to keep the trough full.
I believe both Trump and Cruz are anti-AGW scam. Cruz would make a good V-P, and between them they could knock those lying scam artists out of play.
mikelowe2013,
Don’t you see the game? Hillary is out of it. Sanders can’t beat anyone, so now “Republican” Bloomberg steps in looking like a ‘moderate’.
He’s no moderate, he is as far left as the current Democrat pack, and more RINO than McCain.
He will run. He’s a billionaire. He’s won elections, so he has the experience. The media will be in the tank for him. And Americans in general have been so dumbed down that they’ll believe the non-stop advertising about what a swell guy he is.
He’s not. He’s a one-world socialist, no different than George Soros. He’s all in for windmills, and the AGW scam, etc. He announced today that he’s “thinking” about running, and will decide by March. Baloney. He is going to run.
This is exactly what the Republican establishment wants. They are selling the rank and file republicans down the river. And I say this as someone who’s never been a Republican.
Maybe Jim Webb will toss his hat in the ring as an independent too, if he can get some donors. That would split the vote into four quarters, with the House voting on the winner. (Who might be none of the four.)
Donald Trump is incoherent; see here: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/09/17/478138/
In any case, the Trumpster is selling nothing but snake oil; he will say whatever he thinks will energize the rubes. Don’t believe a word of it. In 2012 he was against Mitt Romney’s ‘self-deportation’ idea as inhumane. Now he wants to deport all illegal aliens and ‘build a wall’. It’s just Trump babble.
Ted Cruz knows what he is talking about, and sticks to his principles. AFAIK, he is the only presidential candidate to take a firm stand against the CAGW hoax.
/Mr Lynn
Inveighs L.E. Joiner:
Or does this indicate that The Donald is both more educable (i.e., unlike his rivals Red and Blue, he actively observes developing situations, processes the information in orienting it to decision-making, and incorporates these improved appreciations into proposed solutions for the problems perceived) and less corrupt (regardless of influence by troughers with vested interests invidious to the common weal)?
Well, we can all see how that would “energize the rubes,” eh?
Anyone who votes for Donald Trump or any of the other imbeciles running on the Republican ticket should have their heads examined. In short, if any of these fools actually wins next November, the American people and the rest of the world are thoroughly screwed.
Fulminates T. Madigan (who would vote for Jerry Sandusky, running from his jail cell, were he at the top of the Democrat Party ticket in November):
So is every average American citizen not yet used to getting forcibly futtered by our “public servants”?
Better, of course, getting “thoroughly screwed” by the Republicans (nominal or actual) than done agonizingly to death by T. Madigan‘s beloved “Liberal” (or is it “progressive” again this week?) National Socialism.
Rape, after all, is not invariably fatal.
I haven’t the time or inclination to debate politics with you or anyone else here, save for your reference to “National Socialism”. If you meant to link me to the Nazis, you fail because the Nazis (and Hitler) were rightist-fascist ideologues, not leftist socialists. This is a matter of historical fact. And (by the way), your hero, yellow-haired, orangutan-like, big-mouthed buffoon (read national embarrassment – need I say more that Sarah Palin endorses him) is a Nazi lover and sympathizer.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/22/3741977/trump-retweets-white-supremecist
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-kasich-donald-trump-nazis_us_5655b553e4b072e9d1c139fa :
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
OK that’s enough of this from everyone, stop it.
Writes our host in order to prevent a sort of “Scouring of the Shire” here:
As you wish, sir.
T. Madigan: ” If you meant to link me to the Nazis, you fail because the Nazis (and Hitler) were rightist-fascist ideologues”
Wrong. The Nazis were National Socialists, while Stalin’s Communist Party were International Socialists. Ever hear of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
Look up the meaning of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
Then read this.
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html
Funny, isn’t it, how you Socialists invariably deny your association with the religion that replaced ‘God’ with ‘the State’ and killed more of its own people in the mid-twentieth century than all theologically based religions managed in the whole of recorded history?
Wrong, try again. This is an oft-cited argument, an urban myth really, used by neo-cons to bash anyone who associates them or some of their ideas with Hitler and the Nazis. Listen real close to what Trump is doing now with his rhetoric, he’s already singling out Muslims and Mexicans or any immigrants of color, *just like* Hitler did with the socialists, gypsies, the Jews and eventually anyone else who wasn’t Aryan. Hitler and the Nazis were rightist-fascists and to deny that is an attempt to rewrite history.
This famous quote of Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Socialists…”: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/germanyandprussia/fl/Was-Adolf-Hitler-a-Socialist-Debunking-a-Historical-Myth.htm: “Germans who passed their racist criteria, and submitted the individual to the will of the state, but did so as a right-wing racial movement which sought a nation of healthy Aryans living in a thousand year Reich, which would be achieved through war. In Nazi theory, a new, unified class was to be formed instead of religious, political and class divides, but this was to be done by rejecting ideologies such as liberalism, capitalism and socialism, and instead pursue a different idea, of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), built on war and race, ‘blood and soil’, and German heritage.”
http://remember.org/guide/facts-root-nazi: The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state. Totalitarian regimes, in contrast to a dictatorship, establish complete political, social, and cultural control over their subjects, and are usually headed by a charismatic leader. Fascism is a form of right-wing totalitarianism which emphasizes the subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state.
Yeppers. Exactly what Obola is doing now with his domination over the media culture, the pop culture, the academical culture, the arts culture, the national press corpse culture, the national print media culture, the national film and music culture (country excepted somewhat), the national sexual culture, the Washington beltway culture, the politically correct (er, corrupt) culture, your culture, and the Euro-union culture.
No freedom of thought, of expression, nor of the press in ANY of them. Only hatred and domination of those they wish to oppress and silence.
T. Madigan: “Fascism is a form of right-wing totalitarianism which emphasizes the subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state.”
AKA Socialism, hence Left wing, but with a strong influence from the corporates, Mussolini preferred the term “Corporatism” to Socialism.
Slice and dice it how you like, you Leftys are totalitarians.
Wrong, try again. This is an oft-cited argument, an urban myth really, used by neo-cons to bash anyone who associates them or some of their ideas with Hitler and the Nazis. Listen real close to what Trump is doing now with his rhetoric, he’s already singling out Muslims and Mexicans or any immigrants of color, *just like* Hitler did with the socialists, gypsies, the Jews and eventually anyone else who wasn’t Aryan. Hitler and the Nazis were rightist-fascists and to deny that is an attempt to rewrite history.
This famous quote of Martin Niemöller says it all: “First they came for the Socialists…”: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392
And this:
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/germanyandprussia/fl/Was-Adolf-Hitler-a-Socialist-Debunking-a-Historical-Myth.htm: “Germans who passed their racist criteria, and submitted the individual to the will of the state, but did so as a right-wing racial movement which sought a nation of healthy Aryans living in a thousand year Reich, which would be achieved through war. In Nazi theory, a new, united class was to be formed instead of religious, political and class divides, but this was to be done by rejecting ideologies such as liberalism, capitalism and socialism, and instead pursue a different idea, of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), built on war and race, ‘blood and soil’, and German heritage.”
http://remember.org/guide/facts-root-nazi: The government of Nazi Germany was a fascist, totalitarian state. Totalitarian regimes, in contrast to a dictatorship, establish complete political, social, and cultural control over their subjects, and are usually headed by a charismatic leader.
Fascism is a form of right-wing totalitarianism which emphasizes the subordination of the individual to advance the interests of the state.
It is an absurdity of the highest order to suggest that Hitler was someone other than what history and historians have recorded him to be outside of the monster he was.
T.Madigan
Strong words, but incomplete.
Anyone who doesn’t vote for Donald Trump or any of the other
imbecilesestablishment-elite-despised candidates running on the Republican ticket should have their heads examined. In short, unlessifany of these fools actually wins next November, the American people and the rest of the world are thoroughly screwed.There. That’s better. I do suppose you have some justification for your hatred, your version of your statement, right? (Other than your desire for the prolonged death of millions of innocents by starvation, illness, cold and disease as innocents die in squalor forced by YOUR artificial energy prices and deliberate energy deprivation worldwide? )
OK, I read the Donald Trump statement:
I consider climate change to be not one of our big problems. I consider it to be not a big problem at all. I think it’s weather, I think it’s weather changes. There could be some man-made something, but, you know, if you look at China, they’re doing nothing about it and other countries are doing nothing about it. It’s a big planet…
Sounds good to me.
Funny to hear someone wail and moan that a certain candidate will say anything to get elected!
No way, what politician would ever do that?
HAH!
Which one ever did not?
“In decades to come this one photo alone ***with*** sum up an era of stupidity,…”
Should be ***will***.
Great icon of the utter futility of the whole decarbonisation meme though!
“heating the blades — this may require 10%-20% of the turbine’s nominal (rated) power”
thyristors (to graduate the connection and disconnection between generator and grid) — 1%-2% of the energy passing through is lost”
thyristors are used as switches, not as heaters. if they heat up, it is bad. they are great switches because they are so fast the power never gets to build up, so they stay cool even when switching a large current.
There’s a thing used on aircraft called a de-icing boot, I’m not sure how widely it’s used, but I saw it in action when I was in (either a Cessna 310 or a King Air, can’t remember which). It’s an inflatable covering over the leading edge of the wing. When ice starts to build up, the pilot puts some air to the boot, it inflates (not by much, and not enough to change the wing profile too much), and the skin of ice just breaks up and falls off. You wouldn’t need wires in the blades.
The thing that I’ve noticed about wind turbines though, is that they are always breaking down. It’s so common to see 1 or 2 turbines not turning in a field of a dozen or so, that’s become what we expect. They aren’t very reliable now, and the more add-ons you modify them with, the more unreliable they will be. So if they ice up, better just leave them till the weather warms up.
The windmills are not analogous to the wings of an airplane, they are analogous to the propellers. Putting blow ups on propellers is very difficult as you would need an o ring (or such) that could take high rpm’s.
The windmill blades are larger than most jet airplane wings. A few less flaps true, but just as large, and subject to more vibration and stress because they are constantly in the turbulent air just above ground level, then the smoother winds at blade top elevation, then the turbulence at ground level again. And again. And again … each revolution they “land” and “takeoff” with no damping system or fixed airplane mounts to reduce vibration.
The full quote is even better:
Well if the Universe isn’t infinite, whatever is left over must be.
Only, that would means that the Void between the Universe and Infinity wasn’t Purgatory after all, it was instead filled with human stupidity.
Hard to imagine something that is infinite expanding.
After all, what is it expanding into?
And since the word itself encapsulates everything that exists, what does it even mean to have anything beyond it.
But if nothing is beyond it, what is it expanding…
Call me John Snow, because I know nothing.
And we are all John Snow.
Let wind turbines be the symbol for the eco-fascism that has dominated the West since the turn of the century. Let the infamous hockey-stick be its sword, a solar panel for a shield.
I hope Josh wanders by your comment.
Good one, indeed, Mr. Valencia!
Or… hockey-stick for the hammer
and a windmill blade for the sickle… on a blood red background, of course.
A solar panel as a grave, a windmill as a tombstone, and pushing up a hockystick.
(NOTE: I am not saying this is not laughable.)
Here is an article, referencing this particular picture from the Swedish magazine NyTeknik:
“Kostnaden för att avisa en turbin motsvarar två dygns elproduktion. Beslutet är enkelt om man har ett nedisat vindkraftverk och vädertjänsten lovar fortsatt kyla, säger Mats Widgren.”
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/vindkraft/article3877156.ece
Roughly it says, to deice one turbine, using a helicopter cost about the equivalent of 48 hours of electricity production. The article mentions that the truck produces some 44 cubic meters of hot water overnight and then the helicopter shuttles to the turbines with hot water.
It works well in -20C weather.
It can take up to hour and a half to clear one turbine if it is heavily iced.
The article goes on to state that deicing equipment is installed, but better solutions are being engineered and built.
The place is in Boden, northern part of Swede.
P.S. The Swedish commenters are pissed off about this too. However, the commenters go through the calculations and figure that the 48 hour number is about right.
One commenter makes the point that why do they bother with wind at all? Sweden has Hydro and Nuclear power. All none C02 producing!!
Does this also cover the cost of the helicopter and crews. Check out the cost to rent a helicopter these days. this is a little Bell G2. I would say we are talking about 400-500/h for a sturdy ship for this kind of work.
Apparentley stupidity is universal.
Gary P. Yes it was to cover the helicopter, crew etc.. This would not be your normal “rental” which is very expensive, I agree. These are on contract so they work on lower margins.
From experience, I would estimate minimum $1000 per hour of flight time. Hard to see but I believe this is a Eurocopter AS350 B3 , a pretty common machine for light work. It uses 190 Litres of fuel per hour.
http://www.gsheli.com/fleet/astar-350-b3/
From a site dedicated to destroying wind turbines. Interesting Bloomberg chart of new investment in European renewables.
“Wind Power Investment Collapses in Sweden, Denmark, Finland & Norway”
http://stopthesethings.com/2015/10/08/wind-power-investment-collapses-in-sweden-denmark-finland-norway/
Detailed Analysis: 5-Minute dispatch price reached the Market Price Cap (MPC) of $13,800/MWh in South Australia for dispatch interval (DI) ending 0750 hrs.
=================
yikes! That is a wholesale price of $13.80 a KWh. While the retail price is around $0.10 a KWh. What can possible go wrong? How long can you sell something [retail] for 10 cents when it costs almost 14 dollars to buy it? Someone (guess who taxpayer) is going to end up owning a bankrupt industry.
here in Queensland some years ago, the Govt introduced a scheme, to pay solar producers 44cents a KWh for feed in from their solar panels, to encourage people to install solar panels.
If you sell your house it is not transferable, or if you upgrade your small system cancels it out.
Wonder why if its such a good scheme, because the balance of taxpayers are paying the smart ones who are on this soo called great scheme.
Also this year the power companies are I believe are introducing a fee for having solar panels, and selling them power, do they want more of us to go off grid, NO COURSE NOT THEY SAY.
My thoughts on this are unprintable, but it has occured to me, that if a lot of us solar producers got together and switched off our feed in, say at 8am in the morning when demand surge starts, the power stations would not be able to spin up their turbines fast enough to make up the demand load, brownouts at the very least would be a possibility.
Solar panels owners unite, we do have the power!!!!!!
Lyn Roberts if all solar producers went off at once no one would notice
Perhaps give it a try.
off peak for water heaters only might be 10c a kwh
mines 12.9 in vic
avg price of power is anywhere from 24 to 30c a kwh dayrates in aus
To rescue a turbine in distress, they heat 40m3 water to 60C from possibly 7C. The system was “invented” and tested earlier 2015.
I am sure the birds love the warm shower.
They would if they hadn’t been killed by the big blades!
Win-Win. Duck soup.
Love it, coudn’t agree with you more, chicken soup anyone.
If we enter a period of Global Cooling those windmills will blend into the frozen environment well. That’s all they will do because they would [not] be producing any electricity.
…won’t be producing…
Hey, maybe the breeze from that helicopter’s rotor can get that windmill spinning!
/snark
@ PaulH, Thanks for the laugh!
Wouldn’t “hot” water freeze on contact in cold temperatures.
I have experience de-icing aircraft with hot glycol. Hot water was used to remove wet snow not thick ice.
I don’t think it is reasonable for us to expect that the windmill industry can or should learn from the experience of the aircraft industry. It is always better to spend (someone else’s) money to reinvent the wheel. [sarc]
The article explains that they can deice down to -20C, or about 0F. They use high pressure and high flow rates to succeed.
Swedes know their engineering. They didn’t go out there and guess. They developed this, and figured out the cost. So, the numbers work. In addition, the crews watch the weather forecasts. They are not going to do this if it is going to ice up again. They get that.
As Davidq says, they state the energy for deicing is compensated in two days production. The question is though for what Capacity Factor? At the moment is is really calm in Boden in Sweden, see DMI chart: http://www.dmi.dk/vejr/til-lands/byvejr/by/vis/SE/606531/Boden,%20Sverige/ where it looks like 1m/s for the next days.
the energy for deicing is compensated in two days production.
———————————
good thing they only have to de-ice them once a day! I thought for a moment there that they were losing money on the deal.
The *cost* of the deicing is equal to the value of two days’ power production.
Knowing the way wind power costs and earnings are counted; it is very likely that the 48 hours or production are counted by using consistent theoretical full power generation.
On another note; distribute free beer and Schnapps to any allegedly wind power advocates willing to show up in -20°C for their favorite intermittent power.
Distribute double beer and Schnapps to all disbelievers of the CAGW cause and their shallow beliefs in free energy.
That way, perhaps, they could collect and use certain excess human fluids and perhaps save the truck’s water heating expense.
Summary of Wind Turbine Accident data to 31 December 2015, global.
Caithness Windfarm Information Forum
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/AccidentStatistics.htm
Can download a complete list of global accidents from this page, from 1980 to 12/31/2015. 175 pages. Contains description of what happened, where, and links to original story or authority.
Skim the descriptions of what happened for 2015.
http://oi63.tinypic.com/t7g7te.jpg
These 250 kW turbines operated from 1987 to 2006 and were removed in 2012. They were replaced by 14 1.5 MW GE wind turbines 1.5 miles away that have been operating since 2007.
“Magma
January 23, 2016 at 5:48 pm
These 250 kW turbines operated from 1987 to 2006 and were removed in 2012.”
How much CO2 was emitted in their making? How much CO2 was emitted in their dismantling, removal and disposal? How much CO2 was “saved” during their lifetime?
So 20 or so year lifespan for these “power plants”? Before ObamaRegs, what was the lifespan of coal fired power plant?
MRW
A long list indeed. Many thanks.
In fairness it includes petty councillor in Llanfihangel not declaring a interest.
Also, the last fatality given was in May 2015.
Auto
Dumping on renewables is sort of an odd thing to do here. Who cares? One frozen turbine in Sweden is not the sum total of the wind turbine industry around the world. Wind energy is actually now very cheap to produce. Intermittency is the main barrier to still overcome, but if electricity storage costs continue to drop then wind/solar plus smart grid plus energy storage will be cheaper than coal or nat gas power within 10-20 years just about everywhere.
Set aside the issue of AGW, which I agree with has a lot of problematic elements to the hypothesis. A world energy grid powered by non-fossil fuels will mean much less air pollution and much less money flowing to oil producers. Both are goods that are worth it alone IMO. I have solar and drive a hybrid, and do so because it saves me money, not to save the planet.
Over half the total new electric power generation capacity installed in 2015 came from renewables. We are in an energy transformation, and unsubsidized grid partiy is getting closer and closer.
Yup, solar and hybrids subsidized by the rest of us. Let’s see how you feel about your hybrid when you have to replace it’s batteries. The real reason for the new generation capability is “renewables” is because of politics not because they’re viable.
The subsidy works for me (to whatever extent hybrids are subsidized; they cost more). Two hybrids. Don’t give a rat’s about the Carbon. Sure do save gas. A good thing, because last time I checked there was no backup.
If we all had stockdoc’s mentality he world would be square.
A square world !!….that takes me back –
“Renewables” or not, ANY intermittent power source cannot be relied on for base load power. Customers want the energy when they turn the switch (they are funny that way) and really don’t want to wait for the right amount of wind to blow or the sun to come up or the clouds to go away. Therefore ALL electric utilities MUST spend capital to make electricity during the non-sun, non-wind times. Fuel costs are a VERY small fraction of the total cost of providing electric service ‘on demand’.
Effectively, this means that capital expenses must be made for so called ‘non-renewable’ energy sources anyway and all renewables do is fractionally reduce the total energy costs charged to consumers. In other words, total ‘renewable’ capacity built in any given year simply doesn’t count!
all renewables do is fractionally reduce the total energy costs charged to consumers.
================
in point of fact they do not. they significantly increase the energy costs charged to consumers because of the way the wholesale spot market works is in conflict with the guaranteed feed in tariffs. If renewables were to directly compete in the wholesale spot market like every other power producer, the problem would sort itself out in short order, as every renewable scheme would be immediately bankrupt.
Who has the graph handy that shows cost vs percent of renewables installed, by country.
It is pretty clear, wind and solar drive up the cost of power, and not just a little.
“A world energy grid powered by non-fossil fuels will mean much less air pollution and much less money flowing to oil producers.”
When and how?
“Over half the total new electric power generation capacity installed in 2015 came from renewables. We are in an energy transformation, and unsubsidized grid partiy is getting closer and closer.”
What? Where?
Renewable and Clean ? – got a long way to go
In 2012, the wind business produced more toxic nuclear waste than the nuclear business –
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
Low-Carbon ?
Here’s an estimate (can’t confirm) of the CO2 generated in the construction of a bird beater (personally, I am a big fan of plant food) –
http://stopthesethings.com/2014/08/16/how-much-co2-gets-emitted-to-build-a-wind-turbine/
like hydro electric schemes
=================
hydro dams silt up. there is no renewable energy source on earth. they all have finite lifetimes. solar degrades. windmill bearings wear. everything has a lifetime.
renewable energy is like rechargeable batteries. in theory they are great. but how long do they last in your cell phone? evidently your cell phone is somehow different than a theory.
What is wrong with solar panels on your roof that charge your electric vehicle? Pretty efficient in my book. Local production. Local use. No (30%) transmission losses. Gotta keep that battery charged, but hey, you can run out of gs too.
gymnosperm
Few cars are at home (in most scenarios) to “hook up and charge” from the solar panels at home when the car is used for a commute to a distant parking lot during a normal work day.
Oh, and when a “city” tries to install only TWO “recharge” points in the city garage? Our local “city” tried that 2 years ago. Needed $25,000.00 dollars to but and install only TWO PLUGS. Now, how much gas can you buy for $25,000.00 dollars (NOT counting the electrical bills needed to PAY for that re-charging service) if the plug in receiver at one location costs $25,000.00?
Fair enough. Out here in California I see executives in their Teslas demanding electrical hookups at work so they can drive home. Imagine the Janitor demanding gas money for the drive home…That doesn’t work. It has to be in situations where the commute is limited to the charge range.
Chances are a whole wind farm would be affected. Do they have wind farms of one? Renewables? That’s a joke! Name one renewable that would be possible with out nonrenewables! Plastics, electronics, lubricants metal alloys. If we run out of oil there will be no more wind mills or solar panels.
String a whole bunch of pin-wheel/wind turbines together and expect to produce a reliable source of electricity. Can be done on paper but not in real life.
Wind farm/power plants exposed to the forces of nature. Transmission lines can also ice up and come down or be blown down.
Problem is you cant prove this until the turbines and lines are installed and don’t work. Something can only be proven after the fact and renewable energy developers know this.
and unsubsidized grid partiy is getting closer and closer. Just like the tourtoise and the hare.
More like Achilles and the Hare – great little Lewis Carroll math fable.
Taylor
What does it mean “but if electricity storage costs continue to drop”? Costs are not dropping because there IS no such storage technology.
“…will be cheaper than coal or nat gas power within 10-20 years…”. Would that be the same twenty years that is going to give us LENR and commercial cold fusion? I thought so!
I’ve got no problem embracing technologies which make economic sense, I’d just rather wait until wind turbines make economic sense, before politicians rush off to spend my money to embrace them.
Not even one little kissy kiss and huggy-poo?
“Intermittency is the main barrier to still overcome”, which is ironic, because you will never ever get over the intermittency of wind.
Regards
Climate Heretic
No, they have top men working on the problem of convincing the wind to blow reliably and at a constant speed.
Are you implying the wind is immune to reason and appeals to logic?
Stockdoc77:
Are we talking installed over the entire world or just the US? I would like to see a justification for this claim given that China and India are building coal-fired power stations at a pretty good clip. New generating capacity in those two countries dwarfs everyone else.
In the US, regulations and subsidies have massively intervened to circumvent actual sound economic decisions, resulting in whatever the current (get it?) stats are.
Penalizing things that make sense and paying people to do things that do not is not exactly the same as making something profitable or sensible.
Not the last time I checked, anyways.
“Stockdoc77
January 23, 2016 at 4:16 pm
…will be cheaper than coal or nat gas power within 10-20 years…”
Like fusion, eh?
“Over half the total new electric power generation capacity installed in 2015 came from renewables.”
And the rest was installed as back-up for the renewables. /sarc
The weasel words are “capacity installed” It will actually produce about 20% at best of its capacity.
Good on you, Stockdoc77! Thoughtful, sensible, insightful post but don’t look for a pat on the back here. Any positive aspect (to your post) will be turned on its head and inside out. Good try though and don’t give up! Keep doing what you’re doing because that *is* the solution. We can’t look to the various governments to solve this. It will come organically and internally, very much like what you’re doing. Again I say, good on you!
T. Madigan
A founding member of the” flat earth society “
@Stockdoc77: with this reply from @nottoobrite, I rest my case! Flat earth society, really! LOL, your moniker speaks volumes about you, quite accurately too, I might add. Cheers-exit laughing out loud! You made my day!
…You want it, YOU pay for it !!
If it is so cheap how come
1) It needs to be subsidised ?
2) EON have just cancelled its major windfarm developments as being not viable without subsidies ?
The fact that we are no longer building enough power plants to replace capacity being retired is nothing to boast about.
@ Keith, +many. This is not a joking matter, with the shut down of coal and natural gas fired plants and the restrictions on fracking this is going to be a disaster if it is not already. I wonder how Britain and other EU countries are going to do in the next year or so, the MSM everywhere is eerily silent on all of this.
Stockdoc,
Yo’re ignoring the fact that windmill power is nuts. Well, for everyone but bureaucrats and windmill sellers.
It might sound good. But is it good?
Keep the government out of it and let the market decide. (No false profits from government subsidies.)
Since electric powered cars are used to drive to and from work they are used from 6AM to 8AM and 5PM and 7PM. Here at over 42 degrees North there is little sunshine from 8PM to 6AM for half the year. Realistically batteries cannot be charged from solar for commuting. Makes solar just a scam for cars. Figure snow on the panels, cloud cover, inefficiency of the panels and transmission/control losses of the system and you get pretty close to zero for solar energy input to commuting.
The poor performance of reasonably price hybrids can be duplicated by cutting horsepower and driving like a hybrid owner. Unsubsidized low performance, really small, gasoline powered cars would save more.
Teslas are fine but at what cost? Chevy volts don’t sell because they don’t function well.
Unless you have a really big roof and lots of lead-acid batteries in your basement you must charge off coal and nuclear since they are what carries the grid at the subject time.
@ John H Harman 8.49 am. And if you use batteries you better make sure they are deep cycle ones and those are not cheap!
I have thought about that hydrodam silt.
It should be dredged. Can it be used as topsoil, once dried out?
Maybe.
At least someone had the foresight of keeping a helicopter around for de-icing. To get more power, each wind turbine should come with a helicopter. They can tie the rotor of the helicopter to the turbines.
They’ll de-ice it, and it will freeze up again tomorrow. 🙂
Only if there are clouds or precip.
The photo shows rime ice, that’s from cloud droplets.
The Swedes know this. They don’t deice if it is going to be a waste.
Of course they know. But idling several days would also add to the 48 hours to make up for it.
But if you run the turbine for 48 hours to “make up for it” haven’t you just wasted / lost 48 hours of production time?
I mean . . there aren’t 367.25 days in a year.
The deicing doesn’t “make up” the cost. It allows power production for several days that would otherwise have been idle. (And remind the neighbors how nice life was without the incessant noise and infrasound from the damn turbines.)
“I mean . . there aren’t 367.25 days in a year.”
Oh, I see what you did there!
I think they should make the turbine blades out of solar panels. The solar power so generate can operate heating coils placed along the length of the core of each blade. No more iced up turbines and the overall installation is double-green.
/sarc
Mike,
If I may refine your inspired idea a little further, to overcome those grey days, when there is no wind, nor any sunlight, the local unicorn farm will be contracted to deliver unicorn farts, for warmth, and methane [Natural Gas], which last can be used to power micro-generators for the warming of blades, de-icing of blade-mounted solar panels, etc.
Triple Green – no?
Auto
Mods – /sarc, hey?. Unicorns, like oryx, and most deer, appear unfarmable.
Good point Auto!
They will need extra power to de-ice the solar panels which are attached to the blades and pylon. Or, someone can invent solar panels which are also structural steel members and lightweight wing material.
For that matter, once they invent those things, we can just build everything out of solar panels.
Did anyone read about the plan to make roads out of PV solar bricks/panels? What an idea…cars would just need a metal rod sticking down to touch the road to suck up power, just like those old racecar tracks we used to use as kids.
Wake me up when someone invents PV solar cells in a can of spray paint.
“and much less money flowing to oil producers” Are you happy that carbon trading is taking over from oil and gas? I am sure the trading will be all above board and honest. What does carbon trading do anyhow besides enrich middlemen? How about the vast amount of land being taken over by bird slicers
I think they got this backwards. They should be building power plants to spin the windmills so they will cool the environment. /sarc
An alcohol fluid weep is a fairly low tech answer that has worked with wings and propellers. Applied successfully, it would do little to make windmills ‘smart’.
Low altitude aircraft only. There is also the rubber boot leading edge expansion/contraction deicing technique. My father flew both prop types for USAF. They must work, since he died of old age rather than wing icing. Some great family stories.
Wind turbines apparently fly neither. Stupid renewables.
They should use a plastic sleeve over each blade and pump it full of CO2.. Just need to keep an eye on it so they don’t damage the blades from the heat.
For f***’s sake, could people please stop attributing any portentous/pretentious quote about the universe to Einstein? This one is not from any published work by Einstein. Unlike many ‘Einstein’ quotes it does at least have an identifiable second-hand source, but not a particularly reliable one.
But it’s CUTE!
“I never said half the crap people claim I did on the Internet.” Albert Einstein
Pardon, but wasn’t it Abe Lincoln who said that?
Some days…. that could be me.
(to compare very small with great).
Okay, okay, OKAY, Knights and Brian H, “I.” It just sounds so snobbishly pedantic these days to use “I” instead of “me” that I’ve stopped using it in some contexts.
I’m confident that Moses never said it.
I am pretty sure Einstein and Abe worked together to come up with that one.
They always did work well together, those two.
Alan Robertson
January 23, 2016 at 5:51 pm
Pardon, but wasn’t it Abe Lincoln who said that?
~~
No, he said, “The problem with the internet is it’s hard to determine the veracity of a statement. That’s how WWI started.” He said that in 1885.
They don’t de-ice the blades so much in order for them to produce again energy, as to stop them from being a dangerous weapon capable of throwing away huge blades of ice as they rotate again. They are possibly spending more money that they will produce with it, but they are potentially avoiding the need to pay huge compensations.
Exactly so. It has happened that a wind turbine has hurled javelins of ice at the public.
In the future, wind turbine javelin throwing will be an Olympic sport.
In Vermont, Wind opposition is being made illegal without a law license, according to this article. Thought that it should be passed on.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/01/23/big-green-tyranny-vermont-signals-citizens-opposing-wind-energy-now-requires-license-to-practice-law/#sthash.3hkoAKgl.dpbs
And
‘Vermont’s Energy Siting Struggle Hits Crescendo’, Jan.21, 2016
What started as a letter from Rutland regarding a lack of local control over renewable energy siting has culminated in an 86-town strong “Vermont energy rebellion”.
http://www.watchdog.org/254581/vermonts-energy-siting-struggle-hits-crescendo/?preview_id=254581
Wasn’t always, but Vermont’s a Blue state. Like everyone else, let’m learn from their suffering.
R. Farrier — HOW CREEPY.
I just read this today in the Carl Sandburg biography of Abraham Lincoln:
(Source: Abraham Lincoln — The Prairie Years and the War Years One-volume Edition, 1954, p. 53)
Well, not any old opposition, but helping abutters prepare challenges to PSB (Public Service Board) meetings, something she has done on her own time and not as a lawyer. The PSB issues or denies permits for the turbines and the hearing are run like a trial. New Hampshire has the same arrangement through the Site Evaluation Committee.
It appears the wind developers realized they can shut up Annette Smith by siccing the Attorney General’s office on her. She hasn’t been charged yet, but you don’t reply to a criminal investigation by the AG without spending money on lawyers.
I’ll be donating some money at https://www.gofundme.com/74kx663w
[“… helping abutters” ?? .mod]
[“… helping abutters” ?? .mod]
Hmm. Well, Baptist were originally called “Anabaptist” because they were against infant baptism. (The thinking being along the lines an infant couldn’t decide what they believed.) The “ana” meaning “against”. In Greek sometimes an “a” added to a word meant the opposite.
Perhaps he meant those that are against spewing the crap? 😎
…
abutter (redirected from abutters)
Also found in: Thesaurus, Legal.
a·but (ə-bŭt′)
v. a·but·ted, a·but·ting, a·buts
v.intr.
To touch or end at one end or side; lie adjacent.
v.tr.
1. To border upon or end at; be next to.
2. To support as an abutment.
[Middle English abutten, from Old French abouter, to border on (a-, to from Latin ad-; see ad- + bouter, to strike; see bhau- in Indo-European roots) and from Old French abuter, to end at (from but, end; see butt4).]
“Stop talking about my abutt!”
-Annette Smith
How long before opposition to “Green Crap” will be legally declared to be “Hate Crime”?
@ R. Farrier, I wonder how many “elected” municipal councils have that requirement?
You people are all confused about the meaning of this photo.
The whole point of erecting wind turbines was to put a stop to catastrophic atmospheric warming.
And this turbine has clearly become a victim of its own success.
If it wasn’t for wind turbines like this then children wouldn’t know what a helicopter de-icing a wind turbine was…
Wait a minute – now I’ve confused myself… 🙂
Hilarious. The only problem is that the photo is from a test of a deicing system developed for wind turbines lacking integrated deicing systems, and was carried out in February 2014 at the Uljabuouda wind farm in northern Sweden just 40 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
Marc Morano failed to note this when he assembled a grab-bag of “gee it’s cold” links to reply to the warmest year on record announcement by NASA and the NOAA. I guess Marc doesn’t like extreme engineering either.
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/vindkraft/article3877156.ece
http://windren.se/WW2015/WW2015_13_312_Gedda_Deicing_helicopter.pdf
http://winterwind.se/2012/download/5b_Rudholm.pdf
Sure. You are right.
So now provide the UK National Grid wind capacity factor for that year, or since. If you dare. I think you will dare not, since the numbers are horrible.
Capacity factor of almost 26% in 2014. If you think that’s “horrible”, bear in mind the wind is free.
Magma – oil and gas is also “FREE”, you just have to drill a hole in the ground to get all that “free” energy. Like WInd turbines – the wind is free but getting it is not. Which one produces the most concentrated economical energy?
Wayne has forgotten about the costs of oil refineries, navies to defend shipping lanes, the War or Terror, and so on.
And Magma (and Felix, it appears) have forgotten that the cost of production, installation, and maintenance of a wind turbine are less than break-even BUT FOR tax and or traditional power customer rate surcharge subsidies.
GREATER “than break-even” (oh, brother)
Felix and Magma forget that concrete, steel, electronics and plastics are required in wind and solar power systems and thus NOT free! They still need to be mined, refined and produced. All the times I have dug holes in the ground I have never ever found shrink-wrapped copper cables with terminators fitted! NEVAH!
Correction, LOL! Not shrink-wrapped cables. Cables with plastic heat-shrunk (Heat-shrink – It’s really amazing stuff these days) insulation on them. Sheesh…I forget the technology sometimes.
Magma, you say “bear in mind the wind is free.” But by the same logic, petroleum is free also. It is in the harvesting and conversion of one form of energy into another that a cost is derived. Wind carries momentum that must be harvested and converted into electricity, just as petroleum has chemical energy that must be harvested and converted to electricity. This “wind is free” meme is pure nonsense, but you guys still use it since it fools the rubes. Wind may drive a sail boat, but the minute that ways to drive a ship with steam were invented was the minute that wind power of boats became untenable. Cabin cruisers might cost more to fuel than sail boats, but the sail makes it far more expensive still.
I would suggest not installing wind turbines where thy might get iced up – Sweden, Norway, Finland, New Hampshire, Montana, etc….
I would agree that the wind is free, until you ask the wind to do some work. So off shore power only cost the consumer 300% (wholesale) more. I love Green Logic. If the consumers ever figure it out, they will be pissed. Well, those that have not frozen to death due to high rates.
Here is an English translation of the first link in Magma’s post.
Somebody upthread seemed to want to tell me that wind is approaching grid parity.
Then can they explain to me why we in the UK are paying £150/MWh to offshore wind energy producers – when the current wholesale price is £50/MWh.
And we are large scale adopters. At what point do those promised economies of scale actually kick in.
Because – I’ve been waiting a long time. And three times the regular electricity price doesn’t look like approaching grid parity to me…
we in the UK are paying £150/MWh to offshore wind energy producers – when the current wholesale price is £50/MWh
==========================
that would be your average wholesale price. When wind farms are producing your wholesale price probably drops to zero, or even goes negative. You end up paying £150/MWh for something that is worse less than nothing, Something similar to garbage, that other people would gladly pay you good money to simply take it off their hands.
And wind farms are not producing? Well your wholesale price probably jumps to a whole lot more than £150/MWh, and the baseline producers can take turns simply not producing and jack the prices up to the sky, and bleed the system dry. Because in the end the baseline producers now need to make their money when the wind doesn’t blow, which means they need to increase their prices to cover the times when the wind blows and they have to sit idle.
So it is a lose-lose for the taxpayer and consumer.
Here in the UK frozen and broken wind turbines would not be such a bad thing.
Provided that they are listed as operational – then the operator could potentially receive a massive payment for NOT operating them.
Which is a win win, if you happen own a dysfunctional wind turbine, which you weren’t planning on operating anyway.
And a lose lose, if you happen to be a user of grid electricity in the UK.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/wind-farms-paid-53-million-to-switch-off-last-year/
indefatigablefrog
I’m uncertain how it works in the UK, but here in the colonies, it REALLY helps if you are an Obama donor. In fact, if reported incidents are accurate, it’s almost required.
Yeah, it’s more or less the same sort of situation here. Or possible much worse.
Here, the same people who can vote in parliament for legislation also head the companies that get the hand-outs.
The same people can even stand on enquiries that dismiss allegations of manipulation of data.
Not focusing on any one member of the house of lords, in particular:
“Climate sceptics questioned whether Lord Oxburgh, chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables, was truly independent because he led organisations that depended on climate change being seen as an urgent problem.”
http://www.thegwpf.com/lord-oxburgh-cru-inquiry-chairman-has-a-conflict-of-interest/#sthash.8TKw9EyO.dpuf
Easy, you can achieve grid parity by jacking up the cost of traditional sources (fossil fuel) with taxes, regulation, carbon surcharges, etc.
Yep – that’s clearly the plan.
To jack up the costs incurred by anyone trying to generate cheap conventional.
And to dish out heaps of free cash to anyone promising to create a renewables “miracle”.
In the end – the prices of the two will meet half-way.
Half-way between cheap and absurdly expensive.
Oh, I thought it was a typo and he meant to type “grid parody” . . 😉
Major Uh Oh.
The east coast storm has dumped several centimeters of snow on the E!Musk-SolarCity panels of home-roofs.
Problem 1) No electricity.
Problem 2) Extra weight on roof (roof designed and built in the ’60s – ’70s at sub-code standards.)
Problem 3) E!Musk High-Tech Super-Duper storage batteries at zero charge.
No worry, E!Musk “Industries” will still get their Federal and State subsides and E!Musk will still receive generous kick-back cash from State Governor’s Office and Federal Agencies.
Ha ha
PS E!Musk has Little Trouble in BIG Nevada!
I had forgotten how funny that movie is.
+10
WTF ?????
It’s important for the blades to slowly turn, in order to prevent brinelling of the turbine bearings and races. There is no known lubricant which can stay in place and provide a cushion between metal surfaces under such intense pressure, without constantly replenishing the squeezed- out lubricant, by rotating the blades.The damage increases with time, until the surface area of the indentation/bearing surface reaches equilibrium with the force causing the metal distortion. The turbine in the photo now has a diminished bearing life.
There is no known lubricant
=============
the ugly truth about size. double the size, 4 times the area but 8 times the weight and therefore double the pressure. as turbines get bigger the bearing pressure increases until no material can withstand the pressure.
windmills are like hard disks. The manufacturer’s quote MTBF of 1 million hours, when in reality the devices have a life expectancy more like 50 thousand hours, similar to other mechanical devices.
mtbf of a wind turbine is around 6 weeks about 750 hours.
And lets not forget brinelling of idle bearings leading to failure.
“ferdberple
January 23, 2016 at 6:18 pm
The manufacturer’s quote MTBF…”
An often misquoted and misunderstood measure of reliability (Mean Time Before Failure – MTBF). Most Mfg’s quote this for an individual component. Once you start putting them together to make something useful the MTBF figure drastically reduces. It’s not a very useful index on reliability IMO. It’s a bit like global average temperature. Rather meaningless but a nice “feel good” factor.
ive wondered a lot about why the hell dont they use the upright Venturi style drum rotors
would sort the bearings off kilter issue wouldnt it?
and theyd still spin if icy
and NOT wipe out birds
Vertical-axis turbines “look cool” but have poor efficiency. The problem is fundamental, because at any given time half the blades are being pushed by the turbine Into the wind.
Most obviously, that means that only half the blades can be doing useful work. But that’s only part of the problem.
The relative airspeed seen by the blades going the “wrong” direction is higher than the airspeed seen by the blades which are capturing useful wind energy. Since wind resistance is proportional to the square of the wind velocity, the faster the turbine spins the less efficient it is, because the rate at which the blades going the wrong direction waste energy increases faster than the rate at which the blades going the right direction capture energy.
(It’s not clear whether vertical axis turbines are really any better for birds, either.)
Because they are even less efficient than the 3 blade up-wind pattern.
as wind is a low density resource the unit needs to be big & high to capture max amount of turbulence free air, those requirements bring ‘challenges’ .
For a reliable output those ‘challenges’ maybe worth the effort,
For an unreliable intermittent output…definitely not.
For a vertical axis turbine to have the same swept area that a 3 MW Horizontal axis turbine does, lessee, https://www.vestas.com/en/products_and_services/turbines/v90-3_0_mw says 6,362 m^2. That’s 1.6 acres or 0,6 hectares. A typical cross section has a height that’s twice the width, say 60 x 120 m (that’s a little high, but even with adjustable blades, you can’t get peak energy out of the geometry, I think you need something much larger).
That’s just about the size of a football or soccer field. So I’ll let you figure out a design for the cylinder and find bearings that will support a center axis.
Hmm. I think my analysis is hopelessly broken. That Vestas machine has a tip velocity between 100 and 200 mph. If we need speeds like that, how can a vertical axis system possibly scale up to that size?
Wind power- a medieval failed technology being foisted on a gullible world by rent seeking cronies.
Nice epigram, Hunter. +1
Wicked giants! Don Quixote was RIGHT!
It was not a failed technology, in it’s day. It ground grains for bread making on a large scale. It also drained low lying lands such as in Holland. It made it’s mark, but we have better technology now. But power derived from wind is several steps back from where we are to where we once were. Wind and solar have their place in small and remote areas, but large scale base load? Nah! There is only ONE genuine “CO2 free” large scale power generating technology we have available today, and that is nuclear. And that won’t happen (Until the decision makers wake up).
I agree, Patrick. Obsolete would be a better adjective there.
And, GO, NUCLEAR POWER!
In the medieval, it may have been the best available. But it ain’t now.
I sincerely hope that “CAGW” inspired regulations don’t make it so.
Wind turbines use the hefty equivalent of between 8% to 14% of the electrical power they profess to produce as a drawback from the Grid when they are not generating power themselves.
This drawback of [ fossil fueled ] electrical grid power is carefully concealed and never publicized by wind farm operators and is not metered nor paid for by the wind farm operators.
It is used to run the electronics, to maintain the correct temperatures in the various oils used in hydraulics and bearings and gearboxes.
It is used to both brake and maintain the braking of the blades and for turning the turbine into or out of wind when not operating and for altering the blade pitch.
It is used in some makes of turbines to heat the blades for de-icing as our headline post depicts, a blade heating that might require 10% to 20% of a turbine’s nominal power output.
———————
[ quoted from the AWEO source as below ]
Grid power is used in;
[ magnetizing the stator — the induction generators used in most large grid-connected turbines require a “large” amount of continuous electricity from the grid to actively power the magnetic coils around the asynchronous “cage rotor” that encloses the generator shaft; at the rated wind speeds, it helps keep the rotor speed constant, and as the wind starts blowing it helps start the rotor turning (see next item); in the rated wind speeds, the stator may use power equal to 10% of the turbine’s rated capacity, in slower winds possibly much more”
&
Could it be that at times each turbine consumes more than 50% of its rated capacity in its own operation?! If so, the plant as a whole — which may produce only 25% of its rated capacity annually — would be using (for free!) twice as much electricity as it produces and sells. An unlikely situation perhaps, but the industry doesn’t publicize any data that proves otherwise; incoming power is apparently not normally recorded. ]
——————————
Grid power is used by wind turbines to very slowly turn the blades on the big wind turbines to prevent slow creeping deformation and bending of the turbine blade shaft from the weight of the blades, a similar problem to that which large stationary single or twin shafted ships propellers shafts suffer from as do the very large steam turbine shafts in the big steam powered electrical generation plants when the turbines are down for maintenance and are stationary.
That 8% to 14% estimate [ it can be much higher in some circumstances ] of grid power drawn back from the grid is never accounted for in both the claimed total output of power and the real financial costs to the public of wind turbines in the very dubious and heavily promoted propaganda of wind turbine industry.
Ref; Energy consumption in wind facilities
http://www.aweo.org/windconsumption.html
It reminds me of a story I saw about traffic lights, where they had switched to LED lights instead of incandescents and they had frozen over so you couldn’t see them, the old lights produced enough waste heat that it kept them defrosted automatically.
I wos gunna get a dgree in climit chnge but they woodn’t tak me on as I wos over qualified. I upgraded to the man hat holds the stop sing at street worxs
Wel dun. 🙂
***it is this sound advice?
22 Jan: Union of Concerned Scientists: Mid-Atlantic Blizzard to Cause Coastal Flooding
Flooding May Cause Property Damage and Power Outages, Likely to Occur More Often in Future
Meanwhile, UCS released an analysis in October that showed coastal power plants and substations—including in the Delaware Valley and Hampton Roads, Va., in the path of the blizzard—could be exposed to storm surge. If flooded, thousands of customers could lose power…
***The report also called on utilities to invest in wind and solar power coupled with energy storage that can provide power even when the electric grid goes down…
The report found that several of the utilities that may be affected by the blizzard have been dedicating insufficient attention to the present-day threat, let alone the significantly escalated future risks driven by rising seas
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/mid-atlantic-blizzard-to-cause-coastal-flooding-0661
would solar panels be providing households with much energy during the current blizzard when many of them are covered in snow?
how much energy is wind & solar sending to the grid during the blizzard?
fortunate that the blizzard has hit over the weekend when electricity demand is low, I guess.
Do they even have a clue how often they happened in the past?!? Or do they know but choose to ignore it for a present gain?
They have this idea that subsidizing renewables today is like subsidizing the railroads back in the day. That progress is inevitable. Put the pony express right out of business. What they don’t understand is that the subsidies must be judicious. Our forebears seemed to have had a better sense of that.You can’t just pick anything and call it progress.
Carbon dioxide is less than half the GHG they think it is. Their heads are squarely up their buns. In a way it is like the foolishness about Sodium. It has been well known since the seventies by anyone with a clue that Sodium is harmless and it is actually the Chlorine in table salt that causes hypertension. CO2 has become a proxy, like Sodium, for a larger agenda to get away from petroleum. A tangent of this is socialist, but my sense is this will not resonate widely.
Humans have a natural repugnance for oil. Don’t believe me? Get out there and change the oil in your car, and grease the front end while you’re at it. Slime yourself with it first with it all, it’s inevitable.
This is the larger and more resonant issue.
Huh? I bet a lot of folks on this site have (or maybe still do) change the oil on their vehicles. I live in the country. I am not about to load a few thousand pounds of equipment on a trailer just to change the oil, nor am I going to take my quad or other farm implements to town for maintenance. And yes I grease my tractor but my truck and car have greaseless front ends – truck has one grease fitting on front drive (I am not sure I like that as it seems that you end up replacing the parts instead of servicing them.) At 69, I can still maintain my machinery – but then I live 25 miles from the nearest small town and 60 miles from a major centre. I keep oil and grease on hand like everyone else in this part of the country. Nuthin’ like the smell of a little oil and grease to whet a lunch time appetite.
Good for you! A couple years younger, I do the same, but it doesn’t whet my appetite for anything but a hot shower.
The problem can be easily resolved using an existing patented electrothermal nanocoating on the blades to keep them heated to above freezing.
Yes, indeed. Industrial wind turbines will be seen in the future as a monument to the stupidly of today’s main stream media and their obedient servants in government – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gliVowu7xCo
Maybe not . . things could change. I say start taking parts out at random, and putting parts in at random, and get the power of Evolution working for us ; )
Build hot wind tunnels around them. At least the birds won’t get spliced.
Having thought more deeply about this problem since writing a few minutes ago… the wind tunnel can blow hot or cold according to the weather. Our Prime Minister Turnbull is running on Innovation. This should get me a big fat grant.
If occasionally needing to use combustion devices to de-ice them was anywhere close to being the biggest problem in replacing combustion devices with wind turbines for grid power, such replacement would almost make sense.
I agree that the above photo is ridiculous indeed but I see some strange things being said on this forum about wind so I’d like to share these results I did some time ago after a row here with Richard S Courtney who said that wind turbines are net consumers not producers of electricity (based on a conversation he had with a NGUK manager at a conference years ago!). I gather he is not the only one here who believes that.
I used the national load data for the Republic of Ireland and the wind production data. In the table I rescaled things to kW but in reality they are in GW (rescaled by a factor of 100,000 – 1.8GW of wind in ROI in 2014 and scaled here to 18kW). Can’t quite remember why I did that but it has no impact on the point I am making (just read the values as GW/10). In 2014 19.6% of all electrical power consumption nationally was from wind. I haven’t yet updated my figures for 2015. The capacity factor of wind in ROI in the period 2001-2013 is 29% with a median of 29.4% (this is about twice that of Germany from memory). Min annual wind production remains a 0MW much to the annoyance of the wind industry here. The spatial diversity they had pinned their hopes on hasn’t worked (known well in advance that winter blocking anti-cyclones would cause such results).
I also got data for CCGTs and their inefficiencies at part loads (they reduce as it is loaded less). From the table below you will see the effect of doubling and trebling the amount of wind capacity in the Republic of Ireland. The model I built curtails wind to the load (loss of production). In reality the CCGT efficiency figures are better as you would be dealing with a portfolio of generation plants and not a single one as I modeled here. Portfolios run more efficiently than single plants at part load.
From the result you will see that the amount of fossil fuel burnt is indeed less (last row). I accept for other fossil fuel technologies such as coal these gains would be much less as coal burning plant is much less suitable for pairing with wind as CCGT. Please note the results are calculated form real world measured values and not model projections/predictions/whatever!
http://s19.postimg.org/mnoso31pf/Wind_Scenario_Table.jpg
I just hope that these real world results show some here that wind does indeed produce real electricity and reduces fossil fuel consumption (NB: I am making no claims here re the economics of wind power which, experience has shown, requires 100% backup – storage, interconnector or OC peaking plant).
I just hope that these real world results
These are not real world results. These are claims made by extrapolating 2X and 3X wind from 1X data. These are exactly that, extrapolations, not “real world results”.
show some here that wind does indeed produce real electricity
Well of course they do, I recall nobody saying otherwise.
and reduces fossil fuel consumption
Again, of course it does, but by what amount? The direct reductions are off set by the very factors you admit to next:
(NB: I am making no claims here re the economics of wind power which, experience has shown, requires 100% backup – storage, interconnector or OC peaking plant).
And there is where the argument for wind comes off the rails. Not only is it not economical, but as the percentage of wind power increases, it must become even LESS economical. The larger your % of production is wind power, the larger your investment in the building and maintaining of backup, storage, interconnector, etc. It isn’t a straight line. A grid with 10% wind power can adapt to wild fluctuation in wind with some careful management, one that is 50% wind would require massive investment in idle infrastructure, making the whole thing less economical, not more. Those negative economic impacts must be recouped somewhere, and the only place that they can be recouped in from non wind energy sources.
Having see richardscourtney in action on matters such as this, my guess is that you would do well to review what he said with an open mind.
‘These are not real world results. These are claims made by extrapolating 2X and 3X wind from 1X data.’
Firstly the 1x data is real and it shows the fossil fuel reduction. The extrapolation to 2x and 3x is reasonable and is based entirely on real world results – that is what I meant. Just because modeling has been used and abused in climate science doesn’t mean that calculating things on a reasonable basis is invalid.
‘Well of course they do, I recall nobody saying otherwise.’ – as I said Richard S Courtney said so many times and believes so. I have seen other references here to wind being a consumer not producer of electricity. Good to see you don’t buy that nonsense!
‘Again, of course it does, but by what amount? The direct reductions are off set by the very factors you admit to next:’
In terms of fuel savings on production was the main point I was making. You now are going at the total energy costs of wind aspect. I haven’t studied that here but it has been studied in much detail even back to the energy to mine the materials to build the turbines. It too shows a positive energy production. From memory, I recall that mid sized turbines were net energy positive after about 7 years. It would be shorter for modern larger ones.
Wind has been very lucky in the development of OCGT and CCGT plants alongside it as it has matured. They are ideal partners for it. Distillate fired OC plants are low on capex but expensive on running costs. On a life cycle basis they are good backup for wind and minimise the backup costs.
However, I did say I wasn’t addressing economics in my post just the impact of wind on fossil fuel plants and claims made here that they caused more energy to be lost due to increased inefficiency that they do energy produced. I have shown through real world actual demand and production data from 2013 in Ireland that that is nonsense.
I know wind is expensive but the argument for it is more about energy security for Ireland than anything else. Ireland relies on a very very long pipeline from Eastern Europe to supply most of its generation plant and using indigenous energy resources makes sense for us from a security perspective. Also we get at least twice the output from a turbine compared to many other locations in Europe. The cost to electricity consumers in Ireland for wind energy is quite reasonable and we are now close to producing nearly 25% of all electrical demand from wind. I know the savings reduce and the table shows that clearly (particularly for 3x).
here’s real world and not pretty –
http://notrickszone.com/2015/02/07/germany-2014-report-card-is-in-its-25000-wind-turbines-get-an-f-averaged-only-14-8-of-rated-capacity/#sthash.AQdV3SsA.dpbs
Bubba – Those figures confirm what I recollected that Ireland’s capacity factor is about twice that of Germany. I am surprised Germany is so enthusiastic about it as it really doesn’t have a very good wind resource at all. 2014 was a reasonable performance year in Ireland but the annual cf has varied from under 22% to over 36% (they are the 95% CI actually too).
EIA report that typical capacity factors for fossil fuel plants range from 31-60% in the various regions around the world. Hydro power ranges from 15% to 57% and nuclear from 48% to 90%. I’ll try to see if I can calculate weighted averages for these. Ireland’s cf of 29% is higher than the highest regions in the world (US & Africa @ 27%) going by the figures in their report.
Hopilte;
I know wind is expensive but the argument for it is more about energy security for Ireland than anything else. Ireland relies on a very very long pipeline from Eastern Europe
Ah. You go to great lengths to demonstrate that that using windmills reduces CO2 production, but when challenged on the economics suddenly it is about energy security. You explain carefully how wind can be combined with OCGT and CCGT for backup, leaving your energy security 100% relying on the exact same very very long pipeline from Eastern Europe. Further, if the goal is energy security, then there are other options more economical than wind.
I begin to have a sense for why richardscourtney would have gotten frustrated with you. Me, I’m just amused.
No David you appear to be unable to read and comprehend what you read. First off I SPECIFICALLY stated I wasn’t discussing the economics but the issue that some people believe wind is not a producer but a consumer of electricity. That AND THAT ALONE was the point of my post. You alone here don’t seem to have understood that.
Only an idiot believes that wind is cheaper than fossil fuels. I never said it and never believed it. I, not you, pointed out that wind still has to have 100% backup pointing out how that affects the economics. You never challenged me on any economics at all – I didn’t discuss the economics. I suspect I know a lot more about the economics of wind than you do. For your information Ireland produces >20% of its electricity from wind and it costs us an annual premium of around E100 each for it (not all of that goes to wind). Hardly what you would call gouging our eyes out, distributionism or communism! Oh, and last surveys I saw the vast majority of people are in favour of wind investment in Western countries. So, I guess it is the people’s choice and not our political masters’.
It strikes me that you are having a row with yourself. You seem to be the type that would argue with his own shadow.
Hoplite January 24, 2016 at 10:53 am
Like wow.
You’re clearly an advocate of wind.
You began by showing that wind is a net reduction of CO2. Fine. But you claimed “real world” numbers from what was clearly an extrapolation, not real world. I pointed out that efficiency and economics change considerably when wind becomes a larger part of the total production. Then, YOU said that the real reason to go wind was energy security! I pointed out you don’t achieve that by going with wind because you still need the gas pipeline for backup. Which generated a snark attack questioning my reading comprehension. Nice,
Point Hoffer.
Game, set , and match.
@David ‘from what was clearly an extrapolation, not real world.’
Unbelieveable. The x1 is real world data!!! I paired it with real world efficiency figures of a CCGT and showed it does indeed reduce fossil fuel consumption. But you still can’t get that fact. THERE’S NO EXTRAPOLATION IN THE X1 DATA!! Get it?
I’m not an advocate of wind but am certainly an advocate of the truth. I said part of the reason for wind was increasing energy security. You read that as no more fossil fuels!!! People who actually understand the complexities of these matters, know that reducing fossil fuel consumption increases energy security as the existing fuel facilities will last for longer in the event of a crisis in supply/cost or whatever.
There’s really no point in my debating this with someone who has as closed a mind as you do.
1. I didn’t say there was extrapolation in the 1x data. I said there was in the 2x and 3x data.
2. You didn’t say “part” of the reason was energy security, you said energy security was the “primary” reason.
3. Your explanation of how this improves energy security implies a fundamental misunderstanding of storage capacities and the practical use of one type of fossil fuel (coal, oil, etc) to replace the utility provided by natural gas. They simply cannot help each other on a time frame that would mitigate an energy security problem like a pipeline burst.
You end by resorting to more insults. Bye.
In New Zealand (NZ), helicopters are sometimes used to “stir” the air on frosty nights to save grapes. Much better use of the technology than spraying frozen turbine blades. Can’t eat a turbine blade, but I am sure I can down a glass of NZ sav blank from the Wairarapa!
And as an ex grape grower and a wine makers assistant up here in the (currently partly) frozen north I totally agree. A StoneLeigh Sav Blanc is one of the best, I guess Kiwi’s don’t have rocks in their heads but use them for making a great wine! ( we also use them to “dry” cherries around picking time to prevent splitting).
As we do up here in Canada, we do the same thing during our cherry harvest and blossom time to prevent early frost damage and later splitting, and your Wairarapa StoneLeigh Sav Blanc is one of the best on the planet. (I grew grapes and worked in the wine industry) It goes really well with lamb and red salmon!
Yes, we do the same up here in Canada including our soft fruits, ( For instance early frost and preventing splitting of cherries at harvest time). Stone Leigh’s Sav Blanc is great!
Yes Asybot and Tboias, having lived in the Wairarapa I can attest to the fact that is a rather nice wine indeed.
Hoplite,
To derive an ROI on a wind turbine, did you subtract (a) the energy invested on manufacture, installation, maintenance & decommissioning from (b) the anticipated total energy output of the turbine over its lifespan?
In your argument you only cite figures for energy production.
Khwarizmi
ROI = ‘Republic of Ireland’ not ‘Return on Investment’
Always best to qualify a TLA.
BTW, I lived in Waterford.
After reading this exchange, I have decided it would be a fine and dandy idea to learn to converse exclusivity by the use of three letter shorthand phrasing.
Dang autocorrect. Doh!
And these total energy costs have been done in extensive studies as I posted up above. Don’t have direct links but read them when I did these about 18 months ago.
well, with global warning no more frozen blades in sweden…we need more global warming to prevent global warming.
Worth repeating here this one.
Electricity Costs: The folly of wind-power
by Ruth Lea
January 2012
© Civitas 2012
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541)
email: info@civitas.org.uk
Or even better: at this link
Mis-posted this below. Wonderful reference. Thank you.
Yes, indeed, Berenyi Peter! Sorry I did not acknowledge your kindness above. THANK YOU to you (and also, again, to Markx, lee, commieBob, Climate Heretic, and daveburton for the links to the Lea articles) for that link.
And here is the link (again) to Alan Robertson and ferdberple re: bearing failure: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/comment-page-1/#comment-2127755
The first rule of enerconics is that if something doesn’t make financial sense it very likely doesn’t make energy sense. So, despite all the blatant lies from the wind industry, it is very likely that putting up wind means there is a net increase in energy usage compared to more cost effective options like coal and gas.
The reason is simple:
ALL ENERGY IS FREE – what costs/absorbs energy is the means to harvest it – and that means costs more for wind than e.g. coal.
Wonderful reference. Thank you.
Green energy schemes aren’t about saving CO2 but making money at taxpayer expense.
@ LarryFine, 1.26 am: Green energy schemes aren’t about saving CO2 but making money at taxpayer expense. it is more like TAKING money at the taxpayers expense
@tobias smit America’s almost got a handle on that.
The irony of using one of the least efficient forms of vehicle to defrost wind turbines. Perhaps we will develop solar powered helicopters one day…
Lawrence
After you – for being a passenger in one of those.
Never liked them when going out to the ESV in the North Sea.
And Solar Powered – in Sweden or the UK especially – reeks of implausibility.
Auto
@ Janice Moore
I must assume from your aggressive comments – January 23, 2016 at 6:17 pm
( “Windmill hu$ters like 1save can try divert attention from their sc@m” ) &
( “until there is a MASSIVE advance in bearing tech, windmills will NEVER have a positive ROI”)
You are either drunk, stupid or ignorant possibly a combination ?? but you are definitely ignorant of the engineering facts.
Over the last 20yrs there have been MASSIVE advances in bearing technology but they have had little bearing on ROI (see what I did there !!), whereas advances in electronics allowing change to direct drive thus reducing fail points has.
I could wax lyrical about the superb engineering & technology that goes into a wind powered generator, but that doesn’t make it an appropriate technology. ( If you want to plough a field do you choose a Rolls Royce or a John Deer ? )
I found it strange YOU accuse me of being a “Windmill hu$ter” as I’ve been an active member of Anglesey Against Wind Turbines http://aawt.org.uk/index.htm for the last 7 yrs & have on numerous occasions presented evidence AGAINST their deployment.
Many years ago when I entered engineering, I was told “if you don’t know the facts, keep your mouth shut & learn them”….. it’s been excellent advice.
New Hypothesis !!! Ice Age returning. Arctic Cold sweeting down over Quebec these the last number of years, does not allow the Low Pressure Systems north as far as before. Therefore Montreal is no longer in the Snow Belt. The Low Pressure now take a 90 degree right over the Eastern USA. Just look at Boston last year and New York this year. Thus Proves my Hypothesis.
Wait a few days, it will be snowing in Montreal.
If for no other reason than you said this.
Gaia hates being told what to do!
“1saveenergys
January 24, 2016 at 3:16 am
Over the last 20yrs there have been MASSIVE advances in bearing technology…”
Yeah, like what? Go on, enlighten us ignorant people. I am all ears to this new MASSIVE advance in bearing technology. Bear in mind I am a trained engineer who worked to tolerances of +/- 2 microns.
I’m with Patrick MJD as the bearing journals for windmill gear boxes are machined like the ones in the gear boxes for the really BIG Caterpillar machines. I know because Dial Machine here in Rockford Illinois machines both. I actually saw bearings for both but was too busy to closely examine them. They were not very different or even busy I would have learned about them.
Here in Rockford we produce magnetic levitation bearings. They are too costly and unreliable to be used for intermittent machinery. For really small stuff they are battery powered and just too darned expensive to get much use.
“John H. Harmon
January 25, 2016 at 5:37 pm”
The only application of magnetic bearings (They don’t work on the horizontal plane, so will never work in a wind turbine) that I know of as an experiment was in a flywheel device on trams to store braking energy and then use that energy stored in the flywheel to power the traction motors. I understand it was binned, partly because of cost, but also an already well established technology was available; regenerative braking. While it works differently, it returns power to the supply lines while “braking” (Using the traction motors as generators creating a “drag” or braking effect) and thus, effectively, saving energy.
1saveenergys
@Janice” Moore ” should say” Less ” up until now she/he has posted 18 comments on this thread (to say so much and know nothing ? not normal!
This, from someone who cannot tell whether ” Janice ” is male or female name ?? Strange !!
Oh, it is ON now, buddy!
What a lot of energy wasted by so many people raving about this particular photo. I wonder how many of you who commented here have actually bothered to read the Swedish article which is the source of the photo? Do you know what the photo actually shows? Ah, you don’t understand Swedish? Well, if you really cared, you could use Google Translate, couldn’t you?
The article is about a guy who claims to have invented a genius idea – and the photo shows an experiment of his. The original article explains that the turbines have an electric heating foil on the rotor blades to prevent ice growth. Mikael Lindmark from Blaiken Vind is quoted as saying that this technique generally works well but that ice which lowers production forms even so. Therefore, the 30 new turbines which are to be installed in the park in April have received a dual anti-icing system – both a laminated electrically heated foil on the rotor blades and the hot air circulating inside the leaves.
Both methods are already in use in many turbines, but Mikael Lindmark says he has not yet seen them combined in commercial operation.
“Anyone who builds wind turbines in cold climates have to deal with icing problems, and my assessment is that the loss of production is around ten percent on the turbines whichh have a de-icing system,” said Mikael Lindmark, CEO of Blaiken Wind.
For some reason, this information was not included in the IceAgeNow article or the many other climate-sceptic sites who seem to be up in arms over this particular photo – because they don’t have a tradition of checking their sources.
On a personal note: I lived in Copenhagen four years with my family, we lived less than 500 metres from a huge wind turbine. I never saw ice on it in that period, and have never heard about it being a serious problem.
Apart from that – why is this so different from worrying about that driving coal supplies to a coal-fired power plant also becomes problematic in cold and snowy weather? – when snow falls as it does in the USA at the moment, for instance…
Mike,
You’re missing the big picture: windmills are über-stupid. They should not be publicly funded. No one in their right mind would prefer windmills over fossil fuels or nuclear if they were paying the bills.
The problem is that the so-called “green” lobby is just a cover for the hard Left. If you ignore what they say and watch what they do instead, it all becomes crystal clear.
Mik Aidt says:
********Apart from that – why is this so different from worrying about that driving coal supplies to a coal-fired power plant also becomes problematic in cold and snowy weather? – when snow falls as it does in the USA at the moment, for instance…
********
That’s what coal storage piles are for. Recover from the local storage pile during nasty snowstorms, etc. Deliveries can resume when conditions improve.
Mik Aidt
Appreciate your input.
One minor point, if I may?
No icing in four years on a huge wind turbine in Copenhagen.
I’m sure you are right; Urban Heat Islands do get everywhere, don’t they?
Auto – tongue only a bit in cheek.
Copenhagen is a port – but in an area of ‘shallow’ [so easier cooled] water.
Mik AIdt: lots of variables but wind industry studies say icing can cause a 20% reduction in production – when the cost of running the de-icing system is included. Older wind turbines must be shut down for de-icing, some newer ones with vibration and flexible leading edges can de-ice while spinning. Some of the latest ones have the ability to run in high winds by adjusting the blade pitch even while de-icing. However, it all reduces the generating capacity. Figures vary dramatically from article to article so there really is no way to know except to look at name plate capacity versus production.
Here is an old but interesting study, including painting of blades with black ice shedding material:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165232X10000108
Worth repeating here this one.
Electricity Costs: The folly of windpower
by Ruth Lea
January 2012
© Civitas 2012
Civitas is a registered charity (no. 1085494) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales (no. 04023541)
email: info@civitas.org.uk
Or even better: this link
Scrap the wind turbines and scrap the solar farms, solar arrays, utility-scale solar power stations (heating towers with heliostats), etc. Lets do it since that is what is being advocated. Forget “climate change” and “Global Warming”. Let’s go back to the 1960s, before there were regs on leaded gasoline, and have a merry old party producing energy the old fashioned way, completely with fossil fuels. Lets get drunk and have a party with the oil, lets swim in it, have coal-burning parties, lets go back to coal-fired steam locomotives–lets do all these things UNTIL IT ALL RUNS OUT (yeah, I know there’s an abundance of coal but you can’t put coal in your gas tank like bio-diesel or propane, right?). Then we can all go back to the stone age and make fires scrapping to pieces of flint together so we can cook and boil water. Sounds like a great plan.
• “Scrap the wind turbines and scrap the solar farms, solar arrays, utility-scale solar power stations (heating towers with heliostats),”
Agreed, not fit for purpose of running a grid.
Some merit for a few stand alone projects – Water pumping & Desalination
• “but you can’t put coal in your gas tank like bio-diesel or propane, right?).”
Wrong !!
have you never heard of Coal liquefaction or coal gasification ??
Reliance on ‘unreliables’ is the quickest way to take us back to primitive times.
However we do need to be less profligate.
The most foolish thing about your comment is the total fantasy that oil or gas etc. will run out ALL AT ONCE as though it is some big bucket under there and you are certain we are approaching the bottom. Nothing could be further from the truth.
1) NOBODY actually knows how much is down there, 2) Oil exploration thus far has only scratched a very TINY percentage of earth’s God given bounty, 3) Technology keeps coming to the rescue to both find more oil and also find new ways to get such as fracking.
Please reconcile the fact that there were people just like you saying exactly the same things about “peak oil” doom ~50 years ago for exactly the SAME reasons and they were just as wrong then as you are now.
I also find it odd that some people will point to a global temperature trend as evidence of climate doom but then are forced to ignore the trend of ever increasing oil production in order to proclaim FF energy doom.
There have been predictions saying oil is going to run out in twenty years going all the back to the 1800s.
And there are oil fields which are being recharged from below as fast as the oil is drawn out of them.
The reservoirs that allow oil to be extracted are only a sort of catchment…places where the right geologic conditions exist to trap and hold oil in a strata that is sufficiently permeable to allow for efficient extraction.
And even after tertiary recovery techniques have needed and a formation is considered tapped out, about half of the original oil remains. Future technology may well allow recovery of all of the oil, and if this is the case it doubles the amount available in one fell swoop.
Also, recharge rates for many fields is such that wells that were capped decades ago can now be reopened and production resume.
The amount of oil ever drawn from the Earth is tiny on a geologic scale, about the volume of a single large mountain. The equivalent, volume and proportion-wise, of a bacteria taken off the surface of a cur ball.
The world, solar system, galaxy, and entire universe are awash in energy on a scale so titanic we can barely conceive it, just like we can barely conceive of the actual volume of the Earth beneath our own feet.
We should get our energy from where it is cheapest to get, period. Anything else is economic death by a thousand cuts.
Sorry about the typos, need coffee.
Have ended,
Cue ball.
T. Madigan the Well-educated, Economic-Illiterate.
As others have pointed out, fossil fuels will gradually run out. As long as you allow the free market to work, futures traders and fossil fuel producers and their competitors in the power-generation market will be very aware of how much is plausibly left at any given time and the price will reflect that.
As the resource diminishes, the price will go up. Alternatives which were too costly to research and or produce before will be able to get market share… gradually.
Also! Take heart!! HUMAN INGENUITY IS! Not all that long ago, people were worried about the telecommunications industry: COPPER IS RUNNING OUT. If you had been around, you (on behalf of the string-and-can hu$tlers who fooled you) would have run over to the local paper and screamed, here, print this!!!:
And then…. along came…… silicon….. .
*********************************************************
Suggestion: add to your fine education these 3 courses: Econ 101 (Macroeconomics), Econ 102 (Microeconomics), and Econ 102 (Applied Economics). You will sleep better at night — and vote for candidates who understand how scarcity and technology and free markets work. AND YOU WILL BE HAPPIER!
Dear T. Madigan,
Please forgive the overly harsh “economic illiterate” name-calling above. There is no excuse. I’ve just had to deal with one-too-many unthinking liberals this past week… I guess. Anyway! Please forgive me. I, for my part, am definitely “astronomy-illiterate.”
Hoping you learn some science (and economic 🙂 ) facts at WUWT (and elsewhere),
Janice
Correction: “…..Then we can all go back to the Stone Age and make fires scraping two pieces of flint together so we can cook and boil water. Sounds like a great plan.”
Further to my point, Einstein’s famous quote, that you shamelessly used to describe the de-icing of wind turbines in the opening photo, rather than describe it as being necessary in a few instances (compared to their world-wide deployment in all different types of climates) for continued use in cold weather (whose total energy output over their useful life times far outstrips the energy needed to de-ice them a few times), more so epitomizes the ongoing folly of continued reliance on and consumption of NON-RENEWABLE fossil fuels!
I see you are mad again !!
calm down
😉
Are you really that stupid or are you just practicing to be a liberal politician ??
Well then shouldn’t they be using whale oil to de-ice them or at least use palm oil from farms in Indonesia that displaced rain forest habitat for orangutans? Both are renewable resources correct?
Maybe that’s why they are allowed to kill so many endangered birds ?… Chicken fat for re-greasing the ball bearings !
Hypocrites, you’d think they would have at least devised a way to use a large kite to lift the water up to the blades?
There are heat absorbing colors, why not flat black. I would like to know if this could reduce the number of birds killed buy these things. All I have seen are painted light colors or even white and not black. Why is that?
Or coat the blades with this stuff – http://www.neverwet.com/ or PTFE etc.
Why bother? Don’t throw away money or risk lives, just let it melt naturally. It’s not like it produces any significant power…..
And how did the grid respond when the turbine(s) shut down?
Anyone who votes for Donald Trump or any of the other imbeciles running on the Republican ticket should have their heads examined. In short, if any of these fools actually wins next November, the American people and the rest of the world is thoroughly screwed.
I suspect you are related to Illinois Speaker of the House Mike Madigan ( Speaker for 40 years). We have no budget but figured a way to spend more money than we raise. Now THAT is talent. A Government that cannot pass a budget to designate on what it’s money is to be spent is spending more than it raises.
A State that is totally broke cannot allow “fracking” in Southern Illinois to provide taxes and jobs when “fracking” was common there in the 1950s.
Wells drilled in the 50s are now surrounded by corn or beans within 30 feet even though mud pits and dump points for produced water (mixed with oil, of course) covered more than an acre.
Watermelons lie. It is what they do. We now actually know that each doubling of C)2 will raise air temps .14 to .55 degrees C. We know the period 1926 to 1945 was warmer than the last 20 years, yet, the watermelons tell us the oceans will boil without windmills.
Even Trump sees through the CO2 scam.
If coal and hydrocarbons really were bad only nuclear would replace them for grid-supply purposes in the near term.. Watermelons oppose nuclear in the “developed” world but aid Iran in building reactors. Wow!
I hope your car breaks down on way to vote .
Anyone who votes for Donald Trump or any of the other imbeciles running on the Republican ticket should have their heads examined. In short, if any of these fools actually wins next November, the American people and the rest of the world are thoroughly screwed.
Any fool who voted for Obama should have his head examined.
I recall people saying exactly the same thing about Reagan as they’re saying about Trump at this point in the campaign.
But maybe the polls are all lying, and Bernie Sanders is the guy everyone wants, LOLOL!!
Pretty scary when you think about it !! Half the liberals want an elitist who will probably be in jail next year for incompetence and other crimes, while the other half wants a socialist willing to raise the the debt by another TRILLION dollars !!! NUTS !!
See my reply to @Tucci78, above: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/comment-page-1/#comment-2128286
Hmmmmmm…Too lazy to retype it or too stupid to copy it ?? Hmmmm, choices, choices !!
One whole helluva lot more than one trillion, Marcus. A trillion is the new billion…chump change for gubnamint big spenders. Hell, we are already at close to 19 trillion, IIRC.
Bernie wants free everything, for everyone, forever…and send the bill to the fat cats.
Just do not run the numbers, nooo, do not do that.
You mean it’s possible to even more “thoroughly screwed” than we’ve been by Obama?
I admit, I never thought we’d could have a less honest, more selfish, more despicable President than Hillary’s husband. If Hillary or Bernie win, I’ll need to set a new low standard for that high office.
Lets agree to disagree; thanks.
I think it is the widespread and systematically articulated irrational concepts used in the climate change debate that the pic illustrates. It is not insanity. Insanity could not create the comprehensive complex ‘mimicking of science’** that led to the absurd in the pic. It is an academic philosophically irrational world view, it is not insanity. The antidote is merely scientific and philosophical systems based on objectively verified reasoning.
** ‘mimicking of science’ is the essence of the concept of pseudo-science
John
The debacle comes from politicians who see some shyster’s pitch and say “hey, that looks good, let’s build 20,000 of ‘em.” A rational investor would build one and run it for 10 years first, then make decisions.
@pochas94 . . . and probably sell it as a carnival ride. Elevator. Ferris wheel seats hanging from blades. One of a kind . . .fast . . . exciting
Well at its either paid for by the government, which is perfectly understandable as they want to just count how many watts they produce. Or its paid for government-subsidized private enterprise and the private enterprise is just trying to earn mark up on expenses. Or its paid for by private enterprise, likely soon to be out of business. . . .which is probably the most outstanding attribute of the private enterprise system.
@ commieBob
January 23, 2016 at 4:32 pm
Electric deicing for aircraft propellers It’s technically doable. I leave the economics to you as an exercise.
I know there are lots of reasons it’s safe but seeing a helicopter that close to a windmill scares the willies out of me.
I was sorta hoping that the blade would break free and twat that squirrel…
@RACookPE1978: see my reply to Trump lover above (@Tucci78): http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/23/saturday-silliness-wind-turbine-photo-of-the-year/comment-page-1/#comment-2128286
Hmmmmmm…Too lazy to retype it or too stupid to copy it ?? Hmmmm, choices, choices !!
[??? Let each other writer decide how he/she/it decides to write and repeat answers. The more difficult somebody makes an answer become visible, the less likely it is to be read by anybody. .mod]
Marcus slinks away mumbling to himself !!!
Well I thought it was funny….which really doesn’t help much !! D’oh !!
If you want to have a reasoned discussion, stop with the ad-hominems, you will end up talking to yourself. Neither, I don’t have the time and no matter what I say, it will be a waste of whatever time I’ve invested in my reply.
Hilariously, T. Madigan postures:
Oh, my. Our host having asked us to forego “reasoned discussion” with T. Madigan anent this “Liberal” fascist’s political malignancy ’cause it would sizzle him like any other grease spot on a barbecue, how should we address this and other toxic spew therefrom?
By the bye, buchen, how do you differentiate your socialism from national socialism from the socialism being implemented by the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP)?
The candidate teetering at the top of the NSDAP presidential polling – the lady who’s wearing orange so often now, we might suppose, in order to get used to what she’ll likely be wearing every day after she enters the federal prison system – couldn’t seem to answer that question.
Yes, and I respected his request until someone else decided to start it up again. Don’t worry host (and moderator), I’m done.
C’mon guys… T.Madigan was involved in a pie fight upthread and our gracious host asked everyone to knock it off, (which TM did.) Leave the troll alone.
No, he didn’t ” knock it off “, he repeated his comment by directing people to his comment upthread !!
Check the time stamps, Marcus…
Alan, I cannot read the time stamp on his forehead from here !
Great picture, indeed! And great metaphore also! On the other hand, I want to remember an important fact: Northern European winters are getting warmer and warmer at a rate higher than global average. An important role, in this case, seems to have been played by the offshore wind farms and by the stirring effect. Here are some information on that: http://www.ocean-climate-law.com/12/arch/12.html.
So, we are all going to somehow die of less frigid winters?
I worked out the global weighted average capacity factors for the different technologies. These I calculated form the data at the EIA website (average 2008-12). They are as follows:
Nuclear 78.2%
Coal 56.2%
All Fossil Fuels 46.3%
Hydro 42.2%
Natural Gas 33.4%
Petroleum 28.5%
Wind 22.3%
Solar,Tide&Wave 11.3%
These are lower than I had expected. One of the main criticisms you hear of wind (apart from wind not blowing when you need it) is that the capacity factor is unacceptably low. However, looking at the figures for wind you can see that it is globally comparing with levels of 28-42% for other technologies except for coal and nuclear. Given that Ireland, US, Canada, Aus&NZ, Africa, S. America, parts of Europe get capacity factors 27-30% means it is a bit more comparable than I had thought on a CF basis. The global average is brought down to low 20’s mainly by Europe and Germany would be the main culprit with a large installed capacity. As I said earlier, their love of wind is unusual as it isn’t a great resource there with annual capacity factors as low as 14.5% recently.
I don’t get why people say here it is a great scam being foisted on us. Wind is popular with the public and polls have shown this (except for those directly affected by proposed wind farms). In Ireland for over 20% of electricity generated from wind it costs us an extra E5.69 per month (incl sales tax and only part of the remainder goes to wind). Wind is producing real energy, increasing energy security, popular with the public and a modest individual extra cost. What’s the great scam here that so many here see? I know many here don’t like it but, be honest, can you really claim it is all a great scam?
Ummmmm…you forgot to include burning cow dung for the impoverished people of the world !! You know, that stuff that kills 100’s of thousands per year !!
Also the biggest installers of wind today are China and India. China installed nearly half the new global capacity last year. They now have 18% of total global wind capacity and India has 7% compared with 22% for USA and 43% for Europe. The environmental movement isn’t very strong in either country. Also they have quite poor national average capacity factors of 18%. So claims here that wind is just being pushed by Western enviro-nuts doesn’t stack up. Why would China and India be developing it so much if they didn’t see it as beneficial to their economies? (I know remote un-electrified rural areas are part of what attracts them to it).
Hoplite,
Totally different situation. China and India are providing electricity where there was none, like the U.S. Tennesseee Valley rural elctrification project did in the 1930’s. In many cases it’s the fastest to install, and it keep employment up. That’s especially important in China, where the government’s hold on things is always a little shaky.
How long does it take to build a dam? Or a nuke? Or even a conventional power plant? Your comment leaves out those things, which are also being built.
In the West, though, windmills are presumed to replace much cheaper fossil fuel sources, while despoiling the countryside, killing raptors by the millions, and making a few cronies rich.
But you aren’t one of the cronies, are you? Why would you ever approve of windmills??
dbstealey, Well said, BUT China and India have stated they will at least triple their coal energy production in the next 15 years…and I don’t blame them !! How many more people have to die in third world countries from lack of affordable energy before liberals admit that it is the only viable option available to that area ?? All Human life depends on keeping your ass warm !
DB,
As I said part of the reason is remote rural electrification. But that doesn’t explain China installing almost half the new installed capacity in 2014. It is estimated that only around 25% of China’s installed wind capacity is not grid connected. So the facts don’t support your assertion.
I know China are also installing Nuke, Coal etc. How does that argue against the point I was making?
‘windmills are presumed to replace much cheaper fossil fuel sources, while despoiling the countryside, killing raptors by the millions, and making a few cronies rich.’
No, as I said, they don’t replace anything. They are IN ADDITION to the fossil fuel sources and have to be. Despoiling the countryside is your aesthetic opinion. Others like the look of them. I’d like to see a reliable (as in properly scientific with real data and unbiased methodology) report on raptor strikes by wind turbines. Making a few rich? Terrible stuff indeed!! Disgraceful I say that anyone would get rich from commercial endeavours. All us posters here on WUWT are down at heel communists and will have no truck with people making money and bettering themselves over their neighbours and comrades! Down with that sort of thing I say.
I’m sure you’ll agree with me DB that no one in oil, gas, nuclear or coal ever made any money and enriched themselves. The wind industry shouldn’t expect to be any different. Absolutely no one in the value chain of wind should be allowed to make a profit at the expense of others!
Bottom line is: wind works and produces real electrical energy that people use every day; the ADDITIONAL costs of wind are modest on a notional scale; the public generally are very enthusiastic about it; almost no one claims that wind reduces the cost of electricity. I guess that is democracy in action.
Oh – and forgot to say that I don’t receive any money from the renewable industry or have any shares or financial interest in it. Did a little research work in it a few years back but that is it. I don’t receive money from the Koch brothers either for my global warming skepticism (or anybody else) and never have done!
Nice to see you using the same tactics as the warmunists 😉
‘National’ not ‘notional’ in the previous post.
“Hoplite
January 24, 2016 at 12:42 pm
Also the biggest installers of wind today are China and India. China installed nearly half the new global capacity last year.”
I think the right word is “say”. They say anything to appease alarmists. Can you provide documentary evidence that this actually was the case? Because if this were true it would be plastered all over the ABC, SMH and SBS here in Australia, the BBC in the UK, the CBC in Canada. *crickets chirping*
They say there is a plastic patch the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific. If satellites can resolve a door sized object floating in the sea, why can they not resolve an object the size of Texas?
If satellites can resolve images of huge run off in to the sea, why can they not resolve this rubbish patch?
They say ocean heat, as a result of CAGW, is hiding in the deep oceans, where it cannot be found nor measured.
I say it’s all BS!
@Patrick – China’s wind installations
http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/05/12/chinas-revolution-in-wind-energy-infographic/#3c5853142cb5
http://www.reuters.com/article/china-power-windpower-idUSL4N0VM3XJ20150212
You can google others yourself. Check out http://www.eia.gov. The figures are too specific so I don’t think the ‘Chinese are telling fibs’ will explain away all of this.
“Hoplite
January 25, 2016 at 1:49 am”
Cannot see anything in those articles that demonstrates China installed, in 2014, nearly half new global capacity (Your words) wind power. Nothing! Again, I call BS on your claim!
“Hoplite
January 25, 2016 at 1:49 am
You can google others yourself.”
You made the claim. You back it up with real information. I am not going to waste my electrons googling a pile of BS.
and again:
What a pleasant person you are indeed! (You do know you are now behaving exactly like the CAGW true believers that you decry here so much?
BS? Back it up with real information? If I do will you apologise for your churlish and ignorant behaviour? I doubt it very much.
Not for your benefit (as you don’t deserve it) but for others reading this here’s the data to back up my ‘claim’:
New capacity Installed in 2014
http://s19.postimg.org/g1bd9xbab/World_Wind_Installed_Capacity_2014.jpg
Accumulated installed capacity at Dec 2014:
http://s19.postimg.org/77p26kdpf/World_Wind_Accumulated_Capacity_Dec2014.jpg
Read all about it here:
http://www.gwec.net/global-figures/graphs/
As of Jan 2016 the UK has ~ 13.6 GW wind capacity from ~6,600 industrial turbines
http://www.renewableuk.com/en/renewable-energy/wind-energy/uk-wind-energy-database/
At the moment we have high winds across the entire UK
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=1.19,49.32,671
the wind contribution is only 5.6GW ; 41% of its capacity & that’s on a good day (for wind)
http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/
Also go down that page to see Averages –
Annual wind contribution to UK demand is just 8,1% • capacity factor ~ 19.4%.
We’ve paid £billions for less energy security …
…& no one is going to jail !!! ( I speak as a moderate)
How exactly is UK now less secure? Please be specific.
How exactly is UK now less secure? Please be specific.
The idiots in charge believed the ‘green’ snake oil salesmen instead of the power engineers,
“green energy is the way forward” “100,000s of green jobs” “enough renewable energy resources around Britain to power Europe”…..
so they brought in far reaching “green” legislation to enable it to happen which has closed / is closing all coal powered generating, shut all British coal mines, so we now have to import all our coal.
A few conventional power stations are being converted to co-fired biomass (utter madness) 95% is imported.
Green energy has pushed up energy costs so many companies have moved abroad
Larger numbers of CCGT units are running inefficiently as spinning reserve to absorb the volatility of wind & solar,…. we import Gas from Norway, Nigeria, Qatar.
Because our glorious leaders believed that ‘green energy’ was more effective than it really is, we are closing conventional power stations at a greater rate than we are replacing so margins of reserve are down to ~3%.
Fortunately it’s an El’nino winter & Tata has just closed several steelworks so no blackouts this year.
A cold 2016-17 winter will be a different story.
CCGT plants run very efficiently at part loads. Your information is well out of date. Gas technology pairs extremely well with wind and wind is very lucky it developed alongside it (wind really couldn’t have paired with coal or nuclear). Wind can’t be blamed for the decision to not invest in thermal plant technology. Per capita, Ireland has a lot more wind than Britain and it has surplus thermal capacity. The problem in Britain is your market structure which hasn’t incentivised generating (thermal) development (this has been known about for years and it isn’t like you haven’t collectively seen it coming). That is the fault of your politicians (ultimately the electorate) not the wind industry.
I note that the blowhard Patrick MJD has slunk away and said nothing after I met his challenge to support my ‘BS’. Am I surprised he has behaved thus?
@ Hoplite January 26, 2016 at 7:23 am
CCGT plants run very efficiently at part loads. Your information is well out of date”
Shadowing a widely fluctuating grid can knock 12-15% off the efficiency curve of a CCGT.
You may like to peruse these-
General overview
http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-119/issue-9/features/improving-the-flexibility-and-efficiency-of-gas-turbine-based-distributed-power-plants.html
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222520914_Comparative_analysis_on_the_part_load_performance_of_combined_cycle_plants_considering_design_performance_and_power_control_strategy
http://www.wartsila.com/energy/learning-center/technical-comparisons/combustion-engine-vs-gas-turbine-part-load-efficiency-and-flexibility
All of that was taken into my calculation table further up this thread showing reduced fuel consumption.
Windmills bring out the worst in me. Whenever I see a wind farm, I just itch to get my hands on a bazooka.
Funny thing is, a thick piece of rope wrapped around the turbine would have the same affect !! They are unstable and destined to explode given enough time !! ( too much Carbon emissions from a bazooka also )
Marcus, I LIKE carbon emissions. I also like your idea. Rope I can get my hands on. I might yet get to watch a windmill burning. I hear too that there’s a lot of copper to be had and wily thieves are taking advantage. Oh, to be young again.
I bet the plants ( those funny green things that environmentalists forgot about ) like it better than you !!
That would be criminal activity. Lets leave that to the alarmists.
Anthony – please check for a post I just submitted on global average capacity factors for electricity generation technologies. What’s happened to it?
[Reply: Please give us more than 5 minutes. ~mod]
Sorry – see it there now.
Patience little worm !
Reblogged this on Sierra Foothill Commentary and commented:
Another demonstration of liberal insanity.
T. Madigan
January 24, 2016 at 1:01 pm
If you want to have a reasoned discussion, stop with the ad-hominems, you will end up talking to yourself. Neither, I don’t have the time and no matter what I say, it will be a waste of whatever time I’ve invested in my reply.
I’ll assume that ENGLISH is not your first language, so I’ll forgive you for the above nonsense !
I’m actually bi-lingual, have advanced degrees is physics and astronomy and lose more functioning brain cells after a glass of wine than you were ever born with.
Yup, sure..I believe ya ..honest !! ROTFLMAO !!
Nothing like a reasoned conversation with no ad hom baiting.
Glad to see you got your wish, TM.
Thanks, but I’m not into astrology…sorry to hear about your [trimmed] !!
That would be astronomy, you know a real science, not astrology.
…OMG…I’ve been trimmed !!! LOL
T. Madigan…I checked your web page..it’ astrology !
No, it’s “Astronomy”; look at the site banner. Bye
OMG…you’re over your head !!
This adds NOTHING to the debate! Puhlease! Take your bun fight outside!
T. Madigan: “have advanced degrees is physics and astronomy and lose more functioning brain cells after a glass of wine than you were ever born with.”
Clearly the number of glasses of wine you have drunk must be astronomical.
….Menicholas. I see you have found your coffee !! ( re: your thread way above ” need more coffee ” )…..
Couple of points with blade deicing.
That fluid they are spraying would have to be de-ice fluid. Spraying hot water on an aerofoil will just end up with clear ice all over the blade. The water does not have enough energy to heat the entire blade. So they must be polluting the environment with de-ice fluid.
And heating the blade is not going to work. Aircraft wings are only heated on the leading edge, because that is the only part that matters on a moving aerofoil. However, if the wing stops rotating then the entire wing gets covered – just like these blades. And when that happens, you have to deice the entire blade, just as you see at an airport.
I cannot imagine any blade deice system that would heat the entire blade, instead of just the leading edge. These systems tend to be very expensive, and difficult to engineer into composite blades without reducing strength and reducing aerodynamic efficiency. Why do you think they have not been added to blades thus far?
R
Forethought is not a liberal concept !!
“I cannot imagine any blade deice system that would heat the entire blade,”
Try to imagine Hot air
http://www.slideshare.net/WinterwindConference/further-development-of-enercons-deicing-system-christoffer-jonsson-enercon
&
The Vestas de-icing system (VDS) consists of a heating unit in the hub to distribute hot air throughout the blades. The outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge are fully de-iced.
the heating unit uses 150kW,
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1217693/vestas-reveals-de-icing-system
“The outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge are fully de-iced.”
Thanks, but that’s not good enough to avoid disaster.
Out of curiosity…what airline company would you fly with given such “outer third of the blade and two thirds of the leading edge” assurances?
There was a thread here a couple of years ago about how ice falling from a wind turbine is extremely dangerous and could potentially kill someone. I can’t find the thread however.
Sorry, not only falling but being thrown off the blades while in operation and travelling quite a distance in fact.
Hi, Patrick MJD. I couldn’t find (didn’t look all that hard, though) that WUWT wind turbine ice danger thread. I did find the Rutgers U. analysis of Wind Throw Distance (1,680 feet).
Here: http://xray.rutgers.edu/~matilsky/windmills/throw.html
(caps in original text)
Yes Janice, sums it up well. Nasty things. Sure they have their place in the energy mix, but not a replacement for good old coal, oil and gas!
>>The outer third of the blade and two thirds of
>>the leading edge are fully de-iced.
That would be fine for when the blade is turning. But when it is stopped and it snows, the entire clade gets covered. Especially as they normall turn these things into wind. And while I suppose you could operate it with snow on the center 2/3 of the blade, there would be severe efficiency losses, and possible imbalance-vibration issues. And these windelecs (turbines) have enough trouble standing upright as it is, without extra vibrations (and ice-bomb shedding).
As an aside, with aircraft covered in thick snow a very weak hot solution is often used first, just to get rid of the snow. But then this has to be backed up with a de-ice 50-50 or 75-25 solution, otherwise the water will refreeze on the wing. And clear ice all over a windelec blade would lead to yet more imbalance-vibration issues. The only possibility for just using hot water, would be if ambient temperatures were already positive. But if temps were positive, the snow would not stick on the bkade for very long anyway.
Ralph
I read where each chopper-load of truck-heated water is 850L. No mention of chemicals added…but it was a Swedish paper, so they wouldn’t mention it, would they? Would be interesting to know.
Anyway, let’s give the blade-warming technology time to suck. Should be funny – but patience!
Apart from the billions down the toilet (which we should be used to by now) there’s a lot of humour in this climate-tackling solution stuff: Woodchips-to-Drax, Gas-to-Ivanpah, Brandenburg solar at 50+ degrees north…
But I still say NSW’s very own wave power generator is top of the comedy pops:
http://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/resize/frm/storypad-etJBba7Xdfpi8EFGYJPPtt/9dce4663-16fb-4cc5-81bf-d5744c261c57.jpg/w1200_h678_fmax.jpg
Here in Oz we also have unused desalination plants in a number of capital cities, deemed necessary during the last drought because the rains would never again be sufficient. They got them built, despite flood delays, and they now cost upward half a million per day to do absolutely nothing. The Sydney one had its roof wrecked by a cyclonic storm a few weeks back. Seems it was raining pretty hard that day.
Stay funny, warmies.
Desanityation plants. I like the idea but they cost too much. 😎
Is that the HMS Obama ???
“The aviation fuel, the diesel for the truck, and the oil burned to heat the water, could produce more electricity (at the right time to meet demand) than the unfrozen wind turbine could ever produce. (Before it freezes up again).”
This statement is false by between three and four orders of magnitude.
So show us your calculations…….or are you guessing
Rough calculations:
2.5MW turbine, average 40% capacity factor = 1MW average (0.4*2.5) power for 20 years.
20 years * 8760 hours per year * 1MW = 175,200MWh
GGe of jet fuel ~= 30kWh/gallon = 0.030MWh/gallon
175,200MWh/0.030kWh/gallon = 5,840,000 gallons of jet fuel equivalent
Approximate use by helicopter (rough guess) = 80 gallons. We’ll be really generous and double it for warming the water.
5,840,000/160 = 36,500 (ratio between lifetime generation and deicing energy)
So, you’re right, my error. Actual falsehood is between four and five orders of magnitude, not three and four.
Further, the operator claims, “The cost to deice a turbine is equivalent to two days of electricity.” (http://iceagenow.info/ice-freezes-windmills-sweden/)
Watts should retract the article since it’s so obviously false.
lj: “Rough calculations:
average 40% capacity factor …20 years… Approximate use by helicopter (rough guess)… “
No estimate for the cost of the de-icing agent, and assumption that this was a one-off event.
Just like the man said, you’re guessing – and stone me, you are so obtuse you even admit it!
Not particularly convincingly, either.
So it’s you, not Anthony, who needs to retract.
Floating Windmills? Missed this in the general sh8te that rumbles along in UK (and its a terrible URL). Please discuss. Or has it been already?
http://www.statoil.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Offshore/HywindScotland/Pages/default.aspx?redirectShortUrl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.statoil.com%2fHywindScotland
Couldn’t they just have covered the blades with teflon?
Here in Sweden many people think that wind power will save the planet. First problem to attack is the ignorence shown among politician, that seems not to understand the difference between energy and effect. Heavy subsidiary to energy will end up in problems with shortage of effect when top load is required. Unless someone comes up with a miracuolos way of storing energy. 20 percent – or nowadays 25 percent – is an equivalent figure that says how many hours the capacity factor showing how many hours a turbine operate at installed effect to. The problem is that it varies from zero to hundred percent. As a national figure for the grid system we use 6 percent as a safe asset at top load.
Sorry to say but we are not smarter than Einstein suggested. Yet.
Scream for polluting the earth and air by using engine fuel to clear the wind turbine blades to run the wind turbines, yep failure to install heat like you can for car seats. BTW: once up and running won’t the engine fuel heat and cause a fire or blow the units up?
This article discusses the difference between Social Engineering and Real Engineering:
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nipigon-bridge-failure-social-vs-real-engineering/
As the Mythbusters guys would say, “There’s your problem!”
Great, even more blades to chop birds with
As far as I’m concerned, the comments section of this article might as well be closed as I’ve written all I’m going to write/comment/reply on it. I don’t care what you have to say or what your opinion is regarding any aspect of this article or what I’ve said. I’m done and you will not get any further responses from me here.
I always enjoy seeing an alarmist concede because he doesn’t have credible facts to support the ‘climate change’ hoax, or the related and just as stupid ‘alternative energy’ scam.
[ID thief. -mod]
Simply place a herd of cattle beneath each windmill and the Flatulence generated will defrost the turbines
I have said it before. We are pretty much [trimmed] as species.
Mark
http://minimalistlifestyle.wordpress.com
The windmills in the facility in Palm Springs have been responsible for killing numerous birds including some of the bald eagles in the area. The solar panel facilities in Nevada and Callifornia are responsible for killing numerous birds by cooking them from the heat generated by the panels.
So if we want kill more bald eagles, keep creating these types of installations.
Also, 16,000 people installed solar panels on their rooftops in Las Vegas at a cost of $20K to 40K per installation for the net metering program and lo and behold, Warren Buffet purchased NV Energy and dramatically reduced the pricing being paid for excess energy sold to NV Energy by these fleeced homeowners and now the homeowners want the government to further subsidize them in addition to the subsidies they received from the government on the original installation. Who made out on this program, why it is the solar installation snake oil companies.
Bob wrote, “The solar panel facilities in Nevada and Callifornia are responsible for killing numerous birds by cooking them from the heat generated by the panels.”
“Solar panel” usually refers to solar photovoltaic panels. Those don’t cook birds. The raptor rotisseries are the solar thermal generators, like Ivanpah, which use vast arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers, to make steam, to drive turbine generators.