By Roger Sowell (1)
Figure 1 Artist’s Depiction – Hywind Scotland credit Statoil ASA Environmental Statement
Background
This article is the result of a request by Charles The Moderator (ctm) for me to write a more in-depth piece on my views of wind energy systems. About one week ago, WUWT had an article bashing the Hywind Scotland wind farm (7/28/2017, see link) on which article I offered a few comments. I also added a link on the Tips and Notes page to the Hywind Scotland project’s Environmental Statement (ES). That ES is the rough equivalent to an Environmental Impact Report in the US. Many technical details are included in the ES. That note in Tips and Notes prompted ctm to ask me to write this article.
Having withstood for several years the slings and arrows (including libel) of many commenters and guest bloggers at WUWT, I was reluctant to write a positive piece on wind energy. I reserve such articles for my own blog. But, ctm is a persuasive and charming fellow, and I agreed to write this. I have attempted to use plentiful references and citations throughout, and those only from reputable sources. For example, Statoil’s claims to 40 years offshore experience, built and operated more than 40 offshore oil and gas structures, some of those offshore structures are powered from shore by undersea cables, and the details of their Troll platform, are from Statoil’s own documents online. If those facts are in error, the fault is theirs. However, those facts also align with my memories of working with Statoil guys over the years.
Forging ahead, it should be remembered that another article of mine is online at WUWT (and my own blog), on the serious consequences of breaking the libel laws online. See link to “Climate Science, Free Speech and Legal Liability – Part 1.” In plain English, it is OK to disagree, but argue your points with facts, and argue politely.
Introduction
This article’s overall topic is part of the questions, what should a modern civilization do to look to its future electrical energy needs? Then, what steps should be taken now to ensure a safe, reliable, environmentally responsible, and cost-effective supply of electricity will be available in the future? These questions have no easy answers; they occupy a very great deal of time, energy, and written words.
More to the point, what should an advanced society do in the present, when it is very clear that two of the primary sources of electric power will be removed from the generating fleet with 20 years, and half of that removed within 10 years?
Two scenarios are discussed: first the world electric generating situation, then that in the United States.
The basic facts are these: at present, worldwide electricity is provided by six primary sources: coal burning, natural gas burning, nuclear fission, hydroelectric, oil burning, and a mix of renewable energy systems. Of the renewables, most of the power is from wind turbine generators (WTG), second is solar power, and the rest is from a few other sources that include geothermal, biomass, biogas, and others. (source: EIA and other reputable entities). For approximate percentages, in 2012 the world’s electric power was provided by Coal 39.6, Natural Gas 22, Hydroelectric 17.6, Nuclear 10.7, Oil 5, Wind 2.4, Solar 0.5, and Other 2.1. Figures for different countries are available from various references.
In the United States, however, the mix of energy sources is changing rapidly over the next two decades. The essential facts in the US are a great number of nuclear plants will retire; many coal-fired plants will retire, many natural gas plants will be built; and a great number of wind turbine generators will be built. Within 20 years, almost every one of the 98 nuclear plants in the US will retire. Half of those will be shut down within 10 years. That is most significant, because coal plants produce 30 percent and nuclear plants produce 18 to 19 percent of all the electricity in the US. With most of those shut down in 20 years, the US is facing a deficit of almost one-half of the electricity supply. In energy terms, coal and nuclear provide approximately 2,000 million MWh per year. (EIA for 2016). For the shorter term, ten years from now, one-half of those shutdowns will occur, leaving a shortfall of 1,000 million MWh per year.
An aside to look more closely at coal burning power plants and their rapid closures in the US. Coal is no longer king, no matter what anyone says about the matter. The fact is, as I have long stated and written, that coal burning power plants were intentionally given a pass on environmental issues. They were not forced to comply with many of the environmental requirements of the US Clean Air Act. Instead, the coal industry found ways to “perform maintenance” that added capacity, while retaining the grandfathered status. Only a few coal burning power plants were required to comply with the pollution laws. Recently, that all changed. Now, coal burning power plants are closing in record numbers because the owners cannot afford to install the expensive pollution control equipment. (Reference: MIT paper, 2016, MITEI-WP-2016-01; also see http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/2016-ELI_Grandfathering.Coal_..Power_.Plant_.Regulation.Under_.the_.CAA_.pdf) I am aware that this is a controversial statement at WUWT, having made this statement before and receiving blistering comments on that. Yet, facts are very stubborn things; they do not care one bit what anyone thinks of them. Facts just are.
The facts of US nuclear power plants are just as plain: the fleet of 98 plants is aging. Almost half, 47 out of 98 still running, are between 40 and 47 years old. (reference: https://www.eia.gov/nuclear/spent_fuel/ussnftab2.php ) Within 10 years, it is almost certain that all of those reactors will be shut down permanently and retired. Many of the nuclear plants are losing money and have done so for a few years. Some have received direct government subsidies recently to keep running. These direct payments are in addition to the numerous other subsidies that US nuclear plants receive, such as for indemnity from radiation releases, federal guarantees on construction loans, softening of safety regulations, laws prohibiting lawsuits during construction, and others. .
In the arena of electricity generation at grid-scale, conventional and new technologies contend for market share. Over the past decade, new technologies that use renewable energy as the motive force have become more prevalent. Wind and solar technologies are two that are presently at the forefront of market share and development effort. As the traditional mix of generating technology changes in the next two decades, wind energy will certainly play a greater and greater role. In early 2017, combined output from hydroelectric and renewable sources slightly exceeded nuclear power plant output (Figure 1 from EIA, figures in billion kWh per month). Also notable from Figure 2 is the almost complete absence of energy from wind (dark green area) before 2010.
Figure 2 US Renewables with Hydro v Nuclear
The growth of wind energy has been substantial in only 7 years, from almost zero percent to 7.5 percent of US total electricity. The growth in wind energy is shown also in Figure 3, where wind energy, for the first time, was the same as the output of hydroelectric plants in 2014-2015. As an aside, Figure 3 is the real hockey stick. The data is from EIA, but the graph is my own. This graph made quite a splash on Twitter on 5/2/2016 among the #windenergy crowd. (@rsowell is my handle)
Figure 3 US Hydro v Wind Energy
The US has more than adequate wind resources and natural gas resources to fill the generating gap from retired nuclear and coal power plants. Onshore wind capacity at present stands at a bit more than 84,000 MW, (windexchange reference) with another 25,000 MW under construction. Natural gas power plants of 190 GW could easily be built to meet the need. Wind turbines of 170 GW could be installed and remain well below 20 percent of all electricity generated annually. The added 170 GW of wind is well below the estimated 11,000 GW of wind capacity that exists onshore in the US.(Lopez, A. et. al. Technical Report NREL/TP-6A20-51946, July 2012) These figures, 190 GW for natural gas, and 170 GW for wind energy are found as follows. The need is for new natural gas power plants to generate 1,000 million MWh per year. By dividing 1000 million by 8766 hours per year we obtain 114,076 MW (and multiply by 1 million). By then dividing by 0.6, the natural gas power plant capacity factor, we obtain 190,127 MW or 190 GW to install.
The 170 GW of wind capacity to install over the next decade is found similarly, but using 0.35 as the capacity factor. The desired result is to have wind energy make up 20 percent of the total electricity in the US annually, the “penetration” as it is known. With existing wind energy already at 7 percent penetration, the need then is for 13 percent from new wind turbines. Multiplying 0.13 times 4,000 million MWh/y we obtain 520 million MWh/y. As before, we divide by 8766 and multiply by 1 million to obtain 59,320 MW. This divided by the capacity factor of 0.35 gives 169,486 MW, which is rounded nicely to 170 GW of new wind capacity.
The nice result here is that total installed natural gas power plant capacity would exceed wind plant capacity. Therefore, when wind speed declines below generating speed, the natural gas power plants have plenty of capacity to make up the power deficit. Wind generating capacity at present is approximately 84 GW, and the new capacity to install is 170 GW. The total of 250 GW is less than existing natural gas power plant of approximately 260 GW. When the new natural gas power plant is added, there is 260 (old capacity) plus 190 (new capacity) which yields 450 GW of natural gas power plant capacity.
This gives a viable solution for the first ten years. Natural gas capacity would be 450 GW total, wind would be 250 GW total, and wind penetration would be a nice, round figure of 20 percent.
The second decade would require similar added capacity. An additional 170 GW of wind capacity would add 13 percent more to the penetration. That would then be 20 plus 13 for 33 percent total. That would present almost zero problems on the national grid. Total wind capacity would then be 250 GW plus 170 GW, which yields 420 GW. (reference DOE Wind Vision site states slightly more than 420 GW can be added by 2050 in their analysis. https://energy.gov/eere/wind/maps/wind-vision ) Natural gas capacity would be another 190 GW, for a total then of 450 plus 190 to yield 640 GW. With 640 being comfortably greater than 420, there is adequate natural gas power plant capacity to take over when the wind speed declines.
One question arises, then; can wind turbine generators be added at a rate necessary to achieve 170 GW over ten years? That is an average of 17 GW per year. From actual history, it is noted that in 2012, US wind capacity of a bit more than 13 GW was added. Also, 10 GW was added in 2009. It is clear, then, that 17 GW per year should be no problem. The US wind energy supply chain would be required to increase output by 4/13 or approximately 30 percent.
A second concern sometimes is expressed, as the land area required for a large number of wind turbines. That is not a problem, however. Studies of actual, modern, efficient wind farms found that on average, total land required is 85 acres per MW installed capacity. (Reference: Land Use for Wind Farms Technical Report NREL/TP-6A2-45834, August 2009 http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/45834.pdf ) The study used hectares, giving 34 h per MW. Converting appropriately, we obtain 85 acres per MW installed. The total land area, then, for 420 GW or 420,000 MW of wind capacity is 85 multiplied by 420,000 and divided by 640 acres per square mile. The result is then 55,800 square miles when rounded up a bit. For perspective, that is almost exactly the area of the state of Iowa, which has 56,272 square miles. Of course, the wind parks would be spread out over the states and not all concentrated in Iowa. Another consideration is almost all of the land with wind turbine generators can and would be used for its original purpose.
Why the focus on wind and natural gas? One might prefer to build sufficient nuclear plants or more coal power plants instead of wind and natural gas power plants. Nuclear and coal power plants are discussed below.
It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to build a sufficient number of nuclear power plants – 40 to 50 of them – in the next decade to replace those that retire. Recent news (7/31/2017) shows that the two new nuclear plants under construction in South Carolina at the V.C Summer plant have been halted with no intention to finish building them. (see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/scana-to-cease-construction-of-two-reactors-in-south-carolina ) The South Carolina plants are approximately 35 percent complete, many years behind schedule and several $billion dollars over budget. The projects were halted when the revised estimate to complete showed $26 billion. In order to start up 40 to 50 nuclear plants ten years from this date, the 40 to 50 plants must be approved and under construction today also. Clearly, that has not happened. New nuclear plants also have a very high price for electricity produced.
It would also be unwise to build new coal-burning power plants since the remaining amount of US coal that can be mined at a profit is limited to 20-30 years or less at current prices. (Reference: Luppens, J.A., et al, 2015, Coal geology and assessment of coal resources and reserves in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming and Montana: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1809, 218 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/pp1809 ) If coal prices rise, perhaps by increased demand or subsidies, more coal can be mined. However, high coal prices require a coal burning power plant to have higher electricity sales prices. That simply would not occur with natural gas and wind power at such very low prices as today. New coal-fired plants would lose money, just like the new nuclear plants would.
World-wide, the numbers are similar. Coal production is limited to no more than 50 years, unless some force increases the price at the mine-mouth. (Rutledge, David, “Estimating long-term world coal production with logit and probit transforms,” International Journal of Coal Geology, 85 (2011) 23-33 http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/DavidRutledgeCoalGeology.pdf )
Why onshore wind?
Why, then, the big push for wind technology? Below are listed a few reasons in support of wind power. Following that is a description in some detail the new 30 MW Hywind wind park being installed off the northeast coast of Scotland by Statoil.
Onshore wind farms have benefited greatly from private and public funding over the past decade. The wind turbine generators are already low-cost to install and operate. Projects are profitable in the Great Plains region of the US where the sales price for power is 4.3 cents per kWh. (source: 2015 Wind Technologies Market Report https://emp.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/2015-windtechreport.final_.pdf ) The federal subsidy is to end in 3-4 years. Most importantly, the installed cost has steadily decreased over the years, by a factor of 3 in the past 7 to 8 years. The low capital cost is the primary reason that wind power is being installed at 8 to 13 GW per year in the US. It must be acknowledged that the reductions in capital cost per kW occurred only because the federal and state subsidies for wind technology allowed developers to design, build, and install better and better designs. Whatever arguments there may be against subsidies, wind turbine generators have benefitted substantially from the subsidies.
Installed costs will continue to decrease as more improvements are made. Designers have several improvements yet to be implemented such as larger turbines, taller towers, and increased capacity factor. Oklahoma just announced a 2,000 MW project with 800 turbines of 2.5 MW each. Onshore wind farms will soon have the larger size at 4 MW then 6 MW turbines similar to those that are installed now in the ocean offshore.
Wind repower projects have even better economics. Repowering is the replacement of old, inefficient wind turbine generators with modern, usually much larger, and much more efficient systems. The wind will not have changed, was not used up, in the same location. In fact, the taller turbines reach higher and into better wind that typically has greater speed and more stability. The infrastructure is already in place for power lines and roads. Repowering may be able to incorporate legacy towers as the upper section of new, taller towers for larger wind turbine generators.
Wind power extends the life of natural gas wells. Wind power creates less demand for natural gas. This reduces the price of natural gas. That helps the entire economy, especially home heating bills, plus the price of electricity from burning natural gas. But, this also reduces the cost to make fertilizer that impacts food, since natural gas is the source of hydrogen that is used to make ammonia fertilizer.
Wind power is a great jobs creator. Today, there are more than 100,000 good jobs in the US wind energy industry. Many of the wind industry jobs are filled by aeronautical engineers. Instead of designing airplanes with two wings that fly in a straight line, they design wind rotors with three wings that turn in a circle. There are approximately 1.2 jobs per MW of installed capacity, with 84,000 MW and 100,000 jobs. That’s approximately the same ratio as in nuclear power plants, with 1 job per MW.
Wind provides security of energy supply. No one can impose an embargo on the wind. There are no foreign payments, and no foreign lands to protect with the US military.
Wind provides a good, drought-independent supplemental income via lease payments to thousands of families nationwide, due to the distributed nature of wind turbine projects. Almost 100 percent of the land can continue in its original activity, grazing cattle or farming. Marginal land with no economic activity now produces income for the landowner. 85 acres is required for 1 MW of WTG.
Wind power promotes grid-scale storage research and development. Wind energy generated at night during low demand periods can be stored then released when demand and prices are higher. As always, some losses occur when energy is stored and released later. Storage and release on demand has spinoff into electric car batteries. EVs will reduce or eventually eliminate gasoline consumption, and that will spell the end for OPEC. The entire world’s geopolitics will change as a result. Recently, the CEO of BP, the major international oil company, predicted that the next decade or two would bring such a surge of EVs that oil demand would peak, then decline. The CEO is right, too. When it becomes patriotic to drive an EV rather than a gas guzzler, EV sales will zoom. A gas guzzler will be seen as an OPEC enabler.
Wind power hastens nuclear plant retirements as electricity prices decline. Nuclear plants cannot compete with cheap electricity from cheap natural gas. As stated above, wind energy keeps natural gas prices low by reducing the demand for natural gas.
Power from wind is power without pollution. Wind power has no damaging health impacts from smoke, particulates, or noxious sulfur or nitrogen oxides. The American Lung Association encourages clean, pollution-free wind power.
Summary to this point.
The utility-scale power generation mix in the US will change substantially, even dramatically over the next ten and twenty years. Nuclear power will be almost non-existent. Coal power will also be greatly reduced or almost absent. Wind power will be four to five times as much capacity and generation compared to today. Natural gas power will grow to replace the nuclear and coal production, but will loaf along as wind generation occurs. Only when the wind dies down will natural gas power plants roar to life at full throttle. This describes the US situation.
Several other nations also have similar issues to face. Of the approximately 450 nuclear power plants still operating world-wide, roughly one-half will retire within 20 years, and for the same reasons as do those in the US. Old age, inability to compete, and safety concerns will shut them down. A similar analysis can be done for each major nuclear power country with aging reactors, including Japan, France, Canada, UK, and Germany. On average, with 20 years being exactly 240 months, that is roughly 1 reactor per month to be retired. The booming business of the future will be reactor decommissioning.
Next is part two, the specifics on offshore wind and the Hywind Scotland wind park.
Why, then, offshore wind?
In addition to all the benefits of onshore wind power listed above, offshore wind farms have a few benefits of their own. First, a couple of drawbacks that exist with offshore wind power. It is well-known that offshore wind power has higher costs to install, and higher operating costs due to accessibility issues when compared to onshore wind farms. However, these drawbacks are somewhat offset by the much larger wind turbine generators that can be installed, taller towers, and better wind as measured by both velocity and stability. Lease payments do not flow to private landowners, typically, but to the government that controls the local part of the ocean.
For areas that do not have the very good onshore wind that exists in the interior of the US, offshore may be an ideal place to develop wind energy.
Larger turbine designs for offshore wind projects can be evaluated and adapted for onshore projects.
Much of the world’s population lives in cities near the ocean. Transmission lines to bring the energy from the offshore wind turbine generators to the cities may be shorter, compared to running long distances overland.
For those who cannot see the beauty in a technologically advanced wind farm, an offshore wind farm can place the systems out of sight.
The marine industries get a boost with offshore wind farms.
Offshore wind farms are ideally situated for a few forms of grid-scale storage. In particular, one of those is pumped storage hydroelectric with the ocean as the lower reservoir and a dedicated lake higher up onshore. Another form is the MIT submerged storage spheres.
Offshore wind farms very recently, Spring of 2017, won an auction in Germany that contained zero government subsidy as part of the bid. With more and more advances in the technology, the era of subsidized offshore wind farms may be over. Time will tell.
Offshore wind farms bring additional capacity to play. Using the US for example, the government estimates 11,000 GW of wind capacity is economically feasible onshore. An additional 4,000 GW of wind capacity is economically feasible offshore. Offshore wind power increases the US total by a bit more than one-third.
Finally, offshore wind power brings affordable electricity to islands that presently have very expensive electricity due to burning oil in power plants, or diesel in piston-engine generators. Offshore wind power is a mainstay of Hawaii’s plan to obtain 100 percent of the electricity in the islands from renewable sources. Some storage will be necessary to balance out the fluctuations in demand.
The Hywind Scotland floating wind farm uses the moored spar technology, appropriately modified for the single-tower system of a wind turbine generator.
Hywind Scotland Project
Figure 4 Conceptual Layout From Hywind Environmental Statement
Technology
As depicted in Figure 4, Hywind Scotland has five floating, seabed-moored spar-type wind turbine generators rated at 6 MW each for 30 MW installed capacity. Note, these are the same size as the offshore wind park in Rhode Island in the US. Block Island system offshore Rhode Island started production in 2016. Note, however, the Block Island system’s towers are not floating, but are anchored to the ocean floor.
Each Hywind Scotland WTG has three mooring lines anchored to the seabed. These mooring lines split into two, so there are six anchor points on the floating tower. (ES 4-5) see Figure 5 below.
Figure 5 Undersea Mooring Schematic – from ES
WTG has a proprietary motion compensation system to ease the load on critical bearings. (ES 3-1)
WTG has three rotor blades. The rotor blades are pitch-controlled. Rotating speed varies with wind strength, from 4-13 RPM (ES 4-19).
The WTG are provided by Siemens, a major vendor of offshore wind turbine generators. The model is SWT-6.0-154. Access is available by boat and a ladder system inside each tower.
Hub height for the WTG is 101 meters above sealevel.
Cut-in wind speed where power generation begins is 3-4 m/s. Cut-out wind speed for WTG protection is higher than 25 m/s. (6.6 mph – 55 mph) (ES 4-19) See Figure 6 for wind direction and range of speeds at the site. Wind speed is higher than cut-in speed more than 95 percent of the time.
Figure 6 Wind Rose Showing Direction/Speed – from ES
Power is collected from the 5 WTGs and brought to shore via a single cable along the seabed, length approximately 25 to 35 km. The power is tied into the national grid. Power is at 33 KV, 50 HZ and AC. Undersea power cable to shore is armoured and 0.5 m diameter. Power can be drawn from shore if the need arises. Diesel-powered generators can also be used at any WTG (ES 4-6)
Each WTG is connected via inter-array cable, 33 kV at 50 HZ and AC. Cables are armoured and approximately 0.5 m diameter. The temporary loss of any one WTG for repairs or maintenance will not affect the output of the others. (ES 4-5)
A smaller floating WTG prototype operated 10 km off the west coast of Norway since 2009 to 2014 and withstood 20 m waves and 40 m/s winds (approximately 88 mph). The prototype was a single WTG with 2.3 MW capacity. (ES xi and 3-1)
Seafloor area required is 15 km-2. With capacity of 30 MW, the ratio is 2 MW per km-2. (ES 4-2)
Water depth is 95 – 120 meters (ES 8-8)
Each of the WTG Units will be equipped with code-compliant navigational lights for marine operations and aviation that will automatically turn on in the dark. (ES 4-7)
Statoil ASA, a Norwegian oil and gas company, is the designer, and investor. Statoil has more than 40 years of offshore oil and gas experience with more than 40 separate offshore installations, most of which are in the harsh conditions of the North Sea. Statoil designed and built the world’s largest object that was ever moved over the Earth’s surface, the Troll A platform. Troll A was designed in the late 1980s, approximately 30 years ago. It began operating in 1996. Troll A is a complex concrete and steel structure that sits on the ocean floor in more than 300 meter deep water. The platform itself is far above the ocean surface. Troll A is more than 470 meters from top to bottom. Statoil also has long experience with power cables along the ocean floor from shore to offshore structures.
Hywind Economics
Economics are improved over the initial one-turbine, 2.3 MW prototype. The prototype generated 40 GWh over several years and demonstrated a 50 percent annual capacity factor during one year. Lessons learned at Hywind Scotland’s 30 MW system will be employed in future, large-scale wind parks. Hywind Scotland’s installed cost is GB £210 million (approximately US$276 million. $/kW = 9210.) But, this includes undersea cables. Note, this is just a bit less than the Block Island 30 MW system in the US, which cost US$300 million.
The unsubsidized economics for the small, 30 MW Hywind Scotland system gives a sales price of electricity at $215 per MWh sold for a 12 year simple project payout. This is based on 45 percent annual capacity factor and investment as above. Revenue would be an average of $23 million per year. With public funding sources as described in the Environmental Statement, the economics are very likely substantially better. This price point, $215 per MWh, is competitive with peaker power prices.
With economy of scale and 60 percent reduction in installed cost for a larger 600 MW park, and 12 year simple project payout, no subsidies, the electricity could be sold at $89 per MWh. At that price point, offshore wind becomes competitive with baseload natural gas power with LNG at $10 per MMBtu as the fuel used.
Bird Collisions
The environmental impact on numerous species are included in the Environmental Statement. The impact on birds is summarized here.
Avian collision mortality was predicted in the Environmental Statement for species that commonly fly at rotor height (101 m) using a range of modelling scenarios. This showed that the predicted additional mortality was negligible compared to the numbers of birds that die from existing background mortality causes. (ES 11-1)
With one exception, predictions of the size and duration of potential impacts shows that for all species for all times of year effects would have negligible impact on receptor populations. The exception is razorbill, for which a potential disturbance effect of low impact for the breeding population is identified owing to the very high densities sometimes present in August, a period when individuals of this species have heightened vulnerability to disturbance. This impact is nevertheless judged not significant. (ES 11-1)
The negligible impact conclusion is consistent with studies in the US on bird mortality from wind turbines. In the US, approximately 1 billion birds die annually from various causes. Ninety-six percent of those are caused by collisions with buildings, power lines, automobiles, and encounters with cats. Less than 0.003 percent were due to wind turbine impacts. (Erickson et.al, USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-191 (2005), Table 2 https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/psw_gtr191_1029-1042_erickson.pdf ) In addition, bird fatalities decline as older, truss-style support towers are demolished and modern, monopole support towers are installed.
Conclusion
There is a need for electric power generation technologies to replace the rapidly aging and retiring nuclear power plants in several countries within the next decade. Also, coal at today’s prices has a limited horizon of 20 to 50 years. In the US, coal power plants are shutting down due to pollution equipment costs. It is prudent to develop safe, reliable, and affordable means of generating power. Wind power has improved dramatically in the past decade to take its place as such – safe, reliable, and affordable. More improvements are identified and already in the pipeline. In addition, wind as an energy source is eternally renewable and sustainable. The benefits of reduced natural gas demand, lower natural gas price, less air pollution, improved human health from lung diseases, economic benefits for land owners with wind farm leases, increased jobs, increased domestic manufacturing and service businesses, all make wind energy desirable.
The offshore, 30 MW Hywind Scotland floating spar wind energy system is built and backed by the very experienced Norwegian company, Statoil ASA. Even though it has subsidies, the project’s unsubsidized economics would make it attractive against peaker power plants. The improved economics due to economy of scale will make this competitive with main gas-powered plants where LNG is imported for fuel. The Hywind Scotland technology for wind turbine generators, floating moored spar supports, and undersea power cables is already proven. The location chosen, off the eastern seaboard of Scotland, has excellent wind with 40 to 50 percent capacity factor.
A 600 MW or larger offshore wind farm using the Hywind Scotland design can be expected in the next decade. Wind energy technology continues to improve with demonstrated, year-over-year reductions in cost to install.
Additional References:
http://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/hywind-scotland-pilot-park-united-kingdom-uk76.html
Abbreviated in this article as ES: https://www.statoil.com/content/dam/statoil/documents/impact-assessment/Hywind/Statoil-Environmental%20Statement%20April%202015.pdf
Footnotes
(1) Roger Sowell is an attorney in Science and Technology Law. Since earning a BS in Chemical Engineering in 1977, he has performed a great many engineering consulting assignments worldwide for independent and major energy companies, chemical companies, and governments. Cumulative benefits to clients from his consulting advice exceeds US$1.3 billion. Increased revenues to clients are at least five times that amount. He regularly makes public speeches to professional engineering groups and lay audiences. He is a regular speaker on a variety of topics to engineering students at University of California campuses – UCLA and UC-Irvine. He is a founding member of Chemical Engineers for Climate Realism, a “red-team” style think-tank for experienced chemical engineers in Southern California. He is also a Council Member with the Gerson Lehrman Group that provides advice to entities on Wall Street. He publishes SowellsLawBlog; which at present has more than 450 articles on technical and legal topics. His widely-heralded Truth About Nuclear Power series of 30 articles has garnered more than 25,000 views to date. Recently (2016), he was requested to defend climate-change skeptics against an action under the United States RICO statutes.
This evaluation should be done on the basis that half the *baseload* power will be retired in 20 years. Nuclear and coal are 24/7. Until we have enough renewables that produce 3x the energy needed so we can store 2× the energy to distribute when the wind doesnt blow, we better keep those baseline units.
Until feasible grid-wide storage technology is invented it doesn’t matter if renewables produce 1000x the energy.
The reason coal and nuclear plants have been shut down and more are likely to be shut down in the years to come has little to do with economics but is due to state mandates that require solar and wind power. Coal and nuclear plants are incompatable with wind and solar plants because the power supply becomes very erratic with wind gusts and clouds and make it necessary for reliable energy supplies to fill in the difference between the supply wind and solar power and the demand for power. Coal and nuclear plants have traditionally been used as base load power and run at or near full power 24 hours per day and combustion turbines used to the additional power to satisfy demand as it varys during the day. They are not practical if it is necessary to shut down, start up, and make large rapid power changes during the day. The power sources that can do this are combustion turbines and hydroelectric, thus coal and nuclear plants are being replaced by natural gas powered combustion turbines. It should be noted that need for reliable power sources isn’t significantly reduced by adding wind and solar power because they are too unreliable. Wind and solar would only be economically if the total generating costs were less than the fuel costs for the fossil fuel that could be saved. It should be noted that wind and solar may do nothing to reduce fuel costs, because they may be forcing combined cycle power plants that run at a high thermodynamic efficiency with single cycle gas turbines that are much less efficient (there was a study in England that concluded that this was the case on there system). If this is the case, then there is no possible way for wind and solar plants to make economic sense nor would they do anything to reduce CO2 emissions.
In the UK they built a beautiful new 2000MW CCGT plant right next to the LNG terminal in Pembroke. It cost £1 billion. They dug up miles of main roads to lay new gas pipes.. All the transmission lines were in place from the old oil fired station. It will reliably power 8.5 million homes, shutting down 1 in 5 turbines on a regular basis for maintenance. It only requires 100 workers to produce 2000MW.
Why in God’s name would anybody be dumb enough to try and duplicate that output by destroying the Welsh Countryside with a turbine technology straight out of the dark ages that requires miles of tracks laid, pylons, huge transporters, cranes, thousands of tons of steel and concrete, stuff imported from China etc etc etc.
The EU want us to give them £80 billion to dump their sorry ass club into the cess pit of history and that cannot come soon enough. That money would pay for all the CCGT plant that we need. We have enough natural Shale gas under the UK to last for 500 years or until the next real technological advance arrives, probably before the end of the century.
So why I ask again would anyone in their right mind even consider for one second covering pristine landscapes with white wind flailing monstrosities that occasionally and randomly squirt a miniscule amount of electrical power to disrupt a normally balanced grid.
Why, Mr Sowell, why?
for Ivor Ward,
I’ve been to Wales only once, back in the early 1990s, so cannot claim any expertise on the area. Had a great trip, though, just an overnight and sales presentation the next day.
“Why in God’s name would anybody be dumb enough to try and duplicate that output by destroying the Welsh Countryside with a turbine technology straight out of the dark ages that requires miles of tracks laid, pylons, huge transporters, cranes, thousands of tons of steel and concrete, stuff imported from China etc etc etc.”
I agree that a modern CCGT is hard to beat, on economics. Unless, of course, one is feeding it freshly vaporized LNG that cost a fortune to import.
“The EU want us to give them £80 billion to dump their sorry ass club into the cess pit of history and that cannot come soon enough. That money would pay for all the CCGT plant that we need. We have enough natural Shale gas under the UK to last for 500 years or until the next real technological advance arrives, probably before the end of the century.”
Pulling up the shale gas is a good solution. We do that quite a bit in some areas of the US, you probably knew that.
” So why I ask again would anyone in their right mind even consider for one second covering pristine landscapes with white wind flailing monstrosities that occasionally and randomly squirt a miniscule amount of electrical power to disrupt a normally balanced grid.”
The reason we do wind turbines in the US is because we have some of the strongest and most steady winds of any country on the planet. Our Great Plains region, from Canada to Texas, and from Colorado to Missouri, has tremendous amounts of good, steady wind. This has been known for centuries, of course. It is only in the past decade, though, that the technical wrinkles were ironed out enough to build the systems in great numbers. We have, for example, a 2,000 MW wind farm that is now approved and finances arranged for 800 wind turbines in Oklahoma, with a transmission line going to the East to send the electricity to Tulsa. The project is viable even in a state with enormous natural gas resources. The wind is steady and strong in that part of Oklahoma, with wind turbines averaging 41 percent of their nameplate capacity on an annual basis.
That is likely not the case in Wales, as I seem to recall a great many low mountains and not much flat land. Oklahoma is just the opposite, very flat land and zero mountains.
The amount of electricity from the Oklahoma wind farm is not miniscule, though. The project will send electricity along at an average rate of just more than 800 MW. Annually, the electricity to Tulsa will be just over 7,000 GWh/y. The wind turbines will, of course, have natural gas-fired power plants as their backup. The beauty of the system is, the gas-fired plants already are installed. Now, they get to loaf along, not burning natural gas until and when the wind dies down. And in that part of Oklahoma, it almost never, ever dies down.
You mean the gas plants get to run inefficiently (higher real emissions like NOx and worse economics) and with increased cycling stresses which will reduce their useful lifetimes and cost everyone more. There’s going to be an awful lot of spinning reserve backing up an 800MW in feed.
Tsk
Perhaps this article on reserve needed for wind power may prove enlightening:
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1192957/power-system-reserve—no-need-build-wind-back-up
The wind capacity in central US is 40 to 45% over a very wide area – better that the 30 to 42% range observed (based on past performance) for UK offshore wind turbines
Your cite is laughable, Griff. The claim is that there is already sufficient backup in the system BECAUSE the system is functioning today without wind. If wind is going to actually displace current generating capacity, then it is going to require dedicated backup. Why is this so hard for you to understand?
I am not buying. Renewables will never be economical from the view point of the retail customer because he will always have to pay for two systems, one that works some of the time, and one that works when he really needs it. But, the second system, whether storage or gas turbine, sits their and accrues capital costs that must be amortized, even when it is not producing power or revenue.
Second, even accepting that coal will fall into disuse*, nuclear’s problems are not technical. They are political and created by leftists who are still enacting the old Soviet playbook. If we had our heads on straight, and the government had not been subverted by long march of Marxists through the institutions, we would be conducting far more R&D on fourth generation nuclear power and on fusion, than on wind, which is technology that is 100 years old, or on solar. Nor are construction costs an inherent issue. Nuclear reactors can be and are built in factories for aircraft carriers and submarines.
*Ask the Germans how that is working out. And their coal is low grade lignite.
Third, Blowing off a 55,000 sq. mi. foot print is audacious. I doubt whether any human activity other than agriculture requires anywhere near that much land. And, you will have to pay rent for it. It ain’t free. The whole idea is pharonic. I don’t think you can get the land as long as local people are allowed a say in the matter.
Fourth, I am very happy that all of the aeronautical engineers in China will have good jobs designing windmills for us, but I am not buying green job hype either.
Fifth, Another cost an political problem is transmission line construction. I live in a state that has no good wind sites on shore and that has outlawed commercial use of its offshore areas, which are not that good or large. If we are to have power in the age of wind, it will have to imported from far away. Building transmission lines is expensive and fraught with political problems. It is not a simple problem to solve.
That is it for now. I will have more objections later.
There is a lot of talk here about subsidies and whether they are justifiable based on the idea that they are necessary to support increasing efficiency of new technologies. However these arguments mostly appear to be phrased in terms of the cases where such subsidies may have been effective.
That’s the wrong way to look at it. The subsidies need to evaluated in terms of the total portfolio of subsidized renewables, not just cherry-picking ones that might actually be paying off. All the failures also need to be included–Solyndra and many others throughout the world.
No investment manager ever gets evaluated on just the winners he selected, ignoring all the losers.
There is always wind:
http://hint.fm/wind/
ReallySkeptical
And you’re called Denver, full of it.
Allocating an amount of real estate equivalent to the area of Iowa for wind turbines is simply out of the question. Thats almost 2% of the lower 48’s land area set aside for wind generation?
Steve R
Try this analysis, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
or this https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables?language=en
The TED talk by the late David Mackay is amusing, short and informative, from a green condemning renewables.
It’s worse than you thought.
Actually, that’s just the gross area needed. Of that, only 1 percent or less is actually used by wind turbines and transmission towers. Whatever rural activities were going on before can continue, as they usually do.
The point of that Iowa size statement is that it does not occupy the entire real estate of any country.
I find it apalling quite frankly that anyone would be Ok with wind turbines occupying nearly 2% of the land area of the US. Isnt there some way to meet our electrical needs with a smaller and less conspicuous environmental footprint?
Once drilling activities are completed, a gas well is quite inconspicous. Even open pit coal mines are temporary and eventually rehabilitated, and they take no where near this much land area.
I would like to comment on the “job creation aspect.” This is almost always a bogus argument thrown in for political reasons. Labor is one part of the cost of energy production. Labor is part of the capital cost (building the plant), the operating cost (running the equipment), and fuel cost(mining, drilling etc.). Because some of these are front end only, and others continuous, it is quite hard to compare. Usually, when someone says energy production “creates” jobs, either: A) it is real jobs when energy production moves from somewhere else to one’s own country or B) it is a made up of temporary jobs involved in switching from another form of electricity generation. Furthermore, if a form of energy production has more “jobs” than another form of production, that just means its labor content is higher than other forms. If something else (e.g. fuel, capital) is not less, then the “jobs” are just part of the higher cost which is a case of “make work.” In recent history, real impact on jobs related to power generation comes from either: A) moving energy production from an imported good to domestic (e.g. US fraking) or B) lowering the cost of energy thus enabling all sorts of other economic activity to be more competitive (e.g. again US fraking).
Wind and solar have many advantages and disadvantages. But the major unspoken disadvantage is that renewables have the potential to reduce the profit in non-renewables, mainly by making them a back up power source, like that generator in your garage for blackouts.
Reducing the $$ in non-renewables will reduce the non-renewable industry and reduce their $$ into US politics.
You guys have your big world control conspiracy theories. And I have my big oil ones. Seems like mine are real.
“You guys have your big world control conspiracy theories. And I have my big oil ones. Seems like mine are real.”
How so? Hardly any of US electricity is generated from oil?
I am with Roger on most, including the notion that nuclear and coal must go due to pollutants other than CO2.
I think in Belgium they are looking at using wind offshore to pump water up to a reservoir so you can generate electricity from it like hydro exactly when you need it.
The biggest problem with wind is that you sometimes have no wind exactly when you need power the most…
Henryp, thank you. Well said. The gas-fired generation perfectly solves the no-wind situation. As the wind industry slogan says, When the Wind Blows, The Power Flows.
Offshore wind for Belgium to pump water up a hill for later use? Last time I was in the region it look ed pretty flat. The country next door is called Pay Bas, or low lands. Belgium, the country with more roads lit up at night that any other EU country.
They want to build the reservoir inside the sea. Correction on previous comment: CO2 is not a pollutant. My results show there is no man made warming.
This is the UK electricity generation profile for a relatively mild winter month:
http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ukgridjan17.png
I think it illustrates the fundamental problem in expecting wind (or solar) to replace base load from any source.
Hi Chris!
This diagram is indeed the fundamental answer to the whole wind energy hullabaloo! No strong! wind, – no energy!
A glance to the Weibull distribution of the wind velocity, taking into account the poor efficiency of wind turbines shows that they are not useful for grids.
For the case of windstill, there must always be a backup system, designed for the total load!
The higher the share of wind power in the entire electricity production,the greater the cost increase for this.
For proof just look at the devastating results of Merkels “Energiewende” (energy turnover) in Germany.
But perhaps a miracle happens and Elon Musk invents an affordable! storage system, not a 30 second one like in South Australia.
A basic home installation is 120A at 240V. This is Roughly 28KVA. Ignoring power factor and erring to the side in favor of wind power, let us assume that a typical home requires approximately 25KW of rated power (yes few home blow the main breaker, however the circuit must be sized to support the theoretical max demand). At that level, per this paper, an 85 Acre windfarm would be able to support 40 homes.
I am sure many people in the US would love to have a home on 2+ acres of land, but the typical suburban tract is frequently 1/8 acre plots. Housing development therefore require almost 680 times more energy density than an “actual, modern, efficient windfarm” can produce. This of course does not include Industrial or other usages which are frequently much higher (I have yet to see a home with a 600V, 3000A switch gear installed).
What made me think about this was the fact that I own approx 30 acres, and have a 200A service in rural use. I wondered how many homes I could supply with my property and then realized that I could barely supply myself, my closest neighbors and the country store with an “actual, modern, efficient” windfarm. On the other hand my solar roof fits within my homes footprint, and is still sized large enough to provide enough power on an annualized basis for my home. Even with this installation however I require grid connection to even out the peak generation vs peak load differentials.
Which leads to the next point. any comment used in this article regarding to “if we could develop storage techniques” is also applicable to ANY other power generation capability, even coal fed boiler systems as they too have a minimum operating level below which the system is highly inefficient. Were steam generation used in conjunction with these hypothetical storage systems, ‘brown outs’ and ‘rolling blackouts’ would be unnecessary as the boiler based systems would be operating at maximum efficiency at all periods and the peak demand periods would simply be absorbed by the capacity of the storage systems.
This piece by Roger Sowell is yet another article advocating doing something economically stupid just because one fails to do something sensible and question whether CO2 is a danger and the chief cause of Global Warming. This sort of thinking is a huge brake upon the alleviation of Global poverty and access to electrical power.
Nothing says “I hate you” like wind turbines. If you overlook the extreme environmental damage, them being pushed on people that cannot fight back and destruction of a way of life…….I still can’t find anything positive to say.
Well, at 290 comments and counting, I’m not sure if it is worth weighing in. So, while this is probably the most factual article I have ever seen from Roger Sowell ( consider that a grudging positive Roger) it does contain some logical fallacies.
Roger’s position (I’m paraphrasing, but he pretty much said this in both the article and his comments) is that natural gas is putting coal and nuclear out of business based on price, and so we should build more wind power. Huh? Sorry, that doesn’t follow. The notion that wind will somehow reduce demand for gas and so make it even cheaper makes no sense at all. No one replaces their cheapest power source in order to use less of it if they have high cost sources they can replace instead. If wind is REALLY economical, then it would logically replace the highest cost power sources, not the lowest cost. So the notion that gas will be made even cheaper by wind is simply illogical.
Roger also asserts that using wind can reduce the use of peaking plants which are very expensive to operate. Again, this just isn’t logical. Sure, from time to time there will be a surge in demand and a surge in wind that coincide, keeping the peaking plant off line, but that will be a matter of chance, and the exception to the rule. In fact, the use of peaking sources is driven by two factors. One is variability of demand, and the other is variability of supply. No power source can affect demand, so leave that out of the equation, and we’re left with variability of supply. The only thing with higher variability on the supply side of the equation than wind, is solar. No matter how you cut it, introducing highly variable sources of supply into the grid has the inevitable consequence of requiring not only more frequent use of peaking sources, but also more capacity on the peaking side.
Intermittent supply requires massive infrastructure build out that can step in on little notice. That capital and operating MUST be added to the cost of production by wind in order to have a sensible comparison. The second step in that process is to consider the cost of building a non-intermittent supply of the same scale in the first place, and look at that lifetime operating cost. This is a battle neither wind nor solar can win on economics alone. The notion that we should use wind to preserve the supply of the cheapest energy source we have is also an absurd economic analysis.
For davidmhoffer, not sorry, you get zero substantive response. Your previous comments on earlier threads are the reason.
No further comment.
Y’know, I figured Roger was a lawyer, but I didn’t realize he was too pusillanimous to answer a clear, well well written, and interesting comment.
However … it’s no surprise. People like him often run from real questions, and he’s no exception.
Too bad. I was looking for real answers to real questions, but Roger is playing the victim card.
w.
Your previous comments on earlier threads are the reason.
For readers not familiar with the discourse between Roger and myself over the years, Roger is referring to the many times I mopped the floor with him. So many times did I expose the fallacies in his arguments that he threw a hissy fit and swore never to respond to me again. Yet here he is, responding to me, but implying that past comments of mine are a good reason to to slink away without answering me.
I was going to let the past be the past Roger, but since you dredged it up, I’m delighted to have yet again confronted you with an argument to which you clearly have no substantive response. If you had one, I presume you would have presented it instead of whining about my previous comments. Feel free to prove me wrong Roger, and show that you do have a substantive argument instead of weak excuses for not engaging in actual debate.
Or are you going to sue me instead? I was going to let that piece of cowardice go as well in the interest of having a rational discussion, but since you refuse to engage, I’ll call you out on that too. Threatening law suits in your article, before anyone has even commented, by a lawyer no less, is nothing more than a weak attempt to bully people into silence.
So sue me Roger, or answer me, or say nothing at all. Any of these is far better for you than the excuse you have seized upon.
ctm ~ good on you for getting Roger to write this article, I hope you get more articles from the other side published here (including from Roger). It makes for interesting reading, and where the author has the kahonies to engage, interesting debate.
Mr. Sowell – I wish you would explain to the Maryland Legislature that just passed a law requiring electricity suppliers in the state to provide at least 25 percent from renewable sources and the Public Service Commission that approved a subsidy for a large wind farm off the coast of Ocean City that the mandate and subsidy are not necessary because wind power is reliable and cheap. Then maybe consumers will not be bombarded with lies about how switching to completely renewable sources will save the planet from catastrophic climate change, although at a cost well above what we are currently paying, and Ocean City will not have to go to court to stop the sight pollution of the subsidized wind farm off their tourist flooded (now, but not necessarily later) beaches. Or maybe you are being too optimistic?
For South River Independent, re August 7, 2017 at 2:32 pm
My part of the continuing conversation is now at my blog. Post your comments there, if you like, and I will respond.
https://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2017/08/offshore-wind-turbine-project-statoils.html
Mr. Sowell – I reposted my comment on your blog where there are a total of four comments so far.
“Intermittent supply requires massive infrastructure build out that can step in on little notice.”
Except that a lot of time, effort and computer power has gone into making renewable output, especially wind, predictable up to a day in advance.
and there are other solutions for frequency response/sudden demand spikes.
Except that a lot of time, effort and computer power has gone into making renewable output, especially wind, predictable up to a day in advance.
Even if your assertion was true, it changes the need for a massive infrastructure build that can step in on little notice (one day is little) by nothing. nada, zip, zero.
and there are other solutions for frequency response/sudden demand spikes.
Arm waving. There are no low cost solutions to this problem, if you know of one, by all means tell us what it is.
It’s a mistake to count on a certain supply of fracked gas … fracked wells deplete fast, secondary recovery is dicey… fracking consumes another precious commodity: fresh water…
That leaves the nuclear and cola option. Nuclear plants are currently expensive because the anti-nuclear movement destroyed the industry so that new plants are practically bespoke, artisan crafts. Once economies of scale are restored fixed capital costs will drop again.
Fackers reuse almost all of the water so water is not a problem.
Where does the water that’s recycled come from? That’s not inconsequential amounts of consumption. And then this highly toxic slurry has to deposed of without polluting the groundwater sources.
Roger, you say:
I consider this a slimy and underhanded attempt to keep people from expressing their opinions by threatening them with a lawsuit. It is a cowardly puerile despicable threat, but one that is not surprising given my past interactions with you.
As far as I’m concerned, your legal threat makes all of your claims suspect. Since truth is a full and complete defense against libel, why on earth would you be afraid of any attacks on your ideas?
Gotta say, I thought my opinion of you couldn’t get any lower … but you’re a superstar, so I guess any depth of depraved action is possible.
Don’t like my opinion? Sue me. It will do nothing for your reputation and can only burnish mine.
w.
But as to the content of the post, WE has no comment. So sorry.
ReallySkeptical August 5, 2017 at 5:08 pm Edit
As to the content of the post, I divided my response into context and content. So sorry, but I was writing my comment on the content while you were doing your usual—insulting decent people. I truly don’t understand why they allow you to post here, since you’ve already had to change your alias because you were ashamed of your words.
You are a skidmark on the shorts of humanity … lead, follow, or STFU.
w.
The content of the OP post ignores that wind is incredibly unreliable, incredibly expensive, and requires incredibly expensive intermittent fossil fueled energy for backup.
What part of this did you miss?
How sorry are you now? LOL
“RS, I have great sympathy for what Willis has written. Your remark however says nothing at all in response to what Willis has written other than perhaps that he should not have expressed his opinion. Now THAT’s pathetic.”
Not really. WE whined about lawsuits, like a big baby. that’s his first criticism, how pathetic.
Willis Eschenbach
You get all the plusses I can muster for that comment.
Short of actually calling him a wanker, you did.
I found some of his analysis interesting, from a layman’s point of view, that being an analysis of someone utterly unconcerned with anything other than party line numbers and puerile legalese, but to threaten everyone in the world with legal action, even before he began his submission is just as low as a snake can slither.
Typically authoritarian, but he won’t understand the meaning of the term.
Have none of these people every been down to the sea and had a look at what it does to stuff that gets put in it? What about those boat yards where they’re CONSTANTLY repairing and maintaining boats, or the BOARDWALK…looks like they’re replacing the piers and some of the structure because of corrosion and storm damage. Hey, what’s that on the BEACH (rock that has been ground into tiny particles = sand) oh it’s a rusted SHIPWRECK…but what the heck…let’s stick a billion dollars worth of equipment (that’s meant to turn and generated electricity from the wind, which doesn’t work very well even on land) but let’s try putting it in the ocean and tie it up with heavy chains and use cable to transmit the energy back to shore….I mean what could possibly go wrong?
And the UK has been building offshore oil and gas platforms way out in the North Sea for what – 40 years?
And wind farms have now been operating for as much as 25 years continuously… as have sub sea cables to wind farms and across the N Sea
Really, the corrosion is NOT an issue. We can build stuff which copes with it. Cables, platforms, turbines, turbine pylons, the lot.
Griff,
Exactly! In the North Sea, offshore Alaska, (my favorite is Sakhalin Island in Russia, just north of Japan), offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore Australia, offshore Africa, offshore Qatar, the oil and gas industry has decades of experience in some of the hottest waters (near Qatar) and the coldest (North Sea and Sakhalin Island). Fierce Winds and giant waves flinging salt spray on everything.
Keep it up!
Roger
Forrest Gardener
I look forward to his response, as you might expect.
As I see it, the problem with wind power is that it seems to have a saturation level. The actual level seems to vary in different countries, probably due to different wind conditions, but it seems to be over 20% but not much above 30%. When the saturation level for a particular location is exceeded, the grid becomes unstable and brown outs and black outs start to occur. This is already happening in South Australia, and Germany has only just avoided it on several occasions, It just seems that above a certain level it is impossible to manage a grid with a large input from intermittent generators.
Returning to the subject at hand, the EIA says that of all of the ways to generate power, offshore wind is the second most expensive of all of them. Only solar thermal is more expensive.
Note that offshore wind is three times as expensive as natural gas, and that does NOT count the cost of having to keep spinning reserve backup running at all times. If it weren’t for fools like Roger advocating obscene subsidies to fulfill their green dreams, we’d never hear a word about these expensive monstrosities.
Obviously, using the second-most expensive source of electricity will screw the poor terribly, as they are the ones least able to withstand an increase in costs.
And equally obviously, that means Roger Sowell doesn’t give a fig about the poor … as far as he’s concerned, they’re too poor to pay his lawyer’s fees, so let them eat wind …
w.
Am I reading that right — 3 beers — but is onshore wind the cheapest but for geothermal?
Wow.
With an assumed 39% CF (hah!) and including the tax subsidy it barely edges out CCGT. But as Willis said this also doesn’t include the cost of backup. I suspect there’s also a CO2 cost in there but haven’t checked to confirm it.
Look again!
But gas WILL be the backup in the future, even if it is about the same cost. This will mean that gas will drop in price even more, meaning that when we go on backup, it will be cost effective, that’s good you think?.
It will be substantially less cost effective than just running on gas to begin with. Human prosperity and longevity arose when we harnessed dense, DISPATCHABLE energy sources. Putting ourselves at the whims of that oh-so-gentle Gaia is a recipe for misery and lower living standards.
ReallySkeptical August 5, 2017 at 5:51 pm Edit
Nope. You’re not reading it right. What it says is that IF you pour billions in tax subsidies into renewables onshore wind is still a very expensive option. Not only that, but they’ve ignored all of the subsidies except tax subsidies, plus they’ve insisted (without evidence) that new coal plants will require CO2 sequestration, and they’ve ignored the cost of the spinning backup.
In short … you’re not even close. Go have the rest of your beer and stop bothering the adults.
w.
You don’t have to keep the spinning reserve running at all times.
UK wind predictability is very high and the grid just turns the gas up or down according to predicted demand. It doesn’t need all its fossil fuel on spinning reserve. It doesn’t need as much as when it had all fossil. With batteries coming in for frequency response, spinning reserve drops still further
Cold starts are even harder on equipment and accelerate their depreciation. Somehow you think that’s a feature.
If wind is the answer, why then are wind producers paid to NOT produce in times of too much electricity while gas is kept going?
Nice troll and click bait judging by the number of comments. I guess that is the only way WUWT would want to erode its credibility in this way. The web is full of mendacious articles flogging snake oil like this by people with an agenda who stand to profit. Why add to them? We’re suffering from very high electricity prices in Australia because of this bs. The more wind and solar the higher the prices. Fortunately 50% of Queenslanders have woken up to this according to a recent survey by The Courier Mail (aka the Brisbane fish wrapper).
Mike, WUWT is a place for public debate of ideas. The fact that WUWT posts a host of contrary views does not “erode its credibility” Instead, it is a sign that we are willing to discuss anyone’s ideas.
After all, how can we show these ideas are bogus unless we post them, discuss them, and debunk them?
Regards,
w.
Eschenbach posts: “WUWT is a place for public debate of ideas.”
…
Except for the fact that the ideas debated here are one-sided. It is a shame that mainstream ideas from real science are absent from this site. The fact that Sowell gets attacked for presenting facts is telling.
Mike Borgelt
And as the sun rises over Aus, we get some real time experiences to refute Rogers idealistic, socialist perspective on wind generated energy.
I’m off to bed now guys. Get stuck in.
But be careful you don’t say anything libellous, Roger’s out to get you.
Nighty from the land of Poms.
No, i think WUWT should run posts by people like Roger Sowell, an informed advocate for his cause, however bad it is, so the readers are familiar with the sort of arguments other advocates will present. Knowledge is always preferable to ignorance.
On the other hand RS does not really price out wind properly, adding in the cost of keeping the required spinning backup idle but available. Storage is still largely vaporware as far as true grid-scale installations go.
I agree — an open debate is always preferred.
Saying the “science is settled” is fascist propaganda — intended to stifle the debate, and deliberately is diametrically opposed to the Scientific Method.
“On the other hand RS does not really price out wind properly, adding in the cost of keeping the required spinning backup idle but available. Storage is still largely vaporware as far as true grid-scale installations go.”
remember the cost of people’s generators and extra fuel for temporary black outs. Not to different.
“remember the cost of people’s generators and extra fuel for temporary black outs. Not to(sic) different.”
In what country?
Never have i have experienced this in the US or any of the other countries I have lived.
Amazing. You have lived in the US and not had neighbors with their noisy generators in blackouts. Pretty common in snow belt states.
I live in a snowbelt state and have never had a neighbor with a generator.
tt
do you really live in the US? You should check.
Many businesses in the US have backup generators, because they are doing things that cannot be interrupted. Hospitals nearly always have backup power. Any business that requires electricity for safety systems will have generators onsite.
Actually they are quite different. The extra cost of gensets is incurred to offset disruptions from unexpected acts of nature and accidents. The extra cost of backing up renewables is incurred to offset expected disruptions intrinsic to their unreliable nature. There is no justification for incurring extra costs from exchanging a stable system for an unstable one, and then using the stable system to back up the unstable one. Complete madness.
Hear! Hear!
Temporary blackouts in the U.S. are generally due to damage to power lines from falling trees or ice storms. Those blackouts would exist regardless of the type of power being generated. Switching to renewable power would not swap one form of backup for another, but add a second system of backup, and result in more blackouts, because of the unreliability of renewables.
but renewables are not unreliable… the German grid is highly reliable and does not have outages, even when it has high levels of renewables
http://energypost.eu/german-grid-operator-can-handle-70-wind-solar-storage-needed/
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-electricity-grid-stable-amid-energy-transition
“Production of intermittent green electricity has risen sharply over the last few years and worries about security of supply for consumers have been voiced by the industry. But, so far, actual power blackouts have become even less of an issue. Germany still has one of the most reliable electricity grids in the world. [Update – adds 2015 figures for Germany published in October 2016]
Germany’s power grid stability and security of supply has been rising despite a huge expansion of intermittent green electricity production. Average power outages per consumer amounted to 12 minutes and 42 seconds in 2015, according to the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur). In 2014, the average outage was 12 minutes and 17 seconds. “The slight increase in supply interruptions was mainly caused by weather events such as storms and heat waves,” the agency’s president Jochen Homann said in a press release. “The energy transition and the rising share of decentral generating capacity continues not to have any negative consequences for the quality of supply.””
First, that’s cherry-picking. Other countries or districts might be cited whose experience has been less favorable.
Second, Germany’s reliability to date is dependent on its connection to a wider grid that does not have a high level of renewables.
Third, Germany has occasionally put such stress on its grid partners that it has come close to destabilizing them.
Roger, a well-written and cogent exposition of wind energy. I appreciate the time that you spent putting it together, which must have been considerable.
I agree with you about nuclear energy becoming obsolete in the next 20 years or so. Regardless of what one thinks about the justness of it, nuclear energy is politically dead in this country. Once these plants reach the end of their productive lives, they will be shuttered and not replaced. We can hope and dream that fusion power will become a reality, but that is a long way off, unless an AI quantum computer can accelerate the progress. 🙂
I was surprised about your comments on coal, though. I had always heard that we had several hundred years of coal reserves. You estimate we have about 25-30 years of coal that can be mined at the current price. The article about the Powder River basin listed about 25 billion tons of reserves there that can be mined profitably. According to the US EIA, the US consumed 730 million short tons of coal in 2016 (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30652). That works out to 34 years of reserves on just the Wind River basin source of coal. The EIA says that Montana and Wyoming have about 37% of the US Demonstrated Reserve Base (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm/index.cfm?page=coal_reserves), and the US has about 255 billion tons of Estimated Recoverable Reserves, which would be almost 350 years at today’s usage. Of course, today’s prices aren’t going to stay the same, nor will our use of coal stay the same, but it seems like we have enough for building more coal plants today if we need to, especially if the CO2 sequestration requirement is removed.
I am not an expert in this field by any means. Am I missing something?
Having said all of that, I can see why coal would be disfavored since we now have so much natural gas. There are a lot of good reasons to prefer NG to coal when building power plants. But that doesn’t help the argument for wind energy production.
What is your answer to the argument that renewable energy, despite subsidies, is more expensive than coal or NG? We can’t subsidize it forever, and higher prices for consumers does act as a regressive “tax” on poor people.
For DeLoss McKnight, re August 5, 2017 at 7:14 pm
“Roger, a well-written and cogent exposition of wind energy. I appreciate the time that you spent putting it together, which must have been considerable.”
Thank you, DeLoss McKnight. I will try to respond to your questions.
” I agree with you about nuclear energy becoming obsolete in the next 20 years or so. Regardless of what one thinks about the justness of it, nuclear energy is politically dead in this country. Once these plants reach the end of their productive lives, they will be shuttered and not replaced. We can hope and dream that fusion power will become a reality, but that is a long way off, unless an AI quantum computer can accelerate the progress. :-)”
I would disagree about politically dead. I see it as having tremendous political support over the Obama years, with 4 reactors started construction, federal guarantees for loans in the event of default, and state legislature support for billing the consumers for the funds with which to build. Of course, now that the four reactors are the Four Fiascos, with Westinghouse gone bankrupt, fired as contractor, and the two reactors in South Carolina declared stopped and not to be resumed, it could not be a bigger mess.
However, as I wrote in the article, the 98 operating reactors will retire within 20 years and not be replaced. On that, we agree. I see absolutely no hope for fusion power, as I have written about at length on my own blog, SLB.
“I was surprised about your comments on coal, though. I had always heard that we had several hundred years of coal reserves. You estimate we have about 25-30 years of coal that can be mined at the current price. The article about the Powder River basin listed about 25 billion tons of reserves there that can be mined profitably. According to the US EIA, the US consumed 730 million short tons of coal in 2016 (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30652). That works out to 34 years of reserves on just the Wind River basin source of coal. The EIA says that Montana and Wyoming have about 37% of the US Demonstrated Reserve Base (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm/index.cfm?page=coal_reserves), and the US has about 255 billion tons of Estimated Recoverable Reserves, which would be almost 350 years at today’s usage. Of course, today’s prices aren’t going to stay the same, nor will our use of coal stay the same, but it seems like we have enough for building more coal plants today if we need to, especially if the CO2 sequestration requirement is removed.” and “I am not an expert in this field by any means. Am I missing something?”
Coal is a fairly complicated issue, to me. But first, the estimate of 20 to 30 years of US coal remaining is not my original idea, nor my original research. That was first brought to my attention a year or two ago. I looked into it with great care, because that simply did not match what I thought was true about US coal reserves. Like most people in my generation, we were told that the US had hundreds of years of coal in our country, and we would essentially never run out. That was in the early 1960s, we were told that. But, fast forward 50 years.
Coal also has the problem of limited resources, where low prices for coal have limited the economically recoverable reserves to less than 50 years worldwide, and approximately 25 years in the US. These are the conclusions of coal experts, who have researched and analyzed coal from all over the world. I gave one such reference in the post above, from Professor David Rutledge of Cal Tech, in the International Journal of Coal Geology. I checked his figures for the US against USGS publications, also reference given above.
And, it all checks out. Depending on the mine-mouth price, the Powder River Basin has about 10 to 15 billion tons of coal at present price. Powder River has roughly one-third of the US coal, as you stated. That brings the profitable coal we can mine to roughly 30 to 40 billion tons. And, with recent coal production before the huge decline, at 1 to 1.2 billion tons per year, we arrive at 30/1.2 or about 25 years remaining. All that can, of course change if the price of coal climbs, or the production rate decreases.
One might wonder if this is a false shortage, as was the peak oil prediction related to oil and gas in the 1970s. There are significant differences between coal reserves, and oil and gas reserves. The primary difference is the cost to extract. If a huge oil reserve is discovered, perhaps thousands of feet deep and offshore a few miles, it will be economic to drill and produce the oil. ExxonMobil is doing exactly that with their huge oil field offshore Russia’s east coast, the Sakhalin Island field. This oil field required drilling more than 7 miles deep and with the drilling rig located on the island, more than 7 miles horizontally under the seabed.
Coal cannot be economically mined under such conditions. Per USGS experts, deep coal mines are uneconomic at more than 4000 feet from the surface. Also, for surface mines, or near-surface mines, no more than 10 tons of overburden can be removed for each ton of coal mined. This limits coal production to far less than the known amount of coal in the world
” Having said all of that, I can see why coal would be disfavored since we now have so much natural gas. There are a lot of good reasons to prefer NG to coal when building power plants. But that doesn’t help the argument for wind energy production.”
Yes, lots of good reasons. First cost, is one. Water used for cooling is another. Weather issues for transporting coal in the winter is another. Some power plants on the Great Lakes nearly ran out and had to shut down a few winters ago. Following the load easily is another. Scrubber equipment and disposal of the pollutants is another.
“What is your answer to the argument that renewable energy, despite subsidies, is more expensive than coal or NG? We can’t subsidize it forever, and higher prices for consumers does act as a regressive “tax” on poor people.”
I see that wind turbine generators, onshore and in the Great Plains of the US, are competitive today with coal or natural gas. They are subsidized at the moment, true, but they are obtaining only 4.3 cents per kWh total. Coal plants with scrubbers – not CO2 removal – can not compete against that. A modern CCGT plant at $4 natural gas can compete. I don’t see the subsidies lasting forever, nor do we need them. Congress already closed the door on the subsidies, which decrease each year and end in, I believe, 2021. By that time, wind farm operators with new projects will obtain likely 4 cents per kWh by contract with the utilities, no subsidies, and make a decent profit. It is also likely that exports of LNG by 2021 will have increased natural gas prices in the US to $5, at which point even a CCGT plant would have difficulty beating the wind turbine price of 4 cents per kWh.
In any event, the main benefit of more wind capacity and wind generation is to reduce the demand for, and price of, natural gas.
The subsidies did their job over the years, allowed wind designers to optimize the designs to reduce installed costs and increase capacity factors. The systems are ready to stand on their own without subsidies.
Fusion is not a long way off. There are new designs and concepts that have made huge progress on a shoe-string..
I’m amazed at the number of people who are ignorant of recent developments so casually mouth off on a subject of which they know absolutely nothing.
sarastro92
I have been waiting over 50 years for the fusion generation that was only 10 years in the future. We will not have a reliable fusion reaction until we have control of gravity. There is only one way to contain the plasma and that is to use the same method as the only successful fusion reactor we have seen, “THE SUN”. Gravity is the only way to contain the reaction. Of course we could also develop a magnetic monopole but I don’t see that happening anytime soon either.
For sarastro92, re August 6, 2017 at 7:39 am
“Fusion is not a long way off.”
That is good to know. Will it be here in time, and in quantity, and at low cost, to replace the output of 47 nuclear plants and hundreds of coal-fired plants, in the US by 2027? The energy needed is 1,000 million MWh per year, on average. The price point to beat is 5 or 6 cents per kWh sold.
The nameplate capacity that is needed will, of course, depend on the annual capacity factor for such fusion plants. Also, do you have off-line characteristics? Will the fusion plants themselves require any sort of backup?
Do you have that information? I would love to see it.
Fusion is always 10 years in the future. The energy required to contain the fusion reaction will always be more than what the reaction produces, if this is done on the surface of the earth. The one way to actually do a fusion reactor correctly would be to capture an asteroid, and pull it into earth orbit. Drill down to the gravitational center of the asteroid, and spark the plasma there. Essentially, gravity is zero at that point, so you don’t need containment, since it is self-contained. Another advantage of using an asteroid, is that you can use the vacuum of space. Creating a vacuum on earth is another energy intensive situation. Once a plasma has been created, can simply keep feeding it, while siphoning off a portion of the energy. Transmit the energy to the earth by converting it into a microwave frequency that will not be attenuated by the atmosphere.
Bergin… you’re just repeating yourself, only louder. You can find out about the privately funded, anuetronic fusion devices.
You can compare these designs to the current (dead-end approaches) (Part 1)
Roger… we’ll know for sure by Qtr 1 2018 whether the LPPFusion device can achieve the required density to generate net fusion… commercialization will take a few more years after that… so yes, it’s quite feasible to have 5MW reactors in the early years of the 20’s…. we’ll have abetter idea in 9 months… this is not a 50 year project
For progress reports see: (parts 4 and 5)
The floating butcher is back! Hack them to pieces! They will disappear in the sea. No more evidence of mass slaughter
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/07/article-0-1923299A000005DC-754_634x377.jpg
Giant blades better than machete in hacking birds
http://savetheeaglesinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/pic21.jpg
You should walk along I84 some time.