From Energy.gov
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
August 23, 2017
New energy science and technological breakthroughs could cut the cost of wind energy in half by 2030—making it fully competitive with the fuel cost of natural gas.
This new finding is outlined in a report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that examines the future of wind power plants—backed by the supercomputing power of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories.
Atmosphere to Electrons (A2e): Enabling the Wind Plant of Tomorrow
Watch and learn more about DOE’s Atmosphere to Electrons initiative
It’s part of DOE’s Atmosphere to Electrons initiative, which focuses on maximizing efficiencies at the plant level (i.e. how wind turbines interact with one another and the atmosphere) rather than treating each wind turbine as an individual unit. The next step is for DOE to apply high-performance computing to this grand challenge of better understanding the complex physics that control electricity generation by wind plants.
The Wind Plant of the Future
According to NREL, the wind plant of the future will use a collection of technologies that allow wind power plants and the turbines within them to not only respond to the atmosphere as an efficient, integrated system, but also to control the airflow within the plant to maximize power production. This approach is made possible by recent advances in supercomputing technology, which turns large sets of atmospheric and wind turbine operation data into a high-fidelity model. Industry can then use these government-driven scientific insights to design new wind turbine components, sensors, and controls. Future wind power plants would include:
- High-fidelity modeling and state-of-the-art sensors to accurately estimate wind power plant energy production, reducing uncertainty and increasing predictabilty of electricity production;
- Integrated wind plant design, real-time active control of turbines, and operational strategies to increase reliability and extend turbine lifetimes;
- Innovative design of wind turbines and components such as rotors and drivetrains to optimize performance and enhance energy capture, including larger rotors and taller towers to capture higher-potential wind energy in the Earth’s upper atmosphere; and
- Controllable, dispatchable, and predictable grid support services for grid resilience and stability, including precise forecasting of wind energy production for short-term grid operation and planning.
The wind power plant of tomorrow.
Illustration Josh Bauer, NREL
Wind’s Place in Shaping the Energy Landscape
The rise of wind energy over the past decade has been driven largely by technological advances that have made wind turbines more efficient at a lower cost. Wind was the third most-installed source of U.S. energy capacity in 2016 behind solar and natural gas. Between 2009 and 2016, installed project costs for new wind farms dropped 33%, while also generating more electricity per turbine.
Continued cost reductions will become even more important as wind’s main policy incentive, the federal production tax credit, expires in 2019. By leveraging high-performance computing and accelerating energy science R&D efforts for the wind plant of the future, wind energy costs could be cut in half by 2030 or sooner, bringing it below the projected fuel cost for natural gas.
Newly-built wind plants using production tax credits are already cost-competitive with new natural gas plants in some parts of the U.S., especially in the “wind belt” that runs from Texas to North Dakota. New energy science and technology breakthroughs outlined above could drop the unsubsidized cost of wind energy below the projected cost of fuel for existing natural gas plants by 2030.
Levelized cost of energy is the total cost of installing and operating a project per megawatt-hour of electricity generated by the project over its life. AEO projections are from the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook.
Read more from NREL or download the full report.
Liz Hartman is the Communications Lead for DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, and formerly (2009–2016) the Communications Lead for EERE’s combined Wind and Water Power Technologies Office.
OFFICE of ENERGY EFFICIENCY & RENEWABLE ENERGY
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HT/Roger Sowell (busy boy)
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Wind energy costs: Cut it in half ? They must have been inspired by some raptor residue to guess that figure.
And when the wind does not blow for 21 consecutive days in winter who will be the first to say “We’re gonna need a bigger battery!”
Hasn’t Griff spent the last few months claiming that wind power is already economically competitive?
Are wind turbines hurricane-proof? What if all Texas had today were turbines for power. Would Texas have power after the hurricane ended?
Another way is high density det cord.
Jetcord might be a better choice.
All have missed the obvious, if you halve the installed amount of wind turbines you’ll halve the cost.
Not if all that “added” technology doubles the cost of each turbine.
Doubling the size of the turbine way, way more than doubles the cost of each tower/turbine.
Then they’ll only be a 100% waste of money!
Robert: No, the obvious is, install twice the WTG to halve the cost. Call it CliSci Math.
More models is always the answer to these folks. They must really think we are all idiots.
They only have to think that Congress critters are idiots, Paul. A much better bet.
So true. Politicians are very easily fooled, especially when it involves profit for them and their donors. Since politicians are most interested in themselves much of the time, people end up with little say in the whole matter.
In less than 2 days hurricane force winds are predicted over the area of the windmill field located north of Corpus Christi, Texas.
A survey of this field after the hurricane might be interesting. Are there any solar farms in the are as well?
The nuclear power plant at South Texas Nuclear will shut down for Hurricane Harvey – as required under federal law for all nuclear plants that may experience hurricane force winds.
The St. Lucie nuclear plant (Florida) shut down before Hurricane Matthew passed in October, 2016:
“Federal rules require nuclear plants to be shut down at least one hour before hurricane winds hit the site, spokesman Peter Robbins said. FPL closed the Hutchinson Island plant at 11:15 a.m. and will reopen it after the category 4 storm is over. ” – local Florida newspaper (FPL is Florida Power and Light; St. Lucie nuclear is on Hutchinson Island)
ctm, there is a story here. Nuclear power unreliable in a hurricane.
From the Houston Chronicle today, re Hurricane Harvey shutting down the nuclear plant near Corpus Christi, Texas:
“Power plants also began battening the hatches. NRG Energy runs a 2,700-megawatt nuclear power plant (South Texas Nuclear Project) in Matagorda County about 10 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Spokesman Buddy Eller said the (nuclear) plant has special storm crews working around the clock, on a rotating basis.
Several hours before sustained winds reach 73 mph or greater, operators will start to shut down the plant.”
A photo of the STNP plant, the artificial cooling pond, and the Gulf of Mexico. Texas’ Colorado river at the left.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yAeo0Gl2DSo/UzDi5NNHmNI/AAAAAAAAAm0/U14fbZbs6VI/s1600/STNP+Reservoir.jpg
“Roger Sowell August 24, 2017 at 7:49 pm
ctm, there is a story here. Nuclear power unreliable in a hurricane.”
A hardened concrete structure is more unreliable than wind turbines in a hurricane?
Patrick. If a really BIG storm is going to mess up the cooling or something, you really don’t want to find out about that while the plant is running. For a given plant, a hurricane shutdown is probably at most a twice a century event. Let’s see — a day or two in 50 years = 2/(50*365) = .00012 Looks pretty close to 99.99% availability to me. I think actual historic availability allowing for nuclear power has been in the 75% to 80% range.
Aside from which, given 100mph winds, torrential rains, etc, etc, I don’t think demand along the Texas coast is going to be all that high. A lot of folks are going find their lines down or substation underwater.
Wind and solar unreliable every day
No wind, solar or Nuclear during a Hurricane tells us we need fossil fired power generation? I’m sure wind and solar are down during a storm that is not even a Hurricane level winds which occurs a lot more often. .Refineries normally shut down during a Hurricane along the coast because operators cannot get out to the field, do fossil fuel plants, being different, have a point where they also shut down when they are in the path?
Let’s see which comes back on line quicker after the hurricane?
DonK, sounds like a case of being overly cautious. It is a government regulation after all.
If one of the towers were to collapse during the storm, highly unlikely in my opinion, then the reactor can quickly be powered down. All that’s needed at that point is enough power to keep the cooling water running, being able to pump water directly from the cooling pond should be sufficient.
Another source that documents the shut downs of many nuclear plants as hurricanes approached.
http://www.power-eng.com/articles/print/volume-116/issue-10/features/preparing-for-hurricanes-nuclear-power-plants.html
One big concern is the wind sending debris at 75-100 mph into vulnerable areas of the plant. The containment dome is not much of a concern, but the transformers, switchgear, cooling tower (if there is one), all are vulnerable. On Harvey, there are no cooling towers at STNP. The cooling is provided by an artificial lake.
From the power-eng article: “Hurricane Andrew: In 1992, staff safely shut down Turkey Point 3 and 4 in south Florida after Hurricane Andrew, the most powerful hurricane ever to hit a nuclear energy facility, knocked out off-site power and damaged electrical infrastructure. Emergency diesel generators were used for six days.” (note: authors probably should have written “before” instead of “after.” — Sowell)
What kind of power plants does NOT shut down in a hurricane?
@Curious George;
Exactly. Nothing Roger has listed as a vulnerability appears to be unique to nuclear.
The fallacy of wind turbines is revealed with simple arithmetic.
5 mW wind turbine, avg output 1/3 nameplate, 20 yr life, electricity @ur momisugly wholesale 3 cents per kwh produces $8.8E6.
Installed cost @ur momisugly $1.7E6/mW = $8.5E6. Add the cost of standby CCGT for low wind periods. Add the cost of land lease, maintenance, administration and the cost of standby fossil power for when the wind does not blow.
Solar voltaic and solar thermal are even worse.
The dollar relation is a proxy for energy relation. Bottom line, the energy consumed to design, manufacture, install, maintain and administer renewables appears to exceed the energy they produce in their lifetime.
Without the energy provided by other sources these renewables could not exist.
That’s it. Without subsidies., w/out back up,
Dark Ages energy.
Thank you Dan that is exactly right they cannot produce enough energy in their life span to produce themselves,ergo they are not renewable. They are parasitic and intermittent as useful as tits on a bull.
Exactly. It costs more to buy a Tesla battery than it costs to buy the electricity it stores over its lifetime. It is cheaper to produce the power from fossil fuel than to store free energy in a battery.
This is just yet another rationalisation for spending other people’s money to solve a non-existent problem in an inefficient, intermittent and environmentally damaging manner. Even if wind-turbines were totally cost-free, they would be of zero value in supplying base-load to the power grid.
Off topic, but I couldn’t resist. Climate change is increasing rat infestations.
http://gothamist.com/2017/08/24/rat_city_baby.php
Ridiculous premise on this one. Weather may effect how fast rats get to their maximal population via breeding rate but not what that maximal population is. The population will expand until they can no longer find sufficient food or shelter. Period.
Resistance to pesticides and indifference by the authorities who attempt to control them will impact the final population as well.
Too late, Gore droppings are found everywhere…
That’s not a lab report that’s a fairy tale.
maybe I am way off base here but wonder if all the (wasted) money spent on huge under performing wind farms had been used towards POS (dwelling) type mills to power the home and safely augment the grid would we not have been better off?
the issue, in my layman opinion, is wind (and solar) doe not work well under normal economy of scale (ie: large) like most items. IMO something that CANNOT be counted on cannot be ramped up to a large economy of scale model like most things.
Make it as cheap as you like but when the wind don’t blow, the power don’t flow.
My first thought was kill off half the world’s population.
I go read the article now.
The watermelons seek an ‘optimal’ (for them and their buddies) global population of 500 to, at most, 750 million people. Even 750 million is about nine-tenths down on today’s 7,500 million (Plus, and still rising).
This link – http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#top20 – gives 7,527,000,000 plus at 1752Z.
Auto
On top of everything else, doesn’t the wind blow in an effort to equalize air pressure when there are differences in that air pressure between areas? I am not a scientist, so please forgive if I have this understanding wrong.
https://www.why.is/svar.php?id=5512
What are the consequences of harvesting that wind energy on a significant scale and interfering with Mother Nature’s response to the air pressure differences? Have there been any studies in this regard?
I thought the Green Movement was about minimizing human impacts on Mother Nature. Perhaps not.
You’ve never noticed that when trees are not waggling their branches, there is no wind? Obviously wind is caused by aforementioned trees waggling said branches. I plan to write a scholarly paper on this neglected phenomenon. I’ll be needing peer reviewers.
I’ll volunteer, but only if you provide the alcoholic beverages.
CD
With honourable exceptions, the ‘Green’ movement is about socialism, and imposing that onto the part of the population that – for now – lives in ‘liberal democracies’.
We have seen how the UK’s own Liberal democrats do not always speak in a liberal [or democratic] fashion – not least about the Brexit vote.
And those who are able to live on into the ‘Optimal’ population world these socialists want wil find that we are – mostly – slaves or concubines.
Not a good outlook is the ‘New World Order’ comes to pass.
And I see little sign of the [British]Tories actively seeking to prevent this.
The US, at least, has DJT!
Auto
“New energy science and technological breakthroughs could cut the cost of wind energy in half by 2030”
They start making breakthroughs, when GW funding comes under the Axe.
Very Interesting.
That doe vid was so full of buzz words it actually became comical 🙂 I tried to count them but could not stop laughing!
“The rise of wind energy over the past decade has been driven largely by technological advances that have made wind turbines more efficient at a lower cost.”
Just think about this opening statement and how false it is and wonder about the accuracy or viability of the claims in the entire article.
Any knowledgeable person knows that the rise of wind energy has to do with subsidies, mandates for renewable, penalties on fossil, restrictions on which energy must be purchased first, free land, excessive regulations on fossil, lease fees and production fees on fossil fuel . Meanwhile fossil fuels are the largest contributor to the US treasury after income tax, how much do the renewable’s pay in taxes?
When I was involved in ASME boiler code activities I was impressed with some of the government labs contribution including their role to advance the development of high temperature materials. They did a lot of testing and played an important role in new materials development.
It seems as though every agency has been totally corrupted in he last 8 years including these once great Laboratories that once were free of political influence. This report is not believable, anyone who has worked in industry and witnessed the development and commercialization of new or improvements of equipment on the ground can smell the political influence in exaggerated and distorted claims.
Even diligent scientists are generally over optimistic and when things get to the real engineering stage the costs inevitably rise.
Consider all extra the cost of steel, concrete, and other materials to make larger and higher turbines, it’s tough to believe the claimed savings are viable. A lot of fossil fuels are required to manufacture the basic materials, fabricate the hardware and erect the turbines especially offshore. They need some common sense Engineering input. ,
“The material requirements of a modern wind turbine have been reviewed by the US Geological Survey (Wind Energy in the United States and Materials Required for the Land-Based Turbine Industry From 2010 Through 2030). On average, 1 megawatt of wind capacity requires 103 tonnes of stainless steel, 402 tonnes of concrete, 6.8 tonnes of fibreglass, three tonnes of copper and 20 tonnes of cast iron. The blades are made of fibreglass, the tower of steel and the base of concrete.” Then you must build the roads to service these “windmills”.
No roads. Dirt paths.
‘New energy science and technological breakthroughs could cut the cost of wind energy in half by 2030—making it fully competitive with the fuel cost of natural gas.’
A fun game. Why not 90%?
“If you are going to make up a number, make up a big one.” – Gamecock
‘This new finding is outlined in a report’
Good grief! It’s not a ‘finding.’ Output of models is not data; it’s speculation.
‘by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that examines the future of wind power plants’
Wow! Able to examine the future!
‘—backed by the supercomputing power of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories.’
Can we run cars on supercomputing power?
‘“System Management of Atmospheric Resource through Technology,” or SMART strategies.’
Replacing STUPID strategies, I presume.
Thanks for the comment. while the government paper tigers are talking about cost reductions that are not realistic, the real life engineers and scientists have reduced the cost of fossil fuels especially Natural gas with real technology breakthroughs that have shown up in the real world with significant increased supply and much lower cost. Government mandated Wind turbines will never compete with the free market fossil fuel machine that has made life continuously better throughout many decades even with the table tilted by our governments against them.
At what point is the government going to address the ever increasing problem of slicing and dicing birds as the amount of Turbines increase?
The irony is that wind generators could never have been built without the preexisting fossil fuel energy and could not be built in the future using their own energy source. Wind seems to be nuisance gesture energy.
Let me summarize this report: Poor wind farm performance isn’t due to the wind not blowing. The poor performance is due to the wind turbines not being pointed into the wind.
Thank God for supercomputers, now we know: point wind turbines into the wind correctly.
Who knew!?
If they were not in such a rush to implement inferior technology so hastily and extensively, not fully developed, we would not be suffering from the many inherent pitfalls with wind turbines. Why did they not fix all the problems before recklessly pushing an inferior product on us. BTW while there is some sarcasm in that statement this has been a big problem with biofuels projects I worked on. The Obama government was desperately pushing for commercialization before all the issues were resolved and every project failed.
How do you cut the cost of subsidized wind-power in your model? Cut the subsidies in your model! Yes, these people are genii.
Flogging a dead horse. “They” are so intent on making wind produced electricity viable that nothing will stop their march to failure. Soon we will be hearing about “wind storage” as the answer to its’ unpredictability.
The wonderful thing about renewable energy is that it is always going to be 40% more efficient in 15 years time and cheaper than it is now.
So if wnd might cost half us much in 13 years, do we focus on research and stop subsidizing the proliferation of today’s inferior technology? How can you justify subsidizing wind facilities that will soon be dinosaurs which wll be taking up prime wind supporting real estate? Expensive wind would not seem to be the best option to bridge the transition to cheaper wind. Justifying today’s wind takes big subsidies and assumptions of long term value.
You could probably cut it more than half if you just did away with it…just sayin…
So what are they going to do to prevent the major health impacts from Infrasound on rural residents who are forced to live with and in the vicinity of the bird life, human health, environment, scenic view destroying wind turbines?.
It is now well established that the 20 hertz or lower infrasound well below the threshold of human hearing, activates the hairs in the liquid filled ear canals that provide the sense of balance.
Constant agitation of these tiny hairs particularly in the 20% or so of very suseptible individuals in the population is the equivalent of motion sickness continuing 24 hours a day for days at a time with all the health and mental consequences that type of continuous low grade torture brings on.
An Irish family sued and won, with more cases still to come, a major compensation claim from an Irish turbine company which refused to go to court but rather paid up than have what is becoming an turbine generated infrasound created health epidemic opened up for legal examination.
A turbine created infrasound health epidemic that the politicians and greens refuse to recognise and accept as highly destructive of the health of those forced through no fault of their own to live in the vicinity of newly erected turbines.
Thank you ROM for addressing the “low grade torture” issue. In Ontario, the refusal for the government to acknowledge this issue has become an ethical crisis.
In a study authored by Jerry Punch and Richard James, titled “Wind Turbine Noise and Human Health: A Four Decade History of Evidence that Wind Turbines Pose Risks,” the authors do not take a pro-wind or anti-wind position but, rather, advocate for a “pro-health” perspective. They describe this view in their conclusion:
“A pro-health view is that there is enough anecdotal and scientific evidence to indicate that ILFN [infrasound and low frequency noise] from IWTs [industrial wind turbines] causes annoyance, sleep disturbance, stress, and a variety of other AHEs [adverse health effects] to warrant siting the turbines at distances sufficient to avoid such harmful effects, which, without proper siting, occur in a substantial percentage of the population. … It is our belief that the bulk of the available evidence justifies a pro-health perspective. It is unacceptable to consider people living near wind turbines as collateral damage while this debate continues.”