Guest essay by Paul Driessen
Foreword:
An article I wrote several weeks ago had a couple of stupid math errors. This column attempts to correct them – and take readers on a journey to the futuristic world of 100 percent “clean, green, sustainable, renewable” wind energy. Since the assumptions always guide the analysis, this column lays mine out, crunches the numbers, and concludes that replacing the 2.85 terawatts of electricity generated worldwide in 2016 – while ensuring stored power for just 48 windless hours – would require:
14.4 million 1.8-MW turbines … 570 million acres (30% of the Lower 48 US states) … and 1.4 trillion Tesla 100-kWh lithium-ion battery packs!
Need stored electricity for seven windless days? 50 million turbines, the US-Canadian land mass, and 5 trillion battery packs should do it.
Disagree with this analysis? Wade in with your own. Let’s have a wide-open debate, before renewable energy activists and politicians lock us into an energy future that might be horrendous for humanity and planet. (Or might save us from calamitous climate change.)
It’s amazing, though hardly surprising, how quickly some used Hurricane Harvey’s devastation to claim that fossil fuel emissions are driving catastrophic climate change and weather. Their proffered solution, of course, is to replace those fuels with “clean, sustainable, renewable” energy.
I’ve criticized this supposed solution many times, on multiple grounds. Unfortunately, a hasty numerical calculation for a recent column was way off base, and readers properly chastised me for the error. I just blew it, using megawatts instead of megawatt-hours to derive the number of wind turbines … and amount of land … it would take to replace the world’s 2016 electricity entirely with wind energy.
My conclusion that it would require 830 million turbines and twice the land area of North America was thus off by embarrassing amounts. However, my reviewers offered many “correct” numbers.
Their turbine totals ranged from 2 million to 4, 10 and 12 million; their acreage figures from 0.5 to 40, 60 and even 247 per turbine. Total acreage for all the turbines ranged from the size of France or Texas – to half of North America. Energy scholar Cork Hayden graciously provided analytical aid.
Bottom line: Assumptions are key – about turbine size; number, location and extent of good wind sites; ability to actually erect turbines on those sites; wind turbine capacity factor, in average hours per day of electricity generation; duration and quality of wind power per year, especially as turbines proliferate into increasingly poor wind areas; and power generation needed to charge huge battery arrays to ensure reliable electricity during multiple windless days (2, 7, 14 or more) when turbines provide no power.
Another variable, of course, is the amount of electricity that is to be replaced by wind. In 2016, the world used 25 billion megawatt-hours (MWh) of electrical energy, generated by fossil fuel, hydroelectric and nuclear power stations, with minor contributions from wood (biomass) and trivial amounts of wind and solar. Year-round average power generation was 2.85 million megawatts (MW) or 2.85 terawatts (TW) – compared to zero generation in 1881.
Electricity makes our industries, jobs, travel, communication, living standards, health and safety possible, and demand will certainly grow as more nations electrify, and more vehicles are battery-powered.
Here are my fundamental assumptions: Wind turbines replace 100% of today’s 2.85 TW global electricity generation, by some future date – as many activists and politicians insist we must (and can) do. Turbines are all 1.8-MW nameplate power. Average turbine capacity factor gradually falls from 33% to 16.5% as the best wind sites are utilized, and much poorer sites must be developed.
(In the USA many of the best wind sites are off the Washington-to-California and Maine-to-Georgia coastlines, and in the Great Lakes, where water depths and powerful local opposition would make it impossible to install many turbines. Onshore turbine size is limited by the size of blades that can be hauled by trucks on winding roads. The same situation would likely apply around most of the globe.)
Further assumptions: One-third of turbine output powers society; two-thirds charge batteries that provide power for 48 of every 72 hours that wind is not blowing. And winds always cooperate with that scheme – always arriving just in the nick of time, as batteries are depleted, and never disappearing for more than two days, even during sweltering summers or frigid winters when demand soars but winds disappear.
Of course, most of these assumptions exist only in the realm of fairies, pixie dust, green energy utopia and easy number crunching. They are meant to initiate important analyses and debates that climate alarmists, renewable energy proponents, legislators and policy makers have never conducted.
Using these assumptions, generating 25 billion megawatt-hours would require 1.6 million 1.8-MW turbines functioning at full 1.8-MW capacity in strong winds, all day, every day, with no worries about storage. If they operate only eight hours a day (33% engineered capacity), we just use electricity when it’s available, instead of when we need it. But that’s terribly inconvenient and disruptive.
So we employ the Dr. Hayden system, instead. We erect 4.8 million turbines that operate steadily for eight hours, sending one-third of their electricity to the grid and two-thirds to batteries. That would yield 8 hours of direct power while the wind is blowing (33% capacity factor) – and let us draw power from the batteries for the next 16 hours, until the wind regularly picks up again. “I love magic,” he says.
That clearly won’t work. We really need at least 48 hours of storage – and thus three times as many turbines, under a similar arrangement, but providing more flexibility, to recognize unpredictable wind patterns and the likelihood of two windless days in a row. We’re up to 14.4 million 1.8-[MW] turbines.
Want a bigger safety net? To assure against seven windless days? 50 million turbines should do it.
But then we’re really into the mediocre wind sites. Capacity plummets to 16.5% or so. Perhaps 100 million turbines will do the trick. Pray that lulls last no more than a week. Or send the army to those intransigent, unpatriotic coastal communities, and forcibly install turbines in their super windy areas.
That would also ensure that electricity generation is close to our big urban centers – hence shorter transmission lines, and less cement, steel, copper, et cetera to build the power lines. It’s a win-win situation, except for those who have to look at or live next to turbines and transmission lines, of course.
How much land are we talking about, to generate 25 billion megawatt-hours of global annual electricity? Assuming top quality wind sites, at 5 kilowatts per acre (average output per land area for any turbine at the windiest locations), onshore turbines operating 24/7/365 would require some 570 million acres.
That’s 25% of the United States – or 30% of the Lower 48 US states. It’s almost all the land in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona combined!
Change the assumptions – change the numbers. To store electricity for windless days, total power generation (and thus turbine numbers and land acreage) begins to skyrocket. For 48 hours of backup, triple the power generation; that’s the entire Lower 48. For a full week of backup, add in Canada.
Let’s not forget the transmission lines and batteries. They also need land (and raw materials).
How many batteries? Storing 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity – to provide power for 48 windless hours for a US city of 700,000 people – would require 480,000 of Tesla’s new 100-kWh lithium-ion battery packs. Backing up 2.85 TW for just two windless days would require 1.4 trillion Tesla units! And this assumes the batteries are charged and discharged with 100% efficiency.
Just imagine the land, raw materials, mining, manufacturing and energy that would be needed to make all those batteries (and replace them every few years). As energy and technology analyst Mark Mills has noted, all the world’s existing lithium battery factories combined manufacture only a tiny fraction of that.
I’m sure the world’s battery makers would be more than happy to take our hard-earned taxpayer and consumer cash to build more factories and make all those batteries – to save us from dangerous climate change that is no longer governed by the sun and other powerful natural forces.
Let’s get real. It’s time to stop playing with pixie dust and renewable energy utopia schemes. Time to open our schools and legislatures to actual thinking about energy, sustainability, climate change and what makes our jobs, health and living standards possible. Time for full-bore studies and legislative hearings on all these issues – in the USA, UK, EU and everywhere else.
Sustainability and renewable energy claims are too grounded in ideology, magic and politics. Wind and solar energy forecasts ignore the need to find and mine vast new metal and mineral deposits – and open US lands that are now off limits, unless we want to import all our wind turbines, solar panels and batteries. They assume land use impacts don’t really exist if they are in other people’s backyards.
Worse, too often anyone trying to raise these inconvenient truths is shouted down, silenced, ignored. That has to stop. The stakes are too high for ideology and pixie dust to drive fundamental public policies.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death and other books on the environment.
Note: My article fixing my previous math error has a stupid typo. It’s in the paragraph beginning “That clearly won’t work. The reference at the end of the paragraph to “1.8-GW turbines” should obviously read “1.8-MW turbines.”
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This study is flawed from the start, because it only considers wind turbines.
It needs to consider existing hydro power, solar PV, solar CSP, demand reduction (e.g. LED street lighting), demand management (co-ordination of power for refrigeration and air con), anaerobic digestion and tidal power (both turbine and lagoon). I don’t think it considers floating turbines in deeper water.
Further it needs to consider that HVDC lines can ship power from distant windier/sunnier areas.
I might add that the best wind resource being situated in central USA I don’t see any problem shipping blades across the prairie… there is no problem shipping them across Germany (a country much more congested in its road system than the USA).
Please run this again will ALL forms of renewables in the mix.
Love the unicorn fart and pixie dust Griff!
Is any country planning on using just wind power?
No.
So the study needs to take into account all forms of renewable energy. The UK uses all the forms I listed except solar CSP (and even then I left out natural gas from sewage plant and power to gas injection of hydrogen into the gas grid and small scale hydro)
Maybe we could have a big war. Lots of people will die, and then we wont need all that supposed power! Problem solved? (sarc)
The problem is getting the greens and the art students to fight it., They are notoriously workshy and I cant see them cooperating.
Simple small nuclear detonations at green rallies might work though.
As might secret infusions of chemical sex hormones into the tofu.
There are signs from the growth of LBGT activism that this is already happening.
There’s also an energy pay-back problem. Older solar cells would never pay-back the energy used to make them. Newer cells are more energy efficient and use less energy in manufacture, so they do have a pay-back potential. (Whether or not they do pay-back the energy depends on their actual, useful lifetime.)
As for windmills, the concrete used to support these structures have an energy cost. It takes about 3 to 6 GJ per ton of clinker produced. Clinkers are then ground to produce cement–the main component in concrete. It took many years of windmill operation to pay-back the energy used in the concrete support structure. I don’t know how much energy is required to produce the other components in a windmill–it’s not nothing.
Jim
Given that there are no economies of scale, and each turbine has to be individually sited, when one takes into acoount all the associated cost and CO2 involved in shipping, transport, siting, foundations, coupling remote and distant places to the grid, the requirement for backup power and grid balancing/stabilisation, windfarms are never cost effective nor do the reduce CO2 by any significant amount.
Indeed, since about 2005 Germany has been unable to reduce its CO2 emissions notwithstanding its drive towards renewables. The last couple of years, Germany has been increasing its CO2 emissions. The UK has also struggled to reduce CO2 emissions since around 2009 notwithstanding the roll out of ever more windfarms.
Increases in Germany (and lack of progress overall) have been in the heating/transport area… in electricity progress is steady. but note the decision to switch off 45% of nuclear power in 2011 didn’t help things, in CO2 reduction terms.
and a wind turbine saves the CO2 from its entire lifespan, construction to dismantling, within 18 months.
You are right, and herein lies the problem. Wind requires 100% backup and unless this backup comes from CO2 free energy eg nuclear plants in Germany, nuclear plants in France, via the interconnect, or by hydro (possibly via Norway or Switzerland), then wind does not reduce CO2 emissions to any meaningful degree.
Wind has a nominal average output of around 25% nameplate. the average can be as low as just over 20% to around 30% depending upon siting, but whatever it is, wind requires backup for all the time it is generating less than its capacity factor.
Now then one might imagine that if wind on average produces on average about 25% energy that will lead to a similar 255 reduction in CO2 emissions. But it does not work out that way because unless the backup is CO2 energy, the backup produces much more CO2 than had it been left to run in steady state 24/7 52 weeks per year operation.
Some of this backup is produced by coal fired generation which cannot because of its design be ramped uped/ramped down, but instead runs 24/7 whether or not any power is needed from it. It produces as much CO2 as it would even if there were no wind turbines.
Other back up is provided by gas generation which can be ramped up/ramped down with demand, but this is a very in efficient mode of operation and it means that the gas plant is producing almost as much CO2 if it were left to run at optimum level 24/7 52 weeks per year. There is only a little CO2 being saved.
then because of the intermittent and non dispatchable nature of wind and the lack of spinning reserve, diesel generators (STOR) are additionally used to balance the grid. These of course produce even more CO2 than coal.
The net position is that no significant CO2 is saved and that is why Germany has been unable to reduce its CO2 emissions recently and indeed the last couple of years have shown an increase in CO2. this trend will continue.
You can check the principle to which I refer by comparing how much fuel your car uses when it drives 100 km on a motorway (steady 100km per hour) and compare this with how much fuel your car consumes when it drives 75 km (ie., 100 – 25%) in urban conditions. Driving in urban conditions uses a lot of fuel because of the ramp up/ramp down manner in which the car is being used.
Taking a relatively small car for example purposes.(a BMW 320i)
So on a motorway ,driving 100 km at a steady speed the driver uses some 5.6 litres of fuel. By comparison driving 75 km in urban environs, the driver uses 8.025 litres of fuel (ie., 10.7 x 75/100). The same principles applies with the backup required for wind; the energy used in overcoming the inertia (speeding up of the the generators) means that one might as well let the gas generator run at its optimum design speed 24/7 all year long.
Windfarms only result in a measurable reduction of CO2 if the backup comes from non CO2 energy sources, so Denmark achieves a saving because it can rely upon Norwegian hydro. Of course, it pays a very high price for this and that is why Danish electricity is about the most expensive in Europe.
Sorry a typo. Should have read:
`The BMW data is set out at: https://www.auto-data.net/en/?f=showCar&car_id=9929
The bulk of western Europe is connected, or being connected, with HVDC interconnectors and part of a single day ahead electricity market, ensuring maximum use of priority dispatch renewables…
that’s the way it is designed to work…
wind offshore has a capacity factor of 30 to 40% – that’s from measured operational data from N Sea wind farms.
I don’t know what you mean by 100% backup exactly: certainly if wind or solar is producing energy, then the fossil fuel plants are turned off… if you look at UK coal power from April to date, it has hardly been used – in Q2 I believe it contributed 1.8% of demand.
Wind is predictable to 95% confidence a day in advance, thus allowing efficient ramp up and down of gas and switch off of coal. spinning reserve is increasingly being replaced by fast acting grid storage allowing slower ramp up of gas plant (at an efficient rate).
In short, I think your figures incorrect.
My figures are general and illustrative. No doubt the best sited off-shore windfarm will peak at well over 50%, but on average 25% is a good ball park figure for the average wind capacity factor, but it make no difference to the principle if this figure is 23% or 28%. the same problems and issues arise.
When I say it requires 100% backup, I mean that there are times when wind and solar produce no measurable energy at all. Thus if one has say 16GW of installed wind and solar, one needs 16 GW of backup to cover the situation when these forms of renewables produce nothing to speak of. How that backup is made up is material, and to the extent this is made up by fossil fuel generated power this is relevant to how much CO2 is saved by utilising wind and solar in the grid system .
So for example during the UK winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11 for the best part of a month wind produced close to zero energy, and solar produced zero energy during the hours of darkness and little energy during sunlight hours because of the low angle of solar irradiance and because the solar panels were covered in snow.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47061000/jpg/_47061196_greatbritainjpg.jpg
I have 30 years experience in shipping, and I can tell you that wind and weather is anything but predictable.
You might like to look at a report issued by the Renewable Energy Foundation 2012. This is not an impartial report and is a issued by a foundation that promotes windfarms. http://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19.12.12.pdf
The figures I suggested were for onshore wind, I having not specifically considered off-shore wind when I was commenting.
This report (page 40) shows that for England the capacity factor varied between 20.8% (2010) and 26.6% (2011). I suspect that the low percentage for 2010 was the result of the 1 month period during that winter when wind produced next to zero energy thereby depressing the average for the year. So one can see that my ball park figure of 25% is a fair figure. The report does not cover off-shore for the UK, but no doubt that is higher and may be around 35%
You should also look at http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/Intermittency_report.pdf which reviewed all sources of UK wind and analysed the results for 2013 and 2014. I have only read the summary, from which it appears that:
The take home from the above analysis is that combined on-shore and off-shore has a capacity factor of a little under 30%, and the output is highly variable with approximately 37% of the time windfarms were providing less than 10% capacity factor.
correction:
CO2 reduction is irrelevant anyway.
Tony Mills
“A 2.5-3 MW wind turbine (the current on-shore size) produces 6 Gigawatt hours/per annum.”
Just a shade optimistic?
No, it is simple arithmetic. Say a 2MW turbine, produces, at 100% capacity, 48 MWh per day.
Multiply that by 365 = 17,520MWh, or 17.52GWh per year. Average wind turbine capacity, at 33% = 5.78 GWh/pa. (as turbines are closer to 3MW these days, 6GWh, per year is very conservative)
Calculations like these, and similar ones involving storage, and cost of solar generation, is why WUWT arguments are falling on deaf ears. Nukes and fossil fuels are simply no longer economically competitive. I wonder how long site readers can tilt at windmills before economic reality caches up with them. Indefinitely I guess.
This is absurd and unhelpful. No one in the world is proposing using wind (or any other single technology) to provide all our energy. The fact is, most Americans can produce all their own energy on site each year, using a combination of technologies. I know this, because I’ve done it. I transitioned a home built in 1950 to net-zero energy.
The first step is efficiency: reducing energy consumption by air sealing and insulating the building exterior, upgrading to LED light bulbs, low-flow 1.5 gallon per minute showerheads, )putting in a new high efficiency refrigerator, and sealing and insulating the ductwork. This cut the homes energy consumption by more than half.
The next step is on-site energy production: we installed solar hot water (an 80-gallon hot water tank acts as a big battery, and stores several days worth of hot water!), a 4 kw solar PV array, and replaced the 65-year old oil furnace with a ground source heat pump to provide both winter heat and summer air conditioning for the house. The ground source heat pump has coils of tubing 6 feet deep in the back yard to exchange heat with the earth around us seasonally. This uses the entire year like a big long-term battery, storing summer’s warmth for winter time and keeping the house comfortable year-round!
Each one of these upgrades was a good investment individually. When combined, the energy savings paid for the whole-house retrofit in ~8.5 years, meaning these investments have a 12% return on investment. Additionally, these improvements increased the home value significantly.
If you want more details and to see for yourself, there’s a short video on my website explaining this project, and examining what can be done in one state (Nevada) to transition to 100% clean energy, and become a significant exporter as well.
http://www.poweredbysunshine.org
My power company tries to feed the same lines. I have yet to buy into the fantasy.
I consider the article to contain a number of errors, and I agree that no country is proposing to be reliant solely on wind for all its energy needs.
That said, it is quite clear from the article that there are significant problems with wind energy, and in particular in having wind energy forming a substantial part of the energy mix, let alone the bulk (say more than 50%) of the energy mix.
I have a few points where I disagree with your “analysis”. This is more of a thought experiment, in my opinion. I’m a wind advocate, and even I would not claim that we can or should replace all traditional generation with wind. In my view, solar will be the dominant generator on the future grid, with wind will occupying a medium – large niche below solar and above hydro and any remaining thermal resources. Thermal resources will mostly consist of gas, and these will be used entirely for capacity, but only to the that there is a storage shortfall.
Your thought experiment ignores solar, ignores power markets, and relies on turbine performance specs that are a decade out of date. With solar and wind making up a large portion of generation, we would need a long string of days that are both sunless and windless across, if not the entire country, than across huge regions of it. Power markets are good and getting better, and (just like they do today) will use the bulk electricity transmission grid to mitigate supply / demand mismatches in specific localities. Thus, you are vastly over-estimating the amount of storage required. In my view you are also vastly overestimating the number of wind turbines that will be installed because A) solar will dominate and B) where wind is installed, mostly in the midwest and offshore, it will achieve a 40% – 50% NCF (this is reality in the midwest today).
I am a strong supporter of nuclear and hydro power generation, and definitely not a fan of wind power. However, I need to point out an error with the analysis in this article.
To use the author’s own words, there is a “stupid math error” in this article too. Specifically, the author has overestimated, by a factor of 1,000, the number of Tesla battery packs needed to provide 7 days of backup.
Let’s do the maths:
The author states that “year-round average power generation was 2.85 million megawatts (MW) or 2.85 terawatts (TW)”. In seven days, this equates to 2.85 million x 24 hours x 7 days = 478.8 million MW/hours of power generation. This is how much power would need to be stored in powerpacks to provide 7 days of backup.
1 megawatt = 1,000 kilowatts. In other words, a 100KW/hour = 0.1 MW/hour.
To store 478.8 million MW/hours of power, you need 478.8 million/0.1 = 4.788 billion powerpacks. Like I said, more than a thousand times fewer than the author suggests.
Intuitively this makes sense to. My house, with a family of 4 in Toronto Canada uses an average of 14kw/hours of electricity a day, so a 100 kw powerpack would provide electricity for our home for 4 people for a week.
The word population is approximately 7.5 billion, so 5 trillion powerpacks would mean that there would be 667 per man, woman and child on earth. That’s a lot of power!
You assume wind is your only option.
If you want to use a more realistic model. You need to combine wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal (where applicable). And nuclear.
Plus a battery doesn’t have to be in the classic definition. Use excess power to pump water uphill and stored in a dam to be used when demand rises. It is a more efficient use of excess power.
I appreciate the effort to make a factual argument, but in reality it’s still narrow minded in scope and far from a realistic scenario.
Don’t forget thousands of hamsters running wheels. We ALL alternatives, no matter how expensive or rediculous. I’m checking out using lighting strikes to power my house. An email alerted me to this new source. So I’m going for ALL alternatives. Hamsters, lightening, tesla machine, perpetual motion machine that’s been hidden for centuries. ALL of them.
Should have been “We need ALL alternatives”. Time to fire those lazy hamsters that rested while I was typing.
And still ignored is the fact that on an annual basis, Wind Turbines use about 10 percent of name plate capacity for what we call in the utility industry “hotel loads.” Hotel load is the power needed to keep the oil pumps running, computers energized (look at the power use of your Desktop PC and multiply that by 2 – 4), Control systems, yaw mechanism, electronic controller, hydraulics system, cooling unit, tower, HVAC, Ice removal heating, anemometer and wind vane, and positioning equipment for the Nacelle and blades (to collect the wind.) If it is not aimed into the wind it does not generate power and it will not move there without using power like the old mechanical wind driven water pumps you see on the prairies do.
Nameplate capacity is the maximum continuously deliverable power. Utilities sell all power generated from the generator to the customer. This is measured on the generation output meter. They measure all of the power they are using for the generation unit on a separate (or even multiple separate) meter. What the utilities and the Greenwhackos do not tell you about Wind Power is that power is used up 24/7/365 just to keep the Wind Turbine “Ready to Operate” or in standby. So, for each 2 MW turbine built and put into operation about 10% or about 200 KW per hour 24/7/365 is being added to the grid. Like leaches, they are sucking off power that has to be supplied by batteries, reservoirs, fossil fuel plants, etc just so they can make power when the wind blows.
A wind farm off in the boondocks with no connection to the grid will not work without an external power source – Diesel Generator, Battery, etc. And in inclement climate many of the components and systems must be kept warm (like oil, water cooling) or cooled (like electronics) or it will not work – period. When the wind starts blowing, the Wind turbine and blades must be positioned into the wind.
Thus when you take a two megawatt wind turbine that has the capacity of producing 2MW/H X 24H X 365 = 17,520 MW (note the hours cancel out). 10% of that is 1,752 MW. However, even the best sited Turbine only has a 30% capacity factor. Thus the average annual yield is only 5,256 MW per year and from that you need to subtract 1,752 MW per year giving you a net yield of only 3,504 MW. This means that you need about 1/3 more Wind Turbines to meet your 100% Renewable goal.
Here is the actual measured data for capacity factors for UK offshore wind farms. Pretty much all of tem over 30%… also note the interesting load factor diagrams.
http://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors
I work in the industry. The capacity factor does NOT include Hotel Load. Period. I have seen and read the meters. I have collected the days for Management. The utility gets paid for power produced and delivered to the grid. The utility pays for power they take off of the grid. Often the generating source is in a service district controlled by another utility. That utility wants payed for the power consumed in their service district. Court cases have supported their right to be paid for that use. Further, the power generated is at a higher voltage than the power consumed and it is not economical to use the existing see ice.
I work in the industry. The capacity factor does NOT include Hotel Load. Period. I have seen and read the meters. I have collected the days for Management. The utility gets paid for power produced and delivered to the grid. The utility pays for power they take off of the grid. Often the generating source is in a service district controlled by another utility. That utility wants payed for the power consumed in their service district. Court cases have supported their right to be paid for that use. Further, the power generated is at a higher voltage than the power consumed and it is not economical to use the existing see ice.
@Griff – Now find the data on the load that is used by each of these off-shore Wind Farms and subtract it from the so called (phoney) Capacity Factor. I have seen data sets that show that several Wind Farms in the North Atlantic actually use more power over a year than they produce in a year due to the necessity of heating the nacelle, hydraulics, deicing, and other equipment use over the winter.
I tell you what YOU find the hotel load factor.
I think that’s a red herring.
@Griff, The hotel load is more like a well hidden whale than a red herring. AWEA – American Wind Energy Association and the manufacturers keep this whale well hidden as their business depends on the secret.
Obviously you are NOT using your brain. Simple math.
1. The utility only reports and uses the generator output electricity for capacity factor. Meter #1
It is to expensive to provide local transformers at each and every Wind Turbine to decrease the output power from the generator to the voltage needed for the power used to operate the Wind Turbine. Keep in mind that they must have a separate source of power because if there is no power the Wind turbine will NOT operate to generate power.
2. The utility measures the hotel load on a separate meter, Meter #2.
3. Even someone with your intelligence can deduce that it takes some power to pump hydraulic oil. heat and cool the nacelle, operate the control system, etc. It is not ZERO. The lowest that I have seen is typically 10% of name plate, the highest I have seen is over 16% of name plate.
Just what is your complete disbelief in the fact that this is the way that wind turbines operate? By the way, same is true for Solar Farms with Axis/Azimuth adjusting panels. Each of these positioners is using about 100 watts per hour weather moving or not. That is two per panel.
Enlighten yourself GOOGLE “power consumption of idle wind turbine”
Even Google give some decent information on how much they use and links to articles on how it is kept hidden.
Ones quibble. When Mr. Driessen said storage would have to be 48 hours instead of 16, he increased the number of turbines:
By my way of thinking the number shouldn’t have changed from the 4.8 million he reached when he assumed an average 33% availability. That is, a change in the assumed possible length of a calm period doesn’t necessarily change the average availability.
Just my own opinion but I think it’s less harmful to the environment to use the wind, than all the solar panels that produce enough heat to cook a bird in full flight.
Yet, not one person ever seems to bring up this factor into the problems global warming.
Why is that??? And do they have a way to reduce this powerful heat?
Thank you for your information and much more.
er… the problem with birds was not with solar panels, but with concentrating solar, a quite different technology (and they solved the bird frying thing anyway)
As far as I have read, they call it a “local phenomena” and totally ignore it.
well already “renewables” accounts for about a quarter of world electricity production, so I think there must me something amiss here.
Do you mean hydropower? That’s not the issue. It’s wind and solar.
“renewables” means various things. In the US, hydro does not count. I am told this is because they cannot get subsidies on the hydro. Only things with subsidies count—wind, solar, ethanol, etc. Other countries count biomass, hydro, wood, etc. Lack of an agreed upon definition makes accurate discussion impossible. One must refer to the exact source, such as wind turbines, hydro, pumped hydro, etc.
Of course hydro is renewable. I can’t imagine why it would be different in the US
This is because in part, California designated any hydro larger than 10 Mw as Not renewable, because it had too big a footprint with reservoirs and dams etc. Obviously, a large creek with a large elevation drop that produced 50 Mw, would be just as renewable as solar or wind. And much more energy density and a very long term life span for the civil infrastructure. But there is a movement against all types of water based hydro as well. I don’t think that Griff is even that radical…are you?
This article is making the most absurd straw man argument. Literally no one is talking about 100% wind power.
The green blob is advocating for 100% “renewables”, all of which have the same problems as wind.
How much Solar do you get between dusk and Dawn? Where will this lack of power be supplied from? Now add in a week of no wind and do the calculations again. Simplest solution is Hydro, however that has even more problems in that environmentalists are removing dams and preventing the construction of pumped storage. Thus we are stuck with the Hydro we presently have.
You people are overlooking the fact of the population growth expected to reach 9 billion or more in 10 years
How many turbines will then be needed, the rationale behind the enviro’s is to get rid of 90% of the world’s population.
Honestly, the enviros do not care. By then, the scam of wind will be evident or everyone will be living in the dark fighting over food. Either, way it’s a self-correcting problem.
One of the things that irks me with citing certain renewables costs such as solar PV, is that they say that solar is now competitive with NG at $30 to $50 a Mw/h and can be installed for that price. Or .03 to .05 cents a Kw/h. Forgetting to mention that the solar PV has a capacity factor (CF) of at best, 25%. Which is to say, it only produces total installed capacity for 6 hours of the day. When averaged over the 24 hour day, or 365 day year, you have to multiply the 3-5 cent per Kw/h x 4 for the CF. So while they claim they can install the entire capacity for $30 to $50 per installed Mw, they only generate 1/4 of that installed capacity over the year.
That makes the sporadic solar electricity about 4 times as expensive as the NG base load (dispatchable) power. So the true cost is $120 to $200 per Mw/h (12 cents to 20 cents per Kw/h) for the solar PV. And that is generous to use a 25% CF. My point being that renewable advocates try to say that installing solar PV is comparably priced for either NG or solar PV. Not to mention that the Nat Gas base load plant that is producing dispatchable power at a 90%+ CF, and solar PV is dumped on the grid when the sun shines.
It is an apples and oranges comparison to begin with, since the cost to supposedly install both are the same price, but the renewable solar PV only produces 1/4 the output of equivalent sized NG of non dispatchable quality/quantity. I have a hard time understanding that there are some people who don’t understand this simple truth and/or use it to make it sound like the two sources are identical. But what makes me a bit mad is when it is stated unequivalently that firstly, by people who know better, the two electricity products are the same, and secondly, that the installed capacity of both create the same amount of electricity. They obviously don’t. When solar PV power producers are ready to sign contracts for 3-5 cents per Kw/h, without any direct subsidy, then solar PV can perhaps be taken more seriously and looked at more closely.
you don’t use electricity at the same rate over a 24 hour day.
From midnight to 6am, you may well not be using any at all.
solar plus a battery will get you through your daily domestic use in many places today.
UK large solar projects now typically claim no subsidy. In India they are getting to the sort of costs you mention (haven’t checked latest rounds of figures)
The point is Griff, is that solar electricity is a different product than baseload power being generated by NG, nuclear, coal or large hydro. One is firm power, or dispatchable and solar/wind etc, is non firm, or intermittent. They really shouldn’t be worth the same, in at least as far as electron’s are concerned. One has a higher value than the other, at least as far as what those electrons are capable of supplying. Once you throw in the battery, then the cost for solar is out the window on a pure price play. My point was that it is very misleading for renewable activists to say that solar PV is now on parity with NG when only the capital cost was compared, and not the product delivered, or the quantity of Kw hours. It still makes no sense on an investment basis as it is at least 4x as expensive for the inferior solar electrons on the same installed capacity.
For an off grid scenario, then this is very appealing as compared to running a fossil generator. In fact, on a much smaller scale for off grid, I have a 1 Kw solar array and inverters/batteries, and it is a very nice feeling to have electricity available 24/7 in a remote location. But it barely runs my sat TV/internet/electronics and small fridge/LED lights when the sun is shining in summer. Which is when I want it, but it still costs north of 40 cents per Kw/hr I estimate, when a diesel genset would be costing $1 a Kw/h just for fuel only. So it has its place, but I don’t think on economics alone, solar PV can ever compete. Solar thermal hot water maybe for domestic heating etc, but no one in the west is talking much about this. That sure wouldn’t make sense to generate electricity with solar PV and then use that electricity for heating hot water tanks or electric heat when that same water could have just have been heated with a small solar thermal panel.
If you can predict solar and wind in advance -and you can to a very high degree of accuracy – then there isn’t a problem with intermittency. There is no quality difference.
I don’t know your location, but check latest panel + battery prices. Still falling: may be economic when it wasn’t before. anyway, for my fellow UK citizens offgrid isn’t a reality – nearly all of us are on grid.
“then there isn’t a problem with intermittency”
If the intermittency lasts for weeks – as can be the case when a blocking high gets stuck in the North Atlantic during the winter, as happens regularly – you have a Hell of a problem with intermittency.
Now go and apologise to Dr. Crockford for slandering her.
The math in this “correction” is terribly erroneous, as some simple post-calculation checks can validate.
If average generation is 2.85TW, and there’s 6b people on the planet, then the average person uses 2.85 trillion / 6 billion people = 475w. Using 475w per hour, or 475Wh, for a day = 475Wh * 24 hr = 11,400Wh, or 11.4kWh.
So if I want to back up power for two days, I need two times that, or 22.8kWh. So how many 100 kWh battery packs would I need? 22.8/100, or about one quarter of a battery pack.
Expand that out to 6b people, and we’d need ~1.5b (billion) battery packs for two days of backup power, NOT 1.5 trillion packs. Still a lot, and this still ignores other massive capacity backup power supplies like pumped water, compressed air, etc., as others call have rightly called out in the comments, but this error in the calcs is clearly mis-stating the size of this potential solution, and skewing the conversation.
Would love for the “correction” article to be corrected! Thanks!
Good catch – I found some other boo boos too; e.g., providing 2 days worth of backup power for Mr. Driessen’s hypothetical city of 700,000 souls would require about forty eight (not one) GWh’s worth of storage capacity (1 GWh could provide its residents with just 29.8 watts/each during that supply hiatus. On the other hand, his estimate of 480,000, 100 kWh, batteries for that scenario is reasonable because it would supply everyone with 1428 Watts – about 15% of an average US citizen’s current “primary energy” consumption and close to their average electricity consumption).
However, I’m also very much pro nuke & therefore totally agree with the point he’s making – there’s no way that batteries could ever render any of Jacobson’s WS scenarios practical/acceptable. For example, there have been lots of papers recently published/presented about such scenarios’ storage requirements (e.g., https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315334530_How_much_energy_storage_is_needed_to_incorporate_very_large_intermittent_renewables and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257125700_Estimation_of_the_energy_storage_requirement_of_a_future_100_renewable_energy_system_in_Japan ) which, depending upon their authors’ assumptions, have concluded that any such system must be capable of storing from 1 to 18 days worth of energy. Assuming eight days – a common, mid-range, estimate – and that everyone, all 7.5 billion of us, is to become as energy-rich as we in the USA are now (i.e., consume about 4 kW of “energy services” all of which will eventually become electricity), that translates to needing 2.07E+19 J worth of storage capacity. Accomplishing that would take 57.6 billion of Tesla’s 13.5 kWh “power walls”, which, at $6200 each (https://www.tesla.com/powerwall ) would cost $2650 trillion – about 100 x the USA’s current GDP. There is simply no way that either we or our children would ever choose to spend even 10% of that much money for any sort of energy storage system.
In Germany mass fields of wind turbines. It’s a start. Do nothing and the USA population grows and so would the demand for electricity from fossil fuels. There are wind studies, solar energy studies that provide reams of data . And why are we concerned about Africa, maybe fossil fuels do have an impact? It seems the nay sayers may be the fossil fuel lobby itself. We should be working toward a solution of many sources. As our forward jump in technology moves at light speed (electricity does lol) it could be possible to use less fossil fuels and technology could find more efficient ways to produce electricity and use it as lower voltage and current fuel our applications, appliances and overall needs. Batteries maybe much smaller too. It took 2 d cell batteries to use a flashlight. We now have led lights that run on a AA battery and better illumination too! Dont over calculate the need as technology makes a triple jump toward you!
According to the U.S. Energy Information, the total (not just electricity) energy consumed by the United States is about 100 quadrillion BTU per year. According to my calculations, this corresponds to about 10 kW per person (1016 BTU*0.003 kWh per BTU/(3.21*108 people*365 days per year*24 hours per day)). By the end of the century, the population of the Earth will be about 10 billion people. In order to provide everyone with a U.S. standard of living, this corresponds to a total about 1014 W (100 TW). Assuming, a wind turbine farm can produce on average 2 W/m2 (generous). this corresponds to 50 million square kilometers. The total area of North and South America is about 42.5 million square kilometers. Assuming, solar cells can produce 10 W/m2 (very generous), 100 TW would require 10 million square kilometers. The area of the United States is about 9.8 million square kilometers. Imagine the environmental impact of that! According to Wikipedia, The IEA estimates that, in 2013, total primary energy supply (TPES) was 1.575 × 1017 Wh or an average of 18 TW (1.575 × 1017 Wh/(365 days per year*24 hours per day).
The program screwed up my exponents:
According to the U.S. Energy Information, the total (not just electricity) energy consumed by the United States is about 100 quadrillion BTU per year. According to my calculations, this corresponds to about 10 kW per person (10^16 BTU*0.003 kWh per BTU/(3.21*10^8 people*365 days per year*24 hours per day)). By the end of the century, the population of the Earth will be about 10 billion people. In order to provide everyone with a U.S. standard of living, this corresponds to a total about 10^14 W (100 TW). Assuming, a wind turbine farm can produce on average 2 W/m2 (generous). this corresponds to 50 million square kilometers. The total area of North and South America is about 42.5 million square kilometers. Assuming, solar cells can produce 10 W/m2 (very generous), 100 TW would require 10 million square kilometers. The area of the United States is about 9.8 million square kilometers. Imagine the environmental impact of that! According to Wikipedia, The IEA estimates that, in 2013, total primary energy supply (TPES) was 1.575 × 10^17 Wh or an average of 18 TW (1.575 × 10^17 Wh/(365 days per year*24 hours per day).
You are about 2 billion to high as global population will likely peak within 30 years.
As third world nations become first world, their population growth drops precipitously.
situation in the Netherlands: total energy 3TWh /day. Windmill 4Mw, production factor 33%.
Storage by synthetic CH4 production (or other carbohydrate) at 50% efficiency. Needed per day: electr. 1,5Twh, gas etc 1.5Twh.
Requirement: 22.5TWh/day is satisfied by 235000 windmills = 1500 large windfarms, space 3* Dutch land area + space for hydroxen, methane factories.
If heat from CH4 production is used for heating buildings then less windmills are needed,
Next questions is how to produce required steel and concrete? How to produce them without coal?
see also:
http://www.davdata.nl/math/greenlies.html