Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s an interesting and authoritative new [commenters pointed out it’s from 2012, I can’t find any newer research] study on the lifespan of those ugly bird-and-bat-choppers yclept “wind turbines”. It’s called “The Performance of Wind Turbines in the United Kingdom and Denmark“.
Here’s the Executive Summary, all emphasis is mine:
Executive Summary
1. Onshore wind turbines represent a relatively mature technology, which ought to have achieved a satisfactory level of reliability in operation as plants age. Unfortunately, detailed analysis of the relationship between age and performance gives a rather different picture for both the United Kingdom and Denmark with a significant decline in the average load factor of onshore wind farms adjusted for wind availability as they get older. An even more dramatic decline is observed for offshore wind farms in Denmark, but this may be a reflection of the immaturity of the technology.
2. The study has used data on the monthly output of wind farms in the UK and Denmark reported under regulatory arrangements and schemes for subsidising renewable energy. Normalised age-performance curves have been estimated using standard statistical techniques which allow for differences between sites and over time in wind resources and other factors.
3. The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15. The decline in the normalised load factor for Danish onshore wind farms is slower but still significant with a fall from a peak of 22% to 18% at age 15. On the other hand for offshore wind farms in Denmark the normalised load factor falls from 39% at age 0 to 15% at age 10. The reasons for the observed declines in normalised load factors cannot be fully assessed using the data available but outages due to mechanical breakdowns appear to be a contributory factor.
4. Analysis of site-specific performance reveals that the average normalised load factor of new UK onshore wind farms at age 1 (the peak year of operation) declined significantly from 2000 to 2011. In addition, larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms. Adjusted for age and wind availability the overall performance of wind farms in the UK has deteriorated markedly since the beginning of the century.
5. These findings have important implications for policy towards wind generation in the UK. First, they suggest that the subsidy regime is extremely generous if investment in new wind farms is profitable despite the decline in performance due to age and over time. Second, meeting the UK Government’s targets for wind generation will require a much higher level of wind capacity – and, thus, capital investment – than current projections imply. Third, the structure of contracts offered to wind generators under the proposed reform of the electricity market should be modified since few wind farms will operate for more than 12–15 years.
Not much more that I can say after that most devastating indictment of wind turbines. In a mere ten years, the UK wind farms are producing less than half of what they produced when they were new.
So … why do people still want to build wind farms in the UK? The simple answer is … subsidies. The UK populace is getting royally screwed by their government with its insane subsidies. Here’s an example, the subsidies for some of the largest solar plants in the UK:
I’m sure that you noticed the oddity … in each and every case, the government subsidy is more than the value of the energy produced … I gotta say, that’s dumber than cubical ball bearings.
Now, the UK government did get smart and end onshore wind subsidies … so of course, there are lots of people screaming and pressuring the government to lift the ban on the subsidies. From the Guardian:
The wind industry said if a bar on onshore windfarm subsidies was lifted it would allow the construction of 794 projects which have won consent through the planning system and are ready to build.
Yeah, I bet it would allow construction. Throwing big piles of money at construction projects tends to do that. The most significant point is this:
Without subsidies, nobody is building windfarms in the UK …
The total cost of UK subsidies for renewables is stunning. Renewable subsidies in the UK in 2016, the most recent data I could find, is just under £5 billion with a “b” UK pounds (US$ 6,000,000,000). And since the start of the subsidies in 2003 up until 2016, the total spent is £23 billion with a “b” pounds (US$28,000,000,000).
And what did they get for that £23 billion? From 2003 to 2016, UK renewables generated about 242 terawatt-hours of electricity. This means that the renewable subsidies have been 9.7 UK pence per kilowatt-hour (kWhr) (11.6 US cents per kWhr).
Here is the truly tragic part. The UK subsidy of 11.6 US cents per kWhr is about 10% more than the current US retail electricity price of about 10.7 cents per kWhr … so the UK consumer is paying more in renewable subsidies than the US consumer pays retail for its electricity.
Now the US is not without fault in this matter. However, our renewable subsidies are much smaller, only 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour … bad, but not outrageous.
TL;DR version?
Solar and wind power are worse than useless. Useless would be bad enough, but they are also horrendously expensive, and subsidies make it worse. The UK population pays more in renewable electricity subsidies per kilowatt-hour than the US pays retail for electricity. And to add insult to injury … the windmills are failing faster than anyone but work-hardened cynics like myself would have imagined.
Best to all from our home on the hillside, where from my window I see the cat out hunting in the evening summer grass and the sea wind is bringing us tantalizing hints of its oceanic home …
w.
DATA: UK Renewable Subsidies
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That is really stunning that the fall off in load factor is over half after 10-15 years. That part is new to me but not surprising given that we don’t really have a half century of utilizing this low capacity technology and therefore no way to really know what this has been since the wide spread implementation of big wind has also been about 20-25 years if that. Which makes wind energy really, really useless and expensive. Not to mention introducing junk electricity that makes the grid even more unstable at a huge cost that doesn’t really reduce CO2 emissions much if it is truthfully analysed.
Not that solar is much better, but I wonder what that spec is long term for capacity factor with the newer solar PV tech? It also is about the time frame for widespread recent adoption the last 15-20 years.
As of about 8 years ago, there were over 15,000 dead wind turbines in the US, just sitting there because there was no plan for removing them. It’s a given that the number is much higher now.
People who have added rooftop solar panels have also reported that the production from solar panels also ages and drops off in roughly the same curve as wind. One person indicated that it would take him 30 years to break even with this degradation rate. People assume that solar panels are more or less ageless, but this is far from the truth.
We had one of our cities foot the bill to light up an interstate exchange using solar as a showcase to promote solar power. When a reporter dug into the particulars it was going to be an 80 year payoff assuming zero maintenance/upkeep costs.
In practice, renewable energy means that the generating equipment needs renewing quite regularly. Paid for with renewable subsidies from renewable taxes.
Charles,
By any chance, do you have a source for the 15,000 wind turbines in the U.S. that are idled/out-of-use? I want to pass on to my favor climate advocates who feel strongly about wind and solar. As you suggested, what happens with these after their useful life? Who will want to dismantle if there is no subsidies to do so or some other funding source? What a blight on our landscape.
P&L statements are for 25 years for the life of the system. At year 20 the P&L adds the cost of replacing the inverters. Usually sooner in reality.
The superior scientific minds over at skeptical of science – were bragging about the profitability of wind vs coal. They were citing audited financial statements of the some of New zealands & Australia’s major wind farms. The financial statements were depreciating the wind farms over a 30+35 years while the coal plants were depreciated over 25-30 years.
No sense of reality
Joe tncs: ‘No sense of reality’ – no, this is either just fr@ud by those who prepared the accounts, , or at best incompetence by the auditors.
If you are involved in the wind farm business, you must know the innards of it, so you must know how much electricity the turbines can produce at each site, what the load factor is going to be, how much the electricity will sell for and to whom, how much the subsidy/ies are worth, what the maintenance costs are going to be, etc. otherwise you wouldn’t get into this business. Er, unless you are corrupt of course.
The sale of the balance of 60% of Collgar wind farm in Western Australia to Rest Super lifted the lid on the wind generators balance sheets because being a super fund everything is exposed. This is an older farm with a very generous supply agreement with the state electrical supply utility.
https://www.afr.com/street-talk/no-rest-for-super-fund-as-collgar-wind-farm-auction-heats-up-20180619-h11k2y
Initial 2011 construction cost: $750M
Profit Pre-Tax and Interest 2016-17: $52M
60% sale price in 2018: $263M
A super fund is about the only thing that could make money from those numbers becuase they don’t actually have to finance.
techological advances – have led to smaller more efficient means of production – from computers, cell phones, crop yields, medical surgical tools, engines, all types of machinery, less manpower
REnewables on the other hand, less efficient, larger footprint, increased manpower, lower productivity.
Ass backwards is progress!
Willis wrote:
“Solar and wind power are worse than useless. Useless would be bad enough, but they are also horrendously expensive, and subsidies make it worse. The UK population pays more in renewable electricity subsidies per kilowatt-hour than the US pays retail for electricity. And to add insult to injury … the windmills are failing faster than anyone but work-hardened cynics like myself would have imagined.”
All true Willis – thank you for this article.
Energy experts have known most of this reality since ~forever, but green energy scams have a life of their own – due to kickbacks to corrupt politicians and the ignorance of the average consumer, who falsely thinks he/she is “saving the planet”.
Here is some history of the green energy. This note is from 2012, but I’ve written about green energy scams since 2002.
I tried to “dumb down” the message on green energy, but even this was too complicated for the average politician:
“WIND POWER – IT DOESN’T JUST BLOW – IT SUCKS!”
“SOLAR POWER – STICK IT WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE!”
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
Best, Allan 🙂
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/02/big-wind/#comment-761699
As a professional engineer. I confess that I don’t think that wind power farms are as esthetically ugly as some other people do. Engineers tend to like large pieces of equipment – you know, “big toys for big boys”.
BUT:
1. Wind farms produce essentially no useful, economic energy;
AND
2. Wind farms are probably net-energy-value-negative over their project life;
AND
3. Wind farms require essentially 100% active standby backup from conventional power generation plants;
AND
4. Wind farms require huge life-of-project subsidies;
AND
5. Wind farms needlessly increase the cost of electricity for all, including those who can least afford it, contributing to “energy poverty”;
AND
6. Wind farms can de-stabilize the electric power grid, due to the huge peaks and lulls in their power generation profile;
AND
7. Wind farms kill millions of birds and bats worldwide, including some seriously endangered species.
AND
8. Wind farms may be one of the most useless, counterproductive devices ever invented by humankind.
So wind farms are economically ugly and environmentally ugly, and in summary are just plain old ugly.
“WIND POWER – IT DOESN’T JUST BLOW – IT SUCKS!”
*****************************
Several years ago there was an article about repairing non functioning offshore wind turbines in the UK. They weren’t being serviced because there was only one floating crane capable handling the job, and it was being used exclusively for new construction. Another reason for the drop off, is repairs simply can’t be done during late fall and winter because of high winds and waves. Having to wait six months does not help the average load factor.
The wear and tear you describe (the load factor which I presume means less energy production), does that suggest the blades only have to be replaced or the entire wind turbine (stress on the structure/metal fatigue) and depending on what has to be replaced is it worth it in the end to continue? I doubt it. Sounds as though another fanciful waste of money for really nothing in return, except inefficient use of capital (taxes paid by the UK citizen) to prop-up a form of corporate welfare.
Save the trouble and invest in nuclear, if in deed CO2 is their real concern which it is not.
George T
I understand that the reason is failures of components become more and more common as they age. Spectacular failures of bearings is the exception in the list of repairs. The norm is the bearings wear and it must be stopped and the armature hoisted to change them (a huge undertaking because of the location and mass involved).
So it is not in the same manner as Solar PV, the deterioration of which is inherent in putting things out in the sun. The wind generator efficiency is not degrading, but the mechanical system that increases the rotating speed, does. It is inefficient to increase the rotating speed of a shaft.
I further understand that the main problem with bearings is not the loading, but the frequency of the vibrations that pass through the gearbox. If one knows the number of teeth on all the gears, it is possible to predict accurately the number of bumps the inner and outer races of the bearings will develop. Adding the blade’s rotational frequency, you can predict the harmonics that will create a pattern of shallow divots in the bearing.
As you probably know already, the blades passing the tower at the bottom of the turn causes a low frequency “beat” that affects the gearbox under load.
These are the mechanical facts of life. Things with gears have fundamental vibrations and overtones coursing through the drive chain. Even a literal drive chain will have a vibration that is the same as the number of chain teeth engaging the sprockets in one second.
While the bump caused by the blade passing in front of the support column is probably the biggest problem, there’s also the more gradual change in torque caused by the fact that wind speeds at the top of the arc are greater than wind speeds at the bottom. This will also cause uneven wear on the bearings.
Precession must also place considerable strain on components as the blades would be moving constantly towards whichever way the wind is at any moment.
Would this also apply to the generator which would be spinning at a far higher rate but moves with the blades? Any engineers with knowledge of this?
“I further understand that the main problem with bearings is not the loading, but the frequency of the vibrations that pass through the gearbox. If one knows the number of teeth on all the gears, it is possible to predict accurately the number of bumps the inner and outer races of the bearings will develop. Adding the blade’s rotational frequency, you can predict the harmonics that will create a pattern of shallow divots in the bearing.”
As an engineer working full-time with bearings (including bearing damage, also in gearboxes) I kindly suggest you put the damage description quoted above aside, and instead read e.g. the article of the link below (which in it self is already some years old, and newer results are currently being studied).
http://evolution.skf.com/premature-bearing-failures-in-wind-gearboxes-and-white-etching-cracks-wec/
Willis,
You provide an excellent summary.
The problems were predictable. In fact they were predicted; see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf .
However, even I did not foresee the magnitude of the problems would be so great as it is.
Richard
Willis,
You provide an excellent summary.
The problems were predictable and were predicted; see http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
However, even I did not foresee the magnitude of the problems would be so great.
Richard
Richard, like you I expected the load factor to drop over time, but nowhere near that much.
w.
Mr Eschenbach, it is not just the Efficiency of the Turbinesin the UK that has rduced it is also the actual Wind Speeds. Which appears to be a worldwide issue.
Not only are we paying the subsidies you highlighted, but also a further subsidy if the damned things have to be switched off or curtailed.
There is also a serious Blade degradement problem with offshore turbines.
Our Government just ignores such studies.
Could it be that sucking energy out of the air via turbines has caused the reduction in wind speed?
It stands to reason that at some point it will, maybe.
The other possibility is that the wind, being a response to particular forces, will not diminish at all, and wherever the energy from the wind comes from to begin with, it will just take more to keep pushing as hard as it needs to.
As for the general issue of degradation, I was reading somewhere recently that at least part of the problem is turbulence from placing them too close together.
It messes up the bearings and possibly the blades.
That same source I was reading said that on one almost new offshore wind farm, the blades already needed to be replaced. No word on whether it was covered by a warranty.
Marine environment is very harsh…hardly surprising that the degradation would be not only worse, but underestimated.
In the UK, part of the subsidy for renewables comes in the form of capacity payments. It would be interesting to know if the capacity figure that that payment is based on is the plated capacity, or the actual degraded figure they are able to produce after a few years in use.
Willis,
It is good to know we agree (but in some ways it is better when we don’t).
It seems you are noticing my comments to you here, so I take this opportunity to say to you what I said to Allan MacRae in the other current WUWT thread about problems of UK wind powered subsidy farms.
I need to reduce my pain relief to return to involvement in these matters and, therefore, it takes something as serious as the ‘Nature Blacklist’ to get me to do it. My abilities are slowly fading and, therefore, I take pleasure in knowing there are worthy people including yourself who continue to champion the cause of real science.
All the best
Richard
Richard:
It may not help, but CBD reduced my wife’s need for as much pain medication. Nerve damage and shooting pains in legs, arms and feet.
Paul R.
I am so glad to see your input again! Best wishes.
Richard, thank you for your kind words, and best wishes for your health.
Regards,
w.
“…work- hardened cynic…”
Another Willisism which is just as much fun as the science.
I wonder how much wind blown dust (not to mention various bird carcasses) causes degradation to the blades reducing their efficiency over time.
There is another problem with the blades. Over time, as they degrade, they shed fibres. If the land beneath the turbines is used for grazing, the animals can ingest these fibres.
Nice post. Nothing like a little data to show how ridiculous wind power is. I remind the true believers that the more something costs, the more pollution was created to manufacture it.
A little data indeed.
Pesky facts tend to upset a lot of apple carts. The left has a problem with that.
“Pesky facts tend to upset a lot of apple carts.”
The leading Democrat candidate for President revealed that Democrats have little interest in facts:
“We choose truth over facts.” – Joe Biden.
Of course, truth without facts is very convenient for politicians because it allows ‘truth’ to be whatever you want it to be. And it allows them to preach the ‘truth’ of dangerous climate change without having to show fact-based evidence for their predictions of gloom and doom.
Basically the same problem as China has run into. One fifth of there wind farms remain unconnected to the grid because of cost/subsidy overshoot problems or grid stability problems.
https://physicsworld.com/a/green-power-curtailment-in-china/
Even in a country which doesn’t have a real world exposure for this economy it is proving to be problematic financially.
I think that these machines have tended to become larger over time, and the offshore ones are made to be very large.
I wonder if there has been such a general trend, and if so, is it perhaps related and maybe even the cause for decreasing longevity of them as they get older?
We have heard from many people that these devices are near the limits of material strength and durability and such.
Have they pushed past the limits of what can be expected of materials over time under hard conditions?
As the wind turbines get larger, the unequal loading on the axial bearing(s) gets greater and the maintenance problems more severe. Hence expect the capacity factor to worsen more rapidly.
Rud,
We need to keep a close eye on the companies that manufacture these useless machines. If you are correct (of which I am pretty sure) then these companies will go bust a few short years after their customers figure out this scam and stop buying them. Or, at least I hope…
There is a company called GE. Not sure if you follow the stock markets, but…
Read my coauthored essay True Cost of Wind circa 2015 over at Climate Etc.
We explained this in detail. In summary, wind speed generally increases with height. So the bigger (taller) a wind turbine is, the more severe the wind speed difference and rotational top to bottom axial bearing misloading. Is inherent. And the resulting potential axial bearing stress cracks grow with age.
And that ignores the second axial bearing problem: Reverse load torque distortion when the things are forced to brake when wind speeds exceed max can even force bearings out of the bearing trace. Overengineer the trace as a solution, and the bearings crack instead.
Most of the spectacular flaming wind turbine pics available are the result of an axial bearing failure.
I would imagine that in addition to differences in wind speed at the top and bottom of the turbine blades, there would also be significant differences in the amount of turbulence. Could this potentially cause more problems than just a differential of wind speed (where the wind is in the same direction)? I think you would end up with a high load when the blade is at top, then a lower but somewhat random (or at least unpredictable) load at the bottom. Or, is the bottom of the blade high enough off the ground to avoid these effects?
You have exactly described the inherent axial bearing torque problem. The bottom of the rotation lower load torques the top of rotation higher load. An inherent bearing ‘wobble’ eventually kills them, always.
Rud,
In the business I used to work in, over time we found more and more large three phase electric motors failing due to three phase imbalances.
It was my job to talk to the power quality specialist from the utility (typically FPL) and try to get them to pay for damages.
Of course they never would, as the imbalances were always under the specific tolerances they are obligated to meet.
It turned out that a small voltage imbalance between the three legs of incoming power would induce a much larger amperage imbalance in the current going to the motor.
The power quality engineers from FPL knew this from the get go, but never said anything helpful, ever. I had to figure it all out myself, as no one else in the company, and very few even in the technical support departments at companies like Franklin Electric and even Grundfos were in the least bit helpful.
Every one of these various groups of people, it became clear over time, actually had the job of making very sympathetic noises while saying little except everything on their end is within spec, then waiting for the customer (me) to get tired of asking questions while continuing to pretend to be helping.
In the end, I found out that the basic issue originated when some community was being constructed, and a decision was made to install not true three phase power, but to use only two transformers to make what is called an open delta or open wye configuration, whereby the two transformers use a trick of physics to create three legs out of two.
Everything is fine as long as the total power draw does not approach the limits of the transformers.
Money is saved by only needing to buy two transformers, and have two power cables coming into the place from the distribution lines. Typically residential communities have few large motors, which are the one that have the bearings near design limits regarding stresses: The imbalance causes the motor to wobble on the bearing, instead of spinning smoothly. It is slight and causes premature failure, but only occasionally within the warranty window.
Most manufacturers offer a warranty, but when you send something back for warranty consideration, they refuse the claim and jabber some technical nonsense that fools most people but not me. It became apparent that they would refuse any claim, with Franklin Electric being the worst. If the company was ethical, when you called them on that BS, they would agree to warranty the motor after that. Only one I found to be ethical was Grundfos. But the first reaction is always to refuse the claim.
After a while, I found out from having to learn pretty much everything there is to know about three phase power transmission and electric motor engineering, that there was no way the power companies were ever going to correct such an imbalance.
I eventually came across a technical bulletin that described about the only solution: Oversize the motor, or trim the pump impellers so that the amp draw was well below the Full Load Amp rating of the motor.
Motors can tolerate a 5% imbalance at FLA, but it falls off rapidly above that. To get optimum performance of the feature, and save money, most manufacturers in our industry would build the units to be close to, and sometimes above, FLA… and into the 15% service factor.
When a motor is oversized, say by pairing a 25 HP motor with a 20 HP pump, the same imbalance will barely affect it, being that they have a more robust bearing and a greater capacity to dissipate heat (this last being the only real difference between one HP of motor and another…they all output the same RPMs since the speed the motor spins is due to the frequency of the AC power supply.
3450 RPMs to allow for the motor always lagging the rotating magnetic field of the power supply.
I would up making it a net plus for our company in the end, by getting the owners to agree that for the relatively small increase in price for the next largest motor, we would not only be protected from warranty issues due to voltage imbalance, but also from everything else that causes motors to wear out. Like putting a truck engine in a small car, it will be lightly loaded and last a long time.
So we were able to innovate a best in the industry warranty, much longer than that offered by the motor manufacturers, simply by oversizing the part that wore out the most frequently…the weak link in the chain.
A warranty issue costs many thousands of dollars, but a step up to the next largest HP motor is a few hundred bucks.
Even still, it was like pulling teeth to get the production department to go along with it, and in the end they just started building in the cost of a replacement motor and going back to the motor that matched the HP of the unit as sold. Some BS about how we would be misrepresenting something by oversizing a motor.
This is how things go in industry.
Planned obsolescence, not caring what happens down the road as long as it was not a warranty issue, etc.
But, I found out, since I was in charge of the service department, if I gave customers the option during a repair to pay a small amount of extra money, and explaining the whole thing to them, almost every single one gladly paid extra to have a larger and more robust motor. Paying an extra couple of hundred on a repair way up in the thousands is a no brainer to a property manager.
But not to pencil pushers, desk jockeys, and especially not to salesmen who work on commission…charging more sounds much better to them, rather than making it better.
Planned obsolescence is everywhere.
They can make motors and almost everything that will last forever, but the company that does…well…several things can happen.
There was a company called Red Jacket, which up to the late 1980s made a motor that as far as our original production manager, the guy who hired me, was able to tell…never wore out. Ever.
When they started to get a larger market share, guess what happened?
Franklin electric bought them out.
Then immediately shut down the factory and fired everyone.
No more of that last forever crap messing up everyone’s business model.
Franklin later redesigned the thrust bearings on their motors, and made them very unreliable…but they always lasted longer than the warranty, and the Kingsbury Thrust Bearing is cheap to make.
But they will not hold up when near FLA and mounted horizontally.
Bottom line: It costs money to make stuff better, and unless someone who can do something about it has a conscience, no one will look out for the customer, especially if it is a government and no one spending the money is spending their own.
I should have said they usually lasted longer than the warranty.
Not always.
And often not by much.
And nothing makes people more angry and abused that something that fails just outside the warranty period.
Excellent advise about oversizing the motor which should just be common sense to many but sure does fall on deaf ears a lot. How anyone could not understand this is beyond the pale, but in my case I had to actually change the name plate rating on the motor since was using a 3 phase induction motor as a single phase generator and getting near 3 phase efficiency whilst producing single phase. By turning the induction motor 50 rpm faster and adding capacitors to the two unused phases, it turned into a single Ph generator of course on delta wye single phase, and if the proper capacitance achieved 100% PF and the generator oversized by 33%-50%, would run completely smooth with no vibration and cool to the touch. Added maybe 25%-30% extra cost to the cost of the generator, but would basically run forever since everything was running luke warm with no stress whatsoever on the bearings and not much heat in the windings when the core not saturated. Zero maintenance except for greasing, or get the sealed greased bearings and some are still running perfectly after 25 years.
The utility I was selling the electricity to had a stipulation that the ‘generator’ name plate couldn’t be larger than the rated output for that unit. If you had to follow that requirement, the 3 Ph motor Kw rating that was operating as a single Ph generator wouldn’t last a 1/4 time of the warranty since the heat from the saturation of the core would just fry it sooner than later, even if still within the technical size. The bearings would be first to go since the grease just melted in the bearing race making them dry and of course one would always be changing bearings until the windings fried. Hence, get or make up a new name plate badge on an over sized motor/generator, and the utility idiots didn’t even know what they were looking at. Was the best solution for everyone, whether they knew it or not.
Part of the reason for them not wanting to just keep oversizing every motor was because although it was simple for a three phase motor, in the case of a single phase motor it was not so simple.
Another was like you say related to the electric control circuits, breakers, magnetic contactors, overload relays and the rest of it including sire sizing, all have to be based on the FLA of the motor, not the nominal amp draw of the entire unit as assembled.
And NEC codes then stipulated everything must be sized at least 125% of the Max amps, not FLA, which includes the FLA and a 15% service factor.
And upping some components one size can be inordinately expensive when they are already large, increments in the available equipment get more widely spaced the higher you go, and they are already oversized by code to begin with.
Which is an issue.
I actually came up with the same idea as you: We get our supplier to put a name plate and a special part number specific to our company (we were the single largest US customer of the Grundfos US groundwater division), and label the amperage according to the pump specs. They would do it. After all, the only thing that makes one motor a given FLA is how much the manufacturer is willing to warranty it for. Any induction motor will pull as much power as it needs to spin at the rate determined by the frequency of the power, so putting a 10 HP pump on a 5 HP motor, and that motor will draw 10 HP of current right up until it burns itself out due to overheating.
NEC codes are necessary, but sometimes the realities on the ground mean that excessive safety factors just make stuff inordinately expensive for no real reason except it is the code.
For anyone who is not a mechanical or electrical engineer, and is lost when the subject of motor bearings comes up, here is a short video from the US Navy from back in the day.
They want to make sure the people they train have a clear idea of what they are doing. This makes it simple, and it gets much more complicated then this, but for an outline of the concepts:
I worked for a large chocolate company that used a lot of large electric motors. At the time I left they were still running motors that were built in the early 1900’s and were nearly a century old. They were huge, ~5ft across and 3 ft thick. Relatively slow rpm. Huge bronze bearings that they rebuilt in the machine shop. Reminiscent of a steam locomotive. Actually they had hardly anything to break and anything that could wear out was replaceable.
Yes, all that AND grid instability too!
I posted this on the thread about the UK grid issues, but that’s days old so I thought I would repost here.
The interim report on the incident was published today here.
There was a lightning strike that took out a transmission line (Eaton Socon to Wymondley) at 15:52:33.49UTC on 2019-08-09. Within a second Hornsea went off followed by a unit at Little Barford. The transmission line came back on within 20 secs but the local mains loss there caused ~500MW of local generation (local wind, solar, diesel) to shut down. The two other units at Little Barford shut down successively because of local steam overpressures caused by the first unit loss. In all they lost around 1800MW of generation during the incident. I could understand Little Barford going off as it’s connected at Eaton Socon & would get a voltage wobbly from the lightning strike, but Hornsea is well over 100 miles away. Looks like its safety trips were just too sensitive.
What is appalling to me is that there was 500MW of local generation in a relatively small area affected by the transmission line trip – that is, small solar & wind turbine units run privately for subsidy farming (they are only economic if farming subsidies, as th above article points out)!
Thanks Willis,
It’s hard to believe this stupidity continues.
Willis – do you have access to the ratio of taxes collected to subsidies paid? Governments are notoriously inefficient so the real cost for subsidies in terms of taxes collected will be higher than their face value.
In many jurisdictions, there is a 10 year property tax holiday for building new wind turbines and for being ‘green’, so no new property tax revenues. I have also heard in some jurisdictions that many Gov’ts don’t charge state or provincial taxes because they are green renewables, and the GST federal tax in many countries is a flow thru tax anyways and they get GST/HST back like all business inputs.
Also, many jurisdictions also have accelerated depreciation for the assets for 10 years, so effectively pay no income tax for at least 10 years. After 10 years as this post points out, the degradation of the output starts to decline so remarkably , they don’t actually make any profit and then are abandoned in the end after 15-20 years or whenever the subsidy ends. The public will have to pay tax to have those removed, after paying for the subsidy so some wind farming company gets rich. Or perhaps the private landowners that also got paid a rental fee for having them in their land will ‘inherit’ them when they are abandoned. Maybe scrap value in the end.
Wow!
Eric …
“yclept” ? = pre-Cleopian ?
Oops !
Meant Willis…..
Sadly not a new report, it was produced in 2012, since when wind turbines have been blessed with green fairy dust, and are now models of reliability and longevity … at extracting subsidies, even when they are curtailed.
Who would have guessed? 😉
I think this would bring up the true cost of the wind: Let’s not call these government outlays “subsidies” — call them “price of the wind!”
As for the renew-ability: If they have to pay for the wind, the money spent are certainly not “renewable!”
– It is not a new report, it was published 2012 by the charitable ‘renewable energy foundation’, which despite the name only ever publishes anti-wind power material.
– It uses a highly criticised ‘standardised statistical technique’, rather than the more widely adopted wind indices.
– A peer-reviewed study found a decline in load factor of 16%/decade with the average actual load factor of UK farms between the ages of 10 and 15 of 25%, with no trend over time. Few farms operate for more than 15 years.
Ref: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19783450.pdf
–
I had a friend that was considering leasing land for the installation windmills. I suggested that an important consideration would be how the removal of the windmills was to be paid for once they were no longer used.
What’s that old expression? “I’d laugh, if I wasn’t so busy crying…”
typo: “pressuring the government to lift the subsidies”,
should be lift the bar on subsidies.
But why does performance fall off with age? That is on average, so is it that individual machines don’t fall off, but they die?
Thanks, Toto, fixed the typo. As to the performance falling off, the authors say:
w.
It is lost time due to repairs and a reduction in maximum output of the wind turbine.
Wind turbines’ power output must be reduced when a maximum wind speed is reached to avoid damaging some component of the turbine.
There is a second problem that wind is gusty.
The operational issues and limitations of wind turbines is hidden which is necessary to sell the scam.
Of course at the point when power storage is required the wind scheme becomes comically ridiculous in term of cost and because there is no savings in CO2 …
I knew that this would happen because The failures of electro-mechanical devices have kept me employed for the last thirty five years. It is hard enough to keep them running at ground level, doing the same in a tiny room 400 ft in the air must be great fun.
Not so tiny.
Willis — what’s new about it? The study your link points to is dated 2012. Have you seen a newer one?
Still damning evidence, but not all that “new” and I’d love to see more recent reliability data.
Also data about frequency and phase stability as a function of grid fraction of wind/solar power. I worked in the scientific instrument biz, and we spent our lives trying to defeat power problems, to the extent of sticking line conditioners between the wall and our power supply for anything shipped into Canada (for example) because of wonky mains power.
Willis:
Interesting if not too surprising. The report is dated 2012. Did you find anything comparable that is more current?
Good article, states the obvious. For very little stable output, there are horrendous costs to these bird choppers – catastrophic utility bills, slaughtered bird life, wasted/corrupted (pay to play) subsidies, outright fraud, blighted landscapes. Fake News reports none of it.
Germany is no different. https://stopthesethings.com/2018/08/13/germanys-renewable-energy-disaster-part-1-wind-solar-deemed-technological-failures/
“the wind and solar industries are shrinking, as subsidies are slashed; old coal-fired power plants are being refurbished; and dozens of new coal-fired plants are being built. On any sensible reckoning, the Energiewende has been a monumental failure.”
Germany, Denmark, UK, Spain….Massive social-climate engineering has achieved nothing but a lot of destruction of money, common sense and bird life.
And made some people very, very rich!
An alternative set of opinions, by the late Prof Sir David MacKay, physicist, mathematician, and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Engineering in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge and from 2009 to 2014 was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.
“On the Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom
David MacKay FRS
Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and
Department of Energy and Climate Change, London
May 28, 2013 – Draft 6.0”
http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/windDecline.pdf
Author of “Sustainable Energy — without the hot air”
https://www.withouthotair.com/Electronic.html
“The total cost of UK subsidies for renewables is stunning. Renewable subsidies in the UK in 2016, the most recent data I could find, is just under £5 billion”
For 2019/20 they’ll total in the region of £10.3bn.
I wish this report had been updated since its 2012 publication. Would love to see some of the longer term capacity declines on the systems that are 20+ years old.
The study is from 2012.
Fossil fuels were used to construct these wind farms and fossil fuels will be used to dismantle and clean them up.
Like Toto, I too would like to know if the performance fall-off is due to all the turbines getting less efficient, or some continue working as normal while increasing numbers fail completely?
Or even just failure to spend money on repairs which causes more and more units to be idled.