Posted on 02/25/2005 8:14:20 PM PST by Pikamax
Report doubts future of wind power
Luke Harding in Berlin, John Vidal and Alok Jha Saturday February 26, 2005 The Guardian
Wind farms are an expensive and inefficient way of generating sustainable energy, according to a study from Germany, the world's leading producer of wind energy.
The report, which may have ramifications for the UK's rapidly growing wind farm industry, concludes that instead of spending billions on building new wind turbines, the emphasis should be on making houses more energy efficient. Drawn up by the German government's energy agency, it says that wind farms prove a costly form of reducing greenhouse gases.
It costs €41-€77 (£28-£53) to avoid emitting a tonne of carbon dioxide by using wind energy, the report says.
The study is likely to feed the bitter debate on whether Britain should continue to emulate Germany and dramatically expand its wind farm programme. Germany has the largest number of wind farms in the world, producing more wind energy than Denmark, Spain and the US put together.
The UK's wind power movement is the fastest growing in the world, with up to £10bn expected to be invested in the next five years, attracting government subsidies of roughly £1bn.
But more than 100 national and local groups, led by some of Britain's most prominent environmentalists, including David Bellamy, Sir Crispin Tickell, and James Lovelock, have argued that wind power is inefficient, destroys the countryside and makes little difference to Britain's soaring carbon emissions.
"At last. This report confirms what we have been saying," said Angela Kelly, director of Country Guardian, an umbrella group for the anti-wind-power lobby. "Wind power is three times more expensive than conventional electricity. It is a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money."
The report comes when the British government is promoting wind power as a means of getting 10% of energy need from renewables by 2010.
The German report estimates that it will cost €1.1bn to link Germany's existing wind farms to the national grid if it is to meet its target of producing 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2015.
About 800 miles of cables will have to be laid or upgraded, and power plants will have to be replaced or adapted to cope with the large fluctuations in wind-derived energy. This programme will cost each German household €16 a year, it says.
"Wind energy is expensive. That's true. You can't dispute it," Stephan Kohler, the head of Germany's energy agency told the Guardian. "Conventional methods are cheaper. But you have to do both."
In the past 15 years Germany has constructed more than 15,000 turbines, half of them in the past five years. The number is due to double again by the end of the decade.
In November British and German ministers announced plans for cooperation on alternative energy development.
The 1,034 big turbines now running in Britain produce about 700MW of electricity - about as much as one conventional power station - but in the next seven years more than 7,000MW of generating power will be installed on 73 new farms.
Last year 22 onshore wind farms with a capacity of 475MW were built, but developers are increasingly moving to shallow water off the coasts. Altogether, 9,000MW of new wind power is planned to be installed by 2010, enough to meet the government's targets.
Critics of wind energy in Germany said it would be cheaper and more environmentally efficient to insulate old houses or to renew existing power stations.
"The problem with wind farms is that you have to build them in places where you don't need electricity. The electricity then has to be moved somewhere else," Klaus Lippold, a Christian Democrat opposition MP, said.
"There is growing resistance in Germany to wind farms, not least because of the disastrous effect on our landscape."
The German environment minister, Jürgen Trittin, of the Green party, hit back, saying that the "central parts" of the report vindicated his claim that an expansion of wind energy could be done quickly and cheaply. "There are no grounds for pessimism," he said.
Last year more than 10% of Germany's energy consumption came from renewable sources, a record.
Jim Footner of Greenpeace said the German study would inevitably be used by opponents of wind power as an argument against further investment. But he remained confident that wind power was the best option for Britain's energy needs.
"You can't energy-efficiency your way out of climate change," he said. "You need to have clean forms of energy generation, and wind power is the technology that's competitive, current and it's the one that's available now."
The British Wind Energy Association said it was wrong to compare wind energy in Britain and Germany.
"The UK has a far greater wind resource than Germany. The winds blow harder and therefore the economics of wind power in the UK will be better than those of our European neighbours", said Richard Ford of the BWEA.
The National Audit Office, reporting on renewable energies last week, said wind was the most expensive way to fund carbon emission reductions in Britain. It gave a figure of £70-£140 a tonne of carbon saved - more than in Germany.
But it did not condemn wind, saying that a mix of renewable energies and energy savings was needed.
So I guess Ted "No windpower in MY backyard" Kennedy is suddenly going to side with the oil/coal/nuke crowd on this issue?
If you tell him there is a stiff drink involved...he'll be for anything.
I still don't see how anybody can be for the windpower hoax.
It seems everywhere it is used in the US.....it does not provide the required power.
Companies who use it, have to buy supplemental power from other, more traditional energy companies. And then that ends up costing their customers more.
The dems seem to think that they can simply back Americans into a corner--no windpower in their backyards (with good reason, apparently, but not the reason they were claiming); no foreign oil; no domestic oil; no fuel bought from dictators or whoever isn't on their Friends list. Their only answer seems to be "conserve" (funny, they don't take that approach where sex ed is concerned, do they? And how about that 'they're gonna do it anyway' response they give on that topic?). They seem to want us to just conserve all our energy problems away. It's unrealistic, and they know it, and they don't care because they sure aren't changing to lower-wattage bulbs in their mansions.
Your thoughts on this?
Report doubts future of wind power:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1351403/posts
"You can't energy-efficiency your way out of climate change," he said."
Vice President Cheney said several years ago that energy conservation might well be an individual virtue but it was not a significant element of a national energy policy. Nice to see the GreenWeenies haave come to agree with The Man From Halliburton!
Was that suppose to be a secret?
Let the Euros concentrate on expensive wind power if they want. It'll only drive the European cost of living up more than it is now, but there'll be less carbon in the air.
I suppose there's an environmental reason for not going with nuclear energy which is cheap, clean, and plentiful.
"They seem to want us to just conserve all our energy problems away. It's unrealistic, and they know it, and they don't care because they sure aren't changing to lower-wattage bulbs in their mansions."
Yes but the general public feels good about seeing them... so it is worth paying more for them. You know, it is like recycling.
They feel good doing it, so it does not matter if they pay more, nor care to know if it really hurts the environment. Most would be/are shocked to learn that the trash the carefully sort really all goes to the same dump.
Idiots. Sheep.
Again, think distributed. I seriously think the first company that can come up with a small grid intertie capable windmill system with a full price tag of less than $1000 per kilowatt will be rolling in it. Surely someone out there can com up with a modern version of the Jacobs Long Case with modern components for modern efficiencies.
"I'm left to conclude that they think the electricity that comes out of their walls is a clean, free gift from mother Earth that originates in their basement."
Thats brilliant!!!!
Can anyone tell me why the proposers of wind farms want states to subsidize it. I should think if they really belived it would be effective they would build these without reaching into taxpayers pockets. Just like any other business; on the risk that they would have something to sell.
You have, buried deep in your argument, the assumption that a fossil-fueled electrical energy plant can be switched off like a light.
Rather than calling you silly names, I invite you to investigate this assumption.
No, I do not. You have buried deep in your arguement the assumption that power generating facilities are either fully on or fully off. You also assume there is an "either or" nature to power sources on the grid.
Rather than calling you silly names, I invite you to educate yourself on the matter. Have you ever heard of "reserve capacity"? For that matter, have you ever heard of a simple device called a throttle?
Fossil fuel electricity generating plants can, in fact, increase or decrease their output. They can also be turned on and shut off. We know this to be true because they do it every day.
All power grids need to keep a reserve generating capacity that exceeds demand. Throughout the day, the demand changes, with peak demand some time around two in the afternoon, and lowest demand around three in the morning (depending on the time of year, the location, the weather etc). By your arguement, all power plants would be running at peak capacity at three in the morning just to meet the peak demand at two in the afternoon because "a fossil-fueled electrical energy plant can't be switched off like a light." That just aint so, and it's not how things work regardless.
To maintain the reserve power necessary to keep the grid stable, generating facilities are capable of increasing or decreasing their output. They can either consume more or less fuel in the generators they are running, or bring more generators on and off line throughout the day. In the case of nuclear plants, they can withdraw or insert control rods to regulate the temperature in the reactor. Either way, more watts in output means more fuel is consumed (or waste produced in the case of nuclear plants).
This is managed through the predictable nature of the energy demand curve. Though the demand curve does change on a day to day basis, the causes are usually the results of the changing seasons and weather, which are themselves very predictable. The power output of a wind farm is also relatively predictable, because it is also dependant on the season and the weather. The difference between a wind generator and other more conventional sources is that a wind farm's output cannot be controlled; any energy not used when the wind is blowing is lost (unless soneone somewhere has some really big batteries).
A grid manager with a wind farm on his grid has a pretty good idea of what the output of that wind farm will be in the next few days based on the weather report. He also knows what the probable demand curve will be based on the same weather report. With that in mind, he has a good idea of the fossil fuel generating capacity he will need to order to maintain the reserve capacity of the grid for the following few days. On windy days, he needs to request less fossil fuel generation. On windless days, he needs to request more.
The point I'm making here is that wind farms are not a complete solution to any grid's energy needs. They are a good supplement to a grids energy needs, though, because of their extrememly low fuel costs (some is needed to drive the maintenance trucks). Because of their intermittant nature, the grid will still need enough conventional generating capacity to meet its peak load plus reserve capacity, but when the wind is blowing, all that conventional capacity need not be running, thereby conserving fuel for days when the wind is not blowing.
Having a wind farm on a grid is not a replacement for conventional generating capacity, but it is a supplemental power source that can reduce the fuel consumed by the conventional generating capacity. A distributed network of wind farms only improves the wind solution by reducing the grid load at the point of consumption (reducing transmission line losses) and also by stabilizing the wind power supply (if the wind isn't blowing at one location, it might be blowing at another).
That's not so. The greenie way to obtain electricity is it perform a sacrifice to Gaia, hug a tree, plug a wire into the tree, and get all the free electricty you want.
They might want to look again. Small scale wind power has made one very critical advance in the past couple of years. This important improvement has been the creation of a direct grid intertie inverter so a wind turbine can be connected directly to the grid.
While a batteryless turbine system doesn't offer the blackout protection provided by a bank of batteries, it does have two significant advantages. First, you don't need to waste money buying, maintaining, and replacing batteries. Second, a wind generator connected to an intelligent inverter can operate at peak power output for a larger spectrum of wind speeds because it's load can be controlled by the inverter, instead of being coupled to the charging voltage current curve of the battery bank. In other words, you get a lot more juice out of the turbine if its allowed to dump power into the grid instead of throttling it down to meet a battery's charging requirements.
Having said all that, they are still very very expensive, and only make economic sense if your parent's farm meets some specific criteria as to power consumption, average wind speed, and whatnot.
It is imperative to small scale turbine manufacturers that they do everything they can in developing their machines to expand the economic feasability envelope. The single most important things they can do are reduce the total cost of ownership, and improve the longevity of their turbines. There some designs which have been running sound for decades (the Jacobs first came out before the depression, and many are still spinning today), but there are a lot of turbines out there that are cheap fragile junk. A few turbines out there that can pay for themselves before their warranties run out, but not many (do a lot of research and ask for a list of owners of installed systems to contact before making any decisions). It's my personal opinion that the first company to come up with a good turbine, tower, and inverter system for less than $1000 per actually produced kilowatt will do extremely well, so long as they keep the quality up.
Of course, even with all the limitations of wind power, it still works a lot better than solar. Some wind turbines can pay for themselves in less than 5 years, and need little maintenance beyond that. The best solar arrays out there (even with taxpayer funded subsidies) can take upwards of 20 years to pay for themselves.
Wood's just fossil fuel waiting to happen; take geology 101 and find out how all those fossils came to exist. By using it they just manage to get more nasty emissions than they would from oil or gas, but they feel so good and green.
Not really. That "waiting to happen" is important. The carbon released into the air by burning wood was pulled from the air in the last few years. Therefore, it does not add to the current atmospheric carbon balance. The carbon released into the air by burning fossil fuels weas pulled from the air many millions of years ago, so it does add to the current atmospheric carbon balance.
Of course, the best way someone can help reduce the amount of carbon in the air is by planting a forest, letting it lock carbon from the air into the wood, then cutting the forest down and building houses with it, thereby keeping the carbon out of the air and clearing the land for more the next forest for more carbon trapping. Yet, for some reason, the greenie weenies keep telling us logging is bad. Makes you think.
BTTT
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