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To: Uncledave
Basically, yes. It is too good to be true.

In anything in this world we can find times and places where particular events come together which often seem as if these small, tiny, events could be expanded to the entire activity. For example, all batters in the MLB should hit home runs on every pitch. They don’t. It’s an anomaly. All cars should be as fast as Ferrari's and as cheap as bicycles.

Let look at tiny special unique Denmark, and the actual facts.
It is true windpower in Denmark accounts for 20% of Danish electrical production.
However, Denmark does not ‘get’ 20% of it’s electricity form wind power. The windpower electricity is all exported to Sweden and Germany. It is not used because...it is unreliable. So when the Danes get some juice, it is exported, unused and at a economic loss to Sweden where it is used to pump water up into damns, in a way a battery bank. In Germany, it is dumped into the German power grid because Germany is so large, so electrical consuming that the half of Danish wind power it gets isn’t hardly notable. In a phrase, it is dumped, again at a loss to the Danes into the German grid.

The Danes get their electricty like the rest of us, by powerplants. That is what they keep and use. So to be more accurate, the 20% generated in Denmark is folded into the Danish/Swedish/German grid where that amount looks large in little Denmark but is tiny in Sweden and Germany. I am not sure, but I am guessing like under 1 percent.

All this is done at a loss.

Also, Denmark is the most perfect place in the world to put turbines. Again a unique environment.

And the Danes themselves do not use this electricity. It is too costly, too unreliable so they pay the Swedes and Germans to take the electricity that they ‘dump’ into their electrical generation schemes.

The Danes donot and can not use windpower in a modern economy. Neither can we. We can build it. We can do it, but we will have to pay to dump it. So, what is the point of this other than feeling good and burning money?

More here. http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/sharman-winddenmark.pdf

91 posted on 07/27/2007 2:56:30 PM PDT by Leisler (Just be glad your not getting all the Government you pay for.)
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To: Leisler
According to the Danish Wind Energy Association, they currently get 20% of power consumption from wind, not production as you state. They expect this to be 25% by next year.

http://www.windpower.org/composite-53.htm

95 posted on 07/28/2007 6:00:36 AM PDT by Uncledave
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To: Leisler
Windies always cite the Danish example but I have to say this: I'm not too impressed by the example of a small country that is a minor player on the world economic and military stage. I mean, we're talking about 20% of the supply for a country of 5 million people. What does the greater LA region alone have in population, something like 5-7 million? The greater NY area in excess of 10 million? Cripes, it's a country that is smaller than some of our major cities in population, and they can manage only 20% of their needs? Even if we match them on a percentage basis (highly unlikely), where do we go for the other 80%?

This is the thing that gets my goat about all of these "renewable energy" debates. We're talking about a resource that, if fully developed, will account for only a fraction of our projected demand, maybe 20-30%. So where do we get the other 70-80% that we're going to need? We're wasting a lot of time debating and money developing something that will only provide a fraction of the total. The larger problem remains.

100 posted on 07/30/2007 5:53:41 AM PDT by chimera
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