Posted on 11/29/2008 8:47:20 AM PST by saganite
This is not what President-elect Barack Obama's energy and climate strategists would want to hear. It would be anathema to Al Gore and other assorted luminaries touting renewable energy sources which in one giant swoop will save the world from the “tyranny” of fossil fuels and mitigate global warming. And as if these were not big enough issues, oilman T. Boone Pickens’ grandiose plan for wind farms from Texas to Canada is supposed to bring about a replacement for the natural gas now used for power generation. That move will then lead to energy independence from foreign oil.
Too good to be true? Yes, and in fact it is a lot worse.
Wind has been the cornerstone of almost all environmentalist and social engineering proclamations for more than three decades and has accelerated to a crescendo the last few years in both the United States and the European Union.
But Europe, getting a head start, has had to cope with the reality borne by experience and it is a pretty ugly picture.
Independent reports have consistently revealed an industry plagued by high construction and maintenance costs, highly volatile reliability and a voracious appetite for taxpayer subsidies. Such is the economic strain on taxpayer funds being poured into wind power by Europe's early pioneers -- Denmark, Germany and Spain – that all have recently been forced to scale back their investments.
As a result this summer, the U.K., under pressure to meet an ambitious E.U. climate target of 20 percent carbon dioxide cuts by 2020, assumed the mantle of world leader in wind power production. It did so as a direct consequence of the U.K. Government's Renewables Obligations Certificate, a financial incentive scheme for power companies to build wind farms. Thus the U.K.'s wind operation provides the ideal case study -- and one that provides the most complete conclusions.
The U.K. has all the natural advantages. It is the windiest country in Europe. It has one of the continent's longest coastlines for the more productive (and less obtrusive) offshore farms. It has a long-established national power grid. In short, if wind power is less than successful in the U.K., its success is not guaranteed anywhere.
But wind infrastructure has come at a steep price. In fiscal year 2007-08 U.K. electricity customers were forced to pay a total of over $1 billion to the owners of wind turbines. That figure is due to rise to over $6 billion a year by 2020 given the government's unprecedented plan to build a nationwide infrastructure with some 25 gigawatts of wind capacity, in a bid to shift away from fossil fuel use.
Ofgem, which regulates the U.K.'s electricity and gas markets, has already expressed its concern at the burgeoning tab being picked up by the British taxpayer which, they claim, is “grossly distorting the market” while hiding the real cost of wind power. In the past year alone, prices for electricity and natural gas in the U.K. have risen twice as fast as the European Union average according to figures released in November by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. While 15 percent energy price rises were experienced across the E.U., in the U.K. gas and electricity prices rose by a staggering 29.7 percent. Ofgem believes wind subsidy has been a prime factor and questions the logic when, for all the public investment, wind produces a mere 1.3 percent of the U.K.'s energy needs.
In May 2008, a report from Cambridge Energy Research Associates warned that an over-reliance on offshore wind farms to meet European renewable energy targets would further create supply problems and drive up investor costs. No taxpayer respite there. But worse news was to come.
In June, the most in-depth independent assessment yet of Britain's expanding wind turbine industry was published. In the journal Energy Policy gas turbine expert Jim Oswald and his co-authors, came up with a series of damning conclusions: not only is wind power far more expensive and unreliable than previously thought, it cannot avoid using high levels of natural gas, which not only it will increase costs but in turn will mean far less of a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions than has been claimed.
Oswald's report highlights the key issue of load factor, the actual power generated compared to the theoretical maximum, and how critical it is to the viability of the wind power industry. In 2006, according to U.K. government statistics, the average load factor for wind turbines across the U.K. was 27.4 percent. Thus a typical 2 megawatt turbine actually produced only 0.54 MW of power on an average day. The worst performing U.K. turbine had a load factor of just 7 percent. These figures reflect a poor return on investment. But this poor return is often obscured by the subsidy system that allows turbine operators and supporters to claim they can make a profit even when turbines operate at a very low load factors. So what’s the bottom line? British consumers are paying twice over for their electricity, funding its means of production and paying for its use as end users.
Variability is one of the chief criticisms levelled at wind power. When the wind drops or blows too hard, turbines stop spinning and you get no power. Wind turbine advocates have claimed that this can be avoided by the geographical spread of wind farms, perhaps by creating an international “supergrid.” But, as Oswald's report makes clear, calm conditions not only prevail on a fairly regular basis, they often extend across the country with the same conditions being experienced as far away as France and Germany. Worse still, says Oswald, long periods of calm over recent decades occurred in the dead of winter when electricity demand is highest.
Periods of low wind means a need for pumped storage and essential back-up facilities. Oswald told The Register online news service that a realistically feasible U.K. pumped-storage base would only cope with one or two days of low winds at best. As regards back-up facilities, Oswald states the only feasible systems for the planned 25 gigawatt wind system would be one that relied equally on old-style natural gas turbines. As Oswald says however, the expense of a threefold wind, pump storage and gas turbine back-up solution "would be ridiculous."
The problems don’t end there. The British report highlights what more and more wind farms would mean when it came to installing gas turbine back-ups. "Electricity operators will respond by installing lower-cost plant ($/kW) as high capital plant is not justified under low utilisation regimes."
But cheap gas turbines are far less efficient than big, properly sized base-load turbines and will not be as resilient in coping with the heavy load cycling they would experience. Cheaper, less resilient plants will mean high maintenance costs and spare back-up gas turbines to replace broken ones that would suffer regular thermal stress cracking. And of course, the increasing use of gas for the turbines would have a detrimental effect on reducing carbon dioxide emission – always one of the chief factors behind the wind revolution.
Oswald's report concludes also that the all this wear and tear will further stress the gas pipeline network and gas storage system. "High-efficiency base load plant is not designed or developed for load cycling," says Oswald. Critically, most of the issues raised in the independent report have not been factored into the cost of wind calculations. With typical British understatement, Oswald concludes that claims for wind power are "unduly optimistic."
We think they've been blown away.
They've probably convinced the gummint to pay for the hard parts of the job.
“Meanwhile, we sit on enough oil, gas, and coal in the United States to get us by for hundreds of years - until a technology allows us to actually come up with an alternative to those fuels”.
Rumor has it that one of the first things the new congress will do is reinstate the offshore drilling ban and pass a law that permanently locks up ANWR.
“Don’t blame the search engine for this one. The poster changed the title by leaving out the word ‘exposed.’ “
The poster who beat me to this article had to shorten the title just as I had to because of the limit of 100 characters for titles set by FR. Interestingly the other poster came up with exactly the same solution that I did.
Oh really. Well I’ll tell you what is ignorant are the people that won’t even try anything new or even giving anything new a chance without whining about it. Its the ole just give me my oil attitude that gave us $4.25 a gallon gas. One thing for sure, high gas prices will be back. Its not always about being the absolute cheapest fastest right now source of energy, but how does it affect the country and its security in the long run. Is wind the only answer, probably not but its one of many. If we’ve learned anything from $148 dollar oil is that no one source of energy should ever be relied upon so much that we can’t get along without it.
Wind isn’t any kind of answer at all and the only thing you need to do to prove that is to look at the enormous govt subsidies required to even get anyone to build them. You constantly see reports about the amount of installed windpower but the reality is that they only produce at approx 30% of the installed power and the power produced is necessarily fickle since it depends on wind. This article sites one windfarm in England that produces at 7% of it’s rated capacity. In the real world where market forces decide what gets built and efficiency is a key requirement these things wouldn’t get off the drawing board. You need to consider that the billions spent on these windmills would be much better allocated by the market and produce better results thereby further lessening our dependence on foreign oil if the market were allowed to work. It’s sad to see the level of ignorance of how a functioning capitalist market should work, especially here on FR.
Add to that the possibility of wind power surges knocking out computers etc and you have a poor substitute. We were hit by a wind power surge last summer that killed my printer.
We are looking at energy slavery for decades until someone has courage to talk drilling/nuclear.
Pray for W, Palin and Our Troops
Which is indeed, just plain ignorant.
Try to educate yourself on where the vast majority of US fossil energy comes from, and you won't make such idiotic remarks.
Actually its sarcastic truth because that is what most people as a result of their actions and attitudes end up doing.
I’m in that industry and know the hype all too well.
Can it be proven, I doubt it, but it sure was convenient.
Would it be hilarious if the greenies learned that their whole agenda was based on corporate malfeasance?
Sort of makes you wonder how the Germans beat us to inventing guided missles and almost beat us in inventing the bomb. Only a fool would fall for wind-power as anything but a very minor source of power...like in a wind-mill for pumping water for livestock for example.
Black Friday warning: video games waste energy and contribute to global warming
Scientific American | 11/28/08 | Larry Greenemeier
Posted on 11/28/2008 12:05:22 PM PST by Abathar
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2139694/posts
Green Screens: Adjusting TV’s Settings Can Save Energy (TVs Cause Global Warming)
Madistan.com | November 25, 2008 | Jeff Richgels
Posted on 11/27/2008 7:12:11 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2139169/posts
Battery Life Breakthrough Could Increase Li-Ion Capacity by 1000%
ZoomLife | 11/25/08 | Sebastian Schepis
Posted on 11/25/2008 8:12:11 PM PST by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2138482/posts
Wind Energy Reaches 43 Percent Of Spain’s Electrical Demand
North American Windpower | 11/25/2008
Posted on 11/25/2008 9:55:16 AM PST by Uncledave
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2138161/posts
65 posted on 11/28/2008 7:44:11 AM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2138161/posts?page=65#65
Here’s a radical idea: Why not use OIL for our energy?
“Another very recent study cited the impact of off shore wind turbines to the marine life. The distortion to air flow over the ocean surface, disturbs the patterns of thermal currents and very small marine life, which in turn impact all of the larger, dependent marine life.”
Things like this are where I’m concerned when it comes to wind power. You can’t generate energy from something without removing it from the source (i.e. gasoline to heat, wood to heat, water flow to electricity, etc.). I wonder if any studies have been performed on the environmental impact of the entire western plains covered with windmills (as in Pickens’ dream). I’ve got to believe that the land in the immediate wake of these farms will be desert land, and further down the pike, I see could see serious drought conditions forming.
Wind is the primary climate generator on the planet. While high-level winds may or may not be impacted, local climate at the surface will almost definitely be (and that could cascade to the higher atmospheric levels as well).
Then again, I’m not a blond bubble-headed meteorologist...
...so what do I know?
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