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To: slowhandluke

That 9 percent of windmill reliability figure is based on a very specific set of circumstances at a future date and time.

The purpose of the article you posted was not to enlighten us but to illustrate that the predjudices of the auther against wind power are correct, that wind is not reliable. To do that, the author had to go thru some deep and specific mathematical contortions carefully chosen to make wind look bad. You can do that with any energy source.

I can guarantee you that at some point in the next hundred years all power generating equipment will fail sometime,

Does that make them all unreliable?

In fact the real experience figure of wind power up time is much higher than 9 percent, and grid operators are finding wind power to be a good part of an operating mix as they can use the advantages and work around the disadvantages. They of course do the same thing with nuclear and coal and solar.

You can take wind, coal, nuclear, any kind of power and find a weak point somewhere. This is why it is so important to not put all our eggs in one basket.

Remember, if you have a nuclear plant on line, you have to have a second nuclear plant or equivelant coal plants idling along staffed and ready to take over if the nuclear operating plant suffers a catastrophic shutdown. It takes 1/60 of one second for a computer to take a nuclear plant off line in an emergency. Getting an idle nuclear or coal plant on line takes a whole crew and must take several hours.

If you have a wind farm with a hundred windmills, you might need to keep 4 or 5 in reserve for catastrophic emergency backup. getting an idle windmill on line takes one button and a few seconds.

So not everything is so simple after all.

I covered all this is and more in my post, perhaps you didnt read it all.


24 posted on 08/06/2009 6:56:59 AM PDT by larry hagedon (born and raised and retired in Iowa.)
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To: larry hagedon
Remember, if you have a nuclear plant on line, you have to have a second nuclear plant or equivelant coal plants idling along staffed and ready to take over if the nuclear operating plant suffers a catastrophic shutdown.

BULLSH*T. I already covered this. You don't need 1 for 1 replacement, as all nuke/coal plants won't break at the same time. But you do need 1MW for 1MW nuke/coal plants to back up windmills for those cold, still nights when all the windmills stop because the wind stopped.

26 posted on 08/06/2009 7:31:33 AM PDT by slowhandluke (It's hard work to be cynical enough in this age)
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To: larry hagedon
If you have a wind farm with a hundred windmills, you might need to keep 4 or 5 in reserve for catastrophic emergency backup. getting an idle windmill on line takes one button and a few seconds.

When the wind stops, they all stop. This happens, at least once, almost every day, at almost every wind farm in the world. A couple of years ago, I spent some time near one of America's most reliable wind farms. Every day, I observed periods of time when none of the turbines were turning. There were patterns to this, but it was far from consistent. I never saw all of the turbines turning, because some were always broken.

Wind turbines also have problems with high winds. They often have to be shut down just when they should be generating the most power. The systems which protect them from high winds often fail, creating very dangerous situations. There is a spectacular video, from Holland, of a major wind turbine experiencing a break failure during high winds. The turbine threw one of its 60 foot long blades about 1/2 mile. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, but it had deadly potential.

29 posted on 08/06/2009 8:39:54 AM PDT by 3niner (When Obama succeeds, America fails.)
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To: larry hagedon

There is no wind power when there is no wind; that, and that alone, is at the heart of a wholesale switch.


63 posted on 08/07/2009 11:34:18 AM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, then writes again.)
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