I doubt it. At least we know that the old-fashioned windmills were worth producing, or it wouldn’t have been done. There wasn’t a surplus of energy to waste . . .IMHO windmills might cost more money per installed kw than fossil fuel-ed or nuclear power plants. But I don’t know that the energy budget for a windmill would be negative. Unless you don’t have a good use for the power when and as it becomes available - as would be the case if you tried to use it for air conditioning, for example.
Old fashioned windmills were used to pump water from wells, or mill grain (hence the name ‘wind mill’).
I have studied the energy budget, extensively, for use in an old-fashioned job - lifting water. Specifically, lifting water at an elevated water storage tank, for rural water districts. The beauty of using the windmill to lift water into a storage tank is precisely that it gets around the limitations of relying on when the wind is blowing. You make the tank big enough, it can last several days without the wind blowing to pump in more water. You are essentially storing the energy used in pumping, until it is needed - a rarity in the sale of electricity.
We discovered we could get it to work under only these conditions:
1. 30% federal subsidy to build it
2. State law requiring the electrical utility to purchase unused power, during high winds, at wholesale rates.
3. A fairly large windmill, to generate alot of excess power for sellback to utility company.
4. Be very near an existing transmission line...no money spent to build new transmission line, beyond a fraction of a mile.
And all of these calculations were made with an assumed 40 year lifespan of the windmill...which I tend to doubt will be true.
Several water districts heard the pitch...non bit on the idea...and now the subsidy is gone, so it is downright impossible to make the numbers work.
Without the subsidy, they just don’t cost out. And the amount of energy they make, and their spread out nature, makes the cost of transmission very high, compared to a discreet 1GW power plant, using coal or gas.
I’ve been part of the ‘budget’ process with these things...and it just doesn’t work....even after we thought we had found a clever energy storage medium.