Posted on 08/03/2008 1:59:42 PM PDT by kathsua
Perhaps it would clarify the wind issue if some basic facts were understood. The term is WECS: Wind Energy Conversion Systems, not "farms," "ranches," or "parks." The structures are industrial-scale turbines.
WECS will produce small amounts of energy with an efficiency range averaging 35 percent at most locations. WECS in Kansas in operation or under construction have the ability to produce 1,014 megawatts of electricity at maximum production; less than a quarter of that electricity stays in Kansas.
WECS will not replace conventional coal, gas or nuclear plants, because wind energy is intermittent, unpredictable, unreliable and expensive and cannot be stored in commercial quantities.
WECS will not reduce our consumption of oil. Three percent of oil is used nationwide and 1 percent is used in Kansas for "peaking" periods when electricity is in high demand and wind cannot be counted on.
WECS will pay money to very few landowners. Elk River benefits four landowners; only one is local.
WECS will transfer massive amounts of taxpayer dollars to wind developers and owners, 65 percent nationwide are foreign; 14 out of the 17 in Kansas are foreign owned. Benefits include PTC (Production Tax Credits), rapid depreciation schedules and electricity sales.
Iberdrola of Spain, owner of Elk River, realized over $9.9 million in PTC allowances in 2007. Foreign companies are not regulated by the Kansas Corporation Commission. There are no state or federal regulations of any kind on WECS. Few Kansas counties have wind regulations.
WECS will force consumers to pay for their electricity three times: to build the WECS, build conventional power as backup, and additional transmission lines to carry power from the WECS to the grid.
WECS will not produce large economic benefits to a community as evidenced by records from Gray County (Montezuma), or Butler County (Elk River). Elk River has produced seven jobs. Most employees live outside the community. Construction crews and vehicles were from out of state.
WECS will pay most counties PILOT payments (Payment in Lieu of Taxes). Considered a "gift" to the county, a "payment without consideration," it is not legally enforceable.
WECS will be totally tax-exempt in Kansas unless the current law is changed. WECS will not substantially reduce greenhouse gas, since conventional plants kept in "spinning reserve" to take up slack when wind dies are less efficient.
WECS will contribute to the division and disruption of communities. Riley, Geary, Wabaunsee, Morris, Chase, Butler, Lincoln, Ellsworth, and Ellis counties have all experienced community division involving a wind project. Projects have disrupted communities, split neighbors and even divided families.
WECS will contribute to the destruction and fragmentation of the last remnants of our prairies and open spaces. Elk River's 8,000 acres of beautiful native prairie are now scarred with 100 turbine foundations, trenching to all turbines and about 22 miles of road. The destruction in progress along I-70 at the Smoky Hills wind complex on 25,000 acres of mixed grass prairie shows how native grasslands are turned into an industrial complex that dominates the horizon.
Few developers or power purchasers care about the destruction of the prairie. The notable exceptions are Westar and KCP&L who have met with conservation groups and landowners before developing in order to locate their projects more responsibly.
The governor has wisely encouraged developers to leave a portion of the Flint Hills undeveloped, but all open grasslands are at risk.
Rose Z. Bacon ranches with her husband, Kent, in the Flint Hills of Morris County. She was a member of the Governor's Wind and Prairie Task Force.
And no, Mega watts is not Millions of watts.
Kilowatt is 1000 watts, where Mega is 1000 kilowatts
For instance the wind farm that T Boone Pickens is constructing is "4,000 MW"
So according to you, his wind farm is producing somewhere in the neighborhood 600 billion horse power.... HAHAHAHAHA!
The majority of the 60-odd posts so far seem to back up my position, so who has a ‘dog in the hunt’ and is trying to mislead people?
It seems to be you, my friend.
6000 KW is 6 million watts.
10,000 KW is 10 million watts.
If you meant 6 KW than I'll agree.
That was a winter bill when my windmills were offline and I had to use grid power. So, my post where I said the average person uses 6-10,000 kwh per month is correct.
Nathan, go look it up yourself. Again you are mixing up power and energy. You would convert the 4000 MW to horsepower if that is in fact what you want to do. You would not multiply by hours or time at all.
If you want to do the conversion use this
A typical automobile engine produces mechanical energy at a rate of 25,000 watts (approximately 33.5 horsepower)
You will not come up with 600 billion.
simple. 600 watts =1 hp.
A typical 4 cyl chrysler puddle jumper puts out 100 hp.or 100x 600w =60,000 watts or 6okw.
say you have a 800watt generator, one of those 50cc 2 cycle jobs for camping. You should be able to figure out the HP it puts out based on the 800 watts it generates. 1.33 hp.
Perhaps, eventually wind power will be as advanced as solar power. The energy is stored and in many cases sold back to the utility company. And the utlility companies welcome it from what I have read. The re-sell a free product.
I believe the wind farms are in the more remote parts of the country at this point, with plans for the energy to be transported to the urban/surburban areas (yes, at consumer expense). I can see where windmills may not be desirable in congested areas, but I don’t believe that is the intent.
Not that it might be at some time..after all..in Texas natural gas is being drilled in highly populated areas (Barnett Shale).
Nuclear is FAR more efficient, reliable, consistent, transferable, storable, etc., and needs no further development, nor tax money.
Some do, Many more don't. I've been working with Windmills for a long time (the private installation kind, not commercial) By the time you buy a grid tie inverter and all the other equipment. it will take 1000 years before you realize your money back. Many power companies do not want a bunch of private windmills owners here and there feeding power back into the system because if they shut off a line to do maintainance, it could be accidentally become charged and kill their workers.
The standard daily measure is KWH, kilowatt hour, or MWH, megawatt-hour. It’s the same as energy in Joules with a different scale factor.
Power plants don’t sell watts, they sell KWH.
As soon as you say “daily” then you are talking energy, not power.
It seems to be you, my friend.
Well really, you know every once in awhile you run across situations like you. So you do something with the New York Power Grid. I'll give you credit there for probably know more than I do about some, but not all, of this stuff. However whether or not people here, according to you, agree with you or not, the fact is that you have put out very misleading information. Let's just review a few of your statements.
Ok - run your own house 24/7 on wind power - you’ll get sick of it pretty quick
This of course has nothing to do with whether wind power is effective or not. Of course most of us are not going to put a windmill in our backyard for our use only. I think we are talking about wind farms like the one T Boone is building, 4,000 MW I believe.
So that statement is meant to be dramatic but it's not meaningful.
When the wind is producing then other fuel is being wasted. Plain and simple physics.
That would be true if the other plant was running at full capacity, however both you and I know they would not be.
Not only that why don't you let these people in on the little secret that in order to give good continuity of service there is always an excess in the system so that if there is a sudden loss of power the standby unit can be brought up to full power quickly. But that while it is operational and on standby it's not using as much fuel as it would if at full power.
Every kilowatt of wind energy (and solar, for that matter) needs 900 watts of conventional backup. There is no viable storage, and the US grid is not built to handle random energy input. “renewable energy” (until the time we can use tidal/ocean currents) is a fools game, and the producers damn well know it.
I have to love this one. Ok you have this much conventional backup!
But it's not running at full power when the windmills are operating is it? If not then while you have that much backup you are not using that much fuel.
Apparently, you know exactly zero about the US generating system, including the grid. Major generation stations are not just “switched on and off” like your bedroom nightlight. People in rooms with computers couldn't prevent the great NE blackout when just one transmission line went down, so stop claiming that they have some ‘godlike powers’ - they simply manage chaos.
I am really amazed at this one also. In fact I know much more than zero. If your background is as you state, which I am starting to doubt, then I probably don't know as much as you. That starts begging the question as to why you are misleading on much of this conversation.
The people I was talking about in rooms with computers were the people deciding what power units to use for the most efficient operation. I don't call that managing chaos and their involvement in a blackout would be aiding the restoration process wouldn't it?
As I recall a malfunctioning relay had a lot to do with the NE blackout and there were a lot of changes after that and other outages.
Isn't most of the protection from these blackouts from automatic relays, many of them frequency controlled load shedding to selectively drop load so that there is not widespread blackouts and the load that is dropped as a protective measure easier to bring back up?
I don't call that chaos, I call it good design principals.
NYISO makes FPL look like a AA battery, and I have been involved with them for over 20 years on a consultive basis combining output and loads from Hydro Quebec, NYSEG, Niagara Mohawk (NatGrid), Gilboa Blenheim power storage project, and a host of stupid government funded wind farms (Hillary HairCurlers)... Need I continue?
It's really sad for a person who says they are so knowledgeable to use an argument like this one. I don't know the comparible size of FPL and NYISO but I do know that is sure isn't a AA battery comparison. And you also know that FPL is involved with other Florida Utilities in operating a grid and allocating generation.
As to my reading ability, the quote I put out to you was in fact the whole article.
What we have here is a difference of opinion about wind power. You choose to use the worst possible scenarios such as an individual using a windmill, insult etc. I may not know as much about a grid as you do, but I sure will not put out bad information just to get people to agree with me.
I would just as soon stop this exchange and if continued have an intelligent discussion but if your approach is as condescending as it's been so far then it's you misleading the people on this topic.
To the other people here I apologize for the length of this post and will let you make up your own minds. But please do it based on information and not emotion.
I'm going to play cards with my grandchildren, see you later.
Mega is 1000 kilowatts
Kilo= 1000 or 10^3
1000 kilo= 10^3 * 10^3 or 10^6= mega, million.
One thousand thousand is a million.
He's a BILLIONARE for crying out loud, he could just build it if it was so wonderful, and cheap, and sell it. But because it isn't cheap, and it isn't even able to supplement power to any great extent, he needs TAXPAYERS money to stuff in his pockets.
Didn't anyone watch the monorail episode on the Simpsons?
right
“And don’t forget, windmills are or are being BANNED”
True. Many towns are zoning out windmill towers. They tried for cell towers, but fedgov literally overrode local zoning in the Telecommunications Act of ‘93 or ‘94.
Fedgov will have to do something similar to force us to accept a wind plant every three miles or so, to produce at most 10% of domestic power (don’t hold me to that I dindn’t look it up).
Plus, for every megawatt of wind, we need to keep a megawatt of “real” power spinning in reserve in case the wind drops five MPH. The power you get scales as the 4th power of wind velocity, so going from 30 to 25 MPH means you suddenly need lots of backup power or your customers get interrupted.
As one who was once involved in growing fancy semiconductor crystals, I can tell you that a power interruption usually scraps the entire crystal run.
Wind power is popular now because there are subsidies and tax breaks, and working these cleverly can make profit for people without ever producing real power.
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