Wind Power...Some News

reply to post by RRokkyy

4cents KW hr.

Seriously!? Here is is 19 Euro cents per KW hr! At today's rates that is 26+ cents US - and going up.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Wind has its uses. It is a good supplement for local usage and for specific power needs. The bad idea is to connect large windfarms to the public grid which is significantly destabilized if wind constitutes a certain percentage of the overall power production. The fact is that large wind parks are mainly window dressing, giving the impression of going "green".

Filling up the landscape with bird grinders as far as the eye can see is not very estetically pleasing either.

reply to post by Clavicula


Absolutely. I would go along with you there.

Just so that the problems - quite apart from stability - can be seen take a look at this.

This is an imaginary country (actually very closely modelled on Ireland). The installed wind capacity is 20%+ and the Government requirement is to take this to 30%+ and to remove coal fired stations. (This is very close to real life - no this is the real life situation)

I am not going to go into market pricing and how wind adversely affects the cost to you as it is complex, but I want to take a look at the effect of the above scenario on capacity.



The capacity of the system given a steady system demand is catered for with a small margin when no wind is blowing.

Now we remove the coal fired capacity.



No problem when the wind is blowing, but when there is no wind there is a requirement to draw 1.6GW from somewhere. In the case of Ireland and England this capacity is provided by what are called interconnectors. The grid in Ireland can be supplied by the grid in the UK, and the UK has an interconnector to France.

1.6GW is way over the capacity of a 'standard' power station - more like the capacity of a nuke.

Ireland's capacity is 1/10th of the UK so this would mean 10 small nukes for England to fulfil that capacity if it could not draw from France.

What does France have? Mainly nukes!

The UK depends for the bulk of it's gas on Russia, as does most of Europe. Ireland gets gas through NI when it is not using it's own capacity which is small. If for whatever reason Russia pulled the plug on the gas - or the plug was pulled because of war, bye bye UK power production, hello poverty!

I would imagine that you could apply this 10 times again to the States - but you have the advantage of your own gas supply and no dependency on Russia. However, if like Europe you go down the route of 30%+ being generated by wind, you too will have to build new CCGT stations, or Geothermal or tidal stations to make up the shortfall. (Or 100 more nukes!)

"The wind is always blowing somewhere" is the favourite con of the proponents of the wind power scam. Yes, indeed it is but wind blowing in Minnesota will not help Florida in a heat wave. The transmission losses are conveniently ignored in this scenario, and of course each geographical area as far as wind goes would have to carry many times over it's local capacity requirement on the off-chance that it is the only area that is currently operational. Patently this is just pure nonsense.

CCGT (Gas) YES
Geothermal YES
Tidal YES
Wave NO
Wind NO
Nuclear - Maybe!

reply to post by PuterMan


I agree the consquences should they go forward with this is very dire indeed. It is like they are wrecking the western societies on purpose with this folly.

There are however alternatives to using wind power directly that could work.

One idea that could work is to use wind power to pump water into a reservoir that can then later be used as a standard hydro electric plant. The reservoir then acts as a "battery" you can access on demand.

Thanks for all the information. A lot of it makes sense, but to be honest, it's going to take me a while to digest it all.

I do however wholeheartedly agree with the one recurring theme...that is that, barring some major technological breakthrough, it's probably going to take a combination of sources that are geographically wise to get us past the oil habit.

Keep that oil monkey off our backs!. Wish we were doing more of this in the U.S. faster, but at least we, like France are getting there.

France already has been getting almost all of there electricity from carbon free, fossil fuel free source for decades. And as much as I like wind power, that's not how they accomplished it.



They also have the lowest cost of electricity in Europe. That said, not a whole lot of electricity is generated by burning oil in western nations simply because oil is so expensive. To get rid of oil we're most likely going to need to shift everything over to electricity like rail, high-speed rail (like in France), and electric cars. Or we could use a combination of synfuel and advanced biofuels.

, to lay out properly why wind power is a total disaster that saves about 1.3% CO2 and is the most expensive electricity to the consumer, whereas nuclear power is the cheapest.

Actually new wind power plants and new first of a kind nuclear power plants have economics that are broadly similar, both significantly more expensive than either combined cycle natural gas or coal. However, coal has significant external costs (to our health, etc) than in actuality can push its true cost higher than nuclear and wind. Natural gas can have significant external costs depending on the way it is obtained (e.g. fracking) or it needs to be imported over long distances from countries such as Russia, it also has an extremely volatile price and still introduces CO2 into the atmosphere. Established nuclear, however can have economics similar to that of coal and natural gas with far lower external costs (read: environmental & health effects), and without the energy security issues posed by natural gas.


The arithmetic adds up to nuclear.

(of course, CCS doesn't exist on a large scale, it ruins the economics of NG or coal and pushes them up to that similar of first of a kind nuclear and wind, and makes the mining issue even worse).

Wind isn't too bad. At least it can be implemented rather quickly, the economics are similar to that of nuclear and CCS, and the price of slowly decreasing. The most expensive energy sources are solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, offshore wind, tidal and wave power. Here's an example of a tidal power plant that was ditched because it cost $16/watt and had a capacity factor of 22% which is 10% worse than wind (and 70% worse than nuclear). Until they get massively better they are a waste of time. Thankfully solar is getting better, and I presume that others are too - maybe they will be worth implementing some day but not now, and I don't have a crystal ball.

Nuclear and onshore wind are the least cost low carbon options today, but both above un-scrubbed CCGT. My opinion - establish nuclear as much as possible and proceed with a rapid GEN 3+ nuclear build-out with future GEN 4 nuclear build-out. Ditch CCS. Build out some wind to the maximum extent that's fairly economic. Add in some heat-pumps, hydro, biomass, combined heat and power, add a smart grid (working in synergy with electric car recharging), and some natural gas to balance it out, and we're set. And also continue to develop solar and other renewables. Or simply remove all impediments to low-cost nuclear, compare each clean energy source on a fair basis, and then let the problem solve itself. Or remove all impediments to low-cost nuclear add a clean-energy standard. Either way, I'm betting the same conclusion will be reached.

reply to post by C0bzz

Thanks for the information. I didn't realize there was this much to all this (not at all!) and appreciate all the comments and contributions very much.

Originally posted by ~Lucidity
reply to post by ganjoa

 

On the one hand, it seems to me that if we concentrated our efforts, we'd get further faster. On the other hand, as we've already said, it's probably going to have to be a multipronged solution, so the efforts really do have to be spread out as we search for innovations, inventions, and solutions. It's a fine balance, but it still seems to me we're not focused enough.

edit on 1/26/2011 by ~Lucidity because: (no reason given)

I agree with you on this, we aren't focused enough because all of the options available have their own proponents who have a stake in the success of their individual solutions. Instead of pursuing their choice, and letting others do the same, it seems they must demonize the others. I truly believe the solution is a combination of those options which move away from the nonrenewable, but getting past the entrenched idealogies of oil and coal is like engaging in battle. They don't seem willing to share the playing field, because they don't want to give up the control and the profits.