1. Oil is an insignificant source of electricity in the U.S. (providing less than 3%). But wind may increase that amount, because, oil typically powers precisely the quick-response plants that would be more required as wind power, with its highly fluctuating output, is added. 2. Opponents to industrial wind power do in fact compare it to other sources. First of all, they suggest that the huge amount of plant needed to produce even a tiny amount of unpredictable power is not worth it. They suggest that the money spent to build wind plants (adding to the industrialization of our landscape) could …
All 31 comments by...
Marnie
-
-
1. It was "wolf" who specified oil. Coal and natural gas, and of course nuclear fission, are our primary sources of electricity. 2. There is a difference in the energy in the wind and the energy that can be extracted from the wind. Even the largest turbine rotors are interacting with a very small proportion of the wind around them, and they cannot be placed close together. The current average is 1 MW of wind capacity per 50 acres. And producing at capacity is itself rare -- the self-reported average annual production in the U.S. is around 27% of capacity. Calculated …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
It can easily be shown that where the use of natural gas for electricity increased in the past couple of decades coal use decreased. Or where combined heat and power plants are used fuel consumption falls. But ask for the same evidence that wind does what it is claimed to do, and you get only theory (a nice word for fantasy). Or in an attempt to disarm, the wind advocate ignores the lack of a positive record and demands a better alternative. A better alternative is of course not to waste our money and landscape on a boondoggle. That is not …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
This just in: "Wind energy in Germany is still backed up by coal. For every 1 megawatt of wind capacity, German power companies will install 0.6 megawatts of coal generation as a backup source, said [Bernhard] Hartmann [a vice president at global management consulting firm AT Kearney]." --Interfax China, Sept. 6, 2005 That is to say, wind power is actually driving an expansion of coal plant.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
That new coal plant, which must be run on constant standby, would not have been built if the wind turbines were not built. After posting my 3:24 response, I thought of one other typical mode of response to wind advocates: questioning of motives, even as they support military contractors like GE and Halliburton and financial giants like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. Another typical response is to caricature the opposing argument. I don't expect an new or alternative technology to be a "panacea," but I do expect it to have a measurable positive impact that clearly outweighs its negative impacts. …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
I should add that a plant run as back-up is less efficient and therefore more polluting than one run for base load.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
"The true sign of madness is continuing to do the same thing and expecting the results to be any different." Isn't that what I said? There is no evidence that wind power replaces dirty energy to any worthwhile degree. The experiment has been done -- in Denmark, Spain, and Germany -- and nothing that you say should happen has in fact happened.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Denmark claims that 20-25% of its electricity comes from wind. That is not a small amount. What is a small amount is how much it has reduced the use of other sources. (It would save a lot of time if you read more carefully.) That is a fact. The simplistic one-for-one displacement is wishful thinking that is disproved by actual experience. As to your concern for bats, conservation groups have long fought the ill effects of "traditional" energy and other development. Industrial wind power is a new threat, which is why you hear about it more. As the story that triggered …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Every day I drive my son to school and later drive to pick him up. If I start taking a walk before lunch, every mile I walk is a mile I don't drive. Considering the price of gas, that walk sure will help!
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
But they'd still be driving just as much.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
My analogy was to illustrate the fallacy of your "every MW from wind is a MW not from fossil fuels" reasoning that you don't have to show a reduction in fossil fuel use to justify industrializing the landscape with wind turbines. If you had read it more carefully, you would have noticed that the addition of walking to my daily routine had no impact on the driving. That is, if you argue that wind power can supply a significant amount of our energy needs, then I think you do have to show the reason for that conclusion (as can easily be …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Chris -- electricity is indeed used all the time, but the demand varies through each day and by season. It is the need for the grid to respond instantly to the exact demand at every moment that makes nondispatchable sources such as wind power a problem. It has been figured from the west Danish grid operator's annual report that 84% of their wind-generated power is exported at a loss, because it is produced when there is no need for it. Utilities the world over want the ability to shut wind turbines down when they are producing but there is no demand. …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Those new wind turbines that produce energy 98% of the time are as wondrous as your hydrogen storage. Unfortunately, they don't exist. Your 98% figure is how much they are available, not how much they are actually producing electricity. It is the wind that produces the electricity, and it has to be blowing between 10 and 60 mph. To produce at the turbine's maximum capacity, the wind has to be sustained above 30 mph. Again it's clear that you don't read carefully. Excess power is excessive because power demands are already being met. If a wind facility suddenly throws 100 MW …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Yes, wind is meant to replace bad energy. But it doesn't. Perhaps it could, but the reality has been that it doesn't, and that has to be the basis for judgement right now. If indeed hydrogen storage can be implemented today, then why doesn't the industry or its enablers insist on doing so?
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
But there IS enough of it in Denmark, where everything possible has been done to integrate it into the system. Yet it does not replace "bad" energy. I won't join you in calling for hydrogen storage systems at every wind site, because even with that I don't think the practical or even possible contribution from wind is worth erecting the damn things. But if you seriously believe it will work, I hope you do press for it. You will probably be interested in Prince Edward Island's plan to build a wind-hydrogen village, if you haven't already heard about it.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
The rotor area of an industrial wind turbine is 1-1.5 acres. That's a big mesh to support and keep clean. It would likely add to the noise problem, too.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
And, of course, protect the species threatened by the expansion of wind power.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Certainly. The debate is whether that lesser impact is in balance an additional impact or not. In other words, does the impact of industrial wind development justified because it actually reduces the impact of other energy sources, or is it just adding to the problem?
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
That projection of cumulative effect (good vs. ill) is still part of the debate I described. You apparently think doubters are shortsighted, yet they in turn argue that the enablers are shortsighted. The enablers think they are changing our energy use, but the doubters think it is just more of the same and won't affect current use. The enablers can't conceive of doubt, so they think of debate only in negative terms. Yet if the technology is so promising, if the record is so good, why do they shun debate? The original topic of this article illustrates that attitude: Why did …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
You say the research should be done, but the conclusions should be ignored or at best used in favor of a predetermined agenda. That is avoiding the debate whether industrial wind power makes things any better.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
See? You're shifting the argument. Nobody denies that wind is less damaging than fossil fuels. But it remains damaging. The comparison must be whether the damage is outweighed by any benefits. As I have said before, there don't appear to be any benefits (except to investors into whose accounts so much public money is being blown). For example, where wind is well established other fuel use continues just as before. That is why the industry is so sensitive to independent assessment of ecological impact -- it threatens the "environmentalist" charade.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
But nobody is arguing that except you.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Again, you show that you only hear what you already assume. As you seem to have started to grasp, I have not been denying the problems of fossil and nuclear fuels. What you have yet to get clear is that I have been saying that wind does not change anything for the better, or at least not to any degree that could justify its negative impact. You assume that wind is beneficial. That premise is arguable. No trade or other group has been able to come up with evidence for your assumption. That is where the debate needs to be. That …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Indulge me: Where is that benefit?
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
I forget: Where is that on-site electrolytic hydrogen production in existing and currently proposed wind facilities?
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
And what SHOULD be is a poor justification for what IS.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
And there's the debate: You think wind will change what is, but I think it will not.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Grids cope with variable demand -- and even sudden loss of a plant -- by using backup, namely, plants that are kept burning so they can readily switch between standby and generation. Wind power is coped with the same way. As the wind rises, a backup plant may switch from generation to standby. Wind power has replaced that source, but it has not reduced its consumption of fuel. (That's not really what's being argued here, but while we're talking about how the grid works I thought I'd put it in.) The conviction that somewhere on the grid the wind will be …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
I think you are confused. Wind turbines CAN operate 98% of the time, but they can only generate electricity when the wind is blowing within a certain range, such as 10-60 mph. They do not generate at their rated capacity until the wind is above 25-30 mph. E.ON Netz of Germany has determined that they need ready backup for windspeed predition error of more than 50% of installed wind capacity. That is backup in addition to what is already handling demand fluctuations. (See their Wind Report 2005 at http://www.eon-energie.de/bestellsystem/frameset_eng.php?choosenBu=eonenergie&choosenId=1725) As for the NREL factsheet, it is well documented (e.g., “Danish Wind: …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
It was your insistence that somewhere on the grid the wind is always going to be blowing enough to ensure that wind-powered generation is occurring that required looking at the reality involved. If you now want to talk about a wind turbine directly supplying the user (as a home system does), that's fine. But that's not what developers are proposing. They need their systems to be on the grid so they can generate "green credits" as well, because that's where the money is. Back to Denmark's nondispatchable surplus: It is due to a committed conversion to combined heat and power, effectively …
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
-
Converting CHP plants back to providing just electricity again is wasteful. By developers I mean the people actually building big wind facilities, not idealistic engineers back in the classroom. The developers are in it for the money, and the money is in perpetuating the grid. I agree with you that it ought to be otherwise, but it isn't. The problem is the way big wind is being developed right now.
Posted to Shooting Down the Breeze
- Joined September 2, 2005
- Last Visit December 1, 2005
Other Profiles
IN THESE TIMES COMMUNITY MEMBERS
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Ignoring Outrage, Obama Set to Expand Pentagon Presence in Colombia
- 9.
- 10.
RSS Feed