Gas Wants To Kill the Wind 479
RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."
Re:Successful???? (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly. I don't think there's a single wind-power installation anywhere in the world that is anywhere close to truly self-supporting. They are a great idea but just don't cut it commercially.
Even the Danes - major investors in (and sellers of) the technology haven't been able to make it pay - except by exporting the technology to other countries. That's why they've tried hushing the economic reports about their w-farms; they don't want to scare away customers with the facts.
That's a pity: I always liked the idea of windfarms.
Re:Successful???? (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, but the parent was talking about subsidization, not regulation. Subsidization is handing out money for nothing to non-profitable enterprises; regulation is imposing conditions on your operations that cost you money. Economically, they are opposites.
Re:Successful???? (Score:3, Informative)
But they shouldn't be subsidized. That's just wasteful pork-barrel corruption.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Informative)
It doesn't quite 'take up' all that land.
Re:if these jerkwads had any sense (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Successful???? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:LED Light Bulbs (Score:1, Informative)
LEDs have had longer lifetimes and lower power consumption than CFL for some time. Once on they use about the same, but CFLs use more energy to "get started" something not really advertised. Not to mention CFL are considered HazMat in most cities.
Re:LED Light Bulbs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Successful???? (Score:2, Informative)
electricity from coal - 0.44 dollars/MWh (the vast majority of US power is produced with this method)
refined coal - 29.81 dollars/MWh
solar - 24.34 dollars/MWh
wind - 23.37 dollars/MWh
Some of these things are not like the other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies [wikipedia.org]
Re:Yet another conspiracy theory by idiots (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, all taxpayers get it in the shorts to pay for these shibboleths. Wind turbines, even under favorable circumstances, don't produce even enough power to manufacture wind turbines.
That hasn't been true for at least several years. Direct-drive generation + solid-state power electronics upped both efficiency and durability by wide margins.
Re:Yet another conspiracy theory by idiots (Score:4, Informative)
Wind turbines, even under favorable circumstances, don't produce even enough power to manufacture wind turbines.
Original citation was probably from director of NREL, in TechReview. But it's old, and not true of recent generations of wind turbines.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:1, Informative)
(O.k. - so I just swapped your bubble with a biogas bubble.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4 [youtube.com]
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:3, Informative)
Wind is free but wind turbines cost money. ,construction, running power lines or the land required.
http://www.northerntool.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_6970_200334247_200334247 [northerntool.com]
In this case 9500 for 3 KW.
But that 3 KW is in a 24 MPH wind. How often does the wind blow that fast?
Your average nuclear power plant produces 2200 megawatts.
So in theory using these off the shelf wind turbines it would take $6,966,666,666 to replace one nuclear power plant.
Yes $7 billion dollars. Oh and if you only get half the rated power because the wind doesn't blow then the cost is almost 14 billion dollars.
And that doesn't include the cost of the towers,
Of course power plants use bigger turbines but they are also custom made so the price for watt may not be much better. In this case I just found a well known off the shelf wind turbine and scaled.
Then add in the requirement for a back up power system to make up for when the wind isn't blowing!
Oh and wind turbines are big moving machines. They wear out and must be replaced over time or at least fixed.
So as you can see wind power is far from free.
It sounds like hokey if you are dealing with it at the fourth grade level. Once you get past that level you will see that it is not cheap or easy.
Hey if a power company could get cheaper power and sell it at the same price as gas or coal produced power don't you think they would?
More profit and more good PR for being green.
It would be a no brainier.
As I said this utility has spent A LOT of money on wind and solar and are now facing the fact that they will probably have to eat a lot of it.
They have every reason to want wind to competitive with GAS since all they really care about is selling power for a profit.
You are incorrect. (Score:1, Informative)
...such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's through deflation.
They did no such thing. As a matter of fact, they thought the market would just run its course. Unfortunately, we were on the gold standard and since there's only so much gold in the world and our economy was growing like gang busters, it had a deflationary effect.
See here Lords of Finance [amazon.com]. The best frickin book I've ever read about the lead up to the Depression, the Depression, and the aftermath.
The Fed did make some mistakes but that was because they were new at it and we were beholden to the Gold Standard. If we, and the rest of the industrialized World weren't beholden to the Gold standard, the depression would not have happened. There would have been a steep recession but not the world wide chaos that ensued.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget how many trillions in debt you are.
Re:if these jerkwads had any sense (Score:3, Informative)
I assure you there are dozens of us shedding tears with sympathy over the unfair plight of the downtrodden Coal and Oil Industries.
Fortunately, wind and solar match certain loads. (Score:5, Informative)
Wind and solar power have radically different properties with respect to the national grid, and you can't just plunk them in and go on.
Actually their properties are a good enough match for certain loads that, within appropriate fraction-of-total-grid-capacity limits, you CAN just plunk them in and go on. (Part of the concern is over the push to exceed those fractions.)
Solar and wind both vary wildly at a single-mill or roof-full-of-panels level. But spread them out over a few square miles (do individual clouds, gusts, and storm cells aren't the issue) and multiple sites separated by tens and hundreds of miles (so local weather timing also gets many distinct samples) and the rapid variations average out. They become at least as predictable as the weather - which is very predictable at a 3-day level.
Solar matches the air conditioning load pretty closely - though it leads it a tad. Wind does the same with a slight lag. complimenting solar. It also peaks in the afternoon (due to "lake effect" and tracks the general load peak very well.
Wind also has a component that tracks HVAC load well: Temperature differences drive both wind speeds and need to heat/cool to keep things comfy, while wind speeds drive heat loss-gain through insulation by air infiltration and conduction between surfaces and the air. So higher winds drive both higher geneeation and higher heating/cooling loads to consume the generated power.
So up to a point adding solar and especially wind to the grid - if it's spread out a bit - IMPROVES the grid's ability to handle the cyclic nature of the load and REDUCES the variability that you need to cover with "peaking plants". You still need to keep some other capacity on line to cover the variations. But you needed that anyhow: The load is almost totally UNcontrolled and can vary even more rapidly than the output of a wind farm as a storm cell passes through it. The name of the game is to match the two sides of this equation.
Someone help me understand please (Score:1, Informative)
Do people actually think that if the evil fossil fuel companies would just step out of the way then we'd be instantly blessed with unlimited renewable energy?
I work for an evil utility company that has a lot invested in the future of natural gas and even (eeek) coal. I personally spent a good chunk of time developing systems for gracefully integrating wind farm output into the grid. My evil corporate overlords have a visible slice of their annual revenue pie chart labeled "Wind Generation." Wind power isn't a threat to traditional generation in any way. And some folks throwing around the conspiracy theories haven't fully considered one fact: Those with both knowledge of the energy industry and plenty of extra capital to throw around have invested (and continue to invest) in wind when it makes sense. It's just that wind power can't come close to serving all the load reliably.
As someone whose livelihood depends on the status quo of the US grid, I worry a lot more about Bloom Boxes and their surrounding hype. If what I understand about that tech is true then it's a much bigger threat to my paycheck than wind farms. But if it ends up providing cheap reliable power then I'll be one of the first in line to buy one for my home.
Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni (Score:3, Informative)
Haven't you heard? The stimulus is socialism.
Solution to variable renewable energy generation (Score:3, Informative)
(wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable)
And easily solved with the use of Vanadium batteries [discovermagazine.com]. I'll continue to signal boost this as long as there are people who think there is no solution to variable renewable energy generation.