A former NRC official turns NIMBY?
Is wind worth it? 72
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Posted 3:50 PM on 17 Oct 2007
by JMG -
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Let’s live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
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View as Flat
amazingdrx Posted 2:36 pm
17 Oct 2007
Any math friendly folk hereabouts? That's called exponential growth.
It means 100% of the ice will be gone in the next 4 years. Does that illuminate the darkness of your insanity?
Maybe the appearance of wind farms is not a serious issue anymore? Just a guess.
Besides which, if wind farms are located on the nearly deserted great plains and on floating platforms offshore, hardly anyone will ever see them.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:43 pm
17 Oct 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:53 pm
17 Oct 2007
So even if gas guzzling were to continue unabated, by eliminating the other sources, GHG disaster could be averted.
There exists great potential from plugin hybrid technology, bicycling, and mass transit to eliminate most of that 26% as well.
Mass transit and plugin hybrids powered by clean renewable energy from wind and solar could cut that 26% way down.
But you know, those wind mills and solar panels are so ugly! Hehehey.
Another great article JMG. Your nuclear engineer training has really payed off for you. Do you pronounce it nuke..you..ler, like the duuhbya?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Pangolin Posted 7:09 pm
17 Oct 2007
Wind turbines can be planned, approved, installed and online in under 5 years. Any fool attempting that with a nuclear power plant would be insane.
When the pro-nuclear advocates prove that they can recycle spent nuclear fuel safely, i.e. when hell freezes over, then and only then will I consider nuclear power a viable option. Right now the reactor designs in use seem to be set up to produce the maximum amount of nuclear waste per power unit output with still no waste repository operating.
Wind power, geoexchange, geothermal, solar, these are all power options that get installed. Nukes are a fantasy of spoiled boys wanting to play dungeonmaster with utilities as the playing field.
Put the Carbon Back
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farnishk Posted 7:27 pm
17 Oct 2007
So don't fly all over the place then. FAA rules are only that tight because there is so much flying going on and the aircraft can't squeeze into safe airspace.
Of course, the rest of the biosphere is screaming because they haven't got a nice view. Please put a wind farm near to me, please. I want to see my electricity being generated in a clean way.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
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JMG Posted 12:00 am
18 Oct 2007
Another great article JMG. Your nuclear engineer training has really payed off for you. Do you pronounce it nuke..you..ler, like the duuhbya?
If low-carbon and carbon-free energy is the urgent requirement of the planet, then doesn't it make sense to pay (note, past tense: paid) attention to the concerns of people who are opposing it?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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odograph Posted 12:24 am
18 Oct 2007
Interestingly, the windmill companies proposing to build in New York are primarily European-owned. Consequently, the profits will leave the area.
If the author is worried about "profits" fleeing, then yes, they are obviously "worth it."
Maybe he should build one himself, to snare those same profits!
BTW, blogfish posted a question about wind farms, and then a link to this summary of the Danish experience.
Is it true that the European experience, when you really look at it, is stacking in wind's favor?
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:05 am
18 Oct 2007
These are easily resolved with adequate studies and placement.
" "flicker" effects and increases in noise levels,"
Big whoop. Anyone who lives in a city doesn't even notice background noise and lights.
"the overriding public issue is the dramatic change in a region's appearance and character when windmills are built and operating."
This issue is the most minor of all. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is all a matter of perception and perceptions can be changed. What makes Seattle's cityscape such a sought after view? What is inherently beautiful about a pile of skyscrapers? Personally, I would love a spectacular view of distant wind turbines out my window. Guests would find them interesting and fascinating. And, how easy would it be to give peopele who don't like they way they look a break on their electric bill for a decade or two?
If those people with views of turbines realized that they might actually enhance the view (and property value via status) they would support them. People are forever cutting down trees to improve their views.
Cost is the thing. And the odds look good that they will become increasingly cost effective over time with rising fuel prices. Life is a power struggle.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Erik Hoffner Posted 1:07 am
18 Oct 2007
http://capewindbook.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/a-lump-of-co ...
Makes sense that nuclear boosters would also feel threatened by it. It's a power source that's so obvious and simple, with a fraction of the long term impacts of either nuclear waste or coal's carbon loading of the atmosphere.
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:40 am
18 Oct 2007
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KenG Posted 3:29 am
18 Oct 2007
LIke all issues, we each get to have our own opinion.
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Werdna Posted 4:17 am
18 Oct 2007
These problems include, of course, affects on wildlife especially birds and lack of a steady power source. However, these problems seem relatively minor compared to coal and nuclear. I don't think we would want (or be able to have) 100% of our power come from wind, but to dismiss it outright because it mars the landscape is folly.
Also, talking about the space consumed by wind is a strawman. Unlike nuclear or coal plants, the area directly under and around windmills is available for farming, grazing cattle, or industrial use. It does not pollute the land and so if the windmills are ever torn down, the land can immediately be reused. None of this can be said for other kinds of power generation.
I agree with Keith and would love to see a windmill in my backyard (but unfortunately, by living in a condo, I have no backyard).
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca
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odograph Posted 4:46 am
18 Oct 2007
For instance Ken, do windmills really "fill up" land? I kind of thought the neat thing was the way they could integrate with fisheries ("danish" link above), or with farmland.
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KenG Posted 8:39 am
18 Oct 2007
It's yet to be seen how people will warm to this technology. After all, major conflicts erupt over cell phone towers, 5 story buildings etc that are nothing compared to these windmills.
I really don't have a dog in this particular hunt since I think wind farms collapse from the aspect of capacity factor and predictability when wind reaches about 15% of the electrical generation. (Danish/German experience supports this concern.) However, my personal opinion is that the first one on the ridgetop is interesting and the rest are unsightly.
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odograph Posted 9:35 am
18 Oct 2007
Interesting how the wind turbines were used as scenery and as metaphor. I think I've seen that in other films/tv as well ...
I don't "get" the idea that they are bad. By maybe that is in my genes. They get a century or two old and they're scenic, dontcha know.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 7:20 am
19 Oct 2007
In 1979 the government of Denmark initiated a 30% subsidy for the cost of building windmills. In 1999 they guaranteed wind power producers 85% of retail, 9 cents per kWh, for all the power they could make. They imposed a tax on fossil fuel to provide an additional 3.8 cents per kWh to wind producers. Compare that with the cost to make electricity in the U.S. in 1999; hydroelectric 0.7 cents per kWh, coal 2 cents per kWh, natural gas turbine 3.9 cents per kWh, nuclear 1.9 cents per kWh.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...
Denmark has the, ideal combination of optimum factors for wind.
* A population committed to wind power
* A government committed to wind power
* High energy prices
* Low energy consumption
* Large price guarantees
* Large government subsidies
* A small country with short transmission distances, each person lives within 50 miles of a shoreline
* Surrounding water creates mild winters and summers
* Excellent wind conditions for land and sea based wind farms year-round
* Mature in country wind turbine industry
In 2005 wind accounted for 18.5 % of the 751 watts per person Denmark used, 139 watts of wind power per person.
The US completed about 5 reactors per year from 1970 to 1990 and they have been producing about 300 watts per person since then.
The primitive first generation nuclear power plants ramped up to 300 watts per person in 20 years, vs. Denmark's 140 watts of wind in 30 years while being paid a fraction of the rate per kWh that the windmills received, and the nuclear plants were not given price and purchase guarantees.
Denmark imports substantial amounts of nuclear energy.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf99.html
The nuclear plants do not need energy storage service or voltage and frequency conditioning provided to the windmills free of charge by conventional power plants resulting in the emission of CO2 usually not attributed to the windmills as it should be.
The three countries with the highest percentage of wind generated electricity are, Denmark 18.5 %, Germany 4.3%, and Netherlands 1.7%.
The three countries with the highest electricity prices in the world in 2005 were, Denmark $295 per mWh, Germany $212 per mWh, and Netherlands $236 per mWh, due to enormous wind subsidies.
That same year U.S. residents paid $95 per mWh. France gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear power; their cost was $142 per mWh.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/elecprih.html
Windmill technology is highly advanced and the best designs already operate near theoretical maximum efficiency. There is not a lot of room for improvement.
The lesson of Denmark is that wind power will never be abundant or inexpensive. Nuclear power can be both.
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:32 am
19 Oct 2007
The Merriam-Webster dictionary does.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuclear
Main Entry: nu·cle·ar
Pronunciation: [...] 'nyü-, ÷-kye-ler
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caniscandida Posted 6:25 pm
19 Oct 2007
It takes place mostly in Galicia, Spain's green northwestern corner with coasts on both the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Sea; it is famous as the region in which the pilgrimage site, of great importance from the early Middle Ages, Santiago de Compostela, is located; its people speak a Romance language much closer to Portuguese than to Castilian Spanish; and as a way of showing their essential independence from the Castilians of Madrid, they emphasize their Celtic heritage, for example recently by cultivating the performance of the Irish-sounding music that can be heard in the soundtrack of this movie. In one scene, the drive of the hero from his farmhouse to the city of La Corun~a, his van passes by a windfarm.
According to this article, in March of this year, wind set its record as leading energy source in Spain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Spain
And Galicia is the leader, among all Spain's autonomous regions, in the production of electricity from wind.
Two literary digressions:
The most famous windmills in literature are surely those of La Mancha, the plain just south of the Castilian Plateau, one of which was imagined by Don Quixote to be an evil giant. Presumably La Mancha does indeed have regular high winds, and so one might have expected it to have greater prominence among the regions producing energy from wind.
The Spanish term for the rather klutzy "windfarm" is the much more lovely "parque eo'lico," or "aeolic park," so named with reference to the Homeric mythological figure Aeolus, the island-living King of the Winds, whom we meet in the Odyssey, Book 10, and the Aeneid, Book 1. I have not yet researched to see if cognate forms of "aeolic" and "eo'lico" are used in other languages.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Backcut Posted 11:09 pm
19 Oct 2007
Scenic pics at http://Lhfotoware.blogspot.com
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amazingdrx Posted 12:48 am
20 Oct 2007
Mass produced commercial units that can be installed on regular towers, bridges, or buildings. Economy of scale would make that level of production even cheaper per kwh.
Mass production needs to go forward at war production speed, with economic stimulus to match. Let the oil, coal, and nuclear industries payback some of those subsidies they got from the public coffers.
Use it to stimulate homeoners, businesses, and local government to invest in wind. Not every location is suitable for wind, but even 10% would be enough to power the regional grid.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:32 am
20 Oct 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 1:50 am
20 Oct 2007
Vertical is slightly less efficient in steady winds, but makes up for it in simplicity and the ability to instantly respond to winds from different directions.
It also lends itself to installation on a simple utility pole. A 5000 kwh per year system without all the complication of a standard horizontal machine would fit that model in only a 12 mph average wind speed location.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:27 pm
20 Oct 2007
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:33 pm
20 Oct 2007
At $3,995.00 it comes complete with:
The rotor ("turbine")
The generator
The inverter
The pole and pole stand
Wiring down to ground level
The installation kit - everything you need to install the turbine
Owner's and Installation Manuals
A 5-year warranty Rugged yet simple construction means durability - the Windspire is rated for winds up to 100 mph.
For more info;
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/09/mariah- ...
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:09 am
21 Oct 2007
if each of those vertical turbine gizmos is $4000, and you need four to get 1kwh 24/7 (forget about storage for now) -- I figure 4 because it's rated at about 2000 kwh per year, which is about 6 kwh per day, assuming you need 24kwh per day per typical household, with 100 million households, all we need is $1.6 trillion , over 10 years (see this rough sketch of replacing all electricity with wind for about that much) to replace all residential electricity, about a 30%. That's not too bad for a very rough, first-look. Assuming I'm not off an order of magnitude somewhere.
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caniscandida Posted 4:07 am
21 Oct 2007
It would seem that if the horizontal-axis turbine always faces directly into the wind, the movement of the fins (blades?) will be catalysed simultaneously in all three (?) of them, so that there will be no uneven force downward upon any section of the base -- unless forces on the downward-swinging and upward-swinging sides are not truly in balance. On the other hand, the point of the base opposite to the direction of the wind will receive a constant force that the other points will not. If the winds at that location are prevailing generally from one direction, an engineer might be able to compensate adequately.
In the case of the vertical-axis turbine, it would seem that force upon the point of the base opposite to the direction of the wind should be minimized by the effect of the forward swing of the fins on the non-receptive side. But there will be uneven forces resulting from the opposite reactions of the receptive and non-receptive sides to the wind current. Possibly an engineer could compensate for that too. The vertical-axis turbine might be more recommended for locations with frequently shifting winds.
In either case, it would not seem recommendable to place a turbine on top of a pre-existent structure, no matter how strong, without some significant compensatory alteration to that structure.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:20 am
22 Oct 2007
It would be almost impossible to eliminate that sound being transmitted through a structure. A vertical machine merely produces a steady humming typical of any other electric motor or generator.
As far as wind load on a structure Canis, either type would do that. Of course with 300+ mph tornado winds produced by GHG fueled storms, nothing is safe from wind loading except underground bunkers.
Imagine vertical axis machines that attach to standard communications towers like those used for broadcasting. From 100 feet above ground all the way to the top. The cost per kwh of a setup like this would be much lower due to the lower cost.
Imagine huge skyscrapers with vertial axis machines mounted in the wind stream. The proposed replacement world trade center project had a design like this initially.
The beauty of vertical axis machines is that they can be set up and then run maintenance free for years. A set of bearings to spin the rotor on the only moving parts. With the mechanical power converted in a simple direct drive alternator.
Horizontal machines have all sorts of systems for braking, aiming into the wind, getting the power to the ground, transmissions to adjust to different wind speeds, blade feathering systems... on larger machines everything is computer controlled with energy robbing servo motors.
Small home units are best mounted on utility poles. It's a very economical solution. A new hole can be dug and the whole unit moved easily with a standard utility pole installation truck. If you have an under performing location that can be changed.
With expensive towers and crane mounted horizontal machines, a year or more of expensive wind surveying is done. They can't be moved easily later on.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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ericr Posted 1:59 am
22 Oct 2007
The head of the mid-Atlantic consortium of industrial wind developers is anti-environmentalist Frank Maisano.
Wind hasn't reduced coal or nuclear use, or even its growth, in Europe.
Big coal and nuclear, once they pause and examine the facts, realize that with wind they can have their cake and eat it, too. Leaving us with double the damage.
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trock Posted 3:20 am
22 Oct 2007
Many of the comparisons with wind power and nuclear, coal, and natural gas are unfair and I'm sure you did that on purpose to make nuclear look better and wind look worse.
Denmark may be ahead in wind power, but I hardly think they are 30 years ahead. I think the U.S. out produces them now.
You wrote:
make electricity in the U.S. in 1999; hydroelectric 0.7 cents per kWh, coal 2 cents per kWh, natural gas turbine 3.9 cents per kWh, nuclear 1.9 cents per kWh.
These are just fuel costs (and maybe maintenance?.) They don't include the cost of the Power Plant, which is a significant part of the costs.
These fuel costs are from 1999. The costs of these fuels have gone up since 1999.
The government subsides of these power producing methods are worked into these prices, thus they cost less because of the subsidies.
The costs of building new power plants is quite a bit higher than the costs of building power plants 30 years ago. If you want to compare costs of wind with other power sources, you have to use todays costs to build wind power with todays costs of building nuclear, coal, natual gas, etc., not the average of all plants, many built 30, 50 or whatever years ago.
The real lesson is to be skeptical of the person giving the 'facts.' What you wrote is completely worthless as an honest comparison of electricity power production.
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:52 am
22 Oct 2007
Modern neighborhoods do not have utility poles. Utility poles are too low, anyway.
Have you talked to an engineer about mounting wind-mining rigs to utility poles. Such engineer might have something to say about wind loading.
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:37 am
22 Oct 2007
It is funny that you should mention that.
cphpost.dk/get/102943.html
Residents may reap windmill compensation
02.08.2007 [August 2, 2007]
Stalled plans to build new high-efficiency wind turbines could get a jump start thanks to a government plan to pay residents for decreased property values.
Property owner resistance over plans to replace the country's 5000 existing wind turbines with fewer high-efficiency models has the government suggesting that homeowners living in the shadow of the 150-metre giants be compensated for lost property value.
Most politicians and citizens are in agreement that wind power is the way to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly future, but many also believe rows of wind turbines are an eyesore and destroy the harmony of the nation's gentle landscape.
The new initiative to compensate property owners comes on the heels of a report from a special commission created by parliament to determine the most aesthetic means of erecting new wind turbines across the country.
[...]
citizens' groups concerned about the effects the new wind turbines have on the landscape have managed to stall the process. Connie Hedegaard, the environment minister, believes the new initiative will help get it back underway.
'If you live near a new wind turbine, you should be able to receive compensation from the state,' she told Weekendavisen newspaper.
[...]
'I still think it's best to discuss the situation out in the communities,' she said. 'There are cultural lines in the landscape that you can't necessarily see just by looking at a map.'
When wind turbines began to sprout up in earnest at the beginning of the decade Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the former leader of the prime minister's Liberal Party, expressed the feelings of many when he called wind turbines 'politically correct, economically questionable and ugly'.
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:02 am
22 Oct 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:17 am
22 Oct 2007
Nuclear energy is dense. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively small eyesore.
Wind energy is diffuse. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively large eyesore.
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Gar Lipow Posted 9:02 am
22 Oct 2007
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:22 pm
22 Oct 2007
If the nuclear industry had gone to the federal government in the 1960s and said, "take my industry -- please", and we had constructed a nuclear network that was like France's, then you might see a lot of nuclear energy today. But that time has passed, I believe. The time now is for wind/solar/geothermal, because that is were the capital investment should go.
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caniscandida Posted 2:58 pm
22 Oct 2007
BioD is right (if not terribly original) that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." And Jon Rynn is right that the physical operations of many of the ways in which we make energy, especially the extractive and polluting ways, are pretty damn ugly. In my opinion, wind turbines are no where near as offensive.
That said, if aesthetics matter (and they ought to matter much more than they do), all large new structures must do a great deal to justify themselves. And I am not sure wind turbines have quite got there. To be sure, they are not nearly so charming as old pre-industrial windmills and waterwheels. Aesthetic objections should certainly not damn wind turbines outright, but still, we should allow that there are people who sincerely find them ugly and a blemish on the landscape, nothing else about them taken into account.
Also with respect to aesthetics, I think the vertical-axis turbine that Amazing likes sounds promising, if it would look anything like a ceiling fan, that elegant addition to any interior design scheme.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:45 pm
22 Oct 2007
Nuclear energy is dense. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively small eyesore.
Wind energy is diffuse. For any given amount of power-production capacity, it makes a relatively large eyesore.
And frankly, what do you think people would be more Nimby about?
Aesthetics, or perceived threat.
Noise I can understand, but visuals isn't that big an issue.
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trock Posted 6:37 pm
22 Oct 2007
Wind should be in the Midwest where it really blows.
Nuclear would be in the southeast, where they don't have access to other renewable energy. Photovoltaics are to expensive now.
Concentrated Solar Power would be in the southwest where the sun shines the best for it.
Anything as large as Industrial Wind Power is going to cause controversy. Which is why the first wind turbines going up shouldn't be in heavily populated areas. We still don't have 1 percent of electrical power produced by wind. With a shortage of capacity to build these wind turbines, why cause problems where they aren't needed. There is still alot of land out in the midwest that hasn't been tapped. North Dakota, Kansas and Texas wind could electrically power the entire United States if we don't talk about when the power is produced.
Wind power has problems with production to when its needed. But without talking about demand changes, some studies has shown that in the midwest, wind power can supply 25 percent of the electrical needs.
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solar greg Posted 1:46 am
23 Oct 2007
Diffuse, spread out.
Ever heard of having all your eggs in one basket?
We talk about independence from foreign oil, what about dependance on few large energy suppliers?
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amazingdrx Posted 1:50 am
23 Oct 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:02 am
23 Oct 2007
These are just fuel costs (and maybe maintenance?.) They don't include the cost of the Power Plant, which is a significant part of the costs.
These fuel costs are from 1999. The costs of these fuels have gone up since 1999.]
Trock, did you check this link carefully,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...
The earliest fuel cost I can find for nuclear power (1994) was 0.587 cents per kWh. It has steadily dropped to 0.454 cents per kWh in 2005, the latest data point.
This is the cost of the fuel assemblies that go into the reactor. The cost of uranium is a small fraction of this amount. That is why the cost of nuclear power is insensitive to the cost of uranium.
[The government subsides of these power producing methods are worked into these prices, thus they cost less because of the subsidies.]
I keep hearing about these massive subsidies but never see a reference. What is the total subsidy for nuclear power in cents per kWh? Please provide references with a breakdown of those costs.
[The costs of building new power plants is quite a bit higher than the costs of building power plants 30 years ago. If you want to compare costs of wind with other power sources, you have to use todays costs to build wind power with todays costs of building nuclear, coal, natual gas, etc., not the average of all plants, many built 30, 50 or whatever years ago.]
If a 1,500 MW plant like this,
http://www.areva-np.com/common/liblocal/docs/Brochure/BRO ...
costs $10 billion including interest, over twice the expected amount, it would add 1.4 cents to the cost of each KWh. That combined with the operation & maintenance cost would total 3.3 cents per kWh.
France, Japan, South Korea and others are building nuclear power plants at attractive prices in modest time periods. Early U.S. plants were built quickly and cheaply. We could do so again.
Fuel costs for wind are zero, so windmills have a 0.454 cents per kWh advantage on fuel cost, but consider the total cost of the vertical axis wind turbine identified in my previous post.
The average U.S. lifestyle consumes 1,550 watts. Assuming the wind turbine meets its extremely optimistic performance specifications, the average windmill output is 215 watts. We need 7.22 windmills per person, 29 windmills for a family of four.
We will need to install 6,290,000 units to match the output of one 1,500 MW nuclear plant with a 90% capacity factor.
Assuming a $400 cost for land, foundation, wiring, labor etc. the cost to replace one nuclear plant with these windmills is $25.1 billion. If you want a modest level of reliability add about $10 billion for batteries, chargers and inverters.
But I doubt a plastic windmill is going to last 60 years, maybe 10 -20, so multiply accordingly.
[The real lesson is to be skeptical of the person giving the `facts.' What you wrote is completely worthless as an honest comparison of electricity power production.]
I would like to see a detailed factual analysis proving that wind can produce a large portion of our electric energy requirements at an affordable cost, including the cost of backup power plants and/or energy storage plants to deal with the intermittency of wind, and include the cost of the required grid expansion to collect and transport massive flows of energy from windy areas to calm areas.
Or, identify a country that gets 80% of its energy from wind at an affordable price.
Windmills have been around for over 300 years, the technology has matured. There is little room for improvement. It is a dead end technology because it will never be abundant or inexpensive.
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Erik Hoffner Posted 2:04 am
23 Oct 2007
http://www.aerotecture.com/projects_mlh.html
They'd definitely add to the energy mix in cities, but would probably not make as big a contribution as rooftops covered with PV panels and vegetable gardens, which would probably be a better way to capture energy there. Paul Gipe, the wind energy author, is on record as saying such, that rooftop wind would be an "unfortunate distraction from the real work of building a renewable society." He promotes PV for cities and large turbines owned by coops and municipal utility companies.
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:50 am
23 Oct 2007
Not 300 years for electricity generation on any sort of scale.
It's been around for less time than nuclear for that.
==Or, identify a country that gets 80% of its energy from wind at an affordable price.=
Remind me of any country which produces over 50% of it's electricity from Nuclear, which isn't operated by a government owned monopoly. (i.e. Not really subject to market forces)
Then name me any country which has figured out what to do with the waste.
Then get me a dollar figure on how much it will cost to deal with that waste in perpetuity.
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trock Posted 3:29 am
23 Oct 2007
What if I made a comparison between a nuclear power plant that was put on a space craft and then say, well, look here, that thing that went to Jupiter produced 200 milliwatts and it cost 2 million dollars to build, so then if we put in nuclear power in the United States it would cost 20 trillion dollars and we only got one megawatt from it. Or I could say, lets see, every basement having a nuclear power plant will require a hundred thousand dollars worth of shielding, that's going to really bring the price up.
Using small wind turbines is uneconomical. Nobody does it that way or advocates it be done that way, unless it is a hobby or remoteness from power lines.
If you are going to make comparisons, make them reasonable. I have read that 400 000 wind turbines of 2.5 megawatt (100 meter, 330 feet tall) size could replace all the fossil fuel plants on electrical production alone. The footprint of the towers would be 6 square miles and with proper spacing between towers it would take on half the land of South Dakota.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/1 ...
The costs of wind for the last 6000 megawatts installed has all been below 5.5 cent/kwt unsubsidized. A study of Midwest power requirements and wind supply says that wind power can power 25 percent of the Midwest electrical grid
That's not to say we would or should build the 400 000 wind turbines. Wind power has some real problems with capacity factors, as you would agree, and even emphasize. That's why storage is something that is so heavily worked on, especially by wind turbine advocates.
I think we haven't even started on demand response to energy usage, like having natural gas/electric hybrid water heaters that could switch from one to the other. If people knew their power was coming from wind, would they space heat with it? In the Midwest, the wind really blows when a cold front moves in, thus the idea of using wind power and heat pumps together. Some professor from North Dakota was advocating that it would eliminate a billion dollars in fuel oil that North Dakotan's buy every year.
You get me wrong if you think I am against nuclear power. I hope it does work and we build a bunch of them if it helps with the global warming problem. Not having built any for quite a few years makes it curious to see what the costs will be when the proposed ones do get built. We'll see. But be fair to the comparisons.
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caniscandida Posted 5:05 am
23 Oct 2007
Thanks, Erik, for sending the link to the Aerotecture site. Neither their 510V nor their 520H is a work of art, so far as I can tell, but certainly they do not add new eyesores to the landscape of urban roofs.
Of course, Chicago has the most beautiful large-scale urban architecture in North America, IMHO, and every new project there should be held to a very high aesthetic standard.
Engineers will notice right away that the 520H is just two 510Vs mounted on their side. That would suggest that the big advantage is in terms of savings in manufacture, not in terms of optimal design for locations respectively with and without dominant wind direction.
I had not really been considering "urban wind," in fact, and was just playing around with a couple of ideas that came up in this thread. I tend to think that urban roofs should certainly be made "green," and that the ways that you refer to -- which have already been tried successfully in Chicago -- are the most promising.
But when we think about "urban wind," most people who have lived in large cities with large buildings densely sited would probably not think of looking for wind on roofs, so much as down in the streets, the relatively narrow spaces between the buildings, the "urban canyons." E.g., here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the acropolis-like neighborhood around Columbia University called Morningside Heights, to walk during the winter months from Broadway downhill to Riverside Drive, against the fierce winds pushing up from the Hudson, is a memorably bitter experience.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:40 am
23 Oct 2007
It's been around for less time than nuclear for that.
True. With the "any sort of scale" qualification, wind energy has been around for zero years (which should come as no surprise, given how diffuse and absent it is).
GreyFlcn wrote: Remind me of any country which produces over 50% of it's electricity from Nuclear, which isn't operated by a government owned monopoly.
world-nuclear.org/info/inf01.html
Belgium.
France. ("EDF held a monopoly in the distribution, but not the production, of electricity")
Why might market-freedom be important in the production of electricity?
GreyFlcn wrote: name me any country which has figured out what to do with [nuclear] waste.
world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.html
Argentina
Armenia
Bangladesh
Belarus
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Canada
China
Czech Republic
Egypt
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Iran
Israel
Japan
Kazakhstan
Korea DPR (North)
Korea RO (South)
Lithuania
Mexico
Netherlands
Pakistan
Romania
Russia
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
USA
Vietnam
GreyFlcn wrote: Then get me a dollar figure on how much it will cost to deal with that waste in perpetuity.
$0.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:50 am
25 Oct 2007
Remind me of any country which produces over 50% of its electricity from Nuclear, which isn't operated by a government owned monopoly. (i.e. Not really subject to market forces)
France runs its nuclear power industry the way the U.S. runs Amtrak. The fact that they can make so much energy from fission at an affordable price just hints at the potential of fission.
The U.S. has cheaper nuclear power because most plants were built by the private sector.
If you are going to make comparisons, make them reasonable. I have read that 400 000 wind turbines of 2.5 megawatt (100 meter, 330 feet tall) size could replace all the fossil fuel plants on electrical production alone. The footprint of the towers would be 6 square miles and with proper spacing between towers it would take on half the land of South Dakota.
What will the 400,000 windmills cost?
What will the land cost?
What will the new power lines cost?
What will the backup power plants cost?
What will the storage plants cost?
How long will it take to build everything?
You say my numbers are bad, show me the right numbers in a complete analysis, not just one little piece.
Here are a few numbers;
In 2005 the U.S. consumed about 4 billion MWh of electric energy.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentTotalElec ...
73% came from fossil fuel, about 3 billion MWh.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentConventio ...
400,000 windmills times 2.5 MW times 30% capacity factor times 24 hr per day times 365 days per year equals 2.6 billion kWh. You are 7% low to start. Add 28,000 windmills.
Round trip battery looses are typically 25-30%. See page 7;
http://www.vrbpower.com/docs/news/2007/Ireland%20Feasibil ...
Assuming half the energy passes through a battery you need 15% more windmills, add 64,000 windmills.
Line losses average about 7%, more from distant remote locations. Add 30,000 windmills.
The 30% capacity factor is based on existing windmills in prime locations. When you plant 400,000 windmills, most will be in non prime locations, average capacity factor will go down, lets say to 25%. Add 80,000 windmills.
You need 602,000 windmills, compute a new cost estimate with this number.
Planting so many windmills will draw down wind speed reducing performance further. That will require additional windmills and nobody knows what the environmental impact will be as a result of lowering average wind speeds.
Then name me any country which has figured out what to do with the waste.
This thread is about wind, open a debate on waste and we can go into the details, but here are a few facts.
Converting 5.4 ounces (0.34 lb) of Uranium into fission products will release enough heat to generate a lifetime supply (1,550 watts for 80 years) of electricity for an average American with no CO2 emissions. That's equivalent to burning 1,140,000 pounds of coal which would produce 2,440,000 pounds of CO2.
During that lifetime most fission products decay to non radioactive atoms leaving 0.67 ounces of radioactive atoms. They become less toxic than uranium ore in 270 years.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TRS435_web. ...
For the details go to;
http://www.nuclearcoal.com/index.html
On the second line click "Energy Facts". Download the paper. The discussion of waste starts on page 16. Also note the discussion on page 33.
There is Also a downloadable spreadsheet with references and calculations.
..
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:58 am
25 Oct 2007
If we were really serious about climate change, in my opinion, the cost, while important, would not be the deciding factor. So we can spend a couple of trillion dollars to avoid climate change, stop pollution, and avoid peak coal. That's about what the Iraq war is going to cost.
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trock Posted 12:28 pm
25 Oct 2007
You used fake comparisons, now you do fake answers.
I like how before you used 1999 fuel cost numbers for 2007. Do you buy your gas for $ 1.20 a gallon too?
What good is it to charge batteries with wind to use for electricity? Wind comes in the winter 30 percent more that summer. You going to wait all spring to use the energy in those batteries?
Why get rid of the plants that are still there, they can handle more of the summer load. You want to tear down all those power plants to store the power in batteries. You sure do want to do a lot of unneeded work.
The guy who wrote the article used 35 % capacity factor.
Prime locations might be a problem, but there is alot of prime zone 4 and above. You already use them all up. You got imagination.
But the wind industry doesn't stay the same. The way to increase locations for wind is to use Zone 3 wind. The research is being done to use Zone 3 wind, which will open up a lot of new areas for wind turbines. Wind turbines closer to the electricity markets.
And then you figure it out as if I wrote that we should do it that way. Your whole answer is false. Do you always use false comparisons and false answers?
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:55 pm
07 Nov 2007
Many of the comparisons with wind power and nuclear, coal, and natural gas are unfair and I'm sure you did that on purpose to make nuclear look better and wind look worse.
What you wrote is completely worthless as an honest comparison of electricity power production.
You sure do like to make the fake comparisons between wind and nuclear.
You used fake comparisons, now you do fake answers.
Your whole answer is false. Do you always use false comparisons and false answers?
Trock, here is a tip, insulting people does not move them to your point of view.
There is a simple two step process to alter my point of view.
1 Point out the errors in my logic and calculations.
2 Provide a more accurate, detailed and logical argument supporting another point of view.
Years ago Ralph Nadar convinced me nuclear power was a bad idea. I took a course in nuclear engineering to get the facts to support my antinuclear position, and found out Ralph was wrong.
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atreyger Posted 12:48 am
08 Nov 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 1:24 am
08 Nov 2007
It's distributed nature lends itself to a more stable and efficient grid.
Wind is unreliable?
Wind in distributed locations is reliable to the extent that 95% of grid power can be generated solely by wind with very little backup generation or storage. the diversity of location makes wind more reliable.
Check out Gar's article explaining this (95% grid capacity from wind)with a study of only 8 different wind locations.
Wind is too costly?
As this article states, current bids (including profit for wind machine investors) are 4.5 cents per kwh. With no waste or fuel needed, this puts wind way ahead of every other source on cost. Utility customers in Texas, given the choice, have swarmed to wind (it's cheaper) so much so that utilities have to use a lottery to match wind electricity to consumer demand.
Wind equipment is back ordered 2 years.
Need I go on? Hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 8:44 pm
08 Nov 2007
Using small wind turbines is uneconomical. Nobody does it that way or advocates it be done that way, unless it is a hobby or remoteness from power lines.
I used a small wind turbine for my analysis because many people think that is the way to go. Denmark, Germany and Netherlands have already proven that large windmills are horribly expensive to implement on a large scale, as they have the most expensive electricity in the world and get most of their electricity from fossil fuel and their neighbors.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:18 am
09 Nov 2007
Under 2 dollars per watt is feasible with a very simple vertical axis design molded from recycled plastic with a synchronous alternator that feeds power right onto the grid whenever the wind blows.
With low cost installation on a utility pole for home use or installation on existing towers, structures, or buildings for commercial use.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:39 am
09 Nov 2007
Look at Gar Lipow's "Phase out electricity emissions in a decade!" which is a more in-depth attempt to estimate how to use wind to generate all electricity.
OK Jon, I looked, this analysis has major problems.
1 It is based on annual averages and ignores the fact that wind power is very low in the summer when electrical demand peaks, and high spring and fall when demand is lowest. Huge amounts of energy will be wasted during the spring and fall and there will be chronic shortages in the summer.
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-03m.ht ...
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/maps/chap2/2-04m.ht ...
The 2006 North American heat wave spread throughout most of the United States and Canada beginning on July 15, 2006, killing at least 225 people.
* From July 15 to July 22 very high temperatures spread across most all of the United States and Canada. On Monday, July 17, every state except Alaska, Minnesota, and North Dakota recorded temperatures of 90°F (32°C) or greater. North Dakota had recorded a temperature of 104°F (40°C) the previous day.[4]
* From July 23 to July 29 the abnormal heat was concentrated in the West coast and South West deserts. 164 fatalities were reported in California during this period.
* From July 29 to August 4 the heat wave moved eastwards, causing further fatalities as it progressed.
* From August 4 to August 27, high temperatures persisted in the South and Southeast United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_North_American_heat_wav ...
In California wind capacity factor dropped to 4% for seven days during the heat wave while peak demand rose more than 10% above average.
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/Wind- ...
Over the entire U.S., average windmill capacity factor dropped to 24% during July and August of 2006 while demand jumped 20% above average.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.h ...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.htm ...
If the U.S. was using the proposed system in 2006 we would have had nationwide blackouts over a period of several weeks during a massive record heat wave. I believe the death toll would have numbered several hundred thousand.
2 This proposal calls for increasing wind capacity to 130 times the present level, to a data plate rating of 3.2 times the average U.S. consumption. Existing windmills achieve a 30.5% capacity factor because they are built in prime locations and are connected directly to the grid, so all the energy they can produce goes directly onto the grid.
Building 130 times existing capacity means most windmills will not be in prime locations. A substantial portion will be east of the Mississippi where wind conditions are much less favorable than what most existing windmills see today.
More importantly, when wind conditions are good over a large area, available wind power may be more than three times demand, particularly at night and in spring and fall when demand is below average. Most windmills will have to be shutdown or throttled way back when wind conditions are good over a large area.
These effects will dramatically reduce the average capacity factor. To compensate requires a much greater number of windmills be built than specified in the analysis, which will jack up the cost, and that just makes the problems listed above worse.
3. The analysis assumes that 2/3 of the power goes directly to the consumer and only 1/3 passes through storage. The write up claims 12 hours of backup but the cost analysis includes only 1.5 hours of storage capacity. If the wind blew at exactly 30 MPH all the time everywhere, that amount of storage would probably cover the spread between peak and minimum demand on most days.
Given the fact that wind varies widely, including the possibility of multiple days with little wind, the required storage capacity will be vastly greater than assumed here. The fraction of energy going through storage will be larger than assumed, so storage losses will be greater than assumed, requiring more windmills. Realistically the proposed storage is a small fraction of what would be needed.
The report assumes the use of pumped storage because it is much cheaper and more efficient than other options. It is not clear if land cost is included. See page 22.
http://www.prod.sandia.gov/cgi-bin/techlib/access-control ...
With pumped storage so cheap, why haven't entrepreneurs built pumped storage facilities all over the country, buying cheap power at night and selling it at high prices during the day?
The author assumes a height differential of 875 ft. The most likely locations are where mountains and lowlands intersect. These are locations people find attractive to live and play. Such sites are already occupied by people or designated as national forests or national parks.
Pump storage installations are ugly industrial facilities. Water level can change 30 feet in 12 hours. They are dangerous to humans and wildlife, and must be fenced off. The NIMBY resistance is tremendous.
5 The U.S. consumes an average of 1,600 watts per person. The proposed storage system has a maximum rating of 475 watts per person. If the wind goes down over a large region, at least 70% of the grid goes down immediately, followed by the remaining 30% in 1.5 hrs.
6 The author claims that when the wind lulls and the pumped storage runs out hydroelectric plants will pick up the load. This is not possible because hydro plants are not distributed in proportion to population, and their maximum output is a small fraction of average demand.
7 The author proposes building 62,000 miles of new experimental ultra high voltage DC 6 GW power line at a cost of $805,000 per mile. Keep this in mind when you read comments saying that distributed wind and solar are great because they do not require a strong grid. Think of the fun terrorists could have with such a massive grid.
Figure 1 of the authors reference indicates a cost of $2.7 billion per 2000 KM ($2,200,000 per mile) of 500 KV transmission line.
http://uaelp.pennnet.com/display_article/281953/22/ARTCL/ ...
The author uses a cost of $1.0 billion per 2000 KM in his spread sheet. He has eliminated the cost of conversion stations to boost the AC to HVDC and back to AC at the other end of each line. He has also eliminated the cost of line losses. This is an $85,000,000,000 error.
It appears that this price does not include the cost of land for right of way.
The NIMBY uproar over these lines will probably be even greater than for the pumped storage. I doubt that you could get the permits to build the specified windmills, pumped storage facilities and power lines in 100 years.
8 The author claims his design is 98% reliable. Even if it could perform that well we would endure over seven days of blackout per year, mostly during extreme heat waves and cold snaps. It would still be deadly.
9 The biggest flaw of all is that this analysis presents wind as the primary source of electricity, with all other sources as backup.
In reality the primary sources are the plants that make huge flows of electricity reliably and predictably. They are hydro, nuclear and fossil plants. The only savings from intermittent sources like wind and solar are from the fuel not burned. Fuel costs are;
GAS 5.2 CENTS / KWH
COAL 2.3 CENTS / KWH
NUCLEAR 0.49 CENTS / KWH
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p2.html ...
These are the real break even prices for wind and solar.
The author claims this analysis proves that;
We could replace every non-hydro power plant in the U.S. with wind generators and electricity storage and lower our electricity bill.
I believe he has proven that this statement is not true.
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GRLCowan Posted 10:23 am
09 Nov 2007
--- G.R.L. Cowan, boron internal combustion fan
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
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amazingdrx Posted 7:13 pm
09 Nov 2007
Most cooling is done with extremely inefficient air conditioning that dumps heat into hot summer air. Conservation using geo heat exchange could eliminate most of that load.
So I would say that wind, solar, and conservation would power the whole grid with renewable energy with very little storage or backup generation. At any rate, biogas/natural gas backup generation and even coal backup generation can still provide the 5% needed without signifigantly adding to GHG.
If pumped hydro storage is so good, why aren't investors cashing in storing power and selling it back to utilities? Come on. That's easy to answer. Why isn't a renewable distributed energy generation and storage grid up and operating right now? Because the oily, coal and nuke powered mega corps will not allow it.
They have to be dragged kicking and screaming from their energy business as usual cash cow.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Pangolin Posted 9:18 pm
10 Nov 2007
Wind power would never be a sole source of power for any sane energy grid. It would join hydropower, geothermal, solar-PV, solar-thermal, ocean thermal, ocean wave and biomass energy sources in a distributed grid. For purposes of discussion it would be simpler to assume that wind, solar and geothermal/geo-exchange power sources could be used as a dominant triad.
None of these power sources require military standard security systems or pose long-term waste radioactive waste disposal problems. The nuclear industry has yet to clean up it's existing waste sites; that means Hanford also. Any wind turbine could be recycled completely and elements re-used after it's service life expires.
Wind power's intermittent nature coupled with geo-exchange thermal systems in buildings/homes and a smart grid could allow for pre-loading of thermal systems. A power surge on the wind grid could easily be absorbed by thousands of hot water heaters increasing the tank temperature 2 degrees celsius or cooling freezers another 2 degrees. Likewise a few million electric cars topping off batteries in response to a text message.
Geothermal power is used at far less than the capacity of the resource even on the East Coast. Low grade geothermal resources could be combined in a hybrid with concentrated solar power to provide peak daytime loads practically anywhere. The solar unit could superheat steam or water from the ground and/or the geothermal well could provide a thermal sink for the solar plant. The geothermal resource could be used as base-load power available 24/7. Advanced thermal cycles such as the Kalina cycle actually get more efficient in winter making low temperature geothermal a good resource for northern sites.
Solar thermal plants would add large grid inputs to the smaller inputs of innumerable rooftop and backyard solar PV and hot water systems. These systems once widespread should be able to provide the majority of residential energy load. Simply charge utility customers far more for grid power than installation of a solar system would cost and finance PV and geo-exchange system installation via utility bills. Such system installations would have to be mandatory on rental property.
As far as the visual aspect of wind generation.....anybody complaining about the views of a wind tower doesn't live in farm country. Almond orchards get sprayed and harvest creates clouds of dust, Rice fields are burned in choking clouds of smoke, Vineyards are harvested sometimes at night with machinery creating strange noises and lights at night. The stink from a dairy or poultry operation can travel farther than you'd ever believe. You really don't want to live on the same road as a lumber mill. Wind turbines are good neighbors by comparison.
The triad of wind/solar/geothermal are far easier to finance and install than a single new nuclear plant. It would be modular, redundant and hard to switch off if Enron buys your legislature and goes profit hunting. Remember Diablo Canyon was shut down in California for just that purpose.
Put the Carbon Back
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amazingdrx Posted 12:16 am
11 Nov 2007
Or recycling/melting glass during peak supply, then as the product cools using the waste heat to generate power. In effect storing the peak energy in the molten glass.
With internet signal switchable heating/cooling, plugin car battery charging, and energy intensive industrial activities, enough storage can be found without actually storing electric power directly as in battery systems or indirectly with pumped hydro storage.
The cost of maintaining natural gas turbine generators and even some coal plants as energency backup will be more than compensated for by the lower total cost of energy. Figuring in ever rising fuel costs, waste disposal costs, medical costs, construction costs, GHG disaster costs and so forth for nuclear and fossil fueled power.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:51 am
11 Nov 2007
Enron shut down Diablo Canyon? Please provide details of this.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 1:25 pm
11 Nov 2007
Amazngdrx, you said,
Check out Gar's article explaining this (95% grid capacity from wind)with a study of only 8 different wind locations...
Wind in distributed locations is reliable to the extent that 95% of grid power can be generated solely by wind with very little backup generation or storage. the diversity of location makes wind more reliable.
His goal was to show that;
We could replace every non-hydro power plant in the U.S. with wind generators and electricity storage and lower our electricity bill.
My last post was to show that it is not true. Than you said;
The main problem in your analysis is cooling load Bill. When cooling load is highest, so is solar energy....
At any rate, biogas/natural gas backup generation and even coal backup generation can still provide the 5% needed without significantly adding to GHG.
So you agree that the statement is false, that's good.
The cooling load is not my problem, it is your and Gar's problem. Electrical loads peak several hours after solar peaks, you need lots of storage. The mismatch is even worse outside the desert.
Actually, the main problem is seasonal variation of wind out of sync with seasonal variation of load. You cannot store wind or solar energy economically for several months.
Imagine that you are the CEO of a large utility. You have coal, nuclear and gas plants. You believe wind and solar are the future and have built large quantities of both.
You must keep the conventional plants operational for adequate reliability. You have to pay salary and fringe benefits to operators, maintenance workers, security people etc. As population and load grows you have to add more conventional capacity. When your conventional plants reach end of life you must dismantle them and build new ones to take their place.
This is why the only savings from intermittent sources like wind and solar are the cost of fuel not burned. Fuel costs are;
GAS 5.2 CENTS / KWH
COAL 2.3 CENTS / KWH
NUCLEAR 0.49 CENTS / KWH
These are the real break even prices for wind and solar.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:13 pm
11 Nov 2007
The huge air conditioning load experienced now is unecessary also. Conservation in the form of geo heat exchange would eliminate most of it, and that is the catastrophic summer load you claim makes wind ineffective.
The cooling can be stored in buildings with tubing in the concrete floors for a whole day, 2 or 3 hours is not a problem.
Keeping some natural gas fired turbines around and the more modern coal plants that can be automated as backup will not mean the full cost of those facilities at full capacity will continue. Your fuel savings cost analysis is flawed by that assumption.
The CEO of one utility can't do this alone. Naturally if one company goes completely renewable with no cooperation from customers, government, and other utilities it would be impossible. Your hypothetical is not realistic.
I don't care if you think you scored a debating point over Gar. That's not the point. I'm not trying to argue that wind alone is the best solution to our energy problems.
I'm arguing for a combination of renewable distributed generation and storage, conservation, and plugin hybrid vehicles. Light electric rail, bike trails, tuned inductive recharging strips under highays to charge plugin hybrids while they are in transit, off shore wind/wave floating power stations, biogas fuel cell/turbine grid backup, and more ... to replace the current energy economy.
Will it happen overnight? Nope. But it can happen in a decade or so, much faster than any other tentative replacement for GHG sources, like nuclear, geothermal, hydrogen (pie-in-the-sky), fusion, space based collectors, clean coal, coal to liquid... and so forth.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:57 am
12 Nov 2007
Thanks, Bill Hanahan, for that detailed analysis of Gar's proposal, I point to that proposal quite often, it needs a good airing out. But the main point, that Pangolin and Amazingdrx make so well, imho, is that a renewable electricity grid will be very diverse -- so probably putting the whole world on the shoulders of wind is a bad idea. And yes, as much as I don't like coal or nuclear, I would imagine that they would be around for quite some time, in some form, at least as backup.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 4:41 am
12 Nov 2007
Pangolin said;
As usual the nuclear advocates have emulated the famed Nnadir in being rude and persisting in using cooked figures from the nuclear industry. As has been proven numerous times government figures on the costs and safety of nuclear power amount to nuclear industry propaganda; they are manufactured pablum. The nuclear pig will never sing in the US as it requires us to trust our government beyond a reasonable standard.
Ah, the usual insults. It is much easier to rip off a flaming note than to do the research and calculations to back up your position. I have immeasurably more respect for Gar Lipow for proposing a system design and working up a cost analysis.
Wind power would never be a sole source of power for any sane energy grid. It would join hydropower, geothermal, solar-PV, solar-thermal, ocean thermal, ocean wave and biomass energy sources in a distributed grid. For purposes of discussion it would be simpler to assume that wind, solar and geothermal/geo-exchange power sources could be used as a dominant triad... Solar thermal plants would add large grid inputs to the smaller inputs of innumerable rooftop and backyard solar PV and hot water systems. These systems once widespread should be able to provide the majority of residential energy load. Simply charge utility customers far more for grid power than installation of a solar system would cost and finance PV and geo-exchange system installation via utility bills.
Gar estimates the wind leg of your tripod costs $2.5 trillion. If each leg costs the same the total cost will be $7.5 trillion, $25,000 per person.
Geothermal is a very predictable energy source, why not build enough deep well geothermal to carry the whole load and avoid wasting money on intermittent sources?
Show me your system design.
Show me your cost estimate.
Show me your reliability analysis.
Or, show me a country that has done this successfully.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:03 am
12 Nov 2007
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Pangolin Posted 11:02 am
12 Nov 2007
If we can provide the current per capita power consumption at $25K per head without fossil fuels or nukes that is a bargain that should be pounced upon. That's about the original value of my car.
As I'm not an engineer I would send you to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District for data on how these things are done. All I know is that they have managed to increase their percentage of green (no coal, nukes) power in their mix every year while managing a rapid population increase. Power from SMUD is cheaper than surrounding PG&E customers even thought they mothballed the Rancho Seco Nuclear plant early. There's a large solar installation there now.
Wind and solar power installation is a daily activity in California and receives little comment except for celebration of new systems. New sources come online almost every single day. A Fresno legislator proposed construction of a nuclear reactor that was shot down in record time. Geothermal power requires major site reviews and geo-exchange is not really well known. I'm sure they will become more important players in the long term.
Nuclear power is tainted. (see anti-nuke factsheet The existing nuclear power industry is not clean and has no plans for clean operation. It's not really a matter of dispute. A dirty nuclear fuel chain is more profitable than a clean(er) one and has remained the status quo to date. You can suggest the US moves to a thorium fuel cycle but I wouldn't hold dinner. The profit is in holding the poison over our heads as a threat.
Most importantly nuclear power is anti-environmental and fascistic in nature. Massive centralized power sourcing allows political heavies to play games with populations power supply in order to exert political control. I don't want the likes of George W. Bush et. al to have the means to play "Israelis in Gaza" or "Putin at the gas valve of Europe." The thought of the entirety of California developed on the San Diego model based upon water from nuclear desalinization is another nightmare. Having survived one round of "Republicans at the light switch" in California I'm not keen on another.
Alternative power is affordable at $25k per capita and more so if we live at the quite reasonable power requirements of the Eurozone. Climate Change is not affordable at any cost.
Put the Carbon Back
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 2:12 am
13 Nov 2007
Seasonal storage is totally unecessary. Wind, wave, solar, biogas, and other renewable sources produce peak output at different times in different loactions. The odds that they all fail at once are very low. But in any case, management of load using an internet enabled/switched grid can deal with emergencies that do arise.
Define very low odds. Provide a reference that shows they produce peak output at different times in different locations in the amounts and ratios required for a stable supply.
An internet enabled/switched grid cannot keep the lights on when demand exceeds supply.
The huge air conditioning load experienced now is unnecessary also. Conservation in the form of geo heat exchange would eliminate most of it, and that is the catastrophic summer load you claim makes wind ineffective.
The cooling can be stored in buildings with tubing in the concrete floors for a whole day, 2 or 3 hours is not a problem.
2 or 3 hours is not enough. You need 3 or four months. More importantly, the summer cooling load is not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem is that wind capacity factor in California dropped to around 4% for a week, and wind capacity factor for the entire country during july and august averaged 24%, no doubt on some days it was much lower than that.
Assuming the average annual capacity factor was 30% that is a 6% drop, which does not sound to bad. But 6% of 30% is equal to 20% of 100%. Wind output was down 20% over the summer.
If we had started july with all the pump storage units charged to 100%, they would have been empty in less than 10 hours, and remained so for the rest of the summer. We would have experienced massive blackouts till fall, even with no cooling loads at all.
Keeping some natural gas fired turbines around and the more modern coal plants that can be automated as backup will not mean the full cost of those facilities at full capacity will continue. Your fuel savings cost analysis is flawed by that assumption.
California wind was down to 4% for a week. What percentage of conventional generation do you intend to keep? Thick pieces of metal don't like to be subject to rapid temperature swings, it creates large stress cycles in the material which leads to cracks that increase maintenance costs. Using fossil plants to provide load leveling and stability for windmills is expensive, inefficient and generates emissions. Those additional costs and emissions should be assigned to the windmills.
The fuel savings cost analysis is conservative.
I'm arguing for a combination of renewable distributed generation and storage, conservation, and plugin hybrid vehicles. Light electric rail, bike trails, tuned inductive recharging strips under highays to charge plugin hybrids while they are in transit, off shore wind/wave floating power stations, biogas fuel cell/turbine grid backup, and more ... to replace the current energy economy.
Will it happen overnight? Nope. But it can happen in a decade or so, much faster than any other tentative replacement for GHG sources, like nuclear, geothermal, hydrogen (pie-in-the-sky), fusion, space based collectors, clean coal, coal to liquid... and so forth.
I would like to see your cost estimate, reliability analysis and timetable for doing this in 10 years, for example, what will happen to all the conventional cars and trucks that exist now and will be built in the next 10 years?
For the record my recommendation is this;
1 Eliminate all subsidies.
2 Add a conservative cost estimate to each source for all externalities, CO2, particulates, mercury, cadmium, sulfur, NOx, radioactivity, bird kills, water pollution, noise, intermittency, waste disposal etc.
3 Increase R&D spending for non fossil energy sources from $2 per person to $200 dollars per person, $60 billion / year.
4 Push every technology as hard as possible, build prototypes of everything.
5 Build one or two full scale commercial sized plants for each promising technology. Publish all of the data including construction cost, operation and maintenance cost and energy production figures.
6 Stand back and let the marketplace choose winners and losers.
We are not smart enough to pick winners and losers now. Our goal should be to create a SYSTEM in which the best technology, whatever it is, is developed and implemented in the shortest possible time.
I believe that in the long run fission would dominate under these rules, but if something better comes along that would be great. Until these rules are implemented I will continue to make the case for fission.
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 1:33 pm
14 Nov 2007
I have discovered an error in my analysis of Gar's system. The revised sections are below. The full review has been posted at.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/12/63111/0928/#37 ...
If the U.S. was using the proposed system in 2006 and we started july with all the pump storage units charged to 100%, they would have been empty in 2 days, and remained so for the rest of the summer. We would have had nationwide blackouts during a massive record heat wave and they would continue till fall. I believe the death toll would have numbered several hundred thousand.
5 The U.S. consumes an average of 1,600 watts per person. The proposed storage system is sized for 12 hours with a 1.5 safety factor, 18 hours of energy storage, priced at $10 / KWh. However the author did not include the capital cost of the energy conversion equipment and balance of plant, $602 / KW.
This is a $431,000,000,000 error.
The author uses a cost of $1.0 billion per 2000 KM in his spread sheet. He has eliminated the cost of conversion stations to boost the AC to HVDC and back to AC at the other end of each line. He has also eliminated the cost of line losses.
This is an $85,000,000,000 error.
It appears that this price does not include the cost of land for right of way.
Correcting for the two errors total system cost is $3,000,000,000,000.
Pangolin said;
If we can provide the current per capita power consumption at $25K per head without fossil fuels or nukes that is a bargain that should be pounced upon. That's about the original value of my car.
It seems like a lot of money to me, $100K for a family of four, and that's just the construction cost. You have to pay an electric bill in addition to that. Denmark and Germany still get most of their electricity from fossil fuel yet they pay 25 - 30 cents per KWh for their enormous subsidies of wind and solar.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/elecprih.html
As I'm not an engineer I would send you to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District for data on how these things are done. All I know is that they have managed to increase their percentage of green (no coal, nukes) power in their mix every year while managing a rapid population increase...
Wind and solar power installation is a daily activity in California and receives little comment except for celebration of new systems. New sources come online almost every single day.
Ok, I looked at it.
New wind and solar may get most of the press but they account for only 2 - 3 % of your power.
http://www.smud.org/community-environment/images/powercon ...
60% comes from natural gas, 23% from hydro and 4% from coal.
Nuclear power is tainted. (see anti-nuke factsheet The existing nuclear power industry is not clean and has no plans for clean operation. It's not really a matter of dispute. A dirty nuclear fuel chain is more profitable than a clean(er) one and has remained the status quo to date. You can suggest the US moves to a thorium fuel cycle but I wouldn't hold dinner. The profit is in holding the poison over our heads as a threat.
That anti nuclear fact sheet is a real hoot. Where are the facts? This thread is about wind, but lets look at their #1 fact.
1. It doesn't take an accident for a nuclear power
plant to release radioactivity into our air, water and soil.
All it takes is the plant's everyday routine operation,
and federal regulations permit these radioactive releases.
Guess what, every time you exhale you release radioactivity into our air, water and soil.
You and I and everybody else are walking leaking nuclear waste repositories.
Here is a fact. Coal plants kill over 20,000 Americans each year.
http://www.cleartheair.org/dirtypower/docs/dirtyAir.pdf
They are killed by mercury, sulfur, cadmium, arsenic, particulates etc. Coal plants also release radioactive materials. The population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants per unit energy.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain ...
But the risk of the radiation from coal plants is tiny compared to that of the other toxic materials.
SMUD gets 4% of its energy from coal plants. Those coal plants release 4 times more radiotoxicity into the environment on your behalf than if SMUD was 100% nuclear. More importantly, the non radioactive toxic emissions from that 4% injure and kill far more people than the emissions from a 100% nuclear system would.
Had the U.S. continued with the expansion of nuclear power that started in 1970 all that natural gas being burned for heat in power plants, homes, shopping malls and factories could be diverted to transportation. That would dramatically reducing oil imports and the flow of cash to the mid east, while improving air quality and our security until battery or hydrogen technology becomes practical and widespread.
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:44 pm
17 Nov 2007
[...]
It means 100% of the ice will be gone in the next 4 years.
Really? Are you sure?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_packs#2007_record_low_Arctic_sea_ice
Based on the extreme drop in 2007, scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reduced their estimates on when the first ice free arctic ocean would appear, predicting this to happen as early as 2030
2030 is not 2011.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:30 am
18 Nov 2007
From your link. Who knows for sure?
If the trend suddenly changes, as it usually has over the millenia, the ice might grow in volume again. It might last until 2030 even? So no problem, right?
But to change that trend back to the usual waning and waxing cycles of the ice, the natural GHG climate balance would have to be restored. For now the trend seems to be melting, at an exponential rate.
Increased severity of storm and drought patterns seems to follow GHG trends as well. But maybe you don't mind taking these chances. "Shoot the dice and wear a blindfold, I know you're not afraid to look the fool." (Dave Bromberg)
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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susnter Posted 11:13 am
24 Aug 2008
What we need is mandatory sterilization of anyone wishing to immigrate to the US. Same for those already here with 2 kids or more. We should deport any with more than two.
Birthcontrol clinics in Mexico would help more than any other suggested solution. Of course you have to get by the religion business which has control over their uneducated minds.
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susnter Posted 11:20 am
24 Aug 2008
Hispanics are amonth the LEAST EDUCATED groups in the US. And now State Farm wants them to make decisions as to how to operate the country??? VOTE!!! Insanity!!!
State Fram could do something positive by investing the same money to educate (environmental and population education) the HIspanics so that their vote would be worth something.
Greed has no linmits. State Farm figures that they will make more money from this and the huge litters of kids that Hispanics have. They are environmental criminals in my book. Destroyin the US and the world, baby, after baby, after baby.
I wrote and cancelled my $12k a year in policies with State Farm.
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