Phase out electricity emissions in a decade!
We don’t need to keep burning coal, oil , and gas for electricity 37
-
Posted 12:51 PM on 12 Mar 2007
by Gar Lipow -
Posted in
Read More About
Gar Lipow, a long time environmental activist and journalist with a strong technical background has spent years immersed in the subject of efficiency and renewable energy. He has written extensively on the economics of solving the global warming, and why pricing externalities (though important) cannot be the main driver of such solutions.
His on-line reference book compiling information on technology available today, “No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming”, is available at http://www.nohairshirts.com.
His articles on the economics and politics of solving the climate crisis have been published in Z magazine and a number of small journal.
Add a Comment
You are not logged in. Thus, you cannot post a comment. If you have an account, log in. If you don't have an account, well, by all means go make one! Meet you back here in five.
Comments View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 6:25 am
12 Mar 2007
Interesting
I wonder how the economics play out between pumped hydro and flow batteries. :O
Permalink
WWAGD?! Posted 6:42 am
12 Mar 2007
Sign Me Up
I have yet to see any downside mentioned for wind.
I like the Wind to Hydrogen systems, but I understand your grid design makes that less necessary....the hydrogen could be used locally at each generating station to make up for low wind.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 6:51 am
12 Mar 2007
Windpower fantasy-numbers vs Denmark's reality
What were your operation and maintenance costs? How much did the roads cost? How many gallons or barrels of oil were required for lubrication and cooling? How much leaked-out every year, needing to be replaced? How much was your gasoline, diesel and jet-fuel -- for powering maintenance vehicles -- costing? What were your jetcopter, truck and crane capital-costs? How many maintenance trips were required per turbine and per kWh? How many construction and maintenance workers were required? How many were killed in the line of duty every year and per kWh? How many many members of the public were killed (from turbine incidents and pumped-storage dam breaches) every year and per kWh? How were you getting capacity-factors of 30.5% when those have only seen at optimum sites? Did those capacity-factors account for broken windmills?
images.google.com/images?q=broken%20wind%20turbine
What were your overall costs per kWh? Denmark is experiencing windpower costs of over $2/kWh. In contrast, US retail electricity costs to the customer, including delivery, are typically around $0.10/kWh. If we adopt Denmark's strategy of heavy windpower-investment combined with pumped-storage, how could our electricity costs drop? If windpower is less-expensive than any other non-hydro power source, why is it subsidized in the US?
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 7:04 am
12 Mar 2007
I like the Wind to Hydrogen systems
In general, just think of hydrogen as an electric storage device. And compare it to other electric storage devices.
On that basis, Hydrogen is rather silly when compared to other energy storage devices.
While a great education tool to lure people out of their existing paradigmn. Is itself rather silly.
Mainly because it's actually rather bad at energy conversion, infrastructure, and storage.
But if you are really sweet on fuel cells
Or things like fuel cells
You might want to take a look at Flow Batteries.
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/01/about_f ...
_
There's also other types of industrial storage to look at.
Oddly, compressed air has been benefitting from the super high pressure systems originally developed for hydrogen.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 7:07 am
12 Mar 2007
NucBuddy
I thought we went over this ;D
If Nuclear is so amazing, then why should it get a thin dime from the public?
Much less more money than all renewable energy programs combined.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 7:09 am
12 Mar 2007
Windpower
GreyFlcn,
The subject is windpower.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 7:16 am
12 Mar 2007
Okay
Then we'll play it that way
The reason it's subsidized is because all other sources of energy are subsidized.
Except of course Renewable Hydro which actually did lose all of it's subsidy.
Which is a shame, since offshore hydro has a lot of potential due to new HighVoltage DC cables.
_
Furthermore, the Europe in general pays much more for energy than the US. Regardless of it's source.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 7:27 am
12 Mar 2007
Windpower
GreyFlcn wrote:
The subject is windpower.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 7:39 am
12 Mar 2007
I guess the real issue
Is that even though Wind does get a $18 per MW subsidy.
That subsidy is only approved for 1 year at a time.
The simple change of approving the very same subsidy for 10 years in advance would drastically lower the cost of production.
Making it so that investors could make longer term investments would make it less costly to secure funding.
_
They could even limit it to the next 6000MW of new capacity.
Permalink
SoggyInSeattle Posted 7:55 am
12 Mar 2007
Some small issues with your model
You seem to be comparing the wholesale costs of your new system with the retail price we're currently paying ($200 billion a year).
Also, there's no way we could role out such a huge system in 10 years. If we asked GE, Vestas et al to increase production as fast as they could, they still couldn't build enough turbines to fill this model.
But let me make a few suggestions:
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 8:45 am
12 Mar 2007
Danish wind prices
>Denmark is experiencing windpower costs of over $2/kWh.
I'd want to see documentation for that. Denmark does have the highest electricity costs around, but that applies to all Danish electricity not just wind. And it is around 20-25 cents per kWh regardless of whether the electricity from wind, coal, oil or natural gas.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 9:01 am
12 Mar 2007
Rollout time
If we looked at this as an emergency situattion then we could roll it out in ten years. Look at how quickly we went from civilian to military production in WWII.
It takes 6 Months from approval to create a wind farm - put in roads, put up towers, put turbines -everything. Including approval process it takes 18 months. Assume time to scout and find site, let us say 2 years from conception to electricity.
So the question is, could we really not roll out factories to make wind turbines in a reasonable amount of time? We are talking 607,000 2.5 Meg turbines over ten years 61,000 turbines per year (or say 100,000 turbines a year to allow time to get up to speed) A blade factor produces 1,200 blades annualy. So 100 new factories could more than produce the turbines needed. Presumably you would need addition factories for towers and other components as well, so perhaps 500 new factories total. How this unfeasible.
I'm kind of laughing at having to defend the feasibility of this: Again we ought to be phasing in massive amounts of efficiency gains so as not to need this much electricity. Wind is not the only carbon neutral source. We ought to be using solar, geothermal, wave, major ocean currents as well. (And of course we could use solar to provide most of our low temperature heat too.) But it is still more feasible than what we are doing today.
Permalink
SoggyInSeattle Posted 9:09 am
12 Mar 2007
$2 a kW/hr Doesn't pass the laugh test
It's hard to know exactly what wind power costs, but let's take a ballpark guess knowing the GE, Goldman-Sachs, Puget Sound Energy and others think there's money to be made.
Here are the sources of revenue
1) The federal subsidy is less than $0.02 a kW/hr
2)the wholesale price of electricity is about $0.05 kW/hr
3) PSE charges an extra $0.02 kW/hr to get your power from wind, so let's use that as the extra the a windfarm owner can get by selling power at a premium as green.
Total revenue is less than 10 cents a kW/hr. So all costs, including construction, M&O and profit, must be less than 10 cents a kW/hr or these companies are losing money.
These are just estimates, but $2 kW/hr doesn't pass the laugh test.
Permalink
SoggyInSeattle Posted 9:15 am
12 Mar 2007
Roll out in 10 years
Yes, we could do this if we use WWII type central planning and don't care about costs. But then your $1,300 a kW are going to need to be increased by at least a factor of 2.
Five years ago Zilkha energy started working on the Kittitas Wind farm (http://www.horizonwind.com/projects/whatweredoing/kittita ...)
They are still working on getting a permit. It's amazing how much NIMBYs can separate what we should be able to do and what we can do.
Permalink
David Roberts Posted 9:16 am
12 Mar 2007
"Can't"
People sure toss that word around a lot. I think what they mean is, "it would be a big fuss and a lot of money." But that's not the same as "can't."
www.grist.org
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 10:19 am
12 Mar 2007
Is Denmark really paying $2.41/kWh for wind?
Gar Lipow wrote:
I am assuming that Danish electricity costs $0.30/kWh (as reported on Energy Blog), and that 20 cents of that is "taxes" (also as reported on Energy Blog) -- a euphemism for windpower subsidies. This article in the Copenhagen Post...
cphpost.dk/get/100287.html
...reports that windpower accounts for 8.3% of Danish electrical energy (e.g., 8.3% of total yearly kWh-delivered are sourced from wind). $0.20/kWh / 0.083 share of total electrical energy = $2.41/kWh.
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
And France, with 80% nuclear saturation, has the lowest electricity production costs at EUR 3 cents/kWh. Is there a pattern here?
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
That's how a subsidy works, Gar. You don't actually tell your customers they are paying $2.41/kWh for windpower. You charge $0.30/kWh for all electrical energy, and when that energy is inexpensively sourced from nuclear generating stations in Germany, Sweden and France, you use the difference in price to pay $2.41/kWh for the 8.3% of electricity that is sourced from wind.
.
I admit, however, that windpower in Denmark could actually be higher than $2.41/kWh -- with further subsidies coming from other tax-sources such as income, property, etc. For example, the reality of that very other-subsidies scenario seems to be hinted at here (same Copenhagen Post link as above):
cphpost.dk/get/100287.html
.The take-home point is that analyses can be twisted -- and significant costs "accidentally" overlooked -- by industry propaganda agencies such as the AWEA (and some of the most-important figures in your Google spreadsheet were sourced from the AWEA), so it is helpful to compare their claims against the real-world experiences of nations that have already attempted to do as the AWEA advocates the United States do.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 10:47 am
12 Mar 2007
My AWEA source are better than your zero sources
Nucbuddy, I note the breataking assumptions you make. "20 cents taxes = 20 cents subsidy for wind power". Come on - you just assume it. No other reasons to tax electric generation than wind subsidies. Also the main place I used AWEA was for capital costs - total expenditures on wind and total capacity added - not exactly something where they have an incentive to lie. (I did the arithmetic to turn it into dollars per KW.) Hell, if they wanted to lie they would be better off to downplay. For that matter, my second source in the spread sheet was the DOE who confirmed that capital costs run from $1,300 to $1,700.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 10:54 am
12 Mar 2007
'We are willing to pay it, no matter the cost.'
Gar,
Where are the electricity taxes going? Are there other tax revenues being funnelled into windpower, as Danish Energy Minister Flemming Hansen seems to be admitting?
cphpost.dk/get/100287.html
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 11:10 am
12 Mar 2007
Well
I will say this.
Wind is nice, but I doubt it will end up being the backbone of any infrastructure, unless it's a small nation near the coast, with a nice shelf, and no ocean currents.
Which is kinda rare.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 2:40 pm
12 Mar 2007
Danes call windpower an 'expand[ing] black hole'
Gar Lipow wrote:
As we can read in Danish newspapers, the cost of windpower is the energy issue in Denmark. Where else would the money be going?
.
cphpost.dk/get/100287.html
cphpost.dk/get/100188.html
cphpost.dk/get/100170.html
cphpost.dk/get/95702.html
cphpost.dk/get/93602.html
cphpost.dk/get/91793.html
cphpost.dk/get/91348.html
cphpost.dk/get/88253.html
cphpost.dk/get/80032.html
cphpost.dk/get/77083.html
cphpost.dk/get/76102.html
cphpost.dk/get/67286.html
cphpost.dk/get/65119.html
cphpost.dk/get/58303.html
cphpost.dk/get/57573.html
cphpost.dk/get/57541.html
.It seems that the question on every Dane's lips is, "Where are we going to find the money to pay for expansion of windpower?" Where else would the electricity tax revenues be going; why would it be that no other european nation has electricity costs that are nearly as high; and why would it be that european national electricity costs rise with increasing wind market-penetration, and fall with decreasing wind market-penetration?
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
The principle of economy in logic demands that we not seek weird explanations for things, when non-weird explanations suffice.
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
Gar, the AWEA is an advocacy organization. Advocacy organizations are in the business of making things they are advocating look good. Wind looks better when its capital costs look lower. How did you come to the conclusion that the AWEA, a windpower advocacy organization, does not have an incentive to lie about the true capital costs of windpower?
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
Yes. Windpower looks good when it looks cost-competitive. Has someone here suggested the opposite?
.
Gar Lipow wrote:
Did the DOE get its numbers from the AWEA? Did its estimate include roads, helicopters, and other capital costs? If Denmark considers its $0.30/kWh electricity cheap compared to what it would cost if wind market-penetration were increased there at all beyond its present 8.3%, the AWEA's numbers would seem to be fraudulent.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 3:05 pm
12 Mar 2007
Where are taxes going?
You brought up the issue - you answer it. Clues:
Denmark applies a 25% VAT tax to electricity - which goes to general revenue, and probably costs a lot more than wind generators. Denmark also has an "efficiency" tax which subsidizes conservation measures and thus can't be used for wind. Denmark has a carbon tax - some of which is spent on wind, but by no means all. I'm guessing Denmark spends more subsidizing combined heat and power than wind, but you are welcome to post figures showing otherwise.
Denmark is not comparable anyway to U.S anyway - because it is a small country: you would get better results with an EU wide wind grid
GreyFic:
>Wind is nice, but I doubt it will end up being the backbone of any infrastructure, unless it's a small nation near the coast, with a nice shelf, and no ocean currents.
You have a reason for saying this other than bare assertion. The great plains of the U.S. alone could provide many times our current demand. Offshore wind resources alone could provide many times our current demand. The Rocky mountains, and various other regions could supply a substantial portion of current demand again. So we have plenty of wind resources. We need to upgrade our grid anyway: deregulation of generation has resulted in perverse incentives, a neglect of transmission and distribution system, and generally a grid that really sucks. Storage is useful for any system; for dispatchable power it saves capital by letting the system run at optimum capacity and storing offpeak for production for peak use. For non-dispatchable power, it provides shaping, and turns it into dispatchable capacity. Given that why not add wind to those two components.
As to incidental expenses - O&M for wind plants, maintenance (for example broken turbines) - well O&M is rising for the conventional electricty industry as well. The long term trend in fuel costs seems to be up. A lot of our existing plants are aging, and will either require more maintenance or replacement (and the capital costs of new fossil fuel plants have been rising too.)
In short, wind still looks cheaper than continued fossil fuel.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:04 pm
12 Mar 2007
Well there certainly is potential
Well there is potential for wind.
However only in places where the wind blows reliably.
Offshore can be good, however if you're dealing with offshore, why not go the extra mile and do ocean current energy, which runs 24/7.
_
Now wind could be good given a good storage mechanism.
Luckily it looks like UltraCapacitors weren't all hype.
http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/MainSt ...
But then again, that'd probably play more favorably for solar than wind.
Since if you can generate electricity at any time of the day, then generating it with soon-to-be inexpensive solar would be your best bet.
_
Way I see it, mechanical energy systems aren't going to get much better. Sure you can streamline, and you can use cheaper materials.
But in the end it's not going to get any easier to make them, and as mentioned, they are rather high maintenence.
Solar on the other hand has 2 big breakthroughs coming through, which we've already made, and are just waiting for commercialization.
1 is drastically cheaper materials and manufacturing
2 is double triple or higher energy conversion effeciency by altering light via the use of quantum dots.
And for more industrial applications, thermal solar, like Stirling Solar Dishes can compete with nuclear.
Wind will have it's place. But it will be where it's most convenient, not the mainstream.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:11 pm
12 Mar 2007
One thing to be said though
Wind works a hell of a lot better on a farm than Solar.
Since you can put it in the middle of a field of crops, and it doesn't block much sunshine, or eat up much space.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 4:53 pm
12 Mar 2007
The low spark of low-density energy sources
Gar Lipow wrote:
O&M (and pollution, and risk) is intrinsically-high for diffuse energy sources such as wind. This follows from the essential governing principle of energy exploitation, Gar. You cannot hope to compete if you are putting your money on a diffuse energy source. Instead of one heat-engine in one location, windpower involves ~10,000 polluting and risky mining-machines spread out over large distances. There is no way to change this intrinsic liability of windpower. Nothing about this situation can evolve in windpower's favor.
Contrary to your assertion, O&M costs for dense energy sources are dropping.
nei.org/index.asp?catnum=4&catid=1014
.Gar Lipow wrote:
That is also incorrect.
nei.org/documents/U.S._Nuclear_Industry_Fuel_Costs.pdf
US heavy-metal-fission fuel costs have been almost-continuously dropping from 1995 ($0.73/kWh) to 2005 ($0.45/kWh). This trend has continued even of late, while raw uranium costs have skyrocketed.
world-nuclear.org/info/inf22.html
.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
.Importance of fuel-cost to overall energy-cost is inversely-proportional to energy density. High-density energy sources such as fissionable heavy-metal have intrinsically-low fuel costs. Medium-density energy sources such as oxidizable coal have intrinsically-medium fuel costs. Low-density energy sources such as draggable-wind have intrinsically-high fuel costs.
Nothing anyone does or says can change these characteristics, because they stem from the most-basic energy-source property -- density. High-density energy sources such as fissionable heavy-metal are inherently low-risk. Low-density energy sources such as draggable-wind are inherently high-risk. It will never -- because it can never -- be any other way.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 5:23 pm
12 Mar 2007
Well
The one thing nuclear over renewables,
is that most most renewables cannot provide reliable baseload power.
Given high density storage.
That, -- can -- change.
_
I suggest ya read up on UltraCapacitors.
Since if they deliver what they claim.
You can kiss nuclear goodbye.
Oddly, this Arizona State article, makes me wonder "Why didn't they think up this sooner?"
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 5:49 pm
12 Mar 2007
Density is key
GreyFlcn,
Intermittency is irrelevant. Solve the intermittency "problem", and you have solved nothing.
Do you think dense energy cannot benefit from storage?
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter14.html
.Storing diffuse energy doesn't solve the problems of its being inherently expensive, risky, polluting, unscalable, and unsustainable.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 6:22 pm
12 Mar 2007
Uhm? That assumes your saying nuclear isn't those
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 3:44 am
13 Mar 2007
Intrinsic my butt
In some applications, fuel cost is inversely proportional to energy density, but you are wrong to insist that this is an intrinsic property. What you describe is a trend not an intrinsic property. Trends by definition change with time, intrinsic properties do not. Using coal or oil to heat homes is not intrinsically more cost effective than using natural gas and the energy density by volume of the natural gas that feeds my furnace is orders of magnitude less dense by volume than home heating oil. You are also confusing the issues of centralized energy generation and energy density. The issues are related but the economics are much more complicated than what you are proposing.
Your arguments tend to be inconsistent from thread to thread. In another comment, on another thread titled "Biodiesel powerplants are more-efficient than coal" you argue that generators are more efficient than coal. In a very narrow sense, this is true, but you change hats as needed to suit your arguments. Instead of one heat engine in one location, diesel generators would involve placing 10,000 polluting and risky machines spread out over large distances (which was the gist of that article). Now I realize that you would agree with that on this thread, but that didn't stop you from defending diesel generators over coal on another. The main variable in this case is cost of fuel. We could not use generators as an analogy for wind turbines because the fuel for one presently costs about $4.00 a gallon and the fuel for the other is free. An interplay between other factors over time will now determine the feasibility, but that feasibility is not locked into place by imaginary intrinsic laws of physics.
Trends change. If everybody and his brother started building nuclear power plants, the cost of nuclear fuel would fluctuate with supply and demand as the costs of other fuels do. The cost of oil is not going to go down as more and more of it is used, and neither will nuclear fuel. The costs of cleaning up waste products as with coal and nuclear also have to be accounted for. The big advantage of wind and solar as everyone knows is the stability and extremely low cost ($0) of the fuel used to drive the electrical generation machines. Time will tell.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 7:34 am
13 Mar 2007
Two stastical points
A lot of this argument is aimed at questioning two points of my model - the cost of building these generators and the value of the electricity.
For costs, as I pointed out, right in my model there is a second source(WORD File) - the Northwest Power Council - part of the Bonneville Power administration.
As far as value - someone complained because I calculated the value of generation as a percent of retail price.
OK: here is an alternate way to calculate the value of replacing generating capacity:
Generating costs for stockholder owned utilities in 2005 were $126.672 billion dollars(large PDF).
For profit utilities (which are mostly stockholder owned) represented about 63% (large PDF) of revenues from electricity.
So dividing 126.672 billion dollars by 63%, you end up with generating costs at 201 billion dollars, higher than my previous estimate. If you want to lower that fractional denominator further by subtracting any non-stockholder owned private investors (assuming you can find that statistic) you will end up with even higher generating costs.
So, the 197 billion dollar generation cost I used appears to be conservative.
I'm pretty sure any reasonable cost estimate for electricity generation nationwide (as opposed to transmission or distribution) by our current system will be in the 195-205 billion dollar range.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 5:58 pm
21 Mar 2007
Windpower only produces tax-sheltering
GreyFlcn wrote:
Now it is $19 per MW. It does not constitute a major portion of American windpower subsidies. That and the other windpower subsidies are detailed and referenced here:
aweo.org/Schleede.html
Windpower functions essentially as a money-losing tax shelter.
.
GreyFlcn wrote:
The tax credit covers the first ten years of production. The law needs to be renewed every two years, but that does not affect installations already receiving the credit.
google.com/search?q=windpower+production+tax+credit+%22ten+years%22+%22two+years%22
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:07 pm
21 Mar 2007
Great job Gar!
The HVDC grid is very important. I think that high voltage capacitors, either built into the power lines or in separate facilities along the grid, would provide enough storage.
And then there is distributed generation from biogas digestion used in solid oxide fuel cell/turbines for backup power. The methane release prevented, waste water recycled, and organic fertilizer produced with systems like this are all great byproduct benefits.
And the fuel cells also run on natural gas. The ultimate fossil fuel backup energy supply. There is enough of this source for many decades converted underground from coal and oil.
And I think the cost of wind power will drop signifigantly with mass production and a switch to wind machines three times the size of the current largest multi-megawatt machines.
Mounted on the nearly deserted northern great plains and offshore on floating wind/wave power platforms. 50,000 of these larger scale machines could take over 25% of baseload power generation.
Conservation and distributed solar, small to medium wind, and biogas to fuel cell generation could take care of the rest, even with a massive shift to plugin vehicles.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 11:48 pm
27 Mar 2007
Wind power storage prgress
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/03/vrb_pow ...
Great development. Non-polluting and cost effective flow battery storage.
Could it backup the 500 kilovolt DC grid? yep, no reason why not. Except fossil and nuclear industry lobbyist opposition.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
Permalink
Engineer Posted 3:36 am
28 Mar 2007
Inconsistent numbers...
Nucbuddy wrote (regarding tax credits):
Interesting that in the first report, when calculating the benefits of wind production, they use a "generous" (their term) capacity factor of 27%, yet in calculating the tax subsidies, they use a capacity factor of 40%...
Perhaps someone is trying to skew the results???
Common sense is an oxymoron...
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 5:09 am
28 Mar 2007
Also
Any thoughts on bio-natural-gas as a power backup?
We got plenty of cow poops
Plenty municipal yard trimmings
And worst comes to worst, you can capture carbon from power plants, and combine it with electrically generated hydrogen, and presto.
Baseload natural gas from solar panels.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 9:56 am
05 Apr 2007
Wind Power Storage Progress
Flow batteries are great. But VRB estimates that they lowest price they can come down to in the forseeable future is $300 per kWh. In contrast, pumped storage is $10 per kWh of capacity. Because we need so little of it, it may be worth the added environmental costs to be able implement wind and sun more quickly.
In terms of fuel cells. If they can really make a fuel cell that can use methane with 50% efficiency for less than $250 per KW of capacity I agree that will be a great back up to a renewable grid, and would constitute a about 1% of kWh produced though a great deal more than that of capacity. I doubt landfill, sewage and animal husbandry waste plus mine emissions alone can supply that 1%, but even if most of it was mostly natural gas providing 1% of electricity from natural gas converted at 50% efficiency would not be an intolerable global warming burden.
Permalink
SustainableGreen Posted 2:05 am
26 Jun 2007
Lifespan of Windfarms?
Hey, all:
Hey, Gar: You wrote: "Wind farms last twenty years or more."
Don't you actually mean the components of installed equipment have a useful lifespan of ~20 years, requiring replacement or overhaul after that time?
Otherwise I completely agree with your position--add PV distributed to every rooftop possible and practical and you have the best solution!
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
Permalink
BILL HANNAHAN Posted 5:10 am
14 Nov 2007
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 ...
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. 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%.
Electricity consumption for the nation jumped 20% above average during july and august.
Nuclear plants run at 100% rated power all the time because of their low fuel cost, yet nuclear power production was 10% above average during july and august because utilities schedule refueling outages for spring and fall when loads are low. The rest of the shortfall was largely picked up by natural gas plants.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.h ...
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.htm ...
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 that 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.
Given the fact that wind varies widely, including the possibility of multiple days with little wind, the required storage capacity will be much 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.
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.
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.
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.
Correcting for the two errors total system cost is $3,000,000,000,000.
8 The author claims his design is 98% reliable. That is a dream, however if we built a more substantial system that could achieve 98%, we would still 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.
Permalink