Dear Umbra,
In your response about opposition to wind farms, you neglected in your enthusiasm to say how much electricity from wind would actually be used and what effect, if any, the farms would have on our overall energy use. Can you cite an example of actual reduction of fossil- and nuclear-fuel use brought about by existing wind farms on a general grid? And if so, couldn't conservation bring even more benefits, without "adding modestly" to the industrial depredations of yet more roads, power plants, transformers, and transmission lines?
Eric Rosenbloom
Kirby, Vt.
Dearest Eric,
Watch out, this answer is filled with numbers and metaphors.
Let's give wind power another look.
Global energy demand is on the rise. The only path toward a sane future is to work simultaneously on conservation and renewable-resource development. Wind offers us a road toward sustainable energy and economic generation -- especially in developing countries and in rural areas of developed countries.
In 2003, the U.S. generated 3.883 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. All non-hydro renewable sources combined -- wind, biomass, solar, etc. -- contributed about 2 percent of that supply. Wind turbines have generating capacities that range from 200 watts to 2 megawatts; by the end of 2004, the U.S. had 6,470 MW of wind capacity, and is expected to generate almost 18 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005. That's about 0.5 percent of our annual electric generation.
Some think wind could provide 20 percent of our electric supply; others claim that North Dakota alone has enough capacity to power a third of American households. But right now, as we can see, wind is a drop in the bucket, a balloon in a gale, a metaphor-rich tiny bit of our energy supply. I checked with the American Wind Energy Association to see whether they could regale us with tales of wind replacing nuclear power, and the like. That's difficult, and here's why. Right now, traditional fossil fuels and nuke plants are like your trusted day-care center: they have steady hours of operation and have proven they can take care of your "kidowatts." Whereas wind is like the younger sister you call to take the kids when you have to work late: a great gap-filler. Sometimes she's flaky (i.e., when the wind doesn't blow), but as she gets older (i.e., as technologies and weather prediction improve), she's more and more reliable. And someday, she might even work at the day care.
Returning from metaphor-land, I do have some promising news from AWEA: there are many examples of wind beating the old standbys when it comes to new bids for energy generation. Take the town of Lamar, Colo. When local activists forced their energy supplier to consider wind during the bidding process, natural gas was blown away. Wind was a clear winner on economic points, and will save area consumers $4.6 million in power bills in one year. Wind has also been smacking down natural gas during bidding in the Eastern U.S., according to the region's electricity transmission organization, PJM.
Wind's ace in the hole is that it is free. Technological development makes the case for renewables stronger, and conservation makes the load lighter. If capacity and technology improve steadily (or, in the case of wind, exponentially) while we take every opportunity to conserve and to shun coal and nukes, the arguments against renewables will weaken. And we will win.
Triumphantly,
Umbra
How to turn your turkey carcass into a spectacular gumbo
This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!
Comments
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amazingdrx Posted 8:03 am
18 Jul 2005
The big win in Colorado of wind over natural gas is no doubt based on kwh needed and generated, and the cost per kwh. With estimates that are conservative for the wind installation.
The rapidly rising cost of natural gas, with no end in sight, is hard to integrate into the equation, but should make the economic lead that wind has, increase rapidly.
I have heard that 20% figure for wind before, and heard a whole argument based on utility engineering that claims anything over 20% generated by wind is impossible due to wind variability.
My counter argument was that with a whole national grid, particularly on the great plains where very high and steady wind resources exist and with that wind input over a very wide area, the prospect of low wind conditions everywhere simultaneously becomes less likely.
I believe the 20% figure is based upon a windfarm in a local region that is more likely to see variations in wind speed.
It does not take into account using storage and new power management businesses that negotiate with companies that have high power use that agree to shut down during peak demand in return for lower power rates.
These tactics give backup fossil plants time to get online to buffer low wind time periods.
100 million electric cars connected to the grid when they are not being driven would provide storage to fill in for wind fluctuations. Kind of like a renewable energy storage account, when a car disconnected to drive others would be connecting, providing a bank of energy that would not be signifigantly depleted by individual driving habits.
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog
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jdhlax Posted 9:48 am
18 Jul 2005
All buildings should have solar collectors on their roofs, and additional power, if needed, could be provided by a windmill or windmills on the same property. That's all the electricity that we NEED, in any sense of the word.
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georgekao Posted 5:47 pm
18 Jul 2005
Renewable energy credits (or "green tags") can purchased by eco-conscious individuals who want to invest in green power to earn an environmental (and sometimes financial) return.
CleanEnergyTeam.com
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amazingdrx Posted 11:33 pm
18 Jul 2005
Wind generators sized for homes can also provide heat, electric, and battery charging for electric vehicles.
But the very large wind installations on the great plains can replace the devestation of the land, water, and air by present oil, coal, and nuclear... mines, oil wells, pipelines, waste storage, tankers, refineries, reactors.. and on and on.
30,000 one thousand foot wind generators along with conservation and electric cars is a viable alternative to the present condition, and that 1 cent per kwh wind energy (extrapolating here) as a basis for economic revival would make cleaning up the mess left in the past a real possibility.
With the economic devestation of soaring energy costs from imported oil, ever costlier natural gas, nuclear waste disposal, and coal pollution we simply will not be able to afford to clean up the mess already made.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:39 pm
18 Jul 2005
http://msmith.typepad.com/smithelectricco/solar_energy/
Latest update, he got $210 per credit!!
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ericr Posted 1:44 am
19 Jul 2005
The metaphor also makes a wrong turn about reliability with age. The wind turbine cannot become more reliable, because it still generates power only when the wind blows. (And below the ideal speed of 25-30 mph the amount of power generated falls off exponentially -- so that about two-thirds of the time wind turbines produce much less than their already low average of around 25% capacity.) Like an abused mate, it is the grid operators who must go to great lengths to better predict the whims of the wind so they have some idea when and how much the turbines will be adding power.
It is also problematic that Umbra turns to the industry lobby group AWEA for her answers about wind's real contribution. For example, she says that the U.S.'s 6,740 MW of installed wind power capacity "is expected" to generate almost 18 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005. The basis for that estimate is only the theoretical 30% capacity factor that the AWEA insists on despite the actual record being significantly lower.
According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2002, wind and solar together generated only 0.17% of the electricity used in the U.S., less than 5 TW-h. Almost all of that is wind, so from the average installed capacity between the end of 2001 and the end of 2002 (according to the AWEA) of 4,480 MW that represents an output of only 12.7% of capacity.
The people of Lamar, Colorado, insist that the winds are not puny. Nobody has suggested otherwise. Nor are the turbines. It is the usable power produced by them that is puny. The apt metaphor is Aesop's trembling mountain that gives birth to a mouse. At the AWEA's imagined 30% capacity factor, the 12,000-acre 162-MW Lamar facility would produce the equivalent of 3% of Colorado's electricity use. Realistically, however, it may provide less than half of that. And it would produce at that low average rate or better only a third of the time, times that would only rarely correspond to actual need.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:29 am
19 Jul 2005
No time now, but you got a rhetorical clobberin' comin'. Hehey.
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ericr Posted 8:09 am
19 Jul 2005
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amazingdrx Posted 2:58 am
20 Jul 2005
This current figure of 2 cents per kwh for wind...
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/28/982514.html
... takes into account any and all of your objections about wind variability (it is based on real world costs from actual windfarms), as does this comparison of overall financing, fuel, and maintenance costs.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/7/12/20731/0483
What does this last article leave hanging?
The huge cost of nuclear waste disposal and storage, devestation from coal mining and pollution, the 100s of trillions in cost of global climate disaster from CO2 emmissions over the next century, and the incalculable cost of a possible accident like Chernobyl that renders whole regions uninhabitable.
Wind has none of these costs. And the only present slight winner on cost over wind, natural gas is rapidly rising in price due to shortage.
As far as variability of wind, these solutions can answer that objection.
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2005/7/18/1459/58709/1#1
I heard no counter argument from you to any of this.
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ericr Posted 4:43 am
20 Jul 2005
And you are correct that large-scale storage would solve the problem of variability. Your examples of the latter, however, don't really change the current situation. For example, electric cars will simply add to demand, so unless they are all to be connected to a completely separate wind-only grid -- a possibility, but unlikely, and one in which people would have to be resigned to frequently not having enough charge to drive -- they have to be fed power when they are plugged in, whether the wind's blowing at ideal speed or not.
Anyway, giant wind facilities are being developed right now. They aren't waiting for networks of pumped hydro or electric filling stations. And the record so far is surprisingly pathetic (except financially).
The big problem I have with wind power is the huge footprint for such a lousy and small product. And the turbines are rarely being installed where there is already industrial build-up, but rather in many of the last unspoiled lands we have left in the world (e.g., New England's Berkshires and Green Mountains, the Flint Hills of Kansas, the Allegheny Ridge in the Appalachians, near Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin, Maui, the Scottish islands of Lewis and Skye, the Norwegian island of Andoya, New Zealand's Makara Hills, and so on, without ever having shown any actual benefit).
It does not pass environmental muster. It damages wild habitat and rural peace, and it doesn't change a thing about our energy use.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:30 pm
20 Jul 2005
Your pathetic ad hominem aside, let's examine that footprint. On say..the northern great plains, no one to object to the wind installations, only struggling farm communities that will benefit from the economic growth.
A 1000 foot, 20 megawatt wind machine will occupy a very small ground area. Most of it is up in the air. The base area and the guy wire anchors hardly take up any space, cattle, crops, or wildlife and prairie can exist underneath it right up to the base. Powerlines to connect the grid buried underground.
Compare this to the huge areas occupied and polluted by the present energy infrastructure..including mining, oil wells, pipelines, processing and generating plants, refineries, nuclear waste sites...and the plume of toxins spreading exponentially into the groundwater, rivers, lakes, oceans, and air.
There's your footprint, that's a FOOTPRINT!
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amazingdrx Posted 11:49 pm
20 Jul 2005
True enough.
But of course they will still provide storage, and reduce dependence on imported oil, creating benefits in a multitude of areas...from winning these oil wars without firing a shot, reviving the US manufacturing and export economy, and curtailing the main source of global climate disaster from greenhouse gas emmissions.
The average car is driven say..2 hours per day or less? That leaves 22 hours per day to act as part of this proposed renewable energy storage bank. with 100 to 200 million electric cars, that is a lot of storage.
And as far as increased electric power demand, that is exactly why conservation, solar cogeneration on every roof and over every parking lot, 30,000 20 megawatt wind generators, and the present (non-nuclear) electric power plants as backup are all needed to make this energy plan work.
Nuclear power is far too dangerous to continue with. Part of the savings in capital outflow, 500 million per day to pay for imported oil, from our country and the resulting economic boom from low, stable energy prices and a revived manufacturing base ought to be devoted to safely mothballing the entire nuclear nightmare.
Maybe this new reactor design...
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/7/18/1044211.html
...will safely "eat" the waste, it could be located underground at Yucca Mountain or a similar waste repository. Next time a safe one?
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ericr Posted 4:52 am
21 Jul 2005
That is indeed a large footprint far out of proportion to the small output. Two wrongs don't make a right.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:56 pm
21 Jul 2005
And wind and solar requires no fuel, causes no pollution, and remediates global climate disaster from CO2 emmissions.
And last but not least, what is your proposal for energy policy? Business and continuous oil war as usual? Nuclear powered hydrogen energy economy?
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ericr Posted 1:14 am
22 Jul 2005
And while wind is not changing anything about our energy use, it is industrializing huge amounts of wild and rural land -- hardly a green direction. As I pointed out in my first comment, the Lamar, Colorado, wind plant takes up 12,000 acres for an average output of perhaps 40 MW (25% of its capacity), only half of which might actually be used.
Extrapolating the figures I also cited before, it would require about 132,000 MW of installed wind capacity just to provide 5% of U.S. electricity use in 2002, turning well over 10,000 square miles of previously undeveloped land into industrial "parks." But by the time all that would be built, demand would have risen to make that small contribution almost meaningless.
And wind has its network of infrastructural support, too, including materials production, manufacturing, transport, road building, cement (a major source of carbon emissions), and transmission. I already mentioned some of the damage to the land and the negative impact on wildlife. The turbines also require a fair amount of power from the grid to start working, and each one contains hundreds of gallons of oil which must be periodically replaced.
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jdhlax Posted 9:33 am
22 Jul 2005
Putting anything industrial on natural land is devastation, by definition. That's why I'm strongly and unequivocally opposed to these projects. The only real solutions to these problems is to greatly lower the human population and for everyone left to greatly lower consumption. That, along with the solar panels on roofs and occasional windmills out back should take care of the problem.
That said, I'd probably always rather have a windfarm destroying the land than a mine or oil well. However, it's all destruction of natural areas.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:51 pm
22 Jul 2005
And 30,000 wind machines that produce the equivalent of a 20mw continuously operating generating source will replace the present generating capacity of the US.
Those 30,000 machines will occupy 3,000 square feet of nearly deserted northern great plains land per machine. The rest of the area around the machines and under them can be occupied by cattle, farm crops, wildlife, or prairie.
The roads necessary for building and maintenance will be minimal, the power lines will be buried. The energy used to build the wind machines is payed back in three to six months of operation in clean, renewable low cost energy.
Cement gives off CO2? Hehey, you're a funny guy eric.
Ever see those huge cement cooling towers on nuclear and fossil fuel power plants?
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amazingdrx Posted 2:59 pm
22 Jul 2005
I'm sure I can be happy living that way, and I'm sure most people would be happier that way. I'm also sure the majority won't agree or voluntarily do this in their own lives.
It has to be economically advantageous before the vast majority adopts a greener, happier, earth friendly, symbiotic, zen lifestyle.
But once we volunteers show it is economically advantageous, the happiness and quality of life aspects will be persuasive as well.
But until this whole mess on mother earth created by misplaced, misunderstood values is reduced and paradise is restored, I am advocating that the huge degradation from fossil and nuclear energy be replaced by wind, solar, wave, and current generation, and that oil burning transportation be replaced with battery electric transportation.
I see the huge wind generators being scrapped in 50 years after a good healthy duration of clean energy production. Everything in them recycled to make generations of much better technology.
And I see the land they occupied restored to native prairie grass in a few short years. And no trace leftover.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:23 am
23 Jul 2005
You are a real joker eric. Comparing lubricating oil to oil burned to produce energy as a source of pollution?
And comparing prairie wildlife "displaced" to mercury, acid rain, greenhouse gases, and other pollution from conventional powerplants that threaten to wipe out whole ecosystems.
Birds "displaced" a few hundred feet?
But seriously, keep it up. Your nonsense makes the anti-renewable energy political postion laughable. And humor is a great thing!
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amazingdrx Posted 1:44 am
23 Jul 2005
Maybe you should examine your own flakes, maybe that would be more helpful. (thanks to "Nathan Therm", Martin Short's victim-of-investigative-journalism character.)
GE is generating record profit growth from wind power!
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ericr Posted 4:37 am
23 Jul 2005
And please look back at your own words that I have been responding to. You said that wind "requires no fuel, causes no pollution, and remediates global climate disaster from CO2 emissions." Obviously wind's problems pale next to those of fossil and nuclear fuels -- I merely pointed out that wind power is not so "pure" as you wish.
Wind also, unfortunately, pales in how much useful electricity it produces. Pointing to GE's profits from wind (they also profit from nuclear plants and tank cannons) doesn't prove anything. How much less of other fuels does, say, Denmark use, because of their "20%" wind plant? The fact is their carbon emissions are still rising. Utility-scale wind's been around a while -- where's your evidence that it's done anything positive?
If wind could make a real change for the better, than of course its negative impact might be worth it. As it is, however, there is very little benefit (if any, other than profits for the manufacturers and developers and trickle-down payoffs for the locals) to balance even the smallest (or amusing, as you seem to find it) harm.
Finally, I didn't think I had to explain about cement. It's the production that gives off large amount of CO2. From Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, November 2001: "The average intensity of carbon dioxide emissions from total global cement production is 222 kg of C/t of cement." (Note that figure is for carbon; 222 kg C = 814 kg CO2.)
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amazingdrx Posted 6:34 am
23 Jul 2005
You will see from the chart headed "annual energy yield: 3.6 megawatt" that at 10 m/s average wind speed the 341 foot diamter machine produces 15 million kwh of power per year.
There are 8760 hours per year, a 20 megawatt continuouisly operating power source would produce 175,200,000 kwh per year.
Aproximately 12 times the 3.6 megawatt GE machine.
A wind machine 3 times the diameter of this one will produce 9 times the power. The hub of the larger machine is twice as high as the GE machine.
Windspeed rises with height above the ground. And since the output of a wind machine varies as the cube of the windspeed, only a small percentage rise in wind speed of 14% due to the added tower height will push the output up to the 12 times needed to equal the number of kwh per year yielded by a 20megawatt continuous source.
Kwh per year breaks through all the flawed extrapolation trying to compare wind to other sources.
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ericr Posted 7:56 am
23 Jul 2005
Further, there is no "continuously operating power source" of any kind, and wind is the farthest from that. You can cite KWh per year, but the fact is that two-thirds of the time output is less than the average that represents. For more than a third of the time, the wind facility in Searsburg, Vermont, is generating no power at all, so its yearly total is meaningless during those times.
So, as I suggested already, for wind to achieve an average output of 20 MW would require perhaps an installed capacity of 100 MW. And it still wouldn't be continuous.
And have you considered the practical engineering problems of the enormous blades you envision? Current models have to shut down and feather when the wind's blowing over 60 mph. Some have been torn up in slower winds. The strain of ever larger blades on a horizontal generator shaft (and the whole thing on a yet taller tower) would also appear to present some serious problems. This metastasizing vision of the technology suggests not promise but a dead end.
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ericr Posted 8:13 am
23 Jul 2005
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amazingdrx Posted 3:24 pm
23 Jul 2005
I'm betting they are fairly conservative and that even more kwh per year are typical. Those are conservative estimates based on real world results.
My extrapolation is based on the basic physics behind wind power engineering.
Double the diameter of the blades, you quadruple the area of the wind operating on the blades, and the power produced. Triple the diameter and you get 9 times the power.
Double the wind speed and you get 8 times the power from the same sized wind machine. Power rises as the cube of wind speed.
The example of continuous generation merely counts the amount of power, in kwh, that a 20 megwatt power source would produce if it ran for one year (8760 hours).
It is not meant to imply that wind or any other source is continuous, fossil and nukes are rated at 80% continuous operation. The general figure for wind is 40% of fossil powered generation. But these figures are misleading, only comparing kwh per year is straighforward.
It is a clear way to determine how large a wind machine would have to be to equal a fossil or nuclear power source. And the GE machine is rated in kwh per year produced at a given average annual wind speed.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:35 pm
23 Jul 2005
And the current wind power cost of 2 cents per kwh takes into account all inefficiencies due to wind variability and load conditions on the grid.
I think now that large wind systems are connecting to large power grids the variability problems are already being smoothed out.
The use of large energy storage systems based on superconducting technology are very promising. Electrical energy rides artound these rings with virtually no resistance, it is like an electrical flywheel where the electrons are the only things moving.
Power is added or removed by electromagnetic induction. Added when the sun shines and wind blows strong, and put back into the grid when wind is light, the sun is down, and demand rises.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:51 pm
23 Jul 2005
My 20 megawatt continuous equivalent rated wind machine example would take 40 installations to equal that one 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor.
All the nonsense is thus removed from calculating equivalent generating capacities for wind, solar, nukes, fossil...
The present generating capacity of the US is aproximately 600,000 megawatts. With most of it rated at around 80% operation time.
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ericr Posted 4:23 am
24 Jul 2005
Your stubborn refusal to see such realities and the actual experience of wind turbines -- with their nondispatchable highly variable production -- on the grid makes almost everything you say rather unreliable.
For example, the fact as reported by the Energy Information Agency is that wind power produced about 5 TWh of the electricity used in the US in 2002. That was with an installed capacity of about 4,480 MW (the average between the end-of-2001 and end-of-2002 capacities according to the AWEA). At 80% operating time, a 1,000-MW nuclear plant would produce over 7 TWh in a year. So it would take not 800 MW, as you calculate, of wind machine to equal that output but more likely well over 6,000 MW (requiring almost 500 square miles). And that would be less than 0.24% of the total electricity we used in 2002.
You talk a lot about the future and amazing technologies that will solve all our problems. But giant wind turbines are being built today, and their record is not very good. I ask again -- what is the actual production record of the Arklow Bank turbines? It's a simple question about the real world.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:03 am
25 Jul 2005
..Up for you a bit. This company run by the original founders of the company GE aquired and branded as GE windpower.
They are a few generations ahead of GE. US manufactured wind power!
If you want facts and figures that disprove the ultilty of wind go find them yourself eric. I'm only seeing good news on this front.
There are plenty of sites that feature bad news about renewables, google and enjoy! But don't expect much agreement with talking point based propaganda from anywhere but the fairthbased corporatist oil war fans.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:08 am
25 Jul 2005
Just as I said, that is the only way to really compare and rate energy output from various sources and calculate cost.
Clipper puts it's money on the line signing on to guarantee that power output.
Your facts and figures obscure this kind of analysis. To paraphrase Joe Friday ..Just the facts maam (er..eric).
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:19 am
25 Jul 2005
No clue or link to find a clue to what that figure is based upon?
Rating wind generators is usually done at a certain wind speed, sometimes this windspeed corresponds to the average wind speed where it is installed, but often it is not.
An arbitrary figure is usually chosen by the manufacturer.
If we rate a given wind machine at 10 mph wind speed, then the rating at twice that speed would be 8 times greater. That leaves a lot of leeway in your statistics.
So much so that they are meaningless. Stick to the standard that utility companies estimate costs, and sign contracts on. Kwh per year.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:27 am
25 Jul 2005
Read this about the area taken up, roads, power lines, land use...right up to the base!! Of the tower.
Once again your analysis is to laugh at. Hehehey.
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ericr Posted 4:16 am
25 Jul 2005
Making turbines bigger just means fewer of them for the same installed capacity. It won't change that dismal record.
Of course, if you only read sales brochures the picture is very different.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:28 am
25 Jul 2005
Do you know? How many, where, how were they rated? It is a very vague and unscientific combination of data from different sources. No power company would offer a contract based on those kinds of calculations and national energy policy ought not be based on them either.
The figures for the GE machine that I quoted in my exrtrapolation were determined by measuring the performance of that particular state of the art machine (well a couple generations behind the Clipper Wind design).
You are practicing sophistry, grasping at unconnected figures from different sources to obscure the facts.
The trade industry listing every last watt they could no matter if it is working or not. The anto-renewables Bush administration listing kwh generated by wind as low as possible.
After all they did delete all references to global climate change from final reports. The former lobbyist, who since quit in shame, is now going to work for Exxon. Going to his "reward" (bribe). Did this fellow edit that wind figure too?
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ericr Posted 12:00 am
26 Jul 2005
Could it be that the numbers are too embarrassing? Britain's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) doesn't even count offshore wind in its reporting of load factors for wind, presumably because rather than being more productive the offshore facilities bring down the average too much (1.8% in 2003, 15% in 2002 and 2001, 3% in 2000).
Finally, remember that Enron was a pioneer in industrial wind power, and under governor Bush Texas became a leader. GE, hardly a "progressive" conglomerate, bought Enron's wind business. Clipper's engineers are from Enron. The energy pirates have no problem with wind power. They know it's no threat to their other interests, and that as long as people think the wind machines are cleaning up the air the coal and nuclear industries get an easier ride; they're laughing all the way to the bank.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:41 am
26 Jul 2005
My extrapolation is done by taking an arbitrary point on the GE wind power graph. A known, proven source of dara that you have admitted is most likely accurate.
You can do it choosing any point on the graph. It does not depend on performance data from an offshore wind facility.
I favor these huge scale machines on the northern great plains for the bulk of US generation capacity. The point is that the facts and figures support my proposal.
I'm not sure what you are arguing, or what your idea for national energy policy might be. Just that you are agin' mine based on combining figures that don't go together at all.
I am proposing a practical, cost effective program for renewable energy to replace fossil and nuclear power with government leading that iffort, as it lead the war production effort that helped win WW 2.
My rationale is that we are in a series of oil wars, and the best way to win them is to stop depending upon imported oil for energy.
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ericr Posted 8:34 am
26 Jul 2005
You also missed the informattion about oil: Only 2.4% of our electricity is generated from oil. We export three times more than what we use for electricity. Our electricity use supports wars for natural gas, maybe (e.g., Afghanistan), but not for oil.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:24 pm
26 Jul 2005
See? Now, what is your idea for energy policy?
The oily status quo? Nuclear fusion/hydrogen economy paradise? Anything?
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ericr Posted 2:08 am
27 Jul 2005
And what would it take to replace oil in the U.S.? According the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, we used 39.2 quadrillion btus of oil in 2002, which is equivalent to 11,486 TW-h, which translates to a continuous power production rate of 1,311 GW. At the expected capacity factor of 25% for wind turbines, that means an installed capacity of 5,245 GW, 778 times the amount installed at the end of 2004, according to the AWEA.
At the average 50 acres per installed megawatt, that would be 410,000 square miles of wind plant, typically on previously nonindustrialized land.
Because of the the inefficiencies in our current use of oil (see below), more would probably not be needed to cover the inefficiencies of storage and conversion.
And that's with continuing to use coal, natural gas, and nuclear for electricity. To provide all of our electricity as well (3,660 TW-h in 2002, according to the Energy Information Agency), you would need another 1,671 GW of wind turbines, industrializing another 130,000 square miles. Since that's based on actual end use rather than input, the inefficiencies of storage would require maybe twice as much.
The damage: Land area equivalent to Texas plus California to replace oil, plus Montana to provide electricity, plus New Mexico to cover inefficiencies of storage.
And these calculations are based on 2002 use. Projections for the future are that demand will be steadily greater.
I'm sorry I don't have a solution to our energy needs. You don't, either, I'm afraid.
I would point out, however, that currently more than half of the energy in the oil we use and more than two-thirds of the energy going into our electrical system is lost (again, according to the Lawrence Livermore Lab). We could do quite a lot in improving our use of what we currently have (and will have for the foreseeable future). That would certainly have a more beneficial effect than endless swathes of industrial wind machines could ever have.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:43 pm
27 Jul 2005
National geographic has a flawed comparison of wind versus nuclear power that claims with 1.5 megawatt machines (not sure how they rated them) it would take about 1700 to equal a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor that would take up 1/2 square mile. These wind machines would take up about 2.52 square miles.
600 of these 2.52 square mile wind installations would equal the present US generating capacity under these vastly underestimated power calculations per area for wind.
That's about 1550 square miles. Out of a million square miles of the great plains. Less than 1/5th of one percent of the land area, optimum wind locations out on the plains away from anyone who would reasonably be bothered by them is certainly possible.
With my example of 40 huge 1000 foot wind machines replacing a nuke and each machine taking up only about 5000 square feet at the base. Cattle, wildlife, or crops occupying all but a small footprint under the machine, then the actual land area used is under 5 square miles total.
5 square miles out of a million on the great plains... compared to 300 square miles for the nuclear power equivalent.
The 5 square miles for wind can be returned to prairie once the wind machines have produced power for a few decades and become obsolete. They will even produce the clean energy needed to recycle them!
The 300 square miles of nuclear reactor space will be dangerous for thousands of years, as well as the 100s of square miles needed for mining, refining fuel, storing and processing waste,the thousands of square miles contaminated by leaking radiocativity spreading exponentially into lake, groundwater, rivers, oceans....
If you continue to denigrate real solutions, the neoconman administration will go ahead with clean clean and nuclear power, while touting the pie-in-the-sky nuclear/hydrogen fuel economy. And continuing continuous war for oily empire and political manipulation.
But that is alright with you? Correct?
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amazingdrx Posted 1:06 pm
27 Jul 2005
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ericr Posted 12:25 am
28 Jul 2005
The fact is that they require a lot of space around them, thus turning huge areas of rural and wild landscape into industrial "parks."
The Nat. Geograph. figure is apparently based on the nuclear plant having an 85% capacity factor and the wind plant having a 33% c.f. (again, based only on the industry brochures and not on actual experience). Even with that c.f., but using the actual average space required per megawatt in actual wind facilities (as recognized by FPL Energy -- the largest wind plant operator in the country -- and the EPA) -- 50 acres -- the wind plant equal to the 0.5-sq.mi. 1000-MW nuclear plant would be 200 square miles.
But real-world capacity factors would require a larger wind plant, perhaps 2.5 times more if we go by actual electricity used according to the EIA.
And because wind-generated power is highly variable, the output -- whatever the c.f. -- would be equal to or more than its annual average only a third of the time. Another third of the time, its output would be zero or near enough.
You'd still need that nuclear (or coal) plant to provide reliable electricity.
I don't like fossil and nuclear fuel any more than you do, but wind power isn't going to make them go away. It won't even significantly reduce their use.
You are the one touting pie in the sky -- and consequently the pointless destruction of the last rural and wild landscapes in the country.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:08 am
28 Jul 2005
and wind turbines in the nearly deserted million plus square miles of the great plains do not annoy 100s of millions of humans as does air travel.
"industrial "parks."
Parks is right in the case of wind power out on the prairie, the payments to farmers let them turn their unprofitable acres that barely pay the property taxes into wildlife refuges.
"the wind plant equal to the 0.5-sq.mi. 1000-MW nuclear plant would be 200 square miles."
Pure nonsense as is your usual schtick. Sophistry plain and simple.
"I don't like fossil and nuclear fuel any more than you do"
Oh really? You fooled everyone then, good job!
So your confabulated calculations not only top GE, but now The National Geographic? You are becoming quite the expert in this field! Good luck with that!
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ericr Posted 5:18 am
28 Jul 2005
Calling these facts "pure nonsense," "usual schtick," "sophistry plain and simple," and "confabulated," is not refutation but denial.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:36 am
28 Jul 2005
Thanks for the discussion, it yielded some great bloggerel for my site!
(blog+doggerel=bloggerel)
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ericr Posted 10:31 pm
28 Jul 2005
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ericr Posted 12:34 am
29 Jul 2005
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amazingdrx Posted 5:41 am
29 Jul 2005
Maybe the phrase "I give up" does not mean the same thing to you as to the rest of humanity?
Given your misuse of the language and confabulation of figures from disparate sources, that comes as no surprise.
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ericr Posted 6:41 am
29 Jul 2005
I have indeed given up trying to argue,
Because you've already built your castle
High in the air with the door shut behind you,
But I'll still raise my fist, whatever the hassle.
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ericr Posted 12:09 am
04 Aug 2005
During construction, the displacement of pronghorn deer, mule deer, and elk was considered to extend a half-mile farther, for a total of 503 acres.
The noise of the operating turbine was given as 105 dBA at 415 feet. (90 dBA is the level at which "constant exposure endangers hearing.") Concern was expressed for disturbance of raptor nests and sage grouse leks (mating areas).
This is just one turbine.
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amazingdrx Posted 4:20 am
05 Aug 2005
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tomgray Posted 12:51 pm
06 Aug 2005
As for the sound of the turbine, yes, it's estimated at 105 decibels at 415 feet. The EA also says that it "would not likely be highly noticeable more than 1,000 feet away . . . " (p. 50)
The displacement of elk, deer, etc., as noted, is DURING CONSTRUCTION.
Regarding disturbance to raptors, the EA says, " . . . the Proposed Action [construction and operation of the turbine] would not have any significant impacts on raptors."
I agree, useful reading, but it does little to suggest that wind energy is not a significant improvement over other energy options.
Tom Gray, American Wind Energy Association
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tomgray Posted 1:00 pm
06 Aug 2005
, which details the benefits of a single wind farm for a rural county in Colorado.
- Tom Gray, American Wind Energy Association
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amazingdrx Posted 5:30 am
07 Aug 2005
http://amazngdrx.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/5/1111297.html
Will check your site for recent information on sound deadening technology and bird protection. We CAN make wind power bird and wildlife friendly!! Onward!
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rucio Posted 11:03 am
16 Nov 2005
What more could the rustics want? Oh yeah -- any reduction of fossil or nuclear fuels?
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sdwestmo Posted 5:26 am
24 Nov 2007
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