The variability of Alberta wind and the difficulties of fossil power plants matching output

Alberta Electrical System Operator (AESO) is one of the few power companies that posts their weekly wind power input. Below are the 4 charts for April that can be found here. Hats off to Alberta for revealing to their consumers the contributions of wind to the power grid. Click pic.'s to enlarge.

Let's look at the week of April 5th. The top blue line represents the load or demand of electricity and is scaled on the right. You can see the daily needs vary between about 6600 MW and 8200 MW. The peak needs are during the middle of the day and the demand crashes down at night. Alberta has a significant amount of wind power in their grid. From these charts it appears the maximum wind input is 500 MW(the left Y axis scale) or about 6% of peak demand in April.

Look at how the peak demand is much lower on April 10th & 11&. April 10th was Good Friday and I assume there was a holiday which closed industries and decreased demand. Most demand graphs show a decrease use of electricity on weekends.

The chart of the next week April 12-18th shows that the demand on Friday April 17th, normalized to the weeday output. Electricity needs are less on Sunday April 12th than on Saturday April 18th. There is almost no wind power production on April 16th. Notice that in all these Alberta graphs the wind power can easily double or half in just a few hours, in fact that would be typical.

Click here to look at the next week of April 19th. There are even more erratic with enormous swings seen each day. On April 22nd at about 2am we are at peak wind of 430MW, then it quickly crashes to about 60 MW at 1pm, only to rise back up to 400 MW at 6pm and then crashes to 0 MW at midnight.

These enormous fluctuations of power all contribute to the electrical grid but the question we have to ask is Alberta able to follow that dramatically fluctuating wind input with an equal, exact and instanteous decrease or increase of fossil fuel consumption. AESO produces almost all of their electricity by either coal or natural gas, with only small contributions from nuclear and hydro.

The company slide to the right is from California ISO presentation, found here, and reveals how Cali handled these huge swings on March 23, 2005. Look at the left up arrow when at 1:30am wind is producing 1000 MW, that is a tremendous amount of power, equal to a medium sized power plant. The forecast is for the wind to die and by 10am that 1000 MW is now ZERO. There is no wind power for four hours until 2pm when the wind power steeply builds until it reaches 800 MW output at 10pm. These dramatic changes are typical for not only Alberta and Cali but for anywhere where turbines produce power.

The question we all have to ask, was the wind power to the right of the up arrow and to the left of the down arrow wasted, or did a natural gas plant follow this change in output instantaneously. Another very important question. The steep decrease in output occurred exactly as the morning demand was rising, causing the power plants to actually have to work twice as hard to follow the, Increased Demand + Decrease Wind Power = VERY FAST RAMPING, which is defined as change in output. Natural gas plants are better suited to change power output quickly because their output can be quickly changed by simply varying the amount of natural gas burns. A natural gas plants could follow this load change, if they wanted to. But the problem is the unpredictability of the wind.

In the evening as wind output was increasing, the needs curve of California ISO consumers were decreasing. The traditional power plants has to suddenly and quickly decrease their power output to match this. Look here for the daily California ISO demand curve.

Cali ISO likely forecasted a decrease in wind speed, but they would have difficulty in determing how quick would the power output change would occur. Remember, as discussed in post below, wind output does not vary equally with change in wind speed but Energy=xVel3, as a cube of wind speed. What if the wind decreased by 500 MW and then spiked up 200 MW for an hour or two, only to quickly spike down to zero. By looking at the Alberta output and any other outputs you can see that is the daily reality. This is not a problem when wind represents a small percentage of the total grid, because the power company has plenty of excess to make up for any shortfall in wind, they always have about 10% excess capacity to handle a short spike in demand. But we pay for this difficult to measure and unpredictable wind energy either way. When their predictions are inaccurate, that is what causes a blackout. A few posts below I stated RELIANCE on wind power will cause a blackout. I didn't say that wind power will cause blackouts, just a RELIANCE on wind will. We can't rely on wind!

Finally, there are two conclusions of this post. One - it is quite obvious that wind, even dispersed over a wide geographical area like Alberta, regularly falls to zero output. The Alberta grid is almost 50% coal. Do you think they will ever shut down a coal plant in Alberta, no matter how many wind turbines they build? President Obama mistakenly thinks that by raising taxes on coal that we will be able to put coal out of business and substitute wind? How can we possibly do that unless we either want blackouts a couple times per week or want to substitute reliable but expensive natural gas or nuclear for those coal plants. YOUR ELECTRIC BILLS ARE GOING UP!

Point two is that it is obvious that because of these very steep changes in wind output and input, traditional power plants are not able to act as a complete substitute. Instead there is a partial duplication of the wind energy with fossil energy. According to this slide from Cali ISO, they duplicated all of the wind output with traditional power between the left up arrow and the right down arrow. The real question is how much duplication is there averaged out? Is it only 5% or 20% or even 40% as calculated in this paper from Germany on page 6. (3.2 TWh of compensation and regulation by fossil for 8.3 TWh wind feed-in). Other papers put this figure to be much lower and I would hope so.

Again, this is not an extreme example, but typical of all wind farms, no matter how widely dispersed over a geographic region. America meet your new power supply, it is expensive, ugly and damaging to the environment. Take a look at the daily updated total wind output in Ireland and you will see it is the same. Click previous day and it is easy to get the message.

Speaking of environment, I have gotten to that yet. So far we have been talking dollars and cents. But environment is what has called me to this cause and we will get there soon. It will start to get bloody.


.

Texas Wind Doesn't Work, Why Boone Pickens Plan is Hot Air

The American Wind Energy Association makes the claim that Texas is ranked second in the US as a wind power resource. Number one is North Dakota and you can see their recent weekly output under the Wind Output Now link in upper right corner of the blog and on this youtube video.

Texas is Boones Pickens country and we were all bombarded with commercials and television appearances by the legendary oilman who went green and hoped to construct enormous Texas style wind farms and sell us wind --to save the day!!! Let's see how his claims stand up in reality.

Load is the term to describe the demand of electricity at a point in time and the highest load in Texas is during the summer afternoons when the air conditioning needs are the highest. This is the case for almost all of the United States. The companies plan and ensure they have enough capacity to supply the electricity for these few short months. In some areas, they have special peak units that are only used a few times per year on these very special high demand days. The chart to the left, from here, shows that at the time of peak demand only 342MW of 2300 MW of installed wind produced electricity, or 14%. (Double-click any charts to enlarge for better view) 2300 MW represents about 1500 turbines spread out across the enormous state of Texas. It's big they say. Each of these turbines cost approximately about $2-3 million dollars to build or a total of $3-5 billions dollars was spent on these turbines which only produced 7% of their total ability on this day. Please note: without getting too deep into cost detail now, coal plants cost more per MW to construct, while natural gas costs less and nuclear somewhat more, but all in the same ballpark when capitalized over 20-30 years per MW installed. These estimate vary and are increasing rapidly and a separate post is necessary to compare different construction estimates. Texas makes most of its electricity using natural gas, see their profile here.

The slide to the left, click to enlarge, shows you the 2005 annual capacity for those 1500 turbines is 29%. That means that the 2300 MW of potential power referred to in the slide above only averages out to less than 800 MW over an entire year. 667 MW is a ONE small coal or natural gas plant which might sit on 20 to 50 acres, while the 1500 turbines each sit on a large concrete pad requiring 4 acres of clear cut in a forested area, a total of 6,000 acres. If we assume the capitalized cost per MW for construction is similar, then the 30% capacity of the wind means the output cost is almost 3 times as much per unit of electricity.

America paid about three times as much per unit of output to build these beasts and let's see what we got for our money. Our money, because if you are a US Citizen you paid for them in federal tax credits which returned almost 70% of the construction costs to the investors within the first five years.

The slide to left the electricity graphs output for ALL 1500 turbines from January - July 2006. Ercot is the grid manager who provides the transmission of electricity to Texas. Outpout is often close to zero and is never over 1750 MW which means turbine output never breaks 75% of their potential, not even for a moment. The output is completely variable during these seven months of data. Can you see the smoothing of power that is so often referred to?

Electricity grids in the US are strained to provide their highest use in the summer months because almost all most air conditioning is produced with electricity. To the right you can see that there is an enormous daily fluctuation of output and output frequently reaches close to zero for these 3 billion dollars worth of turbines. If we had output graphs for nuclear, coal or natural gas the could be essential flat, however natural gas and some coal plants can be precisely adjusted to match the demand of users.

In the blog post below I address that each 15 minute interval has wide oscillations of output and for wind to work their has to be a substitution of fossil energy. Meaning, for every MW produced their has to be a synchronous and immediate decrease in fuel consumption whether that is nat gas or coal. If the speed of the wind varies even by a couple percent that will drastically alter the MW output because E = xV3(velocity cubed, see below or google it for yourself, that is accepted by the wind industry).

To the right is the wind output for July 2006 but in terms of capacity. The capacity averages about 25% for most of the month with an output rise during the end of the month. Boone Pickens proposes this kind of erratic energy is what America needs and his plan is to construct wind farms then spend billions more to build power lines to supply America with electricity. This might work if we constructed millions of turbines and only needed electricity a few hours per day, when the wind felt like blowing.

Consider that the yearly capacity is 29%, but for that number to be "real" it needs to replace it's output with an EXACT synchronous amount of fossil fuel. That doesn't happen because the grid can't possibly follow those steep curves around. At both the top and the bottom, they would have to be EXACTLY synchronized to wind output and either reducing or increasing the amount of fuel on the fire, and without loss of efficiency. Just like your cars gas mileage becomes less or more efficient at high or low speeds, the same concept generally applies to thermal power plants. Power plants do follow the varying demands of our daily electricity needs, 60% variation in a day is typical, so they are certainly capable of varying their output suddenly, but the fluctuation problem remains. A grid has to ensure that they have an extra reserve so they won't be caught off guard by a sudden unexpected decrease in wind output. The estimates are that anywhere between 20-40% of the wind output is wasted because of a combination of duplication and loss of efficiency of thermal power by the fossil plants. This fluctuation problem is widely discussed in grid company internal documents wherever wind is installed. Look at the charts on my website and you can see this is an universal problem.

Here is another set of slides where ERCOT, the Texas grid company, considers this problem. Just about every line on those slides is considering the fluctuation and intermittent characteristics of wind, which means ERCOT needs to duplicat a small of wind output with fossil to provide reliability also know as robustness to the grid. But even a 20% duplication lowers the true capacity of a turbine. Are you starting to realize why our electricity experts never thought of this before their state legislatures mandated that they are required to play this silly game! They comply because this is a political decision, not what is best for the consumer. We have no choice, we buy it.

This means that instead of the 29% the figure is only 70% of that if we consider that about 30%(ave of 20/40%) of that energy is duplicated by the fossil to compensate for the fluctuating wind so we get only 20% capacity output. To replace ONE medium-sized 1,000 MW coal or natural gas plant you would need 5,000 turbines, however that would not work because quite often there is little output from the turbines as the charts plainly show.

30 miles from me is a nuclear plant(environmentally friendly, on about 30 acres) that is rated at 2400 MW and it ran at that level continuously all last year. The same amount of energy would need over 6,000 MW turbines with 25% yearly capacity and 80% replacement of fossil fuel to match its' output. 6,000 x 2 MW x .25 cap x .80% fossil replement = 2400 MW. But, the charts above demonstrate that the turbines often produce almost nothing in the summer and in the middle of the afternoon when our needs are the highest.
Either Boone Pickens is a great shyster or he doesn't understand wind!!!

You electricity grid is always planning for the worst case scenario and that is the peak electricity use during the hot summer months of high air conditioning needs. Especially in Texas! The chart to the right graphs the wind output at 5PM during the hot month of July. An eyeball average would be 350 MW output with some days only 100 MW produced, out of a possible 2300 MW! On those days billions of dollars of transmission lines will side IDLE, click, yes billions.


To the left is the same MW output but expressed in terms of capacity. The output often stays below the 10% line for much of the month, meaning if the constructions costs were similar, you are getting only 10% of wind for your money compared to coal or gas. ERCOT, the electricity grid company of Texas, needs a margin of safety while planning and originally gave the wind farms a 2.9% capacity credit while planning, which they call their "confidence factor". See page 19 here. (later they considered raising it to between 5-16%).

If you are an American who cares about our deficit, this should bring tears to your eyes. Much of the wasted cost on construction and further production tax credits are piled right on our federal budget. Then the states force the grid companies to purchase the wind output and provide additional state incentives and tax breaks. Finally a federal Production Tax credit of 2.1cents is given for every kWhour produced which for many states is 20% of your per kWh electric bill.

There is no amount of green utopia wishful thinking(ie. their prayers) that will allow Texas to contribute useful energy to our electricity grid nationally. NONE! 3% CONFIDENCE, remember that number, and next time you see Boone tell him you are 3% confident in his Big Man's Plan! Maybe instead of wind farms we should call them swindle farms. And remember, Texas is number two! I couldn't bear the misery of looking at the reality of our other states that are not so windy. The Wind is not FREE!!!

Presentation taken from company slides here.

July 9, 2009 Update: Pickens calls off massive wind farm in Texas

How Often Does The Turbine Produce Power?

A number of people have told me that they have seen the turbines spinning and they seemed to have used that as proof that wind power is efficacious and valuable. Let's talk about how power output of a wind turbine is affected by wind speed.

To the left is a power curve of two models of the General Electric 1.5 MegaW turbine which produces 1.5 MW or 1500Kilowatts at maximum power. This chart is directly from the GE turbine literature. GE bought this turbine business from Enron. This turbine is the most commonly used turbine in the US right now.

Look at the bottom axis and you will see at 3.0 m/s the output of power is zero. To convert m/s to the mph divide by .45 and the result is 7 mph. What this means is that the wheel may be spinning somewhat but it isn't producing ANY power until the wind speeds reach 7 mph. We can double that wind speed to 6 m/s or 13 mph and the power output of the turbine is only .3 MW or 1/5 of it's total ability, referred to as capacity. (For our purposes today let's average the two different models). To get to where the turbine is producing 1/2 of it's rated capacity we must have a wind speed of about 7.5 m/s or 17 mph. To reach 2/3 of the turbine output capacity and have an output of 1 MW we must have a wind speed of about 8.5 m/s or 19 mph, which is a very, stiff wind! The turbine only reaches nameplate capacity output of 1.5 MW at 28 mph windspeed.

Wind _____Output_PercentPower__ Beautfort Scale
7 mph____ 0_____ 0% __________Leaves rustle
13 mph __ .3 MW___20% ________Leaves and twigs in constant motion
17 mph___ .5 MW__33%________ Moderate breeze, small branches move
19 mph___ .7 MW__66%________Small trees begin to sway
28 mph__ 1.5MW__100% _______Umbrella use difficult, large branches in motion

Another factor to consider while you watch the wheel spin is that they don't necessarily spin faster as the wind blows stronger. Their power output is produced by torque, not by speed of the wheel. The spinning wheel will look the same if the wind is blowing either at 13 mph or 28 mph windspeed, yet they are only producing 20% power at 13 mph.

Why is this? Well, wind turbines are powered by the sun! The sun is what produces the varying atmospheric pressure gradients and this factor produces moving air or wind. Moving air per cubic inch weighs 900 times less than water so at a very low speed it is not possible for it to produce much power. The kinetic energy of wind is measured as E=MV3 where M=mass of air which is very low and V3= the velocity of moving air cubed. So with all other factors constant, going from 10 mph to 15mph equates to 1,000 vs 3,375 or a 50% increase in wind speed yield a 3.3 fold increase in power! This is how you get the insane fluctuations for wind hourly output pictured to the above right.

Now for the bad news, the output of power is actually much, more variable! Because the Nine Canyon Output chart is hourly and we must consider that the power output of a wind farm actually fluctuates more dramatically when measured for smaller intervals of time. The chart to the left is from a Germany grid study and is found here. It is 12 days of data with the red being the maximum 15 minute wind input to the grid and the green being the minimum for that 15 minute. Look at the enormous fluctuations. This is an enormous grid in Germany and represents THOUSANDS of turbines spread across the country. How can the German grid manager possibly follow this wind and make corresponding cuts to their power burn rate when the wind clearly fluctuates 100% in an 15 minute period!!! Certainly some accommodation is made, but wind energy can't be stored, how could they decrease their fossil fuel burn rate when within a 15 minute time span the wind input to the grid likely to double or half? Click the picture to study it. This study referred to above and demonstrated by this picture concluded that "compensation and regulation" costs were 40% of the electricity generated, meaning 60% of the wind electricity generated was subsittuted 1:1 for fossil fuel. This is a far cry from the 100% 1:1 figure that the wind proponents are so fond of repeating.

The chart to the right is from a small windfarm on the PJM grid in the Northeast USA. There is 15 days of 10-second data that is compressed, but you can tell the dramatic changes that occur just about any day of the 15 day study. Now do you know why our electric companies NEVER thought of this clean, renewable wind energy as a viable source of electrical power until the Federal Government forced them to buy the energy.

What is my point? The point is that for wind energy to be a viable REPLACEMENT of fossil fuel the power company needs to predict ahead of time what the speed of the wind and output of the wind plant is going to be and then they have to instantaneously increase or decrease their fossil fuel burn rate to match the oscillations of the wind plant output. Is this possible, yes it is to some degree. On my web site www.nofreewind.com under the integration tab are many very long and detailed insider white papers where the power companies discuss this factor. It is a universal problem and one they HAVE to adapt because in all countries where wind power is used for commercial electricity it is mandated by the central governments. There are a few excellent editorials which discuss this problem, here, here and here.

Now we must accept the fact that there are power plants called load-follower or peaking units which are built to change their output very rapidly. This ocurrs every single day as as a society's electricity needs ebb and wane dependent on the time of day. But these changes are expected, easily planned for and accomadated by every power grid in the world. Click to see daily electricity demand changes in Ontario and California. Note that those smooth changes in demand look nothing like the power output curves above. You can go to my charts page for even more power output curves and see this is a universal problem.

There is much, much more to this issue. That is one reason the general public is so easily fooled. We must consider the time of day of the wind energy ouput compared to the need. We must look at how a power plant looses efficiency as it's maximum output decreases. AND the one thought that every Grid Manager and Electric Company keeps foremost in is mind is THERE WILL BE NO BLACKOUT!!!! No matter how much extra it costs the public the take in the wind energy to the grid, our electricity suppliers will ensure that their always will be reserves to accommodate this fluctuation of wind energy. THERE WILL BE NO BLACKOUT! To be continued.

Video: Reliance on Wind Power will cause BLACKOUTS

Wind plant power output curves for North Dakota, Alberta and more. Double click video to go directly to YouTube. As you can see, if we place ANY reliance on wind to supply our electricity needs we will have regular blackouts of our power grid. But this will not happen, or if it does it will happen very infrequently, because surely our power plant engineers will continue to build new REAL power plants that produce reliable electricity to fulfill the needs of our society.

NOTE: This video is locking at 48 seconds, try clicking slight ahead at 60 seconds or click right on the video a few times so that you view it directly in YouTube.

Video: Sample of power output supplied to electricity grid

Electricity use curves for California, France and Ontario. Double click video to go directly to YouTube. (note: I stated the power grids supply hundreds of thousands but certainly this amount of electricity supplies millions, we will work on how to calculate the number in a future post).

Electricity Basics: The Demand Curve (Load)

This is today's, 5/10/09, electricity demand curve from Ontario electric power company (IESO), updated daily here. (You can look at updated curved from California or France.) As you can see the demand is lowest at the middle of the night bottoming at about 11,200 MW's. As the people of Ontario wake up after 6am the electricity useage increases quite steeply to 14,400 at noon at which point it levels off. The green line stops at 15:00 (4pm) because that is what time it is now. The demand is projected to fall steeply at 9pm as people go to bed. IESO anticipates this rise and fall in demand and matches their power output to the grid to meet the demand. This as a typical daily electricity demand curve. The power below 11,200 MW is called base power and there will be either nuclear or coal plants running full time at an efficient output to meet this base demand. The power needed from 11,200 to 14,400 in many cases will be supplied by what are known as cyclic load following generators. These are flexible power plants, burning coal or natural gas and they can follow or anticipate the demand by adding fuel to the fire, which increases power and generates more electricity. In general the cyclic, load followers are smaller, less than 1,000 MW, but are more expensive to operate, with the wholesale fuel costs being twice as much as the large and more efficient base plants.

In the next blog post we will consider the implications of adding a wind plant to the grid. Basin Electric Power Cooperative in North Dakota posts the weekly output of their wind farms here and their chart will serve as an excellent live example because wind industry states "North Dakota has the greatest wind energy potential of any state in the country."

A picture of wind versus load that is worth thousands of words

If you want to know how useless wind energy is as a commercial electrical power source you only need to spend a few minutes studying this picture. Click here to see a much bigger picture.

This chart details a week of wind and load in Alberta Electrical System Operator grid. (AESO). They have a couple years of data here. The top light blue line represents the system load also known as the demand. You can find other load curves on the front page of my web site and more there in the charts tab. The blue line corresponds to the right axis and you can see the load varies daily between about 7600 MW in the dead of night and 9000 MW at peak. The red line represents the amount of Megawatts generated by the wind, that varies between 0 MW and its' peak of 350 MW. AESO was very nice in supplying us price data which is represented by the green dots near the bottom.

What do we see? Look at line A - Tuesday Feb 17th. There was no wind power generated that day. On that day Alberta was likely suffering through a cold front with bright days, cold nights and NO WIND. The cold temps are likely the reason why the electricity load is the highest on that day. This is an example of when we need wind the most it is not there. I hope that Alberta does not follow the US lead and put the coal plants our of business as Obama is suggesting. It would be mighty, mighty cold and dark that day.

Line B: Look to the left of B at the morning of February 18th. The wind is blowing hard in the middle of the night, but the load is at the lowest point and so is the price. The price of your NoFreeWind is going to be as high as ever considering the subsidies and fixed price. Wind is ONLY in the grid through enormous Gov't subsidies and the fact that utiliteis are forced to buy it. Now what else is happening in the middle of the night. In a typical electricity generation mix the nuclear plants are running as usual, at full output. The coal plants are ramping down because the operators can generally predict the amount of load(ie. electricity). They are placing less coal on the fire to conserve fuel, however the power plant operators know that at 7am people are going to wake up, take a shower, turn on their HDTV and coffee maker and then go to work. Industry, business's and government offices will all be requiring a big surge of power through the morning hours. Now look right at Line B, the demand is rising throughout the day but the wind input has now fallen off the roof.

Apparently a front blew in on Feb 19th and on Feb 20th as is quite typical during the winter months, the wind died and now the wind turbines are providing no useful energy to the grid. Feb 21th and line C is a duplication of Feb 19th. The wind is blowing strong in the middle of the night when it is not needed because the conventional resources have to run all night to be ready for the next day and certainly you can never depend on the wind for more than a few hours. You really don't need to know any more about wind power than this one simple graph. Now you know why our society has had commercial electricity beginning in 1880 and yet we never before thought of putting up these thousands and soon tens of thousands of wind turbines so we could get our electricity Free! There is NoFreeWind.

This is not a cherry-picking, this is how it is at the wind farm every single day(more) of the year except for maybe July and August. Because, when it is ninety degrees and dripping wet humid, you can be assured the wind will likely not be blowing for days at a time.

Save God's Country - Potter County, Pa

Potter County township supervisors are in the process of approving 80 turbines as part of the new renewable energy plans in Pennsylvania. They are plans to place 80 turbines and spoil God's Country for at least the next generation. I'll never forget my week of backpacking I spent in the beautiful unspoiled wilderness as a youth. The renewable energy train moves forward blasting away any sensibility with the promise of free energy and reduced "emissions" from wind. Both of those promises are false.
Here is what you can expect it to look like very soon. What is the cost and what are the benefits?

There are the aesthetics to consider and the damage and certain destruction and fragmentation of priceless habitat. But what is the value of the electricity production of those turbines to our society. The 80 turbines will only be providing a "spit in the wind" amount of power, not enough enough to serve the needs of Potter County residents. 80 turbines spread out at 6 per mile and there will be 12 miles of turbines likely visible from throughout the county.

These plans are heartbreaking to me considering what the value of this unspoiled land represents to our state. 80 turbines, each rated approximately 1.5 MegaWatt generating electricity erraticly about some 25-30% of the time will add NOTHING to supplement our growing energy needs here in Pennsylvania. Let's take a closer look at the the numbers. The electricity in Pennsylvania is delivered by the PJM grid. PJM coordinates all the movement of wholesale electricity through out state and all or parts of 13 states in the Northeast. In my previous posts I just started to break into the complicated discussion of just how much electricity does a wind turbine provide? PJM Know Electricity and in a recent report (page 13) they assigned only a 13% capacity credit to a wind energy turbines. Why so much lower? Because they know that the energy potential of the turbine is not to be counted on during peak hours.

The Numbers. 80 turbines each rated at 1.5 Megawatts can be depended upon to produce useful electricity at an approximate "capacity" of 27% of the nameplate capacity of 1.5 MW.
To find the yearly electricity(energy) production we must mutliply by 8760 hours in a years.
80 x 1.5 x .27 x 8760 = 280,000 MegaWatt Hours per year.
Refer to my post below where I calculated that each household uses about 30 MegaWatt hours of electricity per year. 10 MWh in their own house and another 20 Mwh by utilizing industry and commercial goods and services as a part of our society.

Divide 280,000 by 30 and the result is 9,200. That means that in theory, the people who live in 9,200 homes in our state will receive enough electricity from these turbines to serve their needs throughout the year. That is "theoretical" because the wind blows erratically and the turbine will only be producing useful electricity about 50% of the time. Also, much of the electricity is produced at the wrong time of day or during the fall/spring when our electricity needs are low because we don't use much heat or electricity during moderate temperatures.

What is the dollar value of this amount of electricity? We pay for electricity by the kilowatt hour and the price right now is about 11 cents per kwhour. There are 1,000 kilwatts in 1 megawatt. The wind company sells the electricity wholesale to our grid at about half that price or about 4-5 cents per kwhour. At times the wholesale price is less during the night and weekends.

280,000 MegaWatt hours x 1,000 x .05 = approx. 14 Million dollars of Electricity produced. That might seem like a lot, but there are many, many factors to consider. Most importantly, while the electricity is being produced the grid managers can not depend on a constant input from the turbines and must keep a very significant amount of backup running at all times.

We have now entered a new era. The era where it doesn't seem to matter whatsoever to compare the amount of electricity that is produced by a coal generation plant or by a nuclear plant. Logic and reason have all gone with the wind.

Above I explained that our electric company only calculates a 13% capacity for the turbine because much of it produced at off peak hours or erraticly. This would mean the 80 wind turbines in Potter County will produce 140,000 MegaWatts hours of useful electricity according the experts, while Susquehanna Nuclear Plant at Berwick produced 19 millions MW hours. Simple math shows that we would need to construct 136 wind farms of 80 turbines each to produce the energy of one nuclear plants that have been in operation for over 30 years. I hate to say what has not become a very "dirty" word in our vocabulary. COAL! But we would need to construct almost 100 wind farms to replace just one coal plant like there is at PPL Montour.

Using the 27% figure results gives us the result that we would need 78 of the proposed Potter County wind farms to replace Susquehanna Nuclear Plant at Berwick or 50 of them to replace the PPL Montour coal power plant.

There is so much more to this problem and this analysis and we will get to more later. Do you think my numbers don't add up. Do you think I'm exaggerating or underestimating the value of the wind farm in Potter County. Look here to read the company spokesman for the Waymart wind plant say their 43 turbines produce $7 million/year in electrity. Or she said they have the capacity to do that, I wonder if they even make that much!

Take a look at that article and you will see what should shock you as it has me! The company spokesman reports that the expense to produce that $7 million of electricity was a SHOCKING $6.5 million dollars. And you thought the Wind was Free.

Goodbye God's Country, Potter County, Pa, You are now the site of Man's Greatest Folly.