One of the greatest misconceptions of wind energy is we can build turbines to replace conventional, traditional coal power plants. Now why would anyone ever think a completely moronic stupid thought like that? Maybe you heard one of the highest energy officials in our country saying that we may not need to build ANY new coal or nuclear plants, not any never! That was stated by our the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Joel Wellinghoff, as quoted in a 4/22/09 new article. That is completely insane and sadly, President Obama has surrounded himself with complete nitwits who know little or nothing about the real world practicalities of wind energy.
Let’s look at real-time output of wind farms that are in operation right now. Click here to see Irish Wind. In Ireland I estimate there are about 600 wind turbines with a maximum output of 1,000 MW, which is the size of an average moderately large coal power plant. The chart below plots the wind turbine output of the entire island on 1/1/2010. Look at 9:00am when the output was about 35 MW or about 3% of the potential total output of 1000 MW. Click the link above and then click previous day to see how variable wind power is, even when there are 500 turbines, many of them on coastal locations spread throughout the relatively large island of Ireland. Click backwards to December 30th and you can see the results of a very windy day when the output was over 900 MW, but for a very short period of time. How could wind power replace any power plant, when just about every day there are period of time when the output is less than 10% of maximum?
Here is another very sad example. Bonneville Power in Oregon. Click here to go to their company site. At the link, below the graph, Bonneville states they have 2680MW of installed wind. Likely most of these turbines are the older models rated at 1.5MW, with a few more rated 2.0MW and the very newest turbines rated at 3.0MW. With an average of 1.75MW the 2680 MW equals a guess of 1500 turbines. How much do they cost? Go to the cost section of WindIndustry.org web site and they write “The costs for a commercial scale wind turbine in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million, per MW of nameplate capacity installed.” If we used $2.0 million per MW as middle ground then the total of the Bonnevile turbines are $3 BILLION DOLLARS. The chart below show the latest wind output and energy production in MW’s. As you can see on January 1st there was a spike of wind and the average of Jan 1st to Jan 2nd would be about 30% of the possible 2680 MW’s. Now, look at the rest of the week, on December 31st and the three days from Jan 3rd to Jan 6th there was almost NO OUTPUT from these 3 BILLIONS DOLLARS WORTH OF JUNK. Complete JUNK. Not only that, the turbines suck energy from the system even when they are not running! They often use the grid power to turn in low wind because if they are still for too long the blades could deform. It is so simple to see, wind power can not replace ANY CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANT, EVER. Now some would say, we should put them where they work better, the sad fact, is that there is no place(or very very few) where their output is more than 40% of their possible capacity. This is how it is, everywhere. Yet, our energy experts in Washington do not have a clue, or else there are simply deceiving us.
7 comments:
What make the Ireland graphs even worse is that the scale changes from day to day. Sometimes the max is 980 or 1040, and sometimes it is in the 200's or 300's. Your example graph for 1/1/10 is actually much worse, because if the graph was drawn with the max at 1040 MW, the power line would be inthe weeds.
It doesn't matter that wind farms don't produce all of the power needed all of the time. What they do is replace imported gas and oil while they are running.
Anonymous. You, like many know very little about electricity production. Oil is used to make only about 3% of US electricity. And, what is the problem with importing oil? Many say oil exists in a finite quantity, and that we will eventually run out, so why not use oil from other countries and keep ours in the ground until it is more expensive and rare. Also, we have plenty of natural gas, we only import 16% of what we use.
If you look at the fraction of US electricity was generated with oil 20 years ago vs. today, you'll find that there's been a watt for watt replacement by nuclear power. All this without a net increase in the number of reactors. If foreign oil runs out or is too militarily expensive to obtain, we could move to gasify coal and oil shale. This would required large sources of heat in remote locations where the coal and shale are. That would be an ideal deployment scenario for small, compact nuclear reactors such as the Hyperion Power Module, which is about 75-MWt.
The Anonymous comment is a standard misunderstanding. An issue with wind is it changes. To compensate for this fossil fuel plants have to change to match. To keep this short the gas milage in my car is great as long as I don't change speed. Putting a wind farm next to a fossil fuel plant will take the fossil fuel plant from freeway mileage to city mileage real quick. While wind is running it is kiilling the efficiency of the neighboring plants.
Good Informative Article,
It is time we looked at using science and not emotion to look at all of the options.
We are now experiencing a problem with deep off-shore drilling which was forced upon the industry by "good people" not wanting to obstruct the view with these towers.
Most people would not consider the view hundreds of wind generators doting the beautiful landscape or popular costal areas.
Wind, Solar, and other sources of energy sounds great, but we have the coal, oil, and natural gas. We have the technology.
We need to look at more efficient uses of what we make and not how we make it.
Wind power and Solar power is not cost effective unless the Government forces the cost of energy to skyrocket. Then we will have very expensive intermittent power.
I don't think that the current Government has te correct people in place to make major decisions like this.
I know that GE Power is strong on alternative power; I wonder why? Follow the money.
My vote is NO on the new proposed "Energy Reform" on the table.
As a Central Illinois farmland owner, I have seen the impact that the wind energy companies and their investment partners are having in influencing people to embrace wind power. I have done extensive research on this issue and my conclusion is that wind power is not an economically viable alternative to our energy dilemma. Much more needs to be done to promote more efficient use from the power sources already available. I am saddened as I watch my neighbors sign contracts with multinational energy corporations who are receiving financing from some of the very same financial institutions responsible for much of our current economic distress, believing that the promised income from theses leases will benefit their families. I am unable to convince them that they need to search for information beyond what the company is giving them. This deception about wind power is an abomination in the Heartland! I am grateful for the resources available from sites such as this that allow me to access information that has aided my family in making sound decisions about allowing wind farms to place their turbines on our property!
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