Is Wind Power Worth It?

[mpm]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator. They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?
Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind? Why all the excitement?

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

-mpm

 

[[email protected]]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator. They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?
Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind? Why all the excitement?

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

-mpm

Kills birds, intermittent power, noisy for the neighbors, an
eyesore... apart from that, what's not to like?

OTTOMH - $1/watt was the capital cost, probably improved some since
last I looked

Doesn't Vestas make wind turbines? Didn't GE buy out a division of
megawatt-class wind turbines in the US?

FPL owns/operates the SEGS solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert,
CA. I wanted to buy their stock for that reason alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems

Michael

 

[Martin Griffith]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator. They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?
Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind? Why all the excitement?

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

-mpm

A resonable place to start is
http://www.ewea.org/index.php?id=1486


martin

 

[[email protected]]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator. They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

See page 13 of the 2007 Annual Report (Adobe PDF page 23)

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?

About 1 MW, some more, some less

Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind? Why all the excitement?

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

Heh.

Michael

 

[Eeyore]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator. They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?
Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind? Why all the excitement?

In the right locations they can provide electricity at a cost I believe
only twice that of coal fired. The big boys are working on 5MW units now.

Offshore wind power is becoming very popular in the UK now.

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

Haha ! Nuclear is the UK's most expensive source at around 3 x coal fired.
That does include decommisioning costs AIUI though.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Doesn't Vestas make wind turbines?

Yes. One of the largest manufacturers AIUI.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

See page 13 of the 2007 Annual Report (Adobe PDF page 23)


About 1 MW, some more, some less

Then factor in capacity factor.

Graham

 

[mpm]

See page 13 of the 2007 Annual Report (Adobe PDF page 23)

Yeah, I saw that. Can't make heads or tails of it.
Best I can figure, wind takes a lot more Capital Expense per MW
generated.
All this page really gives us is that they've got roughly 15000 MW of
alternative generated power (which is not a lot), and about a third of
this is wind (which is even less).

Especially when you get to the section on facilities. (page 23).
Does it really take nearly 7,489 windmills to develop 5000 MW of
power?

That's an awful lot of geographically dispersed generators to
maintain!
As as someone else mentioned, most of the time you drive by them, they
are not spinning.

 

[Eeyore]

and a whole offshore windfarm is
screwed because they could not be arsed to bury the cable.

Which one's that ?

Graham

 

[mpm]

Of course not - there is no ONE SINGLE end-all-and-be-all solution - the
answer is "an integrated approach using diverse sources". �It gets
exceedingly irritating that someone or another blithers on as to how
*one* specific source won't meet "all" out energy needs, and then all
alternative energy is pooh-poohed. �Hell, not even oil meets *all* our
energy needs, so, by the pooh-poohers' own standards, it therefore ought
to be dispensed with! �Don't get suckered in by that sort of simplistic
nimcompoopery.

Personally, I think wind has enough potential that I've some investment
exposure in it (as part of a diversified portfolio - as with energy, no
one thing is "the one-and-only" solution). �'Nuff said.




Dunno, prob. can find that info by googling - find some Wind power
companies and email them with your politely-worded questions; you'd be
surprised at how many people actually answer email when the sender is
poilte.


Uh, for one thing, because, like solar, once the system is built, you
don't have to keep refueling it, you only have to maintain it. �It's
conceptually simple - wires, magnets, and something to rotate them one
around the other.

Thing Two, unlike refineries and oil storage tanks, they don't explode.

Ting Three, no fuel means you don't get something like today's collision
on the Mississippi near New Orleans that spilled a huge mass of oil into
the river; you don't get situations liek the Exxon Valdiz. �

Thing Four, they don't create fumes as they run, so you don't have to
install scrubbers and pollution control devices adn so ons. �Yes,
materiel is required to build them, but the same is true of both oil
refineries, and the engines that are needed to burn dieel and gas.

THere are more things, but those are a start.




Never heard of that so I dunno.

I used the term _The Answer_ facetiously. I guess you didn't pick up
on that.
I am very aware you can't put windmills on cars, for instance.
(...although, earlier in life, I did have a couple Fords that would
have benefited from that?)
Though if we all had electric cars, then I concede the point.

"too cheap to meter" was a very famous slogan associated with the
nuclear power industry.

But back to my point about Wind - which I guess is a knee jerk
reaction to all the recent T. Boone Pickens commercials on television.
(?) To me, that commericial, with its dramatically choreographed
wipes to pictures of spinning windmills and what appears to be barely
a 50-watt photoelectric panel makes me want to puke. Yesterday on
MSNBC, Pickens when interviewed said we had to open up every
approach: wind, oil, solar, nuclear, the works!! Duh?!

No mention of conservation, by the way. None that I heard anyway.

I was sincerely asking why there seems to be all this hype about wind
generation in particular, when it not at all clear (to me at least),
that wind power is even remotely capable of making any appreciable
dent in our energy needs at any kind of competitive price per kWh (as
compared to say, solar-thermal generation). I did not intend to
debate any of the very fine points you mentioned about the greeness of
these technologies.

-mpm

 

[Martin Brown]

Which one's that ?

Blyth. Two units of 2MW each about 1 mile offshore. It was intended to
test the technology in 2000 - it makes pretty sad reading. Huge
amounts of downtime even before the cable failed totally. The initial
power cable installation was inadequate for the conditions and
botched.

Being well North of the Watford gap I expect it never made the
national news, unlike the annihilation of Labour in Glasgow East last
night.

Curiously most of the reports on Blyth have vanished online. These are
the last surviving ones I can find:

Announcement of intent to build (and the big grants it gets)
http://eeru.open.ac.uk/natta/renewonline/rol26/5.htm
http://www.power-technology.com/projects/blyth/

DTI report on its operation:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file20295.pdf

Slightly cynical but AFAICT accurate description of how the cable
failed and the thing has been off GRID since spring 2005.

http://www.essentialspark.com/offshore_wind_turbine.aspx

E.ONs announcement of buying it at a firesale price (unstated)
http://pressreleases.eon-uk.com/blogs/eonukpressreleases/archive/2007/06/28/1078.aspx

They apparently do intend to fix it and renovate the turbines. The kit
is unlikely to be very well now after 3 years unloved out in the North
Sea. The onshore ones near the A19 are every bit as unconvincing 2 out
of 3 typically idle even when the wind is blowing. Only the Sunderland
Nissan plant ones seem to be properly maintained and working most
times I pass (although one of theirs did self immolate closing the A19
for a day).

I do wonder how many of these projects are designed to harvest the
grant money rather than the wind. The amount of electricity generated
will barely make the interest payments on a commercial loan.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[MooseFET]

Picking up a sub-thread from elsewhere:

Is wind generation profitable (even competitive) on a utility scale?
I read that Florida Power & Light was the largest wind operator.  They
are an investor owned utility so I downloaded their annual report.
However, I can't decipher from that whether or not wind is _The
Answer_ to our energy woes.

What is the nameplate capacity of a typical utility-scale windmill
generator?
Is there a financial sweet-spot for grid capacity connection in terms
of kW or MW for these generators?
What really drives the economics of wind?  Why all the excitement?

And while I'm at it, what ever happened to "too cheap to meter"?

It was a lie.



The biggest problem with producing wind power is the range of power
levels you have to design for. The power available from wind runs as
the cube of the wind speed. This means that you have to design the
machine so that it can withstand power levels many times its average
operating level.

Most modern designs have some method by which they drop their
efficiency when the wind gets too strong. The ones like T. Boone
Pickens is using in his ad usually are variable pitch and can feather
in a very strong wind. Smaller ones are made so that they will turn
out of alignment or have a mechanical brake on them to stop them
turning in a strong wind.

Once you have made the power, you have to get it to market. People
don't generally live right near where you would build a wind farm.
You need power lines to get the power to where it will be used. Again
you have the issue of the large variation in power level. You have to
build lines for the peak power they will carry but they won't carry
that much very often. This makes the power lines a less good
investment than normal.

Wind power also runs up against the desire to store the energy. We
don't have any good way to store it. The best options are to do
things like pump water that don't really need to happen at a steady
rate or to have a very wide ranging grid that can transfer the power
from where the wind is blowing to where it isn't.

 

[MooseFET]

Nuclear isn't popular..  Maybe it will be again now that all the
existing plants that were built are now closing due to age.

No, the decommission costs will make reactors very unpopular. It will
cost more than building them in the first place and since it doesn't
promise any power too cheap to meter in the future it is all bad
news. We have to wait for that problem to be behind us too before it
is likely to get popular again.

 

[mpm]

On Jul 25, 10:27�am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@My-
Web-Site.com>

I'm certainly for all sources of _useful_ energy.

Me too.
I wish I had more information about this whole wind thing.
This weekend, I plan to set aside time to visit the link provided by
Martin (above) and see what comes of that.

I must say I am not particularly impressed with BF's info regarding
kickbacks to the landowner for generating power. I know this is
standard practice, but it appears wind generation costs (even
excluding the land) are already pretty high per kWh as compared to
traditional fossil fuels. Does that make wind competitive, now or in
the future as fuel costs climb?

Maybe it does just boil down to a matter of scale. If we build
enough wind generators, costs come down, designs improve, people get
employed, etc...

But right now, for reasons I guess I really can't explain - this wind
thing is not passing the sniff test for me. I am now going to
paraphrase some offline conversations I've had with other friends and
engineers... See if you agree:

I would rather see us develop nuclear (with breeders), and/or solar-
thermal. We have enough known Uranium stockpiles now for the next 500
years. It is just as green, (to the extent Uranium occurs naturally),
and is renewable thanks to breeder reactor technology.

AND, it's not an unproved technology on large scales:
France, and the US Navy (aircraft carriers & submarines) are great
examples.

France produces something on the order of 80% of its needs from
nuclear (since circa 1976) - so much so, that it exports energy to
Italy, Germany, London, etc... and all without a single siginficant
safety accident, saboage, or terrorist attack. Neither of the two
Navy sub accidents (Thresher & Scorpion) were the result of nuclear,
rather hull crushing at depth.

Chernobyl is another matter. That is attributable to sloppy
engineering practices, poor reactor design, and human error. However,
even that accident is arguably a lot less damaging than the smoke
belched out by countless powerplants all over the world. (?)

Wind may be inevitable as a bridge technology - to get us to whatever
better solution(s) might be out there in the future. Fusion? But
given what I know, this really seems to be the hard way to get
there. Or am I completely off base here?

-mpm

 

[mpm]

The biggest issue with Nuclear is the waste management. They either
have to store it on site, or ship it to a containment facility.  There
really aren't any in the US.  Big NIMBY controversy over Yucca Mountain
in Nevada.  The local Nuclear plants store it on site in concrete casks.

Industry has never had a great track record in regard to hazardous waste.
The materials used in Nuclear Power generation are not the kind of stuff
you ever want showing up in anyones water supply .

Then you have the logistic nightmare of transporting it to the storage
facility.  Both rail and trucks travel through the hearts of major cities.
Talk about the potential for a dirty bomb.  No need for procuring the
nasty stuff - just take out the vehicles transporting it!

If there was someplace or method of safely disposing of nuclear waste, I
would think Nuclear Energy would be a great solution.

What does France do for waste storage?

b. Farmer- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

France uses breeder reactors, so there is actually very little waste.

 

[James Arthur]

I would guess that most plants are coal-fired, followed by natural
gas, and water turbine, then nuclear.


I'm certainly for all sources of _useful_ energy.

T. Boone Pickens has a point--$700 billion flowing out of the
country every year to buy oil would be awfully nice to keep here.

Related, funny: Nozzlerage

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[neon]

Well every body did put in their opinions all right. The fact remains that no they can never conpete with oil generation. 3 blades 40" feet swinging in the breeze are prone to expensive mainatnance. not to mention the generators themselves. and they also need external power to get going when the wind comes up. corporation are getting good tax breaks that is why the wind towers are there for tax breaks not to ever make money.

 

[Jim Yanik]

The biggest issue with Nuclear is the waste management. They either
have to store it on site, or ship it to a containment facility. There
really aren't any in the US. Big NIMBY controversy over Yucca
Mountain in Nevada. The local Nuclear plants store it on site in
concrete casks.

and in open cooling pools.
It was meant only to be a temporary storage,not a long-term method.

Industry has never had a great track record in regard to hazardous
waste. The materials used in Nuclear Power generation are not the kind
of stuff you ever want showing up in anyones water supply .

Then you have the logistic nightmare of transporting it to the storage
facility. Both rail and trucks travel through the hearts of major
cities. Talk about the potential for a dirty bomb. No need for
procuring the nasty stuff - just take out the vehicles transporting
it!

You must have not seen the videos of how they test the transport cars. No
credible danger of "taking out the vehicles".

If there was someplace or method of safely disposing of nuclear waste,
I would think Nuclear Energy would be a great solution.

What does France do for waste storage?

b. Farmer

they glassify it and store it in caverns.
the waste is only a problem if it can migrate.

 

[Jim Yanik]

T. Boone Pickens has a point--$700 billion flowing out of the
country every year to buy oil would be awfully nice to keep here.

well,maybe we should be producing our OWN petro sources.
BTW,I've read that in some places it took only TWO years to begin oil
production.
This "10 years" factoid bandied about is IMO,an attempt to discourage,maybe
a worst-case estimate.

Related, funny: Nozzlerage

Cheers,
James Arthur

read this about Pickens and his energy proposal;

Junk Science: Is T. Boone 'Swiftboating' America?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,390821,00.html

 

[Dirk Bruere at NeoPax]

and in open cooling pools.
It was meant only to be a temporary storage,not a long-term method.

You must have not seen the videos of how they test the transport cars. No
credible danger of "taking out the vehicles".

I bet they don't test it against shaped cutting charges.
The IEDs used in Iraq can disable an M1

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
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