-- Nicholas von Hoffman
"Democrats Should Oppose Empowering the Pious"
New York Observer, Dec. 1
December 2, 2004
Why secularism
Great essay
Peter Linebaugh (click the title of this post) writes about the rationalization of torture, reviews the book Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, and ties together witch hunts, capitalism, and the American invasion of Iraq. Related to this theme is the essay "The Ravisht Bride" (50-KB PDF) from my book on Finnegans Wake. Readers might also be interested in my essay "Nature-Guilt."
December 1, 2004
Output debate in Cornwall
A story from Devon reports on a debate sponsored by the Institute of Civil Engineers at the University of Plymouth. I note one item:
The 30% figure is the total annual output as a percentage of the facility's rated capacity. In the case of Delabole, ten 400-kilowatt turbines have the capacity of producing 10 × 400 KW × 24 hours × 365 days, i.e., 35 million kilowatt-hours/year. According to the utility that buys the power, they in fact produce 10 million, owing primarily to the variability of the wind. That is 28.5% of their capacity, which the developer generously rounds up to 30%.
That does not mean that the turbines are producing power only 30% of the time, because their output is proportional to wind speed. Typically they begin generating a trickle of electricity when the wind speed is around 8-10 mph, slowly building up to their maximum only when the wind speed is around 25-30 mph. If the wind gusts towards 60 mph, they shut down to prevent damage. The figure of 70% is the amount of time that the wind is within the range of, say, 10-60 mph and the turbines are responding.
So while his critics might cite the 30% output to suggest that the turbines are idle 70% of the time (or he skews their charge that way), Mr. Edwards cites the 70% activity as implying 70% output. In fact, because 30% (or, more accurately, less -- the average throughout the U.K. is 24%) is the average output, about two thirds of the time the turbines are producing less than that.
Edwards also mentions how "popular" his facility is (accepted might be more accurate). He neglects to note how small the ten 1991-vintage turbines are: less than half the height (and they don't need flashing lights) with blades sweeping an area just one fourth that of the typical models proposed on land today.
Mr Edwards [developer of the U.K.'s first wind facility] defended the efficiency of windfarms, saying: "At Delabole they generate for over 70 per cent of the time, and not 30 per cent as is often claimed."This is a typical misleading response.
The 30% figure is the total annual output as a percentage of the facility's rated capacity. In the case of Delabole, ten 400-kilowatt turbines have the capacity of producing 10 × 400 KW × 24 hours × 365 days, i.e., 35 million kilowatt-hours/year. According to the utility that buys the power, they in fact produce 10 million, owing primarily to the variability of the wind. That is 28.5% of their capacity, which the developer generously rounds up to 30%.
That does not mean that the turbines are producing power only 30% of the time, because their output is proportional to wind speed. Typically they begin generating a trickle of electricity when the wind speed is around 8-10 mph, slowly building up to their maximum only when the wind speed is around 25-30 mph. If the wind gusts towards 60 mph, they shut down to prevent damage. The figure of 70% is the amount of time that the wind is within the range of, say, 10-60 mph and the turbines are responding.
So while his critics might cite the 30% output to suggest that the turbines are idle 70% of the time (or he skews their charge that way), Mr. Edwards cites the 70% activity as implying 70% output. In fact, because 30% (or, more accurately, less -- the average throughout the U.K. is 24%) is the average output, about two thirds of the time the turbines are producing less than that.
Edwards also mentions how "popular" his facility is (accepted might be more accurate). He neglects to note how small the ten 1991-vintage turbines are: less than half the height (and they don't need flashing lights) with blades sweeping an area just one fourth that of the typical models proposed on land today.
Dear Alan Chartock
I regret having to add to your pile of e-mails concerning wind power, but I must point out a mistake in your last "I, Publius" column, where you write that "unsightly windmills ... are necessary when substituting wind power for conventional oil energy."
Oil is used for less than 2.5% of the US's electricity generation. Granted, Massachusetts is the nation's fourth largest user of oil for electricity, oil being used for over 16% of its own electricity generation and representing over 7% of the national total.
Most of it (83% nationally), however, is used in older plants that supply base load because they can not respond quickly to fluctuations in demand (or supply). The presence of intermittent wind-generated power would not affect the use of these plants.
The rest is used in combustion engines that provide extra power at times of exceptionally high demand. They are expensive to run but can respond quickly not only to demand spikes but also to sudden drops in supply. The former case would not be alleviated by the presence of wind power (peak demand does not correspond with peak wind-power production), and the latter case would actually become more frequent if wind power became a significant source. That is, more windmills would likely require an increase in the use of oil.
It is not just the unsightliness of potentially thousands of giant wind turbines in New England, scarring many of the most beautiful and wild locations remaining to us, that inspires environmentalist opposition. More importantly, it's wind power's utter uselessness for anything other than generating profit and letting people think they are "green."
Oil is used for less than 2.5% of the US's electricity generation. Granted, Massachusetts is the nation's fourth largest user of oil for electricity, oil being used for over 16% of its own electricity generation and representing over 7% of the national total.
Most of it (83% nationally), however, is used in older plants that supply base load because they can not respond quickly to fluctuations in demand (or supply). The presence of intermittent wind-generated power would not affect the use of these plants.
The rest is used in combustion engines that provide extra power at times of exceptionally high demand. They are expensive to run but can respond quickly not only to demand spikes but also to sudden drops in supply. The former case would not be alleviated by the presence of wind power (peak demand does not correspond with peak wind-power production), and the latter case would actually become more frequent if wind power became a significant source. That is, more windmills would likely require an increase in the use of oil.
It is not just the unsightliness of potentially thousands of giant wind turbines in New England, scarring many of the most beautiful and wild locations remaining to us, that inspires environmentalist opposition. More importantly, it's wind power's utter uselessness for anything other than generating profit and letting people think they are "green."
November 28, 2004
Government at work
A racket: Pass laws requiring the purchase of wind power, grant tax credits to the developers, create a secondary market for "green" credits, and choose your own company over others to take advantage of it all. That's what they just did in Ontario. The tightness of legislators and businessmen around the world suggests it is not uncommon.
To the editor, The New Republic
Some opponents of wind power may be initially NIMBY, as Gregg Easterbrook says they all remain ("Cape Hope," November 29), but once they examine the claims of the sales brochure they quickly deduce that utility-scale wind turbines should not be erected anywhere on the grid. As Easterbrook's article only echos the developer's own material in defending the Cape Wind facility proposed for Nantucket Sound, a response is warranted.
He repeats the claim that modern turbines don't kill many birds. Ongoing studies in Spain and Belgium, however, find that a single turbine kills an average 20-40 birds per year. A study at the Mountaineer facility in West Virginia is following up the finding that over 2000 bats were killed in just 2 months last fall. The blades of new turbines are indeed slower in terms of revolutions per minute, but they are so large (typically sweeping over an acre of air) that the speed at the tips is well over 125 mph.
His unqualified claim of "zero greenhouse gas emissions, zero air pollution, zero waste product" also is typical. The parts have to be manufactured and transported (using dirty energy), each foundation requires tons of cement (a major source of greenhouse gases), access roads typically have to be built or widened or strengthened, trees have to be cleared and vegetation kept down with herbicides, each turbine contains hundreds of gallons of oil which has to be periodically replaced, new high-voltage transmission lines have to be built, and the turbines themselves use power from the grid.
Typical, too, is Easterbrook's dismissal of aesthetic concerns. He admits that they are well over 300 feet high (over 400 feet in Cape Wind's case) and usually sited on prominent ridgelines and in open spaces. These are places any sensible person would be appalled to see industrial development. They are not just big (and include roads, transformers, and power lines), they add significant and disturbing noise to rural environments and must be lit with flashing lights day and night.
Easterbrook says all this is necessary to help resolve the problems caused by our thirst for power. He fails, however, to question the developer's claim of the project's potential contribution of an average 170 MW (which represents a whopping five one-thousandths of one percent of our energy use). That projection is based only on the generous formula from the wind industry, which says -- despite all evidence -- that the output of an off-shore turbine will be 40% of its rated capacity over a year. Existing facilities -- when they're working at all; it is still a very problematic technology -- produce at 20-30% (the figure is even lower on-shore). The wind data from Cape Wind's own measurement station in the Sound suggests that its output will be at the lower end of the range.
And because 20% is the average, two-thirds of the time output will be less than that. A lot of the time, such as the day I am writing this, the whole 24-square-mile installation wouldn't generate enough electricity to make up for its own consumption. It certainly wouldn't be replacing any more reliable source on the grid if Mr. Easterbrook wants the light to go on when he flicks that switch.
As the experience of, for example, Denmark (20% wind) and Germany (4% wind) shows us, large installations of wind turbines would not reduce our use of any existing source of power. This is not to dismiss the very real energy issues that Easterbrook has elsewhere written about. It is only to recognize that industrializing our land- and seascapes with wind towers (it would require hundreds of thousands to produce just a few percent of U.S. electricity needs) is a highly destructive (however profitable) folly.
He repeats the claim that modern turbines don't kill many birds. Ongoing studies in Spain and Belgium, however, find that a single turbine kills an average 20-40 birds per year. A study at the Mountaineer facility in West Virginia is following up the finding that over 2000 bats were killed in just 2 months last fall. The blades of new turbines are indeed slower in terms of revolutions per minute, but they are so large (typically sweeping over an acre of air) that the speed at the tips is well over 125 mph.
His unqualified claim of "zero greenhouse gas emissions, zero air pollution, zero waste product" also is typical. The parts have to be manufactured and transported (using dirty energy), each foundation requires tons of cement (a major source of greenhouse gases), access roads typically have to be built or widened or strengthened, trees have to be cleared and vegetation kept down with herbicides, each turbine contains hundreds of gallons of oil which has to be periodically replaced, new high-voltage transmission lines have to be built, and the turbines themselves use power from the grid.
Typical, too, is Easterbrook's dismissal of aesthetic concerns. He admits that they are well over 300 feet high (over 400 feet in Cape Wind's case) and usually sited on prominent ridgelines and in open spaces. These are places any sensible person would be appalled to see industrial development. They are not just big (and include roads, transformers, and power lines), they add significant and disturbing noise to rural environments and must be lit with flashing lights day and night.
Easterbrook says all this is necessary to help resolve the problems caused by our thirst for power. He fails, however, to question the developer's claim of the project's potential contribution of an average 170 MW (which represents a whopping five one-thousandths of one percent of our energy use). That projection is based only on the generous formula from the wind industry, which says -- despite all evidence -- that the output of an off-shore turbine will be 40% of its rated capacity over a year. Existing facilities -- when they're working at all; it is still a very problematic technology -- produce at 20-30% (the figure is even lower on-shore). The wind data from Cape Wind's own measurement station in the Sound suggests that its output will be at the lower end of the range.
And because 20% is the average, two-thirds of the time output will be less than that. A lot of the time, such as the day I am writing this, the whole 24-square-mile installation wouldn't generate enough electricity to make up for its own consumption. It certainly wouldn't be replacing any more reliable source on the grid if Mr. Easterbrook wants the light to go on when he flicks that switch.
As the experience of, for example, Denmark (20% wind) and Germany (4% wind) shows us, large installations of wind turbines would not reduce our use of any existing source of power. This is not to dismiss the very real energy issues that Easterbrook has elsewhere written about. It is only to recognize that industrializing our land- and seascapes with wind towers (it would require hundreds of thousands to produce just a few percent of U.S. electricity needs) is a highly destructive (however profitable) folly.
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