"footprint vs. industrialized area"

A stubborn dialogue has been in progress in Grist magazine's comments section. Here is the latest entry.

The brochures from the industry point out that each turbine's footprint is only a little 250-square-foot concrete pad. That's like saying a 747's footprint is only a few square feet (where its tires touch the ground).

The fact is they require a lot of space around them, thus turning huge areas of rural and wild landscape into industrial "parks."

The National Geographic 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 (as already described).

And because wind-generated power is highly variable, and output falls off cubically as the wind drops below the optimal 25-30 mph, 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.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

WisPIRG hasn't really thought it through

Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WisPIRG) has released a paper arguing for building more wind power facilities. Like most advocates, they point out how awful coal and nuclear fuels (with which I completely agree) yet fail to show that wind power can actually reduce their use. It is like pointing to a person shot in the head to justify stabbing someone. "Not as bad" is still bad, especially if the "worse" is still going to be around as much as ever.

How bad is industrial wind power? At about 50 acres per megawatt capacity (see www.aweo.org/windarea.html for a table of facilities around the world), it simply takes up huge amounts of space, filling every vista with alien behemoths like a giant barbed-wire fence.

WisPIRG points out, "A single [coal] mine can strip up to ten square miles, disrupting individual animals and in some cases entire species." Ten square miles is 6,400 acres. Wisconsin's Forward Wind Energy Center will occupy 32,000 acres, or 50 square miles. Yet the entire facility's capacity will be only 200 MW. And because of the variability of the wind, its actual output will average at the most (developer's claim) 67 MW but more likely (U.S. average, Energy Information Agency (EIA)) only 26 MW of usable power.

As horrible as a ten-square-mile coal mine is, I dare say we get a hell of a lot of electricity out of it. Which cannot be said for industrial wind.

Here are some more numbers. According to WisPIRG's paper, Wisconsin uses 68 TW-h of electricity each year, projected to rise to 85 TW-h in 2013. Seventy-two percent comes from coal and 22% from nuclear. What would it take to replace 20% of that with wind?

The developers claim (and advocates such as WisPIRG swallow, despite evidence that it is highly inflated) that annual production from a wind turbine is 33% of its rated capacity. The EIA says that wind produced less than 5 TW-h of the electricity used in the U.S. in 2002, representing the output of, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) 4,480 MW of installed capacity (average between capacity at ends of 2001 and 2002). That's an annual output of only 13% of capacity.

[Technical note: A electrical generator produces power, measured in watts, which is used over time, specified, for example, in your electricity bill as kilowatt-hours (KW-h), which is a thousand watts used for one hour. A 10-million-watt (MW) generator producing full tilt without break for a year produces 10 MW × 24 hours × 365 days = 87,600 MW-h, or 87.6 GW-h. But no power plant, especially one dependent on highly variable wind, produces at its full capacity full time. The ratio of its actual annual output to its theoretical maximum output is called its capacity factor. As noted above, the wind industry insists that 0.33 is to be expected for wind turbines, but real data shows it to be below 0.13.]

Back to replacing 20% of Wisconsin's electricity with wind. Twenty percent of 68 TW-h is 13.6 TW-h. Divided by 8,760 (24 hours × 365 days), that's an average output of 1,553 MW. That would require at the least (developer's claim) 4,658 MW but more likely (EIA data) 11,942 MW of wind capacity. Even by the developer's wishful thinking that would require industrializing 364 square miles, but more likely 933 square miles -- of formerly wild or rural land.

That 20% will be only 16% in 2013, so ever more would have to be built. (No wonder the industry is lobbying so hard for renewables mandates. And no wonder people are becoming increasingly alarmed by the increasing encroachment of the giant machines.)

And the truly sad thing is that the wind is variable and often not there at all, and the output of a wind turbine falls off in cubic relation as the wind speed drops below the ideal 25-30 mph. Only one-third of the time would the turbines produce at their annual average rate or better. Most of the time, Wisconsin will still need those coal and nuclear plants as much as ever.

Large-scale wind is clearly not an environmentally sound option.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

If only the wind blew as much

An ironic leader appeared in the Tillsonburg (Ont.) News on July 18:

"Progress on Erie Shores Wind Farm is moving ahead at a speed faster than the wind with the hot, still weather that has been blanketing southern Ontario lately."

That neatly sums up the whole industry.

And the day before (July 17), the Boston Globe reported that noise and distraction from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' 100-KW training turbine in Dorchester (Mass.) have not proved to be a problem. Why? Because the blades have barely moved since the machine was connected.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

"Going [Nowhere] With The Wind"

To the editor, Tom Paine:

In "Going With The Wind" (July 21), George Sterzinger [executive director of the Renewable Energy Policy Project] writes, "Every kWh of wind avoids on average 1.3 pounds of CO2 emissions from natural gas generation and is therefore at least a step towards a prudent climate stabilization policy."

There are a number of unmentioned considerations in this example that mitigate wind power as "prudent."

According to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, natural gas is the source of only about 21% of our CO2 emissions and only about 25% of that fraction is from generating electricity. Replacing that 5% of emissions would indeed be slightly significant. According to the Energy Information Agency the electricity used from natural gas in 2002 was 691 TWh. The electricity from wind power was about 5 TWh, with an installed capacity of about 4,480 MW in 2002. The amount of wind power, therefore, to theoretically displace the 5% of CO2 emissions from natural gas burned for electricity would be almost 620,000 MW, requiring more than 48,000 square miles of newly industrialized landscape.

Even then, however, perhaps a third of the time, as in Searsburg, Vermont, the wind turbines would not be producing any electricity at all; in any case, because of the cubic relationship between wind speed and production, two-thirds of the time they would be producing at far less than their average rate -- so other sources, i.e., just as many fossil and nuclear plants, would still have to be operating as before. And because they would have to be run less efficiently to respond to the variability of the wind, their emissions might even increase.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

"Wind power needs support"

Frank Steinberg of PowerWorks writes in yesterday's Tracy (Calif.) Press:

Thank you for writing a positive editorial about the wind turbines in the Altamont Pass. It is nice to know that not all newspaper editorial staffs are politically correct and like to bash capitalism. ...

... We are just trying to do our best by generating environmentally friendly wind power and make a living in an industry that we can be proud of. We have no other agenda.

Since I have worked in the wind-power industry for the past 20 years, I know that most of the wind-power companies in the Altamont Pass have worked very closely with biologists and environmentalists over the past 20 years to mitigate bird fatalities.

What is never said is that the many things that these so-called experts have suggested to reduce bird fatalities have NOT worked.

These mitigation programs have cost these companies millions of dollars, and we have gotten little to show for it.

Why would we now believe that larger turbines would be the solution to reducing bird deaths? To replace 180 of our smaller turbines with 12 large turbines would cost our company $28 million. That is a very large capital investment for a small company like ours.

This burden cannot be put solely on our shoulders. They should get a government-funded study to implement their measures to reduce bird deaths.

The California Senate just passed an energy bill that calls for 20 percent of California’s energy to be produced by renewable energy. Where is the support of our lawmakers? Congressman Pombo is doing an excellent job in revising the Endangered Species Act, but even he is under attack from all sorts of environmentalist groups.

Yesterday, I contacted Assemblywoman Barbara Matthews’ office and asked if she would be interested in sponsoring a bill that would exempt companies from state sales tax for installing renewable energy equipment (Idaho currently has such a law).

Lawmakers need to put there money were their mouths are. If the lawmakers can approve $61 billion for education, they can approve a few million for renewable energy. Without tax incentives and support for the wind-power industry by lawmakers I don’t believe we can achieve 20 percent renewables by 2010.

Interesting that this defender of capitalism is blatantly asking for a government handout. Also that he is clearly questions the claim that larger modern turbines are more bird safe, that the only way for his company to succeed is to "revise" the Endangered Species Act. He's right that lawmakers should think more thoroughly about the implications of their mandates, but geez, what a self-centered little whiner! Maybe wind power isn't the great renewable source some people -- especially those in the business -- think it is. It's certainly amusing to hear that this self-described "environmentally friendly" energy source can't make money if it's forced to actually be environmentally friendly.

Wind farm louder than rollercoaster?

The Sentinel Reporter of Stoke on Trent (U.K.) reported last Thursday (July 14) on the appeal by Alton Towers amusement park against noise restrictions imposed on it after a suit by Farley couple Stephen and Suzanne Roper.

The Roper's noise consultant, Mike Stigwood, testified that the noise level at the Roper's house was an average 10-15 dB higher when the park was open than when it was closed, and that it was "very unpleasant." "If it was like that day after day for the rest of my life," Stigwood said, "I wouldn't live with it. I'd move."

The park's barrister, Jonathan Caplan, questioned if Stigwood could be sure that the extra noise was from the park, suggesting that other noises, such as road traffic and wind farm machinery, completely masked those from the park.

Granted, Caplan was exaggerating those sources of noise (he even suggested that birdsong helped to hide the park's noise), but nonetheless it clearly illustrates that wind power facilities are considered to be significant sources of intrusive noise.

Note that the 10-dB increase that is described as making the Roper's home unlivable is a typical limit in rural areas. Subjectively, it represents a doubling of noise level. But in Oregon, wind developers successfully changed the law because they could not meet that already lenient standard.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Umbra Fisk at Grist triumphantly parrots industry sales material

After Umbra Fisk at Grist Magazine had written in January about the wonders of industrial wind power, a reader wrote to ask about actual evidence of its positive impact. Yesterday, she replied "triumphantly."

With utter disregard for her claim of triumph, the reader has replied in the comments section:

The metaphor about unreliable babysitters is not quite accurate. Wind is indeed a "flaky" power source, in that only the wind determines when it contributes power. But as a "nondispatchable" source, it does not wait to be asked. This babysitter occasionally shows up at your door whether you need her or not. [And you still can't go out, because there's no way to know when she'll just leave again.] There are reports from western Denmark that 84% of the wind-generated power was in fact not able to be used and had to be dumped.

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.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism