Bewildered

In "A tilt at the Don Quixotes" (The Times (London), Sept. 15, 2005), Roy Hattersley insists how beautiful wind turbines are. Indeed, he says that is reason enough to build them. He compares their giant rotating blades to leaves reflecting the sun and their gravelly noise to the "gentle hum of swarming bees." Seeing them off shore at Tintagel, he imagines that "a dozen Ladies of the Lake were reaching out from the water to catch the discarded Excalibur."

So he does not agree that they desecrate the countryside, that they in fact affirm our natural place in it. Their oily rusty remains and concrete pads will be seen in the future as charming relics of an earlier age. Nature-lover that he claims to be, he thinks the escarpment ("the Edge") overlooking his own Derbyshire house would be vastly improved by a line of the "elegant" erections.

This is the same Roy Hattersley who, as Angela Kelly of Country Guardian has pointed out, wrote about the desecration of the Derbyshire Peak National Park and the Edge on Jubilee Day, 2002. As she quotes:

... somebody somewhere looks out each morning at what should be a miracle of nature and sees only the brutality of commerce.

Tomorrow, as I walk up toward the sight of desecration, I shall consider who -- in the judgment of the gods -- are the true patriots, the people who endorse whatever it costs to finance the four-day jubilee celebration or the men and women who would rather spend the money on preserving the splendours of the English countryside. God save the Edge.

There is an obvious contradiction here. Hattersley's divine judgement considers only the passing commerce of promoting the monarchy to be a violation of the landscape, not the commerce of industrializing that landscape with giant turbine towers of doubtful value except to the speculators taking swift advantage of the naïveté of people like Roy Hattersley.

The "splendours of the English countryside" mean different things to different people. But it is outrageous to argue that strings of 100-meter-high spinning turbines are "natural," no matter how much one likes them. And because so many people don't like them, or question their utility, the wise course is to err on the side of nature and avoid building them in otherwise unindustrialized landscapes.

What is "romantic" about ruined farmhouses and abandoned quarries is that nature is reclaiming them. It reminds us not that our impositions on the natural world are right but that they are at best temporary vanity and at worst destructive folly. The jagged remains of Hattersley's beloved erections are more likely to be in the latter category.

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

A mere $3 billion

Froma Harrop writes in today's Providence (R.I.) Journal: "Of the $14.5 billion in tax breaks to energy producers [in the recent energy bill], about $9 billion goes for oil, gas and coal -- and at a time of soaring oil profits. A mere $3 billion was set aside for incentives to produce electricity from renewable sources."

Mere? Over 21% of the subsidies go to renewables, which produce about 6% of our energy. That doesn't sound like an arrangement to complain about. And the soaring profits, the efficient movement of large amounts of public money into private hands, at least in wind, are there, too -- that's why Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase are in the business.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

Some data on blade failure and throw

At the 2004 California Wind Energy Collaborative Forum (click the title of this post for proceedings, both PowerPoint PDFs and audio MP3s), Scott Larwood of the California Wind Energy Collaborative, University of California, Davis, presented "Permitting setbacks for wind turbines and the blade throw hazard."

His research concludes that a reasonable expectation for blade failure is 1 per 100 turbines per year. Thus setbacks in consideration of blade or fragment throw are indeed important to establish.

His calculations (or his reporting of a Danish study) establishes, first of all, how far a blade or fragment could be thrown at tip speeds at and above the normal operation maximum, expressed as multiples of the total turbine height, using data for 1.5–2.0-MW turbines. At the normal maximum, a blade could be thrown to a distance almost 1.5 times the turbine height and a hazardous fragment over 3.5 times. At twice the normal tip speed, a complete blade could be thrown over 2.5 times the turbine height and a hazardous fragment almost 6.5 times. The maximum fragment distance is 6.5 times the turbine height.

Second, Larwood calculates blade and fragment thrown as a function of turbine height, finding that as height increases, the absolute distance they might be thrown increases, but as a multiple of turbine height it decreases. For example, a 50-m (164-ft) turbine (height to blade tip) could throw a whole blade about 120 m (2.4 × ht) and a fragment over 250 m (5 × ht); a 100-m (328-ft) turbine could throw a blade about 125 m (1.25 × ht) and a fragment about 375 m (3.75 × ht).

Larwood does not recommend specific setbacks, presumably because they involve other considerations as well, such as noise, high voltage, and visual intrusion.

On another note, he cites the distance the turbines should be from each other for minimal wind interference: three rotor diameters when aligned perpendicular to the wind and 10 rotor diameters when parallel to the wind. Thus, the GE 1.5-MW turbine, with a 70.5-m rotor span, requires 37-123 acres per tower. Each Vestas V90 1.8-MW turbine, with a 90-m rotor, requires 60-200 acres.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines

Local zoning for wind turbines

The Ludington (Mich.) Daily News reported yesterday on a new ordinance in Hamlin Township governing the construction of wind turbine towers. It seems like good clear zoning.

The ordinance ... allows individual wind energy conversion systems (WECS) in all parts of the township, such that the power is only generated for non-commercial purposes with a rated capacity of 300 kilowatts or less.

Setbacks for the individual systems must be, at a minimum, twice the height of the total structure (tower and blade combined) on all sides of the site boundary. The generated noise of the WECS cannot be more than 5 decibels above the ambient noise at the site of any neigboring dwelling.

The ordinance limits commercial, industrial-sized wind energy generating stations to agriculturally-zoned and industrial areas. They must adhere to the same restrictions as the non-commerical turbines.

Also, the commercial wind turbines, among many things must be surfaced in a uniform, neutral, non-reflective color; have signage to warn of high voltage and other dangers; be equipped with both a manual and an automatic braking device capable of stopping the turbine operation in high winds; and adhere to guidelines set forth by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service "Guideline to Avoid and Minimize Wildlife Impacts from Wind Turbines."

As the leader of the research team that drafted the ordinance pointed out, variances are possible to loosen the restrictions but not to tighten them, so they need to be tight to start with.

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

Paper tiger vs. hard facts

To the editor:

The Bennington Banner (editorial, Sept. 8) appears to think that those who oppose industrial wind power plants on the ridgelines prefer nuclear radiation, coal smoke, and mercury poisoning. They have created a paper tiger and missed the real argument.

Most opponents would readily accept the need for large wind turbines if in fact they reduced the use of nuclear and fossil fuels. Their argument, based on the experience of Denmark and Germany and research elsewhere, is that they don't -- certainly not to any degree that justifies industrializing the ridgelines.

The Banner cites Searsburg as supplying electricity for 2,000 homes. Actually, Searsburg produces an annual average (11,000 MWh) equivalent to that used by less than 1,500 Vermont homes (average 7.5 MWh/year). According to a study sponsored by the Department of Energy, however, almost 40% of the time the turbines are not producing any power at all. That study also reveals that power drawn from the grid by the turbines themselves is not metered and the actual net production is unknown. The bottom line is that it would take an awful lot of turbines to make even a dent in our need for more reliable sources.

To equal the electricity we use from Vermont Yankee (almost 2 million MWh/yr) would require 700 MW of wind turbines, or about 390 of the 1.8-MW 400-feet-high models now being proposed. That probably exceeds even the Banner's opinion of how much more development we should tolerate.

That figure is based on the industry's own self-projections. Based on the actual experience of Searsburg, more than 1,100 MW of wind turbines would be needed.

But because of the cubic relation of energy output to wind speed, two-thirds of the time the turbines would be producing at a rate below their already low average. More than a third of the time, as we have learned at Searsburg, they would not be producing at all. That is, fossil-fueled plants and Vermont Yankee would still be needed to provide electricity when we need it.

To point this out is not to prefer nuclear and fossil fuels, as the Banner implies. Most of us would love to see renewables instead. But we have come to realize that wind power will not significantly reduce our need for "dirty" power any more than taking a walk in the morning will reduce the amount of gas I use to drive to the grocery store in the afternoon.

Gas vs. wind

From the Miller (S.D.) Press, "Wind power development faces many challenges," Sept. 6, 2005: '"When the wind isn't blowing, it's not serving anyone," [Ron Rebenitsch of Basin Electric Power Cooperative] commented. "I think wind will become a partner with gas energy," meaning when the wind isn't producing, the gas will take up the slack.'

And Renewable Energy Access, "Wind, Natural Gas Hybrid Project Moves Ahead," Aug. 3, 2005, described an 108-MW wind facility proposed off the coast of Cumbria (U.K.) with its own back-up 98-MW natural gas–powered generator.

As noted previously, many advocates of industrial wind power argue that it will help stabilize or offset rising natural gas prices. (Natural gas is used to generate about 15% of the electricity in the U.S.) It has been frequently noted recently that wind power is now economically competitive with natural gas.

The use of natural gas has increased because it is so much cleaner than coal, which still provides over 50% of the electricity in the U.S. (Oil is not a significant source, providing only 2.4%; nuclear fission provides over 20%.) Now it appears that industrial wind power will only displace natural gas.

At best, expansion of industrial wind will fuel an expansion of natural gas, necessary to provide quickly responsive back-up to the unpredictably variable wind production. Increased use of natural gas may then further reduce the use of coal. The presence of wind turbines, with their fluctuating production, however, would require the gas plants to run less efficiently and with more pollution (and more expensively) than if they could run steadily. Obviously, rather than mitigating the demand for gas, wind turbines will be increasing it.

But rather than contributing to an albeit imperfect system of reduced emissions, wind power will be reducing the positive effects of natural gas vs. coal. If new gas plants are going to built anyway, it would be better if wind turbines weren't.

Summary: Wind power requires gas power back-up but reduces its efficiency, thus increasing the emissions of the cleanest fossil-fuel alternative to coal.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind turbines

Wind behind expansion of coal power

This just in:

“Wind energy in Germany is still backed up by coal. For every 1 megawatt of wind capacity, German power companies will install 0.6 megawatts of coal generation as a backup source, said [Bernhard] Hartmann [a vice president at global management consulting firm AT Kearney].”

--Interfax China, Sept. 6, 2005

That is to say, wind power is actually driving an expansion of coal plant.

categories:  wind power, wind energy