Newsweek adds defamatory voice to wind development juggernaut

Not satisfied with the "NIMBY" pejorative, Roya Wolverson, writing in the Nov. 12, 2007, Newsweek, rolls out "citiot". Taking her cue from professional anti-environmentalist Frank Maisano, spokesman for a coalition of mid-Atlantic wind energy developers, she caricaturizes the battles over industrial wind turbine siting as between farmers and second-home owners ("citiots") -- as if installing an array 400′-high machines that generate noise and visual distraction night and day is no more offensive than spreading manure once or twice a year. Hosting giant wind turbines is no more farming than turning your fields into a NASCAR track.

The caricature, useful as it is to the developers and the landowners salivating for the developers' crumbs, ignores environmentalist opposition, turbines sited on mountain ridges, the fact that as taxpayers we are all paying for the boondoggle, and that, as one of the comments to the article notes, many leasers are absentee owners. As the saying goes, who's watching the farm? She also ignores the common subversion of local democracy, where the leasers are also the town officials that are supposed to listen to all of the people but instead act to self-servingly facilitate the developers.

Finally, she ignores the evidence that wind on the grid does not do what it is supposed to do, that is, reduce the use of other fuels. Small amounts of wind energy -- which is necessarily highly variable and intermittent -- require other sources to work harder to balance the extra fluctuation they add. Substantial wind capacity requires new "conventional" sources to be able to balance it and keep the grid stable. Since the only practical sites for large wind energy installations are far from people (though still impacting animals and plants), they also require new high-capacity transmission lines (not to mention heavy-duty roads) through those remote areas.

What is significant here, therefore, is that the developers (and their abettors) have apparently given up trying to argue that there are benefits from big wind that outweigh the negative impacts. Dare we say, they have lost that argument? They now have only their nasty contempt for opposition voices and appeals to shortsighted greed.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights

NBC News drinks the Danish wind Koolaid

On Nov. 5, NBC Nightly News, 80% of which is owned by General Electric, the leading U.S. manufacturer of wind turbines, sang the praises of wind energy in Denmark, saying the Danes lead the way that we should follow.

This was part of the network's "green week", a fine idea but one that should not be seen as a license to abandon all veridicality.

The piece on wind included many errors of fact.

To start with, Denmark's wind turbines do not "supply 20% of Denmark's electricity needs".

Denmark's wind turbines produce electricity equivalent to 20% of what the country uses. But much (if not most) of that wind-generated energy is exported to larger grids that can absorb the fluctuations better.

Rather than leading the way to building even more wind turbines, Denmark has in fact essentially halted new onshore construction. Any development that is still talked about (to keep the market for Vestas turbines alive) is far off shore. But even that has stalled since 2004 because of the expense and technical challenges.

The island of Samso is presented as so successfully energy independent that it produces more than it needs. Actually, the island is able to "depend" on its highly variable and intermittent wind turbines precisely because it is still connected to the national grid and not independent at all. The island uses the national grid to balance its wind energy, just as Denmark as a whole uses the international grid.

While it is true that wind turbines emit "no pollution or carbon dioxide" (after their (and their infrastructure's) manufacture, transport, and construction, and not counting ongoing maintenance (including oil changes) or if they are built on and thus disturb peat or other important carbon sinks), the crucial fact is that neither do they reduce pollution or carbon dioxide emitted by other sources. There is no evidence that Denmark has reduced emissions or other fuel use because of wind on its grid.

That is the unfortunate fact that is getting harder every year to deny or ignore, even if one's only goal is to create a market for Vestas and GE.

wind power, wind energy,environment, environmentalism

Dreams of 20% penetration

Carl Levesque of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) writes in Renewable Energy Access (Nov. 7, 2007):

AWEA Policy Director Rob Gramlich provided a glimpse of the 20% vision technical report that is due to come out soon. The vision, which Gramlich emphasized assumes "stable and long-term policy," calls for a ramp-up in deployment of wind power capacity form the current 3,000-4,000 megawatts (MW) annually to 16,000 MW per year at peak. Gramlich also showed the conceptual map developed by American Electric Power of a grid that can efficiently accommodate 20% wind (as well as benefit all of the electric industry). The map calls for up to 15,000 miles of new transmission lines.

That's one new giant turbine every hour for the next 25 years (allowing 3 years to get up to that rate). In addition to the proposed 15,000 miles of new high-capacity transmission lines (mostly in rural and wild areas), 400,000 MW of new wind turbines would require 20,000,000 acres (31,250 square miles!) of newly industrialized land.

And since demand will also grow, all those wind turbines will have barely reached 10% "penetration" -- god save us from 20%! And, as well explained elsewhere, they will have done nothing to reduce the consumption of other fuels or their emissions.

Continuing this boondoggle is clearly madness. Enlarging it is sociopathic.

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Environmentalists starting to notice destructive wind energy development

The Collectif du 6 octobre notes that they are succeeding in turning environmentalists against industrial wind turbines in rural and wild areas, as evidenced by Nicolas Hulot writing in Le Figaro, October 20, 2007:

Recently, a collective of organizations met in Paris to demonstrate against wind turbines. They often have good reasons. The wind turbine lobby is often cloase to the nuclear lobby, working on mayors of small towns with proposals of new income. They have installed wind turbines in spite of good sense. Fields of wind turbines on industrial farms don't shock anyone. But when magnificent countrysides are sacrificed, I understand why there would be reactions.

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Exploding wind turbine transformer

In response to a Nov. 1 query from a concerned citizen for information concerning reports of an explosion in one of the transformers at the "Maple Ridge" wind energy facility on Tug Hill, N.Y., and a truck working in the middle of the night at the base of each turbine, steven_blow@dps.state.ny.us wrote on Nov. 2:

We've checked out the situation and there appears to be no truth to the report.

But janasca@gw.dec.state.ny.us (Jack Nasca) wrote on Nov. 5:

We spoke to the operators at the Maple Ridge site and have learned:

On July 4, a single pad mounted grounding transformer located at the Rector Road substation exploded and was rendered inoperative. This was one of ten such transformers in the substation. No cause was determined, and the transformer has been sent back to the manufacturer for an analysis to identify the cause. Lightning was not a factor. None of the other nine grounding transformers at the substation had any problems, and there have been no incidents at turbine base transformers.

Unrelated to the above, a program of annual preventative maintenance of transformers at the base of the turbines was conducted over the summer. This included an analysis of the mineral oil used as a coolant. A gas analysis of the cooling oil was conducted, which indicated elevated levels of certain gases in about 30% of the transformers, one of which was hydrogen. A contractor specializing in purging gases from transformer cooling oil was hired to remove the gases identified in the analysis. Because the contractor was very busy (apparently this occurs with some regularity with transformers in any type of transmission facility), they worked 24/7 for a 2 ½ week period to complete the task. So at some point they were working at "midnight." The process involves withdrawal of the oil from the transformer, piping it to a truck with the purging equipment, capture and collection of the gas for disposal off-site, and returning the oil to the transformer. It was stated that there is no atmospheric release of gases from this process.

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A Forsaken Garden

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

 

In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland, At the sea-down’s edge between windward and lee, Walled round with rocks as an inland island, The ghost of a garden fronts the sea. A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead.   The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone land. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand? So long have the gray bare walks lain guestless, Through branches and briers if a man make way, He shall find no life but the sea-wind’s, restless Night and day.   The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken, These remain.   Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird’s song; Only the sun and the rain come hither All year long.   The sun burns sear, and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers one never will know, Whose eyes went seaward a hundred sleeping Years ago.   Heart handfast in heart as they stood, “Look thither,” Did he whisper! “Look forth from the flowers to the sea; For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither, And men that love lightly may die — but we?” And the same wind sang, and the same waves whitened, And or ever the garden’s last petals were shed, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Love was dead.   Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? And were one to the end — but what end who knows? Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose. Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them? What love was ever as deep as a grave? They are loveless now as the grass above them Or the wave.   All are at one now, roses and lovers, Nor known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea. Not a breath of the time that has been hovers In the air now soft with a summer to be. Not a breath shall there sweeten the seasons hereafter Of the flowers or the lovers that laugh now or weep, When as they that are free now of weeping and laughter, We shall sleep.   Here death may deal not again for ever; Here change may not come till all change end. From the graves they have made they shall rise up never, Who have left nought living to ravage and rend. Earth, stones, and thorns of the wild ground growing, While the sun and the rain live, these shall be; Till a last wind’s breath upon all these blowing Roll the sea.   Till the slow sea rise, and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead.

Capacity calculations for wind on the grid

Operators of the electrical grid have to know how much power capacity they can county on when they need it. This creates a problem for wind energy, because only the wind determines its production rate and time. It's largely chance that wind and demand might coincide in any dependable way. Therefore, wind is largely a sideshow, or even an added burden, to the real work of the grid.

Here is how different grid operators look at wind power's actual value in their planning, as compiled by the Utility Wind Integration Group ("Wind Power and Electricity Markets", information compiled through September 21, 2007). For "Capacity Calculation":

• PJM (Mid-Atlantic plus northern IN and IL) initially assigns a value of 20% of the rated capacity and then uses the average output over the previous 3 years ot 4, 5, and 6 o'clock p.m. from June through August.


• NYISO uses the average capacity factor between 2 and 6 o'clock p.m. from June through August and between 4 and 8 o'clock p.m. from December through February.


• ISO-NE (New England) uses the overall capacity factor.


• Ontario IESO uses 10% of the rated capacity for long-term (e.g., seasonal) forecasting and 0% (zero) for 1 to 34 days ahead.


• MISO (Midwest) gives wind a 15% capacity value for transmission planning purposes.


• SPP (KS, OK, TX panhandle) uses the level of output equalled or exceeded for 85% of the top 10% load hours.


• ERCOT (TX) uses 8.7% of the rated capacity in capacity reserve margin calculations.


• CAISO uses the average monthly output over the previous 3 years between 12 and 6 o'clock p.m. from May through September.


• Alberta Electric System Operator assigns a 20% value.

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