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

Not so insignificant harm

From today's Herald Sun of Melbourne:

Andrew Richards, external affairs manager for Australia's biggest renewable energy company, Pacific Hydro, admits that as wind power generation increases, more work needs to be done on how it fits into the existing power grid.

But he rejects outright claims that wind farms can increase greenhouse gases because they cause existing brown coal generators to "throttle back" and produce higher emissions.

"Coal-fired power is at its most efficient at maximum load, there is no doubt about that," said Mr Richards, who also sits on the board of the Australian Wind Energy Association.

"But it is a bit of a furphy to say that wind power is causing greater emissions at this stage.

"With the current state of output from wind in Victoria, we are just background noise compared to demand fluctuations."

That is to say, if in the future there is enough wind power capacity installed that when the wind blows just right its output rises well above "just background noise," then other plants will be forced to operate at less efficiency, increasing their emissions. So, as long as wind power's presence on the grid is insignificant, there is no need to worry about its fluctuations causing greater emissions from coal plants.

As noted in response to a similar comment about spinning reserve, yet another advocate seems to be asserting that wind power works great as long as it's not actually contributing anything of significance.

Yes, it's working great for the developers and green credit marketers. But it is destroying more and more of our last rural and wild places. It is destroying the lives of people and animals. For nothing.

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

National Wind Watch

National Wind Watch was founded as a nonprofit corporation in August 2005. The organization will seek to promote knowledge and raise awareness of the risks and damaging environmental impacts of industrial wind turbine development, and will make information and analysis on the subject available through its website, www.wind-watch.org.

Here is the press release announcing the new group:

NATIONAL COALITION TO SPOTLIGHT WIND POWER’S HARMFUL IMPACTS, INEFFECTIVENESS

Rowe, MA (September 27, 2005). In response to the accelerating development of industrial wind power plants in the U.S., a coalition of groups and individuals has established a nonprofit organization, National Wind Watch, to better educate the public.

Growing opposition to wind power plants is raising important questions about whether their construction is justified. Significant wildlife and other environmental impacts of wind turbine proliferation are also becoming evident. National Wind Watch aims to disseminate information about the questions and problems associated with wind power, and to provide support to concerned individuals and communities.

NWW President David Roberson states: “Much of the information on wind power plants currently available to the public is propagated by the wind energy industry and associated organizations. It’s onesided, and frequently misleading. Industrial wind has powerful backers, and small communities are often ill equipped to deal with the issues. National Wind Watch will help to remedy that by providing a central resource of information people can use to make more informed decisions.”

The new organization arose from a May 2005 conference of community planners, wildlife biologists, energy experts, and concerned citizens from across the United States. The group identified many widespread misconceptions about the supposed benefits of wind plant development, and also examined the marketing efforts and other strategies of wind energy proponents.

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

Why a 52-MW wind "farm" is worth only 4.3 MW

I have been asked to clarify the numbers from the "data" paragraph of the previous post, "Why is VPIRG hiding?".

Capacity factor: Searsburg started at about 24% and has now been around 21% for a few years. The national average as reported by facilities themselves to the Energy Information Agency of the DOE is 27%, but they apparently do not count out-of-commission turbines, so I think 25% is a fair estimate. Note that in the U.K., with the "best" wind resource in Europe, the capacity factor also is only 24% or so.

That's the easy one.

For most of the power curve between the cut-in wind speed of 9 mph and the rated wind speed of 30 mph, the power generation increases cubically in relation to the wind speed. That is, as the wind speed doubles, the power output increases eightfold.

Say the wind speeds are evenly distributed within that range, that is, it blows at 12 mph as often as at 24 mph and so on across the range. Because the turbine produces power at much lower rates at slow than at high wind speeds (one-eighth the power, e.g., at 12 mph than at 24 mph), such an even distribution of wind speeds would mean that the turbine is producing at lower rates much more often.

All this is to explain actual observations as shown in this graphic from German grid manager Eon Netz. The curve follows the total output (or infeed to the grid) of Eon Netz's wind plant and the number of hours that level was reached or surpassed. For example, the infeed was at least 2,000 MW during approximately 5,000 quarter-hours of the year and 1,000 MW during about 12,500 quarter-hours. Higher levels of infeed were seen during much fewer quarter-hours.


The heavy horizontal line shows the average infeed (which, as a percentage of the total installed capacity, represents the capacity factor, in this case 16.4%). That level was seen during about 12,500 quarter-hours, which is 35% of the year. The graph shows, therefore, that the average rate of production is seen only a third of the time. That is, only one third of the time the turbines produce at or above their average rate.

A higher capacity factor would simply raise straighten the curve somewhat; the average infeed, although higher, would still be seen only a third of the time.


This graph, from a Views of Scotland paper, shows the same thing even more clearly. Each bar shows how many hours of the year the infeed was in the specified range. The total heights of the first three columns represent two-thirds of the year but only one-fourth of the installed capacity. The capacity factor in Denmark is actually around 20% or less, so a rate of production at or above average was reached less than a third of the time.

That's the time the wind plant is reasonably productive. But that is not really how I got down to 4.3% effective capacity for UPC's proposed 52-MW facility in Sheffield and Sutton.

The "effective" capacity is a measure of how much other sources could be replaced by wind power for the supply system to remain reliable. It is also called "capacity credit." It is a much more speculative number, but study after study of the grid integration of intermittent, nondispatchable, and imprecisely predictable wind energy put it at about a third of the capacity factor.

The scenario is that even as, say, a 52-MW wind plant produces at an average of 13 MW, the grid cannot decommission or plan not to install a corresponding 13 MW but perhaps only a third of that. As more wind plant is added and therefore more often uses more of the rest of the system to balance it, that "credit" approaches zero (which the Irish Grid study I alluded to clearly states).

I'm a bit out of my depth here, but I would assume the capacity credit would be reflected in costs to utilities, which would be similarly unable to contract for less energy to an amount that is anywhere near the amount of wind power they may purchase. Thus, if Washington Electric buys UPC's production from 52 MW of turbines averaging 13 MW, it would be able to buy only 4.3 MW less from other sources.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, Vermont, environment, environmentalism

Questions and Answers: What's wrong with wind energy?

1. The National Wind Watch home page says, “because of the wind’s low density, intermittency, and high variability, [large-scale wind turbines] do next to nothing for reducing carbon and other emissions or dependence on other fuels”. Could you go into a bit more detail about this and present any links you have for evidence?

The power of the wind is 1/2 of area (turbine rotor diameter) × air density × wind speed cubed. There is a theoretical physical limit (Betz’ law) that no more than 16/27, or 59.3%, of the wind’s energy (power × time) can be captured. Modern wind turbines may reach 50% efficiency, but only within a certain range of wind speeds, which appear to be the average speeds for which the turbines are designed, but at which speeds they generate at only a fraction (around 1/3) of their maximum rate. As the wind speed increases, the rotors are increasingly feathered and efficiency plummets.

The brochure for Enercon turbines includes graphs showing the efficiency vs. wind speed.

In addition to being limited by Betz’ law, wind turbines must not interfere with each other, so they must be spaced quite far apart. The minimum distance is generally considered to be 3 rotor diameters perpendicular to the wind (possible only where wind is unidirectional) and 10 rotor diameters parallel to the wind. See, eg, www.wind-watch.org/documents/?p=984. Thus in an array of, say, 90-meter-diameter turbines (the blades of each machine sweeping a vertical airspace of 1.57 acres), each machine would require 810,000 square meters around it, or 200 acres. From that 200 acres, assuming a 2-MW turbine and an average rate of generation 25% of capacity (see https://wind-watch.org/doc/?p=3427 for U.S. averages; they are generally quite a bit less in Europe), the average power density is only 2.5 kW/acre.

Furthermore, that wind energy is intermittent, meaning other sources of electricity must be available, and variable, meaning other sources must be kept running to be ramped up and down as needed to keep the electricity supply exactly matched to demand. This means that wind is only adding to the grid and then causing other generators to run less efficiently, including burning fuel while not generating electricity. See http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2013/10/us-co-emissions-for-electricity-from.html and http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-much-does-wind-energy-reduce-carbon.html

2. Pertaining to health — I’ve heard very mixed messages about whether the health effects are of legitimate concern and I would like to hear your take on it. ... Any scientific information would be great!

21 published (peer-reviewed) studies: http://wndfo.net/wts
10 non-industry, non-government reviews: http://wndfo.net/revs

One hitch has been the term “annoyance” as used in these studies. In epidemiology it means to a degree that can cause health problems. The wind industry has instead used its colloquial meaning to characterize the problem as something people just need to get used to.

Even that flies in the face of the evidence that infrasound (frequencies below the threshold of conscious hearing) and low-frequency noise (ILFN) is probably responsible for much of the problem, because research suggests that people who are sensitive to ILFN become more sensitized with continued exposure.

The research showing that people complain more about wind turbine noise than other artificial sources at similar decibel levels is probably explained by the facts that it is unpredictable (depending on wind speed and direction), that it often occurs at night, and that it is a pulsating noise.

Basically, the wind industry is trying to stop research as it has just begun. Because, as the reviews conclude, the preliminary research clearly justifies concern and is already leading to revisions of noise regulations to consider lower frequencies and pulsating patterns. And if such regulations are justified for humans, they would also have to be considered for wildlife ...

3. For my own sanity, I’m wondering why on earth there is so much controversy! How can there be such polar opposite opinions and what is the truth ... in your opinion?

There is a lot of desperation and urgency to remedy the consequences of our high level of energy consumption, and big wind has exploited that, ever since Enron first realized that it could sell wind to environmentalists as an alternative to coal. Since concern about climate change came to dominate mainstream environmentalism after Al Gore’s movie, wind energy has been sold as our salvation. It became a “with us or against us” marker of one’s concern for the environment or sociopolitical team loyalty. Its own adverse impacts (mining, birds and bats, wild habitat) are then dismissed simply as being much less than those of fossil fuels (the other team), ignoring the fact the the reduction of fossil fuel burning because of wind energy is effectively nil, making wind’s impacts — many of them unique, such as the threats to raptors and bats, and the need to build over hundreds of acres at a time in rural and wild places — an addition, not an alternative. Even the American Wind Energy Association once admitted that the most ambitious wind program would only slow the increase of carbon emissions. And for greenhouse gases, there are still the problems of transport and heating. And animal agriculture. And hydrofluorocarbons.

The truth is that there is no free lunch. By approaching the problem with building more instead of using less, wind energy is only perpetuating it. And while people look to wind energy to save the planet, they are more likely to avoid doing things that would make a real difference. They are able to buy Enron-invented “green tags” (carbon credits) to “offset” their impact rather than actually reduce it.

So the polarity is indeed justified and inevitable. Once somebody realizes that wind is a nonsolution, and harmful itself without meaningfully mitigating other harms, it is clear that there is hardly a “middle ground”. And once someone who believes in wind starts to admit that it has drawbacks or that claims for its benefits are overblown, a cornerstone of mainstream environmentalism starts to crumble — and retrenchment becomes all the more fierce to avoid complicating “the message”.

4. One more question: What are viable solutions instead of wind energy, and if wind energy is here to stay what kind of regulations or changes are needed for it to be successful?

Frankly, there probably isn’t a viable solution right now to 8 billion humans consuming ever more resources, particular in a world economic model of “growth”, which even with the modifier “sustainable” is still growth — growth of consumption, growth of waste, and less for the rest of life on the planet. Thursday's Democracy Now had a couple of climate scientists on calling for radical change from that model: www.democracynow.org/2013/11/21/we_have_to_consume_less_scientists.

As for the potential success of wind energy, it would require not only massive building of wind turbines (and all the resources they require) but also an even more massive battery backup system (and all the more resources) and a massive expansion of continent-wide high-capacity transmission lines. In other words, it’s ridiculous. Virtually everything would have to be turned over to wind energy. We would have instead of a war economy a wind economy, where wind energy powers primarily the maintenance of wind power. And we’d still need backup generators!

H.G. Wells wrote, in 1897, “A Story of the Days to Come”:

And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. ... The great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens ...

In that story, it is indeed the power company that is in power.

That said, it is a fact that wind turbines are being and will continue to be built, so like National Wind Watch I strongly support effective setbacks (at least 2 km, perhaps 5 km) from homes and noise regulations (that limit nighttime indoor noise to 30 dBA, as the WHO recommends, and limit ILFN and pulsating noise as well). And we oppose opening up otherwise protected land to the construction of the giant machines. Of course, such regulation would not contribute to, but instead would threaten, the “success” of wind energy. It would remain rare and unprofitable, as such an absurd source of energy for the modern world should be, used only in the most desperate of circumstances when nothing else is possible and the cost and harm and low benefit might be justifiable.

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

This week in Windpower Monthly

12 July 2013: French wind industry in disarray following ECJ conclusion
The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice has concluded that the French tariff system for wind power falls within the concept of state aid.

12 July 2013: Uncertainty could derail Euro offshore growth, warns EWEA
Market uncertainty in Europe could lead to problems financing offshore projects and derail the growth in the sector, according to European Wind Energy Association.

15 July 2013: Spanish reform to deliver further blows
Spain's wind sector predicts "a torrent of financial problems" following Friday's approval of the Spanish government's power sector law, retroactively slashing returns on wind power generation.

16 July 2013: Greek draft law could break wind sector
The Greek government is drafting a law to push back the determination of a feed-in tariff (FIT) to the moment when a project is connected to the grid.

17 July 2013:
Forecast or pay penalties, India tells wind power producers
Wind farm operators in India now face fines if they fail to accurately predict their output for the following day under a new directive that came into force on 15 July.

10 July 2013: Iberdrola sells Turkish wind portfolio
Turkish engineering firm Guris has confirmed that it has acquired 100% of Spanish utility Iberdrola's wind portfolio in Turkey, totalling 133MW.

16 July 2013: Iberdrola seeks buyer for Romanian wind farms
Iberdrola has put Romanian wind assets on the sales block, as as the Spanish power company continues with the disposal of non-strategic assets.

Plus:
1 January 2013: GE leads deal to buy Iberdrola wind farms
Iberdrola, the owner of Scottishpower, is selling its French wind farm business to a consortium led by American industrial giant General Electric for about €400 million (£326.4m) in its drive to cut debt and maintain an investment grade credit rating.

9 January 2013: Wind company leaves Hammond [New York]
Iberdrola Renewables has confirmed that the meteorological test towers have been disabled and the company will no longer pursue developing the Stone Church industrial wind farm in Hammond, a project the company has been courting for the past several years.

15 January 2013: Iberdrola: Uncertainty continues for wind project development
Iberdrola Renewables is again confirming its commitment to the U.S. market — and the Pacific Northwest — after reports that the company is abandoning wind projects in the face of a continued weak market for renewable energy. After a New York news weekly reported that Iberdrola was canceling 100 projects in the U.S., the company came out in news reports to reaffirm its plans to remain active developing renewable energy projects here, while acknowledging the pipeline will be "rightsized."

24 June 2013: Wind developer abandons Ellis County [Kansas] project
In a registered letter delivered to many residents in the area today, Iberdrola Renewables, LLC said, “A variety of circumstances have led the company to the conclusion that it cannot move forward with developing the wind resources on the Property. As such, pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, Iberdrola Renewables, LLC is terminating the Agreement effective July 20, 2013.”

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms

Wind Power: a Model of Successful Public Policy?

An article published today at the World Energy Forum by Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics, and Matthieu Glachant, CERNA, Mines ParisTech, has some interesting statements undercutting wind industry claims of success:

The massive deployment of wind turbines across the world has been driven mainly by public policy support. European countries like Spain, Portugal, Germany or Ireland have mostly relied on feed-in tariffs. In the USA, Renewable Portfolio Standards and systems of tradable certificates [and tax breaks] have been implemented. The Clean Development Mechanism has played a prominent role in emerging countries. For instance, almost all Chinese wind farms are either registered as CDM projects or are in the pipeline.

The spread of wind policies and the rapid growth of wind energy have gone hand in hand. So can we consider these policies a success? Installation of wind capacity is not an end in itself, and in the short term these policies have actually increased the cost of energy. The cost of wind power generation is still high relative to conventional electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, the cost of onshore wind ranges from 70-130 US$/MWh compared to 20-50 US$/MWh for coal-fired power plants and 40-55 US$/MWh for CCGT [combined-cycle natural gas–fired turbines]. Offshore wind is even more expensive (110-130 US$/MWh).

Even counting the benefits of avoided carbon emissions, it is not clear whether the social cost of wind energy is lower. The social cost of carbon according to the World Bank is around $20/ton, which in the best conditions puts wind energy and coal at parity. However, the net impact of wind energy on carbon emissions remains a controversial issue as the intermittency of wind power production requires a carbon-emitting backup such as combined cycle gas turbines. Moreover, in developing countries, the so-called additionality of some CDM wind projects has been challenged, casting serious doubt about their net carbon impacts.

The result of the need for backup is actually worse than suggested there, because wind power production is highly variable, requiring open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) which are able to ramp their output fast enough to balance that from wind. But the carbon emissions from OCGT are about twice those from CCGT, so that a system of wind + OCGT may actually see more carbon emissions than a system of CCGT alone.

And if wind does not actually do much to reduce carbon emissions, then CDM compounds that debacle not only by driving the construction of sprawling, almost useless, wind energy facilities in developing countries, but by providing the means for developed countries to continue emitting as much carbon as ever.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

U.S. CO₂ emissions for electricity from coal have risen over past 10 years

A report from Spain and a news release from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have recently touted a decline in CO₂ emissions from electricity generation. Both, however, actually cite only a reduction of electricity generated by fossil fuels. A much more meaningful measure, considering the complexity of the grid, would be the amount of fossil fuels burned per unit of electricity generated. But that seems to be precisely what is studiously never reported (outside of this space, e.g., here, here, and here).

It requires a bit of digging into many different sources of data at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administrations. To be as up to date as possible, the following has used the latest Electric Power Monthly, release Oct. 24, 2013, to include data from 2012. First, instead of looking at power plant heat rates of fossil fuels, we need to look at their simple heat contents, i.e., not how much electricity they generate but how much energy they contain. This is because not all burning of fossil fuels at power plants goes to generating electricity. The heat content is expressed as Btu/unit of fuel: The present analysis used the values of 9,530,000 Btu/ton of coal, 1,021,000 Btu/1,000 cubic feet of natural gas, and 5,871,390 Btu/barrel of petroleum liquids.

Second, instead of electricity generated by fossil fuels, we need to look at the amount of fossil fuels burned at power plants.

Finally, assigning amounts of CO₂ per unit of fuel, we can calculate the actual CO₂ emitted by each fossil fuel. Here we assume 210 lb. CO₂/million Btu coal, 117 lb. CO₂/million Btu natural gas, and 170 lb. CO₂/million Btu petroleum liquids.

Then we can total them up and express those emissions as a ratio to total electricity generated. If, e.g., wind power is causing a reduction of, say, coal-generated electricity and thus a reduction of CO₂ emissions, then that ratio of CO₂ per unit of electricity will be lower.

Overall, the CO₂ emitted per GWh in total has indeed gone down, from 1,288,801 pounds in 2003 to 1,120,663 in 2013 — a 13% decrease. This is due mostly to the increasing share of natural gas over coal, because natural gas releases almost half the amount of CO₂ as coal. Furthermore, the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of electricity generated by natural gas has also decreased, from 1,032,279 CO₂/GWh in 2003 to 918,727 in 2013 — an 11% decrease.

The picture is further complicated by the fact that over the past 10 years, the amount of CO₂ emitted per unit of electricity from coal has actually steadily risen, from 2,107,148 pounds CO₂/GWh in 2003 to 2,234,734 in 2012 — an increase of 6%. At the same time, wind energy rose from 11,187 GWh in 2003 to 140,089 GWh in 2012. This suggests that wind does indeed cut into the efficiency of using coal for electricity, because coal plants need to “stay warm” even when not generating electricity so that they are able to kick in when the wind conditions change.

Assuming that wind is the primary reason for coal’s decreasing efficiency, what if the 140,089 GWh generated from wind power in 2013 were generated by coal operating at its heat rate from 2003? Then the overall CO₂/GWh would have been 11.5% instead of 13% lower than in 2003, suggesting that wind power has been responsible for only a 1.5% decrease in CO₂/GWh and a 1.6% decrease in total CO₂ emissions. Considering that wind’s share of U.S. electricity generation increased from 0.3% in 2003 to 3.5% in 2013, it is clear that its effect on CO₂ emissions is very far from — less than half of — what its proponents claim.

In the scale of the graph below, the decrease in CO₂ emissions with wind (blue, mostly hidden - not the teal line for coal generation) or without wind (green) are nearly identical, whereas other changes, including the addition of wind energy, are quite obvious. Also note the exactly parallel lines of coal CO₂/GWh (orange) and wind generation (red).

And that clearly suggests that the costs and impacts of wind energy — the necessary consequence of trying to harness such a diffuse and variable source — well outweigh its benefits. Compared with the very modest conservation that would achieve the same emissions results, wind appears to be a very wasteful and destructive alternative indeed.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Scudder Parker's wind turbine sales tour

WCAX-TV reported from Hinesburg (Vt.) on June 27:

To talk power, Scudder Parker went to NRG Systems in Hinesburg, a company that manufactures wind measuring equipment used by wind power developers. ...

Parker supports wind development and thinks the state can get 15% of its energy from wind, he says that would require at least 100 turbines on ridge lines all over Vermont.

"I don't see it as a question of aesthetics I see it as a question of people recognizing wind turbines as we recognize church steeples and silos in barns as a part of something that is making our economy healthy and giving us choices as a state."

Vermont uses over 5,600 gigawatt-hours of electricity in a year. That's an average load of about 640 megawatts (5,600,000 megawatt-hours divided by 8,760 hours in a year). Fifteen percent of that is 96 megawatts. The wind power salesmen say the turbines will generate more than 30% of their capacity in a year. The facility in Searsburg, however, generates only around 21% of its capacity each year. The national average output as reported to the federal Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency is 27%, but that apparently does not count out-of-commission turbines. Twenty-five percent (1/4) output is therefore a more realistic, though still generous, estimate.

That means that 384 (96 × 4) megawatts of wind power capacity would have to be installed to produce an average of 96 megawatts, or 15% of Vermont's electricity. That would require 256 330-ft-high machines like the four proposed in East Haven, or 192 400-ft-high machines like the 26 proposed in Sheffield and Sutton -- much more than "at least 100" which Parker promises.

They are obviously a lot taller and more intrusive than silos and church steeples (in fact, they're a lot taller than the Statue of Liberty, base and all), they are necessarily sited prominently, their jumbo-jet-sized rotors sweep vertical air spaces of 1-1.5 acres, and they are lit by strobes day and night.

For practical planning purposes, even more would be required. Because generation occurs only within a certain range of wind speeds and the rate of generation is cubically related to the wind speed between the "cut-in" and "rated" wind speeds (typically 8-30 mph), wind turbines generate power only two-thirds of the time and at or above their average rate only one-third of the time. And since the production responds only to the wind, it rarely correlates with user demand. Even with sufficient excess capacity from other sources on the grid to balance its intermittency and variability, the effective capacity of wind is therefore typically assumed to be a third of its expected output.

So 1,152 megawatts of wind -- 576 to 768 machines -- would be needed to reliably provide 15% of Vermont's electricity.

The absurdity goes beyond the outrageous scale for such little benefit, because if all of those turbines were actually producing power at once, most of them would have to be shut down, since base load plants can't rapidly ramp off and on.

wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism, Vermont

Wind power won't replace Vermont Yankee

The July 24 Times Argus (Montpelier & Barre, Vt.) reported on a campaign event in Putney for Bernie Sanders (running for U.S. Senate) and Peter Welch (running for U.S. House). Besides expressing his impatience with those calling for Bush et al.'s impeachment (not to mention conviction and ouster) (and which the Vermont Democrats had a chance to instigate but then backed off), Sanders spoke to the understandably strongly anti-nuclear crowd about the nearby plant:

Sanders said he had been opposed to the increased power production at the Vernon plant, and he was opposed to extending its federal operating license beyond 2012, when it is due to expire.

That statement drew the largest applause of the evening.

But Sanders said that if Vermont Yankee was shut down, Vermont had to find alternative sources of electricity -- and soon. Sanders said he was a strong supporter of wind energy ...

There's the rub. Vermont Yankee provides a third of the electricity used in Vermont. That's an average load of about 215 megawatts (forget about how much it is likely to have increased by 2012). By the productivity record of the Searsburg wind power facility (average output of 21% capacity), it would require 1,024 megawatts of wind power to produce that average load. That's over 500 turbines of the size currently proposed in Sheffield and Sutton (26 400-feet-high 2-megawatt machines over 3 ridges).

But unlike the steady supply from Vermont Yankee, the energy from wind would be intermittent and variable and would rarely coincide with actual demand. For planning purposes, most grid managers (as in a recent New York study) assume an effective capacity for wind of one-third its average output. That is, Vermont would actually need to plan to erect 3,072 megawatts of wind -- more than 1,500 Sheffield-size turbines -- to replace the energy we use from Vermont Yankee.

But that still wouldn't be enough. The assumption of effective capacity only applies when the penetration of wind is well within the excess capacity of the system, when the unpredictable load from wind can be adequately balanced. Once the system has to rely on wind to actually meet demand -- as in attempting to replace a base load provider of a third of Vermont's electricity needs -- wind power's effective capacity starts heading towards zero. This has been found independently by Irish and German government studies.

In other words, when wind capacity exceeds the capacity of other sources on the system to cover for it, its true value is revealed. If you could cover the hills with giant strobe-lit wind turbines, along with their roads, transformers, and high-voltage power lines, you would still be using the same sources as before to get your electricity. Only the lazy, insane, and greedy could support such a destructive boondoggle.

Closing down Vermont Yankee would benefit all of us, but industrial wind isn't what's going to make that possible.

wind power, wind energy, Vermont, environment, environmentalism

Worldwatch makes erroneous carbon savings claims for wind

A July 25 press release from the Worldwatch Institute claims that "2006 Wind installations offset more than 40 million tons of CO₂":

Calculations are based on U.S. data: average capacity factor for new wind power capacity (34%, from American Wind Energy Association); average capacity factor for coal-fired power plants (72%, from North American Electric Reliability Council - NAERC); average CO₂ emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants (0.95 kg/kWh, from U.S. Energy Information Administration); and average coal-fired power plant capacity (318 megawatts, from NAERC).

There are two big flaws in Worldwatch's calculation.

First, a more objective source than the industry itself for the average capacity factor for wind energy facilities in the U.S. is the U.S. Energy Information Administration. According to their Annual Energy Outlook 2007, the capacity factor for wind was 21% in 2005. The AWEA's figures of 34% is promotional spiel and not based on actual data.

Second, there are other sources of electricity on the grid besides coal, including relatively cleaner-burning natural gas and carbon-free nuclear and hydro. At the least, the relative contributions of these sources must be considered. The renewable energy certifier Green-E, has recently proposed to value renewable energy output in terms of actual greenhouse gas emissions from the equivalent output by the rest of the grid.

By Green-E's calculations, the total greenhouse gas (not just CO₂) emissions for different grid regions range from about 1,000 lbs/MWh generated to almost 2,200 lbs/MWh, or 0.47 kg/kWh for new (since 2000) facilities in the Southwest to 0.99 kg/kWh for all non-baseload facilities in the Midwest. The average among all regions in the U.S. for wind's theoretical equivalence according to Green-E is 0.66 kg/kWh.

Then there is the complication of how a highly variable and significantly unpredictable source such as wind actually affects the grid. Obviously, it can't replace any building of new capacity, because the grid still needs to be able to supply power when the wind isn't blowing. Its ability to reduce emissions from those other sources, particularly fossil fuel–fired sources, is also problematic for several reasons.

First, extra ramping and startups cause more fuel to be burned, with more emissions, cutting into whatever savings might have been achieved by using them less. Second, plants that can't ramp quickly may be switched to "spinning standby", in which they don't generate electricity but continue to burn fuel and create steam to be ready to switch back to generation when the wind dies. And third, all sources on the grid are not equally involved in the balancing of wind's variability. Hydro is the first choice to be ramped down, with no carbon savings, and natural gas plants are the second, with much less carbon savings than if coal were reduced.

In addition, the high cost per installed megawatt of wind reflects the energy required in its manufacture, transport, and construction. It may take several years before the theoretical carbon savings from a facility's output allows it to break even.

But now look again at what Worldwatch, with its very flawed formula, claims for wind: "Already, the 43 million tons of carbon dioxide displaced by the new wind plants installed last year equaled more than 5 percent of the year’s growth in global emissions. If the wind market quadruples over the next nine years -- a highly plausible scenario -- wind power could be reducing global emissions growth by 20 percent in 2015."

Global carbon emissions will continue to grow substantially, but not quite so much as they might without 300,000 MW (requiring 23,000 square miles) of new industrial wind energy facilities. That's pathetic even before considering the flaws in their calculation.

With the likes of Worldwatch watching out for it, the world indeed needs to watch out.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

The myths of wind power ...

An article in the June 10 Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, Mass.) describes the controversy of industrial wind facilities, using a tour of the Searsburg, Vt., turbines led by Enxco representative Martha Staskus as the framework. Here are a couple of comments about some things Staskus said.

One of the myths about wind power, says Staskus, is that it's unreliable. On the contrary, she says, the turbines at Searsburg are on line over 90 percent of the time and need little maintenance or oversight. "It's a very efficient operation," she says.

Being "on line," or available, is a lot different than generating power. (And even during this tour, 2 of the 11 turbines were down for repairs, and 1 was turned off for the safety of the visitors.) Searsburg's turbines average about 89% availability but they generate electricity -- even the slightest trickle -- just over 60% of the time, according to a report by the Electric Power Research Institute.

In addition, Searsburg's output has decreased every year since beginning operation. It was down to 20.4% of its capacity in 2003, producing less than 11,000 MW-h, an average generation rate of 1.25 MW. The average residential customer of Green Mountain Power uses 7.5 MW-h annually (an average load of 0.85 KW), so Searsburg's output is equivalent to the use of less than 1,500 "homes." But two-thirds of the time, because the generation rate falls off sharply below the ideal wind speed, output is much less, and almost 40% -- two-fifths -- of the time it is zero. That is, they are very rarely providing power for any homes, much less the nonresidential needs of the grid. Further, when the wind picks up, for example, at night, is not necessarily when people need extra electricity.

But Staskus cites the most important benefit of wind: clean power. Searsburg produces enough electricity to light 2,000 homes annually, and in doing so displaces about 60 tons of sulfur dioxide and 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted by fossil-fuel plants, according to statistics provided by enXco.

In Vermont, the emissions argument is especially weak, because more than two-thirds of our electricity is emissions free (hydro and nuclear -- the latter, however, with its own serious problems) and none is from coal, the main cause of acid rain. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, Vermont's annual emissions from electricity production in 2002 were 17,000 tons of CO₂, 141,000 tons of NO_x, and no SO₂ at all. Searsburg's output is equivalent to 0.2% of Vermont's electricity consumption. So, pretending that 1 MW of wind power displaces 1 MW of nonwind power, that means Searsburg "saves" 282 tons of NO_x (and no SO₂) and 34 tons of CO₂. According to the EPA, that's equivalent to the CO₂ emissions of 2 cars. The U.S. as a whole emitted over 6 billion tons of CO₂ in 2002.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Low Benefit — Huge Negative Impact

Industrial wind promoters claim their machines produce on average 30–40% of their rated capacity. For example, a 400-ft-high 2-megawatt (2,000-kilowatt) turbine assembly would produce an average of 600–800 kilowatts over a year.

The actual experience of industrial wind power in the U.S., however, as reported to the federal Energy Information Agency, is that it produces at only about 25% of its capacity, or 500 kilowatts.

It will produce at or above that average rate only two-fifths (40%) of the time. It will generate nothing at all (yet draw power from the grid) a third of the time.

Because the output is highly variable and rarely correlates with demand, other sources of energy cannot be taken off line. With the extra burden of balancing the wind energy, those sources may even use more fuel (just as cars use more gas in stop-and-go city driving than in more steady highway driving).

The industry is unable to show any evidence that wind power on the grid reduces the use of other fuels.

Denmark, despite claims that wind turbines produce 20% of its electricity, has not reduced its use of other fuels because of them.

Large-scale wind power does not reduce our dependence on other fuels, does not stabilize prices, does not reduce emissions or pollution, and does not mitigate global warming.

Instead, each turbine assembly requires dozens of acres of clearance and dominates the typically rural or wild landscape where it is sited. Its extreme height, turning rotor blades, unavoidable noise and vibration, and strobe lighting night and day ensure an intrusiveness far out of proportion to its elusive contribution.

Each facility requires new transmission infrastructure and new or upgraded (strengthened, widened, and straightened) roads, further degrading the environment and fragmenting habitats.

Why do utilities support them?

Given a choice, most utilities choose to avoid such an unreliable nondispatchable source. In many states, they are required to get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. In other states, they anticipate being required to do so in the near future. These requirements do not require utilities to show any benefit (e.g., in terms of emissions) from using renewables—they just need to have them on line.

In Japan, many utilities limit the amount of wind power that they will accept. In Germany, the grid managers frequently shut down the wind turbines to keep the system stable. In Denmark, most of the energy from wind turbines has to be shunted to pumped hydro facilities in Norway and Sweden.

Yet wind energy is profitable. Taxpayers cover two-thirds to three-fourths of the cost of erecting giant wind turbines. Governments require utilities to buy the energy, even though it does not effectively displace other sources.

In addition, wind companies can sell “renewable energy credits,” or “green tags,” an invention of Enron. They are thus able to sell the same energy twice.

The companies generally cut the local utilities in on some of the easy profits.

Why do communities support them?

Developers typically target poor commu­nities and make deals with individual landowners and the town boards (which are very often the same people) long before anything is made public.

With the prospect of adding substantially to the tax rolls and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs each year, it is understandable that a lot of people are reluctant to consider the negative impacts. They are willing to ignore the effects of such large machines on themselves and their neighbors. Excited by the financial promises of the wind companies, they forget that their giant machines will destroy precisely what makes their community livable.

As people find out more, support for this harmful boondoggle evaporates.

—from “SAY NO! to destroying the environment and our communities”, brochure by National Wind Watch

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

Wind turbines no help to Vermonters

Today's Burlington (Vt.) Free Press includes an opinion piece by Barbara Grimes, general manager of Burlington Electric Dept.

As it stands now, Vermont imports electricity worth about $200 million each year. These are hard-earned Vermont dollars that go out of the state's economy and benefit wealthy people far away.

Turbine manufacturer GE is not local and Vestas is in Denmark, Enxco (Searsburg expansion, Readsboro, Lowell) is based in France, UPC (Hardscrabble in Sheffield) in Italy, Endless Energy (Equinox in Manchester) is from Maine, and the local companies behind industrial wind development are already in the power business, already raking in plenty of our electricity dollars. Their desire for more is not a compelling argument.

(Grimes mocks the mention of Halliburton as an "interesting little scare tactic" -- it must have touched a nerve. The fact is. Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, the division which is also profiteering shamelessly in Iraq, is "in the vanguard of the development of offshore wind power in the UK" (according to their web site), working in close partnership with the above-mentioned Vestas.)

Wind turbines properly placed in ideal wind spots so that we can produce our own energy in an environmentally and economically sound manner while providing good jobs for Vermonters is about as close to Vermont values as anything I can imagine. We believe in appropriately sited wind generation, which does not mean a continuous row from one end of the state to the other. That's just another ridiculous scare tactic designed to frighten the general public.

David Blittersdorf of anemometer company NRG wants to see 50% of the state's electricity generated by wind. That would require precisely the endless string of towers that Grimes dismisses as "scare tactic." Even VPIRG's goal of 20% would require hundreds of turbines (see below). It would also require violating a lot of heretofore protected land. The facts and goals of the industry itself are quite enough to scare the public.

The reality is Vermont already has wind energy and the view is not ruined and tourism hasn't suffered. I really wish people who say they are opposed to any and all wind turbines in the mountains would go and take a look at the wind farm at Searsburg, owned and operated by Green Mountain Power. Though the new ones would be taller, people would still get a sense of how turbines really do fit into the landscape. The wind power from Searsburg enters the grid and provides electricity for Vermonters in a clean and renewable manner.

Searsburg's towers are indeed much smaller. Significantly, they don't require safety lighting. Each tower in new developments is a couple stories higher than the whole assembly of one of Searsburg's machines. The blades reach 1 2/3 higher and chop through an acre of air -- more than 3 times those of Searsburg and correspondingly more noisy. Searsburg's 11 turbines, with a capacity equivalent to the 4 turbines proposed for East Haven, produce power equal to 0.2% of Vermont's electricity use, and it is less every year. To get to 20% would therefore require at least 400 giant new turbine assemblies; 50% would require 1,000 of them, costing about $2 million each and requiring new roads, substations, and high-voltage transmission lines. This is hardly a sustainable solution. It certainly does not protect the environment (each foundation, for example, would likely have to be blasted into the mountain rock and then requires many tons of concrete and steel). And because wind-based production doesn't coincide with demand, it wouldn't even provide much electricity that we would actually use (e.g., western Denmark had to dump 84% of its wind production in 2003).

Wind energy cuts our need of having to import power from outside the state. It cuts our reliance on others, and clearly puts the reliance back on ourselves, while supporting our economy and protecting our environment. If this doesn't reflect Vermont values, I'm not sure what does.

So, with little more argument than that she wants to see more wind turbines built, she closes with the old values bullying. She had laid the groundwork earlier by mentioning she's a "native" Vermonter, implying that all "real" Vermonters think exactly as she does and everyone else ought to shut the hell up. She evokes the "working landscape" unique to Vermont, though it is a feature of all places where humans dwell. New Jersey has a working landscape. What is unique to Vermont are the wild mountain tops for which Vermonters old and new have worked for a hundred years to restore and preserve. The desire to violate that with not manured hay fields but collections of 330-foot-high steel and composite wind turbines -- for very little benefit other than profits for a few -- reveals an appalling set of values, wherever they come from.

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

"Oil is for heat and transportation"

Since switching many plants to cleaner-burning natural gas, the U.S. uses hardly any oil for generating electricity (about 3%), so wind-generated power really has nothing to do with oil, foreign or domestic.

As for global warming, the primary culprit again is heat and transportation. In electricity generation, it's coal. But coal provides the unfluctuating base load of our system, which wind power would never touch. At best, wind power may occasionally allow some peak load plants to ramp down, but since they then have to ramp back up again when the wind slows (or gusts above 60 mph), they may burn more fuel than if kept on line more steadily.

By any real-world analysis -- at least in the industrialized world where we expect a steady supply of energy at our fingertips -- large-scale wind power on the grid is a nonstarter.

In addition to its lack of benefits (except for tax avoidance by big investors -- Enron developed the industry, after all), it has serious negative impacts, particularly as such a huge number of the giant machines is required to pretend it's making any significant contribution.

And that is what is truly disturbing about this article. Lester Brown would have us think differently, but everywhere that wind power facilities are proposed, there is widespread opposition. Aboriginal Australians have fought (and lost) to save their dreaming. Zapotecas are fighting the plans for massive wind power "development" in the Tehuantapec peninsula, one of the world's most important bird migration passageways. To call a small pay-off to farmers in New York a boon is insulting as the wind companies pocket millions from tax subsidies and artificial renewable energy certificates (Enron's most inspired invention). The leases -- written by the company -- essentially make the farmer a tenant on his own land. He even signs away his right to speak to anyone about problems such as noise or stray voltage. Many neighbors of wind facilities have had to flee their homes because of serious health effects.

And so on. The point is that there's another side of this typical story of exploitation and chicanery than Lester Brown's corporate boosterism, one I would have expected a writer for OneWorld to instinctively seek out.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism, ecoanarchism

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."

Sham citizen wind energy activism in Washington state

"Wind Farms Trump Local Land-Use Laws, Washington Governor, Court Decide", by Penny Rodriguez, Heartland Institute, February 1, 2009:

Todd Myers, director of the Washington Policy Center, is skeptical of the promised benefits of wind power but nevertheless applauded the Washington Supreme Court’s decision.

“In many ways this decision can be seen as the opposite of the facts presented in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London,” Myers said. “Here we have state government preserving property rights when local governments are trying to restrict them.

“If farmers want to earn money by putting windmills on their property,” Myers continued, “we should honor their right to do so when reasonable. Local decisions are certainly preferable to those imposed from the state or federal level, but individual property rights should be given the highest priority.

“There are problems with our energy policy, including renewable portfolio standards and preferential renewable subsidies. But denying property rights is not the proper way to deal with those problems. I hope the supreme court will apply the same logic when it comes to other permits and not just wind farms,” Myers said.

"Launched in 2003, ["think tank"] Washington Policy Center’s Center for the Environment focuses on free-market solutions to environmental issues."

Todd Myers is also the executive director of Windworks Northwest, which has just produced a 15-minute video about how crucial it is to get more giant wind turbines into Kittitas County.

As one Fennelle Miller states in the film, wind turbines are a community good that require unfettered property rights to impose them on the community.

This cynical exploitation of climate change fears for such a blatant pro-development agenda, this twisting of environmentalism to mean the very opposite, this opportunistic milking of federal and state subsidies in the name of free enterprise ... well, there's nothing new here. It is just a tiresomely predictable part of human history that nobody should think we are ever free of. And it is not surprising, but saddening nonetheless, that so many otherwise perhaps sane and decent people still fall for it.

The Windworks Northwest film also includes "Dr." James Walker, who is described as "president, american wind energy association". Since last year, though, Walker has been the past president of the AWEA board of directors. What the film also does not note is that he is the vice chairman of the board of Enxco, the company on behalf of whose project the film was made.

And the chairman of Windworks is Robert Kahn, whose company managed the permitting process of the Stateline Wind Project for Florida Power & Light in 2000-2002.

Deceit infuses the film, which is little more than a disjointed intercutting of non sequitur sound bites.

Windworks' "Who Are We": "We believe that the number of wind power plants in the Northwest needs to expand because more wind power means less CO2 emissions and greater U.S. energy security." And anyone who questions those reasons, unless he's executive director Todd Myers himself ("skeptical of the promised benefits of wind power"), is a Nimby aesthete. And anyone who supports industrial expansion heedless of neighbors human and wild is an environmentalist voice for freedom.

If anyone doubted that almost everything about big wind is a sham, Windworks Northwest has helpfully made it extra clear.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism, animal rights, human rights, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Environmentalists falter in gale of wind power propaganda

To the Editor, Vermont Guardian: Shay Totten ("Political winds: Vermont falters in a gale of opposition to wind power," Oct. 7) reports that wind power could easily produce the base, or average, load of electricity used in Vermont, which he gives as 600 MW. His calculation of how many turbines that would require is, however, quite wrong.

He apparently considered only a turbine's nameplate, or rated, capacity, which is very different from its actual output. For example, the existing 6-MW Searsburg facility generated power at an average rate of only 1.25 MW last year. Despite industry claims otherwise, output less than 25% of capacity remains typical for modern wind turbines. Totten's figure has therefore to be multipled by four.

Current proposals in Vermont involve 330-ft-high 1.5-MW turbines from GE and 410-ft-high 1.8-MW turbines from Vestas, so we would require 1,600 of the GE or 1,333 of the Vestas turbines to provide our average load. On a ridgeline oriented exactly perpendicular to the prevailing wind, a turbine needs 3 rotor diameters of clearance in each direction. For the GE, that's 37 acres or 7.5 turbines to a mile, and 1,600 of them would require -- at the very least -- almost 60,000 acres. For the Vestas, it's 60 acres, 6 to a mile, and 80,000 acres for 1,333 of them. Both would use well over 200 miles of ridgeline. If they are expected to perform at all well when the wind is not exactly perpendicular to the line, they need even more space. And that does not account for new and widened roads, substations, and power lines.

But roughly a third of the time they aren't producing power at all, and another third of the time they're producing below their average. Periods of high production may come suddenly and fall away again just as suddenly. Base load would still have to come from other sources almost all of the time. Even at the rare moments when rising wind corresponds to rising demand, backup sources still have to be ramped up as "spinning standby" because the wind may drop out at any moment. This is critical: Wind does not significantly displace other sources of electricity.

Apart from these technical issues, it is amusing that Rob Charlebois of Catamount Energy characterizes the diverse concern of Vermont citizens as "very vocal and well-funded." This is from a company imposing wind facilities around the world, in an article that doesn't seek out a single dissenting view to his and other developers' complaints. Totten only mentions two groups in passing to dismiss their concerns as "mainly aesthetic," as if fighting to preserve rural landscapes, wild habitats, and bird flyways from chains of 400-ft-high steel-and-composite strobe-lit and grinding giants that provide negligible benefit is somehow distastefully effete.

Totten also seems to be unaware that opposition to this industrial sprawl is not unique to Vermont but nationwide and worldwide, from Washington to Maryland, Kansas to Wisconsin, the Basque country of Spain to Zapotecas land in Chiapas, from Norway to New Zealand. It is not "schizophrenic," as Charlebois says, to hold an environmental ethic and oppose this obviously impractical, destructive, and wasteful scheme. Any environmental ethic worth the name requires such opposition.

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

Why Not Wind: an open letter

To whom it may concern:

This is a brief representation of the reasons industrial-scale wind is a destructive boondoggle that only fools – or worse – would approve.

Unlike “conventional” power sources, wind does not follow demand. As the Bonneville Power Authority in the Pacific Northwest of the USA has shown (www.wind-watch.org/pix/493), the relationship between load and wind generation is essentially random. That means that wind can never replace dispatchable sources that are needed to meet actual demand.

The contribution of wind generation is therefore an illusion, because the grid has to supply steady power in response to demand, and as the wind rises and falls, the grid maintains supply by relying on its already built-in excess capacity.

That is also why meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen: because fuel continues to be burned in “spinning reserve” plants which are kept active to kick into electricity production when needed for meeting surges in demand or, now, drops in the wind. Denmark’s famously high wind penetration is possible only because it is connected to the large Nordic and German grids – so that Denmark’s wind power actually constitutes a very small fraction of that total system capacity. To make further wind capacity possible (despite a public backlash that has essentially stopped onshore wind development since 2003), Denmark is now building a connection to the Dutch grid.

Another reason that meaningful reductions in carbon emissions are not seen is that the first source to be modulated to balance wind is usually hydro. This is seen quite clearly in Spain, another country with high wind penetration: The changes in electricity from hydro are an almost exact inverse of those from wind (https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html). This is also seen in the USA’s Pacific Northwest (http://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/Wind/baltwg.aspx).

Finally, on systems with sufficient natural gas–powered generators, which can ramp on and off quickly enough to balance wind’s highly variable infeed, wind forces those generators to operate far less efficiently than they would otherwise. It is like stop-and-go city versus steady highway driving. According to several analyses (e.g., www.wind-watch.org/doc/?p=1568), the carbon emissions from gas + wind are not significantly different from gas alone and in some cases may be more.

And again, whatever the effect, wind is always an add-on. The grid must be able to operate reliably without it, because very often, and often for very long stretches of time, wind is indeed in the doldrums: It is not there.

And beware the illusion of “average” output. The fact is that any wind turbine or group of turbines generates at or above its average rate (which is typically 20%–30% of the nameplate capacity, depending on the site) only about 40% of the time. Because of the physics of extracting energy from wind, the rest of the time production approaches zero.

As an add-on, therefore, its costs are completely unnecessary and wasteful. And even if, by some miracle, it were a reliable, dispatchable, reasonably continuous source, its costs would still be enormous – not only economically, but also environmentally. Wind is a very diffuse resource and therefore requires a massive mechanical system to catch any useful amount. That means ever larger blades on ever taller towers in ever larger groupings. And the only places where that is feasible are the very places we need to preserve as useful agricultural land, scenic landscapes that are so important to our souls (and to tourism), and wild land where the natural world can thrive.

Besides the obvious damage to the land of heavy-duty roads for construction and continued maintenance, huge concrete platforms, new powerlines, and substations (while making no meaningful contribution to the actual operation of the grid) and the visual intrusion of 150-metre (500-ft) structures with strobe lights and rotating blades, there are serious adverse impacts from the giant airplane-like blades cutting through 6,000–8,000 square metres (1.5–2 acres) of vertical airspace both day and night: pulsating noise (including infrasound which is felt more than heard) that carries great distances and disturbs nearby residents (especially at night, when there is a greater expectation of – and need for – quiet and atmospheric conditions often augment the noise), even threatening their physical health, pressure vortices that kill bats by destroying their lungs, blade tip speeds of 300 km/h that also kill bats as well as birds, particularly raptors, many of which are already endangered, and vibration that carries through the tower into the ground with effects on soil integrity and flora and fauna that have yet to be studied.

In short, the benefits of industrial-scale wind are minuscule (if that), while its adverse impacts and costs are great. Its only effect is to provide greenwashing (and tax avoidance) for business-as-usual energy producers and lip-service politicians, while opening up to vast industrial development land that has been otherwise fiercely protected – most disturbingly by many of the same groups now clamoring for wind.

Industrial-scale wind is all the more outrageous for the massive flow of public money into the private bank accounts of developers. It is not surprising to learn that Enron established the package of subsidies and regulatory “innovations” that made the modern wind industry possible. Or that in Italy, the Mafia was an early backer of developers. It is indeed a criminal enterprise: crony capitalism, anti-environment rapaciousness, and hucksterism at its most duplicitous.

After decades of recorded experience, there is no longer any excuse to fall for it.

 ~~
Eric Rosenbloom
President, National Wind Watch, Inc. (www.wind-watch.org)

Mr Rosenbloom lives in Vermont, USA, where he works as a science editor, writer, and typographer. He has studied and written about wind energy since 2003. He was invited to join the board, and then elected President (a wholly volunteer position), of National Wind Watch in 2006, a year after it was founded by citizens from 10 states who met to share their concerns about the risks and impacts of wind energy development. National Wind Watch is a 501(c)(3) educational charity registered in Massachusetts.

wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Wind farms conk out in heat wave

The Adelaide (South Australia) Advertiser has a story today about the sorry performance of the state's 180 wind turbines during the January heat wave. Even if there were some wind, many of the turbines shut down because it was too hot. Then one of them caught fire. Although firefighters couldn't do anything about the turbine, at least they were there to put out the spot fires started by falling debris. Imagine such a fire amidst the brush of a remote ridgeline.

A $3 MILLION wind farm turbine caught fire while dozens shut down at the time South Australia most needed them -- when a heatwave left 63,000 South Australian homes without power last month.

Adding to the drama, firefighters could not extinguish the blaze because the tower was too high at 67m [220ft].

Lack of wind and automatic shutdowns triggered by hot temperatures were to blame for the state's 180 turbines producing just 10 per cent of their maximum power capacity during the January heat wave, according to experts.

The experience proved SA could not rely on wind power to provide electricity when demand was greatest, the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council (ESIPC) said.

"You never know if the wind will be blowing when you need it to or if wind turbines will shut down," ESIPC spokesman Brad Cowain said.

Operators of the Lake Bonney wind farm, where the turbine fire occurred on Sunday, January 22, said all of its 46 turbines had automatically shut down during the heat wave when temperatures exceeded 40C [104F].

... [Wind farm operator Miles George of Babcock and Brown Wind Partners] said the turbine fire ... had been caused by an electrical fault while maintenance crews were working on it after it had shut down.

Around 3pm, 40 CFS firefighters and six trucks rushed to the wind farm to extinguish the blaze but fire hose water couldn't reach the steel generator at the top of the tower.

Instead, the firefighters watched as fire destroyed the $3 million turbine – which weighs 75 tonnes -- and extinguished spot fires ignited by ashes from the turbine blaze.

... [D]uring Saturday's peak power demand wind farm output plummeted to just 2 per cent of capacity, producing enough power for only 3500 homes, according to ESIPC. This compared with the maximum capacity of 318MW to power 175,000 homes. SA leads the nation in wind farm energy with five established sites -- Starfish Hill, Canunda, Wattle Point, Cathedral Rocks and Lake Bonney.

There are numerous other approved wind farm developments including an AGL plan for 43 turbines at Hallet in the state's Mid North.

But AGL also plans to more than double the capacity of its nearby gas-fired plant, from 180MW to 430MW, at a cost of more than $100 million to ensure peak demand during hot weather can be met.

tags:  wind power, wind energy