Spitting into the wind

From "Company revives Equinox wind plan," Rutland Herald, August 27, 2005:

Endless Energy has a contract in place with the Burlington Electric Department, which will purchase the entire output of the turbines when they are up and running, [Endless Energy president Harley] Lee said.

That's enough electricity to satisfy 7 percent of the entire demand in Burlington, said Patti Richards, the director of resource planning for the department.

With the cost of oil now above $65 per barrel, the economics have swung in favor of wind energy, [said Patti Richards, the director of resource planning for the Burlington Electric Department (BED)].

"Whatever amount of kilowatts we can buy (for wind power) is a savings," she said. "If this project doesn't move forward, we'll likely have to go for a rate increase."

What makes wind energy even more attractive from an economic standpoint is that renewable energy can be traded on a secondary market, Richards said, giving the electric department a buffer if oil prices were to drop.

Burlington's main power plant, although it is able to burn oil and natural gas, is primarily fuelled by wood. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, a grand total of 0.2% of the electricity generated in Vermont in 2002 was from oil. Even if all of it was from Burlington -- which it isn't -- oil would represent only 3.3% of BED's output.

The threat of a rate increase if people don't support the wind power facility is simply dishonest bullying. In fact, BED is more likely to be more dependent on oil if they brought in wind power, because oil-fired plants are precisely the quick-response generators necessary to deal with the wildly fluctuating input from wind turbines.

As Richards lets slip, however, the obvious economic benefit is in that market for "green credits" -- the environmental indulgences that people can buy to allow them to continue polluting. The electricity generated by wind turbines doesn't even have to be used, only generated. Since output is so erratic, it is likely to be dumped or at best exported into a larger grid where the fluctuations won't be as much of a problem. So for the prospect of raking in profits from selling not energy but meaningless credits for wind turbine production, Burlington Electric supports industrializing a southern Vermont mountaintop with virtually useless 400-foot-high wind towers. Some vision!

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Missing the point about industrial wind

To the Editor, Manchester (Vt.) Journal:

Jane Newton, whom I have proudly supported in several elections, aptly puts the matter of industrial wind power threatening our ridgelines in context ("'Save our Ridgeline' misses the point," letter, August 26). Indeed, compared to the ravaging that Iraqis have endured for decades, a wind "park" looks almost benign.

It isn't, of course, as the campaign against it has made clear. The drive to develop our ridgelines is part of the same industrial arrogance, the same corporate piracy, that drives the war and poverty machine Newton calls attention to. In fact, many of the same investors and companies, notably Halliburton (active in building off-shore turbine facilities) and GE (the major U.S. manufacturer of wind turbines, having bought the business from Enron), are pocketing huge amounts of public money from both.

Spinning, strobing, grinding, and mostly useless 400-foot-high turbines are not as bad as napalm and depleted uranium, but that doesn’t make them good. If we don’t stop the industrial juggernaut here -- and even repeat the developer’s sales pitch as gospel -- how can we expect it to be stopped in Iraq and elsewhere?

Fighting to protect the ridgeline is every bit as important as fighting other injustices. It is the same fight.

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

Another picture of turbines in Hawaii

Here's another photograph of the South Point, Hawaii, turbines, only 24 of 37 of which are still working after 19 years. They are a long way from being the elegant kinetic sculptures that the industry wants us to see them as.

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

Book wish

"From mescaline to mesclun: The decline and fall of late-20th-century counterculture"

Turbines now junk after 19 years

A Kansas correspondent sent this dramatic photograph that a friend of his took on a recent trip to Hawaii. It's some of the turbines installed in 1986 at South Point, Hawaii. Note the dripping oil and missing blades, and that many of them are turned in the opposite direction of the rest. This is the future!

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

The folly of daylight savings time

Courtesy of David Roberson, here are excerpts from a Boston Globe opinion piece by Michael Downing about the folly of daylight savings (or summer) time, during which our clocks are turned forward one hour so that there is more daytime to shop after work. In the new energy bill, DST will be start a month earlier and be extended a month longer starting in 2007.

The idea of falsifying clocks to delay sunrise and sunset times came to New England from old England. British architect William Willett noticed people were sleeping through sunrise. In 1907, he published "The Waste of Daylight," which inspired Germany, then Great Britain and the United States, to shove ahead their clocks during the First World War, hoping to conserve fuel.

It didn't work. It did work for Boston department store magnate A. Lincoln Filene. He knew evening sunlight encouraged working people to shop on their way home. Filene was chairman of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, which produced the influential 1917 study, "An Hour of Light for an Hour of Night." This became the basis for the national daylight saving campaign. Filene predicted a boon to the health and morals of the nation, and he outlined ten specific benefits for farmers. Each one was at odds with the experience of actual farmers.

Filene claimed that produce harvested before sunrise retained dew, making if fresher and more appealing at markets. Farmers knew crops could not be harvested until the sun had dried that dew. Filene predicted farmers would enjoy sleeping later, but they rose earlier than ever with one less hour of light to get their dairy to cities. Filene said animals preferred to work in the cool darkness of morning. Farmers said roosters did not wear watches.

Congress repealed daylight saving in 1919, despite intense lobbying from the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, professional baseball, and golfers. ... In 1919, defying Congress and pleasing merchants, New York City passed a local ordinance to save daylight. Soon, Boston sprang ahead, and many cities followed. State legislatures, however, resisted the clock change on behalf of rural interests. Indeed, in Connecticut and New Hampshire, you could be fined up to $500 if your clock or watch displayed fast time.

Massachusetts was the exception. In 1921, our lawmakers passed a statewide daylight saving law -- the only one in the nation for more than a decade. This distinction did not please Bay State farmers. They sued the state, demanding a return to Standard Time and compensation for financial losses.

The case was ultimately settled by the US Supreme Court. In 1926, the farmers lost on both counts. The majority opinion was delivered by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a native of Boston.

Now, Congress promises we will save 100,000 barrels of oil every day. "The more daylight we have," reasons Congressman Markey, "the less electricity we use." Unfortunately, Congress can't increase the amount of daylight we have. Moreover, during the first week of November 2007, Americans won't see the sun until sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. We will have to turn on lights and squander our saving before it accrues.

In truth, even in midsummer, the oil saving doesn't add up. Most of our electricity is made with nuclear power and coal. And Congress has known since 1919 that daylight saving does not save a single lump of coal, though it does increase gasoline consumption by encouraging Americans to get in their cars and go shopping in the evening. ... When Congress extended daylight saving from six to seven months in 1986, ... [t]hat month was worth $350 to $550 million in additional sales to the golf and barbecue industries.

Not only roosters don't wear watches: Our own bodies are not simply "reset" to another time system. The annual leap "forward" essentially tells your body to wake up an hour earlier than it is used to. In northern states in March, most people would have to wake hours before dawn. Productivity at work and school plummets every spring because of this folly. And with darkness coming an hour later (by the clock), it is harder to make up the lost sleep to help the body readjust. Any gains for retailers are easily overwhelmed by the stresses put upon every worker and student.

Not to mention, it's unnatural. It's bad enough that we ignore sunrise and sunset in slavish year-round obedience to the clock's schedule. Then going and messing with that clock twice a year just to further manipulate the masses (to the masters' own loss, even) is diabolical. Or just plain stupid.

categories:  anarchism, ecoanarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Shall I Compare Thee to a Freaking Cow?

Common Dreams published an essay by Andrew Christie yesterday about the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) pointing out that exploitation and abuse of animals is akin to slavery, child labor, and concentration camps and why people are so outraged by such an obvious comparison.

... The larger lesson of Darwin (there are no superior species, only differently adapted ones) has not yet sunk in; instead, we are still ruled in every way that matters by the medieval Great Chain of Being, on which we placed ourselves one rung below the angels and far above all other manner of beaste, most low, foule and uncleane. When a black man in New Haven sees images of his ancestors and a cow side by side, equally mistreated and commodified, he is conditioned to see only the comparative sullying of his godliness, not the cruelty that is the lot of sentient beings who have no rights. He fears he will be cast down by the implication that the lot of the oppressed should be raised up.

Historically, he is not alone. That was the deepest fear of his ancestors' owners in the antebellum South. It was the fear of men confronted by women's suffrage. It was the fear of our founding fathers, the white male land owners who, in drafting the Constitution, struggled to find a way to exclude the rabble from too much participation in the democratic experiment, the better to keep the levers in the hands of the right sort of people while giving the others just enough by way of social rewards to keep them controllable.

Changing those paradigms were (and are) hard fights, but the animal rights movement is fighting 10,000 years of cultural conditioning and the tendency of the disenfranchised, in the words of Howard Zinn, to fall upon each other "with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country."

Thus the good people of New Haven recoil, the NAACP shouts at PETA, and the pundits trot out safe, predictable outrage, using generations of conditioning to studiously miss the point. It's a fight amongst ourselves on a deeper level than usual. It misses not only the fact of our increasing disenfranchisement but the dysfunctional ways in which the disproportionately distributed wealth is produced by a system that is impoverishing the Earth and our ethical sense alike. One of that system's most fundamental control measures persuades people that in their visceral rejection of the truth PETA is laying down, they are standing up for their dignity and humanity, when, in reality, they are defending a system in which commonality of suffering is not on the agenda, the members of only a single species have any right to life, liberty and freedom from harm, a chicken is of value only as a sandwich, and the idea that a chicken might be of value to the chicken is an idea that must not be thought.

categories:  animal rights, vegetarianism, ecoanarchism

Tom Gray spins with the wind

Thomas O. Gray, Deputy Executive Director and Director of Communications of the trade group American Wind Energy Association, wrote a letter to the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, pointing out, "Wind energy emits no air, water, or global warming pollution; it uses no water; and it requires no mining or drilling for fuel."

Neither does a dead log. And despite the cost and ecologic impact of wind energy the electricity output is not much different.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

Nuclear power vs. conservation and global warming

An opinion piece by Mark Hertsgaard in last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle is entitled "Nuclear energy can't solve global warming: other remedies 7 times more beneficial." The following comment was posted at Sam Smith's Undernews.

This same argument is even more applicable to industrial-scale wind power. Two billion dollars, presumably for about a 1000-MW nuclear plant, would get at most 2000 MW of also heavily subsidized wind power capacity. But whereas the nuclear industry boasts that their 1000-MW plant will produce an average of 850 MW, the wind industry claims that their 2000 MW of turbines will produce an average of 667 MW. In reality, the nuclear plant may provide an average of 750 MW and the wind plant less than 260 MW (according to U.S. Energy Information Agency data). And not to diminish the huge negative implications of a radioctive plant, the nuclear plant is in a single location over a few square miles at most. Two thousand megawatts of wind power would require about 100,000 acres, over 150 square miles (see www.aweo.org/windarea.html). Further, the wind plant's output is highly variable and unpredictable, requiring the continuing and more inefficient (thus more polluting) use of other sources to compensate. Much of the time, as in Denmark, which must dump almost 85% of its wind plant output, turbines produce well when there is no demand. And (again, not to diminish its very serious problems) nuclear power has proved itself in providing roughly 20% of our electricity, whereas the practical potential for wind power is no more than 5%. Two billion dollars can easily save that amount and more, without industrializing our rural and wild landscapes. Or it could buy 2000 MW of giant intrusive and destructive wind turbines that might provide less that 0.1%.

If nuclear power is a boondoggle whose pursuit detracts from actually solving our energy issues, then that is even more the case with industrial wind power. It's true that wind turbines are nowhere near as dangerous and poisonous, but unfortunately they also don't produce much electricity (let alone other forms of energy) so you'll still have as much "dirty" sources as ever.

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

"Wind is on its way [out] as a powerful resource"

Green Bay (Wisc.) Press-Gazette, August 7, 2005

Paired with an opposition piece by Lynn Korinek of Wisconsin Independent Citizens Opposed to Windturbine Sites, Michael Vickerman writes in his support piece (Green Bay (Wisc.) Press-Gazette, August 7, 2005),

"wind power, with current federal tax credits, is now less expensive than natural gas-fired generating units. It makes no economic sense for utilities to burn natural gas at any time when wind power is available.wind power, with current federal tax credits, is now less expensive than natural gas-fired generating units. It makes no economic sense for utilities to burn natural gas at any time when wind power is available."

According to Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group ("The Environmental Case for Wind Power in Wisconsin," July 2005), only 2.9% of the state's electricity comes from oil and natural gas. 72.3% comes from coal, and 21.7% from nuclear. Nationally, about 15% of our electricity comes from natural gas, 20% from nuclear, and over 50% from coal.

I have seen this argument before, that with subsidies wind power is now economically competitive with natural gas. Natural gas is then lumped in with coal and oil (the latter is an insignificant source of electricity which would be unaffected by wind power) for the claim that wind power will clean up the air. But natural gas is relatively clean; coal, especially the bituminous ("brown") coal commonly burned in the midwest, is the main source of polluting emissions from electricity generation.

So wind power is now being touted for displacing the one source that was actually making inroads against coal.

And because people want to believe that ever-larger wind turbine technology will actually do what the salesmen claim, coal continues to burn as much as before -- but now without any effort to make it cleaner. In fact, wind power advocates have mocked the talk of "clean coal" even as smokestack scrubbers in existing plants and new coal gasification plants, or simply switching from bituminous coal to anthracite, have actually made the air cleaner -- to a degree that all the giant turbines dreamed of by the industry would never be able to achieve.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

Wind power not worth it

To the editor, Green Bay (Wisc.) Press Gazette:

The editorial of August 7, "Give windmills chance to prove their worth," makes the valid point that next to the pollution from fossil fuel plants, the noise and visual intrusion of wind turbines may seem minor. Indeed, most opponents to industrial wind turbines would agree.

What they point out, however, is that next to the insignificant contribution that wind power can make to our energy needs, the impact is disproportionately large and not worth it.

categories:  wind power, wind energy

The difference between theory and practice

According to the New Hampshire Public Interest Research Group, the "wind farm in Searsburg, Vermont, produces enough power for 2,000 Vermont homes" ("New Energy Solutions," www.nhpirg.org).

According to Green Mountain Power (GMP), Searsburg's average annual production has been around 11,000 MW-h for the last two years, and their average residential customer uses about 7.5 MW-h per year. Searsburg therefore produces power equivalent to that used by fewer than 1,500 Vermont homes.

After a facility is built, there's no longer any excuse for using sales projections. There's a record of actual performance. Of course, it seems to be invariably disappointing in the case of wind power, so naturally the advocates choose to ignore it.

And lest 1,500 homes sounds significant, remember that production does not necessarily correspond to actual need (so the homes are not using the power), and residential use is less than a third of GMP's load. (Residential use is a little more than a third of the total load nationally.) Searsburg's 11 200-foot-high towers, with all the roads and clearcutting and new transmission lines, produce less than 0.2% of Vermont's electricity. (Vermont has about 600,000 people.)

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

Low-frequency vibrations from wind turbines

The previous post, "The noise of a wind turbine," noted the very loud figure of 105 dBA 415 feet from the Clipper 2.5-MW model. The "A" in the unit designates that the measurement is weighted to the normal range of human hearing. A more serious problem may be low-frequency noise and vibrations that aren't measured in the dBA scale but have a profoundly debilitating effect on many people.

As reported in the Telegraph (U.K.) (January 25, 2004), a doctor in England had noticed that many people who lived near a 16-turbine facility in --- were complaining of migraines and sleep problems. She made a survey and found that 13 of 14 people who lived within 1 mile of the turbines complained of increased headaches, and 10 reported sleep problems and anxiety that started with the installation of the wind power facility two years before. Other complaints included nausea, dizziness, palpitations, stress, and depression. She is currently conducting a more scientific study of the phenonemon.

Another doctor presented a paper to the Royal College of Practitioners about a "marked" increase in depression among people in a northern Wales village where three turbines were erected in 2002. She said the cause is low-frequency noise that is felt rather than heard.

There are many reports of people who get dizzy and nauseous while they work near wind facilities, and the symptoms disappear immediately upon their leaving the site. People also report that windows in their houses often shake from the low-frequency sound waves from wind turbines. It was noted by a frequent visitor to Backbone Mountain in West Virginia that after the wind turbines went up, there was no longer any sign of wildlife where before it was teeming. That writer also noted, "the noise was incredible. ... It sounded like airplanes or helicopters. And it traveled. Sometimes, you could not hear the sound standing right under one, but you heard it 3,000 yards down the hill."

The Scotsman reported today ("Wind-farm noise rules 'dated'," August 5, 2005) that a study of the Dunlaw wind facility (26 660-KW turbines), which began operating in June 2000, found that infrasound and low-frequency vibrations as the turbines started to turn in low wind could be detected 10 km (6.2 miles) away.

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

The noise of a wind turbine

The Clipper "Liberty" is a new 2.5-MW wind turbine model. The company has installed one as a test near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. In their environmental impact assessment submitted to the Department of Energy, Clipper notes that the noise level of the turbine in an 18-mph wind (8 m/s, well below its full operating speed) is 105 dBA 415 feet away. This is about the same as given for the Vestas V80 1.8-MW turbine. Clipper's own discussion notes that 90 dBA is the level at which "constant exposure endangers hearing."

Concern was noted for the effect of such noise on raptor nests and sage grouse leks (mating areas).

The assessment also expected that 10 acres of land would be disturbed and compacted by the construction of this single 415-ft-high turbine, causing runoff, erosion, sedimentation in streams, loss of soil productivity, destruction of vegetation, loss of wildlife habitat and food, and increased poaching and harassment of wildlife (presumably because of the new road).

During construction, the impact to pronghorn deer, mule deer, and elk was considered to extend a half-mile farther, displacing them from a total of 503 acres.

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

Quote for the day

Evidence is ubiquitous suspicion is pervasive fantasy hardens reality seeps away.

-- Out->, Ronald Sukenick, 1973
(available at www.altx.com/out/0.html)

Wind turbine noise is a problem

A couple of news items pertaining to noise. From the Manawatu (N.Z.) Standard, "Meridian pays family to move" (August 2, 2005):

Meridian Energy has paid an undisclosed sum of money to shift a family from their farm where Te Apiti's wind turbines are located, because noise and vibration made it too difficult to live in their house. ...

eridian has also made a confidential deal with the other farm owners affected. [Company spokesman Alan] Seay said he understands this has involved building alterations, such as double-glazing windows to reduce noise. ...

Last November, Ashhurst resident Colin Mahy complained that sun reflection flickering into his house from the Te Apiti turbines was "driving him mad". Meridian had told him to draw his curtains.

And from the Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pa., "WInds of change aren't problem" (August 2, 2005):

... A hum, like a plane warming on an airport tarmac, falls across the fields of the township as the 43 windmills near Waymart turn -- some lazily, others at a faster pace.

It won't stay this quiet, said Gary Bates, who lives at the base of the ridge about 200 feet below the windmills. The wind shifts and comes down from Moosic Mountain each night at about 8:30. The hum becomes a louder whir that reverberates through the house he shares with his wife, Debbie. The land has been in her family since her great-grandparents.

The wind changes slightly as Mr. Bates speaks, and the hum grows louder. It sounds like a plane flying above the blanket of clouds, but the engine noise never dims.

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

"German Results Cast Doubt on UK's Wind Farm Proposals"

The Independent (U.K.) reported Sunday that the German goal of generating 10% of their energy from renewable sources is being undermined by the very poor performance of industrial wind turbines.

Germany has about a third of the world's wind turbines, with a capacity of about 16,000 MW, which according to the salesmen should be providing 8% of their electricity. But two of the major utility companies, RWE and Eon, report average output of only 16% and below 12%, respectively. The national grid therefore allows wind facilities to count only 6% of their capacity as available to customers, because so much of the time wind power is produced when it is not needed.

That means that Germany's 16,000 MW of wind power looks to the grid more like 960 MW, producing less than 1.5% of their electricity.

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

"footprint vs. industrialized area"

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

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

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

The National Geographic figure is apparently based on the nuclear plant having an 85% capacity factor and the wind plant having a 33% c.f. (again, based only on the industry brochures and not on actual experience). Even with that c.f., but using the actual average space required per megawatt in actual wind facilities (as recognized by FPL Energy -- the largest wind plant operator in the country -- and the EPA) -- 50 acres -- the wind plant equal to the 0.5-sq.mi. 1000-MW nuclear plant would be 200 square miles.

But real-world capacity factors would require a larger wind plant, perhaps 2.5 times more if we go by actual electricity used according to the EIA (as already described).

And because wind-generated power is highly variable, and output falls off cubically as the wind drops below the optimal 25-30 mph, the output -- whatever the c.f. -- would be equal to or more than its annual average only a third of the time. Another third of the time, its output would be zero or near enough.

You'd still need that nuclear (or coal) plant to provide reliable electricity.

I don't like fossil and nuclear fuel any more than you do, but wind power isn't going to make them go away. It won't even significantly reduce their use.

You are the one touting pie in the sky -- and consequently the pointless destruction of the last rural and wild landscapes in the country.

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

WisPIRG hasn't really thought it through

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

If only the wind blew as much

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

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

That neatly sums up the whole industry.

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

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

"Going [Nowhere] With The Wind"

To the editor, Tom Paine:

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

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

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

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

categories:  wind power, wind energy

"Wind power needs support"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wind farm louder than rollercoaster?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Umbra Fisk at Grist triumphantly parrots industry sales material

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

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

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

The metaphor also makes a wrong turn about reliability with age. The wind turbine cannot become more reliable, because it still generates power only when the wind blows. (And below the ideal speed of 25-30 mph the amount of power generated falls off exponentially -- so that about two-thirds of the time wind turbines produce much less than their already low average of around 25% capacity.) Like an abused mate, it is the grid operators who must go to great lengths to better predict the whims of the wind so they have some idea when and how much the turbines will be adding power.

It is also problematic that Umbra turns to the industry lobby group AWEA for her answers about wind's real contribution. For example, she says that the U.S.'s 6,740 MW of installed wind power capacity "is expected" to generate almost 18 billion kilowatt-hours in 2005. The basis for that estimate is only the theoretical 30% capacity factor that the AWEA insists on despite the actual record being significantly lower.

According to the Energy Information Agency, in 2002, wind and solar together generated only 0.17% of the electricity used in the U.S., less than 5 TW-h. Almost all of that is wind, so from the average installed capacity between the end of 2001 and the end of 2002 (according to the AWEA) of 4,480 MW that represents an output of only 12.7% of capacity.

The people of Lamar, Colorado, insist that the winds are not puny. Nobody has suggested otherwise. Nor are the turbines. It is the usable power produced by them that is puny. The apt metaphor is Aesop's trembling mountain that gives birth to a mouse. At the AWEA's imagined 30% capacity factor, the 12,000-acre 162-MW Lamar facility would produce the equivalent of 3% of Colorado's electricity use. Realistically, however, it may provide less than half of that. And it would produce at that low average rate or better only a third of the time, times that would only rarely correspond to actual need.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, environment, environmentalism

The land of the free and equal

A question to the "Etiquette at Work" column, published in today's Boston Globe, asks:

My husband just came home from a business dinner attended by approximately 20 people. The occasion involved people from two companies dining with a speaker who'll be addressing both companies tomorrow. Here's the issue: Does a suit jacket always stay on, or can it come off during dinner? My husband had never seen this done before, but the principal owners in his company took off their jackets during the meal and others followed suit. Is this a new custom?

And an article in the New York Times about Costco as the anti-Walmart (by paying a decent wage and providing decent health insurance) quoted Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher: "It's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

These people seem to have forgotten something basic here: We, the people. We are not here to serve business or government -- they exist to serve us. What kind of society is being created when an individual is nervous about leaving his jacket on through dinner when his boss takes off his? What kind of society is possible when profits to shareholders are more valued than providing a respectable livelihood for one's employees, sharing with them some of the fruit of their own labors?

The great are great only because we are on our knees. -- Max Stirner

categories:  anarchism

Coal lobby supports wind power

It is often assumed that industrial wind power is a threat to the coal and nuclear industries and that any criticism of giant wind turbines effectively supports coal and nuclear power. Criticism is often dismissed with accusations that they are paid for by coal and nuclear lobbies. But how could an industry that even its most ardent advocates project could produce only 5% of the U.S.'s electricity be a threat to the industries that will still provide as much as ever?

In fact, the nuclear lobby is riding high on the obsessive focus on carbon emissions, presenting itself as carbon free while ignoring its many other problems that remain. And the coal lobby couldn't be happier that so many people believe wind energy will clean up the air by replacing coal-generated energy. They know that wind power won't replace anything, but as long as people keep thinking it will, the focus is not on actually cleaning up the power sources we use, such as coal.

A key lobbying firm for coal plants fighting emission controls has been Bracewell & Giuliani. Their man Frank Maisano ("Director of Strategic Communications") has recently been active in Highland County, Va., on behalf of a proposed project of up to 22 2-MW turbines (each of them 400 feet tall) on the Allegheny Ridge on the border with West Virginia. He issued a press release Thursday praising its approval by the county board of supervisors.

It seems it is the wind industry and its supporters, not those who oppose industrializing wild and rural places, who are in bed with coal.

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

A Word In Your Ear

A Word In Your Ear: How & Why To Read James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, by Eric Rosenbloom, is now available in print from BookSurge Publishing for $12.99.

Here is the back cover copy:

Whether you are new to the Wake or a long familiar friend, this humane essay will guide, refresh, and delight. It has been described as "smart and readable," "an excellent Wake Primer," "everything such an introduction should be," "the best intro to the Wake I've seen," "a stunning performance and of exemplary clarity," "intelligent, courteous and serene." [See www.kirbymountain.com/WIE/reviews.html.]

Part I introduces the unique language techniques that Joyce used to create Finnegans Wake and describes some of the major themes and characters. The influence and presence of Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Egyptian mythology are described, and the importance of Dublin and Irish geography and history is emphasized with a concise overview of each.

Part II examines several short excerpts in depth and provides general descriptions and some insights to several others. The selection gives the reader a broad sampling of essential passages from throughout the book and different examples of how to read and interpret them.

Included as appendices are a whimsically short version of Finnegans Wake, thoughts about the narrator, structural insights from the order in which Joyce wrote the book, and an essay on the presence of Irish saint and goddess Brighid as elucidated by the late Clarence Sterling.

"Cut global warming by becoming vegetarian"

From a referral by Jorn Borger's Robot Wisdom (the original "weblog"), here is a summary of an article in this month's Physics World:

Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan Calvert, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas.

Writing in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.

Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. "Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he says.

This summary leaves a lot of questions, of course, but without a subscription they will have to go unanswered for now. For example, I think carbon is meant, not carbon dioxide, because the significant greenhouse gas that "livestock" emit is methane, CH₄, which in fact is much more effective in contributing to the greenhouse effect than CO₂ is.

The summary also mentions only the animals themselves. But there is also a tremendous amount of carbon emissions from the energy used to grow and harvest food for them. It requires 40 times more energy to produce a calorie of beef than a calorie of soy. Only 10% of the plant protein they eat is in the animals' flesh when it is eaten by humans, so it is a rather wasteful expenditure of energy.

Another issue is the destruction of rain forest (an area about the size of Connecticut every year) to create grazing land for beef. Trees, of course, are a crucial carbon sink. After deforesting much of the northern hemisphere, we should be restoring forests, not ravaging the southern hemisphere as well.

The environmental impact doesn't stop at carbon emissions. It takes 200 times more water to produce a pound of beef than a pound of wheat. Feedlots and slaughterhouses are responsible for more water pollution than all other industrial and household sources combined. Eighty percent of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the U.S. go to feeding animals that will be slaughtered for food. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to the animal-flesh industry.

categories:  environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Experience a lie

The western Massachusetts "Center for Ecological Technology" is organizing tours of the Searsburg wind facility (11 small 550-KW turbines, each about three-fifths the size of today's 1.5-MW turbines). The tour appears to be ultimately sponsored by the aggressively pro-industry Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

THe reason for comment is the advertisement to "Experience a wind farm that produces 14 million kilowatt-hours [14,000 MW-h] of renewable energy annually."

There was one 12-month period when Searsburg produced that much energy, but it was from July 1998 to June 1999 (14,256 MW-h). There has never been a January-December year that saw that much.

According to owner Green Mountain Power's annual reports the output was 13,605 in 1999, 12,246 in 2000, 12,135 in 2001, 11,458 in 2002, 10,828 in 2003, and 11,023 in 2004.

The average annual output of the last three years was 11,103 MW-h, representing less than 21% of capacity. The tour hype overstates the amount by more than a quarter.

In fact, 14,000 MW-h works out to what the industry always claims to be the output of a wind facility: one-third of capacity. It's pure shamelessness that they continue to sell Searsburg's theoretical output even after seven years of operation have shown it to be so much less. ANd Searsburg's low output is not unusual. Self-reports (meaning the true figures are undoubtedly lower) to the U.S. Energy Information Agency show an average output of less than 27% capacity.

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

Wind farm production is trade secret

Over at the Cape Cod Times, Clean Power Now's Charles Kleekamp says that one of the owners of Denmark's Nysted offshore wind power facility, Energi E2, told him that the plant had a 12-month capacity factor of 46.5%, though he doesn't say which 12 months (one assumes they're consecutive!). That is an astonishing figure (Denmark's average is below 20% of capacity), so reader Neil Good of Mashpee wrote Energi E2 to confirm the data. Erik Kjaer Soerensen, the Project Development General Manager for E2 Wind Energy, replied,

"I am afraid the requested information is of a commercial nature and therefore confidential."

Not exactly an inspiring response. Controlling information, of course, is another way of lying.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Park Slope Food Co-op falls for wind spiel

Down in Brooklyn, a correspondent tells me that the Park Slope Food Co-op has decided to pay an additional charge on their electricity bill so they can say they are wind powered. Here is an article in response.

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Community Energy is a for-profit company. As pointed out in a recent Bar Association seminar, two-thirds of the value of a wind power facility is covered by federal tax breaks and subsidies (primarily a production tax credit and accelerated depreciation). Another 10% may be covered by state subsidies (such as property tax exemptions). Further, where renewable portfolio standards exist, they have a captive market for their unpredictable and variable output. Where a market for renewable obligation certificates, or green credits, exists, they can sell the output twice. The credits are much more lucrative than selling the actual power.

In addition to these highly profitable schemes, the companies then ask consumers to pay more for the conscientious choice of using wind power. In fact, it's the same electricity as before, the same electricity their less conscientious neighbor is getting. It is just one more subsidy for an industry already riding high on handouts.

Well, more profit is more incentive to build more wind turbines, which are clean and green, right? And though they are large, it's obviously worth it, isn't it?

Actually, the opposite is more obvious. Wind turbines don't produce significant electricity unless the wind is blowing steadily above 25 mph or so. The average output in the U.S. is less than 27% of their nominal capacity. And because production falls off sharply as the wind slows, two-thirds of the time their production is well below their average. The fact that a facility's output can surge to full capacity or drop to zero at the whim of the wind makes it practically useless to the grid, which must dispatch generation by the second to match fluctuating demand. That means that if they are forced to accommodate wind power, the grid needs equal back-up sources that can respond quickly to the fluctuating wind-generated input. These would typically be fossil-fuel powered, and the frequent ramping up and down is very inefficient, thus increasing emissions and costs.

The bottom line is that large-scale wind power does not move us away from fossil fuels. It does not reduce acid rain, improve air quality, or slow global warming. Denmark, which claims 20% of their electricity is generated by the wind, still reports rising greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, almost all of their wind energy has to be exported because it is generated when it is not needed.

And the negative impact of large-scale wind power is large. The effect of the moving blades and the noises and vibrations they create is a serious problem for people and wildlife. The industry says that the blades move slowly. In rpm terms that is true, but they are so long (spanning more than the wings of a jumbo jet, as GE boasts, cutting through over an acre of air) that they are moving at around 170 mph at the tips. Studies of bird and bat casualties at existing sites are rare and unreliable because the companies control access as well as the release of the data.

The turbines can not be close to each other (because they slow the wind up to 3 miles away), so the typical wind power facility requires around 50 acres of clear space for every megawatt of installed capacity. With actual generation only a fourth of capacity, that's 200 acres for every megawatt of average output. Each turbine requires a large cement and steel foundation. The roads to access the site must be wide and straight and strong. Each facility needs at least one transmission substation and, of course, new high voltage lines to the grid. The effect of such industrial installations on forested mountain ridges, where each turbine represents the loss of around 8 acres of interior forest habitat, is obviously very destructive.

On the Scottish island of Lewis, some 340 giant turbines will disturb ancient peat beds, releasing more carbon than the developers claim they will save over 25 years, and completely surround protected bird sanctuaries. But considering the money to be made in green credits, the Council for the Western Isles easily overcame such arguments as well as overwhelming local opposition and approved the projects.

The destruction of wild places, the massive industrialization of rural landscapes, and the exploitation of economically desperate communities -- for no real benefit to anybody except the developers, manufacturers, and a few recipients of trickle-down pay-offs -- is what support of wind power is really helping to achieve.

The modern wind industry in the U.S. was created by Enron, whose innovative schemes for milking profits out of a deregulated electricity system are legendary (and often criminal). Today's brokers, such as Community Energy (or NewWind Energy, as they also present themselves), are Enron's heirs in every way.

See www.aweo.org for more information.

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

categories:  environment, environmentalism

FPL steals Enxco's wind

Researchers from Eltra (one of Denmark's two grid managers) recently found that turbines can decrease the productivity of downwind turbines as far as 5 km (3.1 km) away, thus limiting how much energy can be extracted in large facilities.

Now comes news from Dickey County in North Dakota that landowners who had signed up for exploitation by Enxco are complaining that FPL Energy has swooped in next door and may make the Enxco-committed land less windy. Hah.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

For the good of the Sultan

A comment added to Sam Smith's article, "Eminent domain means the eminent get the domain":

In "Beds in the East," the third novel of Anthony Burgess's Malayan trilogy, a bequest of $20,000 for the public good is used by the Sultan to buy a new Cadillac: "The highest good is the Sultan's good."

Just so, the Supreme Court has now clearly defined "public use" as private use: The highest good is the developer's good.

The whole Bill of Rights codifies protection of the few from the power of the many and the mighty. But the government now is openly a frontman for business, clearing the way of little people and constructing the legal charade for capitalist pillaging and clearance of the inconvenient. It is ironic that it was the most right-wing members of the Court who opposed this establishment of "lo stato corporativo," i.e., fascism.

As Sam points out about the many great urban development failures and follies, thinking of the "highest good" is easily abused and compensation is rarely "just." Without regard for dissent and opposition, a developer's dream becomes part of that mythical city on a hill, glittering in all its delusional glory (and promise of cash flow).

Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe bulldozes whole neighborhoods where the poor might support his opponents. George Bush in the U.S. dismisses his war's destruction of individuals and families as noble sacrifice for "a cause greater than themselves." Environmentalists, flattered by official attention and drunk with corporate partnerships, fight against the regulations and local opposition they themselves once championed but now find in the way of their dream of giant wind turbines (that can't even be shown to work) on every wild mountain ridge and rural open space. And liberals hail the right of the state to bulldoze homes that stand in the way of what they deem progress: waterfront condos for the wealthy few as a solution to the economic troubles of the many. Profits -- not homes -- as "public use."

Business wants it, so we must need it. As Billy Graham once said, there's nothing more inspiring to the poor heathen than driving through their neighborhoods in a big white Cadillac. The highest good is the Sultan's good.

"Hemp for Victory"

"On June 23, 2005, Congressman [Ron] Paul [R-TX] introduced HR 3037, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. The bill requires the federal government to respect state laws (already five of them) allowing the growing of industrial hemp. Immediately, Congressmen Peter Stark (D-CA) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) co-sponsored the legislation. ...

"Please urge your members of Congress to support HR 3037. Free our farmers and you, the consumers, to move toward a more sustainable economy.

"Visit woodconsumption.org, votehemp.org and NAIHC.org for more information."

[Also see "Hemp."]

"Bush Administration Increasingly Isolated on Venezuela"

Economist Mark Weisbrot describes the absurd stand of the Bush administration against Venezuela's democracy:

For anyone who has been to Venezuela, it's easy to see why no one wants to take Washington's side in this grievance. A few weeks ago I passed by a 22-story government building in downtown Caracas, and saw about 200 students blocking the exits in a protest against the government. Trapped inside past quitting time were thousands of employees, including several cabinet-level ministers. A few police stood by calmly, not interfering. This went on for hours. There were no injuries or arrests. I thought of what would happen if people tried this in Washington D.C. There would be tear gas, pepper spray, heads cracked, and mass arrests. Some would get felony charges. The protest would be over in 10 minutes.

Of course, the real problem the Bush pirates have with the source of a third of our oil is:

The Venezuelan economy is booming, millions of poor people have access to health care and subsidized food for the first time, and President Chavez' approval ratings have soared to more than 70 percent -- according to opposition pollsters."

Remember, if you don't want your gas money to go to petty tyrants in the middle east or texas, if you would rather have it go to the greater good of our neighbors, buy from Citgo, which is -- for now -- a Venezuelan company.

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

Migrating birds forced to lengthen migration to avoid wind turbines

New Scientist has reported the results of a recently published study of a goose and a duck species flying in the area of the wind facility off shore from Nysted, Denmark. The results show that almost all of them avoid the turbines. The industry and their apologists have naturally leapt on it as vindication, but here are some qualifying remarks from the paper (Desholm & Kahlert, Avian collision risk at offshore wind farm, Biology Letters, early online publication, 2005).

"... data collection was conducted only in calm winds (less than 10 m/s) and no-precipitation situations."

Considering that the 2.3-MW Bonus turbines don't start turning until the wind is 6 m/s, how much of the time were they actually turning? It is much easier to avoid a large blade that is still than one whose tip is moving at 164 mph (82.4-m rotor diameter at 17 rpm).

"... data collected during twilight were excluded from the analysis."

Twilight is a particularly confusing time for assessing visual cues. The stated reason for excluding it is "to compare situations with good and poor visibility only," but at night the turbines are clearly lit and this comparison could be done without throwing out the twilight data, which might be crucial to an honest assessment of the facility's impact on the birds.

"During the initial operation, frequent visits of maintenance vessels may have influenced the avian avoidance response to the sweeping turbines in an uncertain way. Before solid conclusions can be reached, complementary studies at other sites are needed to confirm these findings, to include possible habituation behaviour over the years to come, and to cover other focal species such as divers (Gavia sp.) and common scoter (Melanitta nigra)."

This study was done in "autumn" of 2003 (the paper is not more specific and does not even specify how many days and nights of observation are included). But the facility was not completed until the end of November and began to generate electricity in December (except for 10 of the 72 turbines, which had begun operation in July and for all we know may have been among the 12 that were out of range of this study). It seems likely that the facility was not fully active during the study.

The researchers compare their results with an earlier study of the same area before construction began, but describing the lower percentage of birds flying through the turbine array as due to "operation" rather than construction seems quite inaccurate.

In addition, as countries desperate to salvage their misguided commitments to large-scale wind power look to build more of them off shore, the cumulative effect of facility after facility that must be dodged must be considered.

Also, I was unable to find any data on the actual output from the Nysted facility (let alone how often it corresponded to an actual need on the grid), which is central to the question of whether it is worth even the slightest risk to birds (and marine mammals -- see the recent story about dead baby seals at the Scroby Sands wind facility off the U.K. shore), not to mention the very high cost not only of manufacture and construction but also of maintenance and integration in the grid.

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

Adopt a megacorporation

An opinion piece in today's Rutland (Vt.) Herald by Jeff Wolfe of Global Resource Options boasts that General Electric, Goldman-Sachs, and British Petroleum now characterize the players in renewable energy, particularly large-scale wind. He then makes a plea that they badly need our money to succeed. Shouldn't we be demanding money from them?

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On the opening of the 39 turbines at Cefn Croes (originally an Enron project), developer Falck Renewables of Italy says the visual impact is minimal. Scroll down to the June 10 post, The destruction of Cefn Croes, to see the decimation and intrusion that they won't acknowledge.

The developer also "estimates" that the facility will save 4 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions over its 25-year lifetime. That's 160,000 tonnes each year, 0.1% of the U.K.'s total. You'd think you'd get a bit more for £50 million and the wreckage of a landscape. And that estimate is quite inflated, based on a very high capacity factor and an assumption that only coal burning would be displaced. Wind power is just as likely to displace easily dispatchable hydropower, and frequent ramping up and down of coal plants in response to the wind actually increases their emissions. Above all it ignores the likelihood that current production will itself be made cleaner in coming years.

In fact, £50 million could be much more effectively spent in that cleaning effort, which would bring a real decrease in emissions -- without violating another landscape.

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

Carbon emissions still rising in Denmark

The National Environmental Research Institute, a part of the Danish Ministry of the Environment, reports (click the title of this post) that Denmark is committed under the Kyoto Accord to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 21% below 1990 levels. But, as they also report, almost as a footnote, by 2003 emissions had instead increased 6.2%.

This is the (non)achievement of about 3,000 MW of wind power capacity for 5.3 million people, about 1 MW for every 1,700 people. [Look at this map showing how saturated that country is by giant wind turbines.] In Vermont, that would be 353 MW, 59 times the existing Searsburg plant. In New York, that would be 11,176 MW. For the whole U.S., 170,588 MW, taking up over 13,000 square miles. But U.S. per-capita energy consumption is twice that of Denmark's, so these numbers would have to be doubled. And greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise.

Thanks to Mark Duchamp for this reference.

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

The destruction of Cefn Croes

Even if you are already convinced that the impact of constructing sprawling wind "farms" in wild places is far from benign, you should look at the photographs documenting the destruction of Cefn Croes in Wales: www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hills/cc/gallery/index.htm.

Here are before and after views from the same location:


Here is another view of the now alien landscape, razed of trees and intercut by wide roads:


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

Renewable power demands a sacrifice

[A sacrifice would be to reduce our energy consumption. The call for imposing sprawling new power plants on rural populations is not a sacrifice -- it's an imperious act of violence.]

To the editor, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle:

If Bob Siegel [Rochester regional energy chair for the Sierra Club] (essay, June 9) argues that we need to dramatically reduce our CO₂ emissions, why does he talk about wind power? Most of our CO₂ comes from transportation. The very small possible contribution to our electricity supply from industrial wind won't make even a dent in our emissions.

His dismissal of criticisms is similarly misguided. New technology has not reduced bird kills (but may have increased bat kills). Land use -- at about 50 acres per installed megawatt, 200 acres per expected average megawatt produced -- is far from minimal. Noise, too, is not insignificant: Oregon had to change their noise regulations so that wind facilities could be built in rural areas. The noise of the 120-foot blades turning is not "equivalent to a summer breeze" -- it is more like continuous thunder, "a train that never arrives."

Nor is their impact on the environment benign. Siegel describes simply unbolting the tower and carting it away. He doesn't mention the huge steel-reinforced concrete foundation or the damage, such as erosion and habitat fragmentation, already done by the wide roads needed for construction (and later for dismantling) and the clearing of forest. [See the destruction of Cefn Croes in Wales.]

It is true that wind turbines will not produce smog or nuclear waste or use water or add to climate change. It is also true, however, that wind turbines will not reduce those problems. Because the wind can't be called up or called off in response to demand fluctuations, nonwind plants will still be operating as much as before -- but less efficiently (i.e., with greater emissions) as they also have to respond to the fluctuations of the wind.

Siegel's response to the crisis he describes is not one to be proud of. His "large, graceful machines" where once was unindustrialized rural landscape and wild forest will stand as monuments to folly not foresight.

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

Windfarm killing seals in U.K.

As reported today in the Daily Mirror:

Staff at the wildlife hospital at Winterton, Norfolk, say hundreds of seals on Scroby Sands off Great Yarmouth have been so disturbed by the 300-foot turbines there that it is affecting their breeding.

Many pups are born dead or abandoned by frightened mums. Jaime Allison, a biologist at the hospital, said: "A definite pattern is emerging. It's hard not to conclude the wind farm is responsible."

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

Delusions

The belief that industrial wind turbines will clean up the planet and free us from mideast oil and central asian gas is just like George W. Bush's pitch that he invaded, destroyed, and occupies Iraq to spread democracy. Only a sucker would buy such obvious bunkum.

Wind turbines as productive as Hoover Dam!

Patty Richards, resource planning director of the Burlington Electric Dept. (BED), wrote in the Fair Wind Vt. discussion list, in response to a May 31 op-ed piece against the easy but misguided acceptance of industrial wind power as "green" in the Burlington Free Press by Hugh Kemper:

If we used that kind of thinking the Hoover dam would never have been built. It too only has a 27% CF.

She cc'd two BED colleagues, communications coordinator Mary Sullivan and customer and energy services director Tom Buckley. It is a surprising comment from someone who should know something about electricity generation and the grid, because the capacity factor of hydropower dams is primarily due to human control -- they are deliberately not used all the time, because they are ideal for quickly switching on when demand rises. This is the opposite situation from wind facilities, whose capacity factor is completely due to variable winds. Even their low average output is not often useful, as the occasional surges of production are unlikely to coincide with an actual need on the grid. If thus speak the "experts" (even to each other, i.e., with no need to fudge the facts) it's no wonder we so often go down the wrong track.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Wind power will not be useless (when?)

On May 7, James Adams responded to in the April 28 Albany (N.Y.) Times Union:

Regarding the usefulness of wind energy, how can one possibly say that wind turbines are a practically useless technology? When complete, the first phase of the Maple Ridge wind farm, currently being installed in Lewis County, will provide clean power to more than 59,000 New York homes and economic benefits for the Tug Hill Plateau communities. That hardly seems useless to me.

He also points out that wind "farms" are better to look at than nuclear waste, smokestacks, and acid rain -- who can argue against that?

The argument, of course, is whether giant wind power facilities (averaging about 1 megawatt of (unpredicable, variable) output per 200 acres of turbines) can actually replace even a portion of our coal or nuclear plants.

James Adams says that the Maple Ridge plant "will provide clean power to more than 59,000 New York homes," a benefit that easily mitigates any adverse "aesthetic" impact (especially for those who don't have to live near them). As with every instance of this argument, only the future tense is used. Even in Germany (6% wind) and Denmark (20%) they talk about success in the future. Why is no benefit provided by today's installations?

Further, that figure of providing 59,000 homes, as usual, is grossly exaggerated as well as misleading. First of all, the figure is meaningless without specifying the average electricity use of a "New York home" or the expected capacity factor of the wind plant. The latter is invariably inflated (i.e., every new wind power facility thinks it will produce a higher percentage of its rated capacity than almost every existing facility does).

It also inflates the impact on pollution by focusing on only one part (about a ninth) of our energy use: residential electricity. Finally, electricity use varies considerably hour to hour, day to day, season to season, as does wind power production. Unfortunately, the two have nothing to do with each other. Two thirds of the time, wind plants produce well below their long-term average output, making up for it with surges of production when the wind blows just right. Whether those surges correspond to an actual need on the grid is purely a matter of chance, so much of the wind plant's power is essentially dumped -- if not outright sent into the ground, then shunted around the grid until it disperses as heat.

Adams asks, "Would people rather have a nuclear facility or a coal-fired plant in their back yards?" It's like asking someone you're about to punch, "Would you rather I knife you?" Given those narrow options, the choice is easy, but given the fact that industrial wind turbines are a useless boondoggle people might say no to both. Two wrongs don't make a right.

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

Wind won't replace oil

A letter in today's Ipswich Chronicle:

Liz Krafchuk's piece about "Living Green" (Ipswich Chronicle, May 26) stated that a wind turbine in Ipswich would "offer some relief from the darkness of oil wars." Someone is surely mistaken here.

Oil is primarily used for transport. Only 2.3 percent nationally is used to make electricity. We export three times that amount. Reducing consumption of all kinds of energy is a worthy aim, but wind turbines -- no matter how big or how many -- have nothing to do with our use of oil. They don't have much effect on our use of current electricity sources, either.

Krafchuk reports an average wind speed of 11.5 mph. That translates to an average output from the 1.5-MW turbine of only about 150 KW, 10 percent of its capacity. Two-thirds of the time, the output would be less than that. Hull's "success" is not in the small amount of unpredictably variable electricity generated by wind, but in the profitable sale of "green credits."

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

Another survey badly spun by the wind industry

Meridian Energy (New Zealand) spokesman Alan Seay in the Dominion Post yesterday that support of a wind plant in Wellington is "widespread":

• 84 per cent of those surveyed are positive about a wind farm in the capital as long as they can neither see nor hear any turbines.


• There is 75 per cent support if turbines are visible, but cannot be heard.


• 68 per cent of people support a wind farm if the closest turbine is no less than 1km away and any noise is neither loud nor intrusive.

These results of the Meridian-sponsored survey only show that people don't know how intrusive the turbines will be, and that as limitations on them are removed the support correspondingly declines.

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

Wind turbines and noise

Irish market researcher Research and Markets has announced a new journal, Low Frequency Noise, Vibration and Active Control:

"The considerable and growing interest in the phenomena of low frequency noise and vibration and their powerful effects on man, animals and the environment, spreads across several disciplines; studies of these topics are to be found at present in the periodical literature of acoustics, geophysics, architecture, civil and mechanical engineering, psychology and zoology. This quarterly journal brings together material which otherwise would be scattered: the journal is the cornerstone of the creation of a unified corpus of knowledge on the subject."

This is not to say that industrial wind turbines (with 40-ton 80-meter-diameter rotors resisting an acre of wind to turn a gearbox and generator in a 55-ton nacelle on top of a 70-meter tower) are a possible source of such noise and vibration (after all, the only evidence is the testimony of people who live near them). But it does underscore the seriousness of the concern. There is a conference in October about wind turbines and noise at which some papers will address the issue.

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