Wind turbines

Ben84

celerity wrote: »

@ Ben84 : can you post some references please?
It would seem to me that your argument applies fairly equally to solar PV on a cloudy (but not fully overcast) day?

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Sure, a good example is the e-on 2005 wind report:

http://docs.wind-watch.org/eonwindreport2005.pdf

The site hosting this is fairly anti-wind turbine as far as I can see and I haven't delved in to it very deeply so am not specifically recommending this site at the moment. I found it by googling the e-on report which is familiar and they happen to have a copy here. In whole it's interesting, but I'd like to suggest page 8 and 9.

As for solar PV, I believe it's more predictable and we get better percentages of installed capacity able to replace fossil fuel consumption, but I don't like to make any guesses so can only say if you're interested in solar for environmental reasons it's worth looking in to this. With any technology which delivers energy straight in to the grid we need to consider how much, if at all, it may displace fossil fuel consumption from conventional power plants.

In general I believe that the electric grid has been designed for large central generating plants and works better this way. Reliability and controllability are important, as well as large generating facilities enjoying many economies of scale in their construction and in the unit cost and efficiency of energy they deliver to consumers. There's nothing wrong with these aspects of central generating plants, just the fuel we normally burn in them and sometimes the efficiency of these plants themselves.

Some large electric consumers such as hospitals and universities have built their own electric plants (often using waste heat for district heating) with good results, but really small scale stuff, particularly ones that aren't controlled by energy demand so much as the weather conditions raise lots of questions about if the energy is ever used, how they might affect the stability of the grid and if their unit cost of electric is practical.

PeterZ_2

I was hoping that Eon might have produced a more up to date wind report, the one linked to is 6 years out of date. However,they do have some useful information about wind turbines here:

http://www.eon-uk.com/generation/windfarms.aspx

In particular they link to a "top 7 myths" document:

http://www.eon-uk.com/generation/mythsandfacts.aspx

"Fact: In 2009 three reports published by respectively the National Grid, energy company Poyry and a coalition of non-governmental organisations, produced the same conclusion: large amounts of wind energy capacity on the system need relatively small amounts of back up."

Of course a few posters on here will completly disagree with the findings of the national grid, but then what would they know?

PeterZ_2

Another quote:

"The report by four leading UK NGO’s claimed that “thermal plant breakdowns generally pose more of a threat to the stability of electricity networks than the relatively benign variations in the output of wind plant.”

celerity

moonrakerz wrote: »

They are a totally pointless and hugely expensive way of producing electricity. Their efficiency is very low, they will always require some sort of "conventional" power station back-up for when the winds fails AND they really are the most dreadful eyesore.

I used to travel Germany a lot, the road from Hamburg to Kiel passes a lot of wind turbines. I really defy anyone to say this things are not a "blot on the landscape" - and Northern Germany isn't the most scenic of areas, unlike the British coast, the Lakes, the Highlands...........

As for the economics ! The latest off shore wind farms are producing electricity at 3 times the cost of land based wind farms which are, themselves, several times more than the cost of conventional generation. The developers are now trying to get more direct subsidies from the German Government (the taxpayer!) so that the "headline" price can be kept down.

Complete and utter gold plated madness !!

I respectfully disagree with the following:

"Their efficiency is very low"

If you mean technically then that is not such a big deal. In the same way that solar PV cells are not technically that efficient (approx 12%), the point is more that once installed, you get "free" energy. OK, I realise in practise nothing is free, but I'm talking in principal. Additionally, turbines and their related infrastructure are getting more efficient, witnessed by older farms in Germany being upgraded with new models (example source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/wind/europe-replaces-old-wind-farms)
If you mean financially, then the point is that any relatively new technology is going to be expensive early on, but as the technology improves the cost will come down. If this were a barrier to entry to the marketplace then innovation would be stifled.

"They will always require some sort of "conventional" power station back-up for when the winds fails"

Of course, nobody is naive enough to think we can satisfy all our energy needs with wind (or solar) alone, the figures just don't stack up. Why is that a problem though? While the backup is not being used, we are saving fossil fuels. Do you not agree that is a good thing?

"They really are the most dreadful eyesore"

This is subjective and I happen to disagree - I think wind turbines are a thing of beauty, and would hope they become one of the defining icons of our generation.
However, I do accept that many people agree with you. My response to that, is I'm afraid, unsympathetic. The fact is, we need to try and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and use cleaner energy sources, and wind farms are a way of doing that. Personally, I don't think overhead power cables are very aesthetically pleasing but people don't moan about them as they realise they are necessary. Presumably when the National Grid was being developed in this country lots of people objected to these electricity pylons, but nowadays society has come to terms with them. Hopefully the same will happen with wind farms.

Having said that, it seems like Germany is now looking to invest more in off-shore developments, so hopefully this will please both camps.

"The latest off shore wind farms are producing electricity at 3 times the cost of land based wind farms which are, themselves, several times more than the cost of conventional generation."

Do you accept these costs will come down in future though? I believe they will, so am not particularly concerned.

Out of interest, how do you see UK energy needs being met in the next 50 years?

My view is that we will need more nuclear (which I am not against, per se) as well as some mature infrastructure for wind and solar. I also expect significantly more micro-generation at the individual house (solar) and small community (wind, solar, hydro) level.
It would also be nice if some breakthroughs in tidal energy happened in this time frame too.

As a final question (for now ) for wind-skeptics on here - do you honestly think we should not try and harvest wind power, which is one of our natural resources with the most theoretical energy benefit?

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celerity

@ Ben84

Thank you for posting the link to that report, it was as you say, a very interesting read.

As PeterZ says though, it's six years out of date now and I for one would love to read an uptodate report to see if some of their concerns have now been addressed. I've searched for quite some time and can't find any such report for later years, which is a real shame.

Ben84 wrote: »

In general I believe that the electric grid has been designed for large central generating plants and works better this way. Reliability and controllability are important, as well as large generating facilities enjoying many economies of scale in their construction and in the unit cost and efficiency of energy they deliver to consumers. There's nothing wrong with these aspects of central generating plants, just the fuel we normally burn in them and sometimes the efficiency of these plants themselves.

My take on that report is that Eon-Netz are unsurprisingly stressing the huge operational challenges and costs they are facing in trying to get wind farm energy to "play nicely" with their existing infrastructure. Put simply, the German National Grid wasn't designed for lots of new, wind-reliant power plants in out of the way places.

This is to be fully expected though, I can't see why it would be a surprise to anyone. Critically, they also detail the measures they are putting in place to mitigate these problems in the future. For example, investing in higher capacity cables from high powered wind farms, so the grid doesn't get overloaded, adding new overhead cables and researching more accurate forecast technology to anticipate supply ahead of time.
This, coupled with newer turbines that are both more efficient and better at integrating with the grid, mean that the current state of affairs should be better already (Source: page 18 of this document).
Note that newer turbines also replace older ones, which is known as "repowering". This ongoing process also improves grid reliability.

Of more concern in the report you cited was this text:

Eon_Netz wrote:

As a result, the relative contribution of wind
power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply
system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously
to around 4% (FIGURE 7).
In concrete terms, this means that in 2020,
with a forecast wind power capacity of over
48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of
traditional power production can be replaced by
these wind farms.

This is being gleefully quoted across the web by wind-sceptics, but I'm not so convinced it is as bad as it sounds.
First of all, they don't seem to factor in all of the improvements to technology and infrastructure that are mentioned in their own report, so it seems pessimistic to me.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but surely if they are talking above 48,000MW wind capacity only replacing 2000MW of traditional power plants, that doesn't give a fair picture of how much fossil fuel is saved from being burned?

They are basically saying "we have loads of wind farms which when they are working well, mean we don't burn as much fossil fuel, but we still need that fuel as a reserve for when the wind farms are running slowly."

If that is the case, what's the problem? This is only an argument against wind farms if proponents claimed wind farms would fully replace traditional power stations, which I don't believe is the case.

I'll close by accepting that the current state of play of wind farms is far from optimal. I do sincerely believe that the expertise of scientists and engineers will improve things so that the technology will soon make sense though - and if it wasn't for countries like Germany investing heavily now then this process would take far longer.

I'm going to link to my above article again here, as I think it's worth a read: http://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/dokumente/English/Broschueren/BWEImageEngl_2006.pdf

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PeterZ_2

celerity wrote: »

"They really are the most dreadful eyesore"

This is subjective and I happen to disagree - I think wind turbines are a thing of beauty, and would hope they become one of the defining icons of our generation.
However, I do accept that many people agree with you. My response to that, is I'm afraid, unsympathetic. The fact is, we need to try and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and use cleaner energy sources, and wind farms are a way of doing that. Personally, I don't think overhead power cables are very aesthetically pleasing but people don't moan about them as they realise they are necessary. Presumably when the National Grid was being developed in this country lots of people objected to these electricity pylons, but nowadays society has come to terms with them. Hopefully the same will happen with wind farms.

/\dam

I also find them to be very elegant magnificent structures, I also find them very relaxing to watch. We have two very large turbines quarter of a mile from us, I often stop by and watch them when out walking, I find it quite relaxing to watch them turning.

I am of course biased, in that I admire great feats of engineering, I also like to visit great buildings, bridges etc.

We also have an old windmill nearby, locally everyone is very passionate about it and we recently raised some funds to get it operational again. I'm sure that when first built locals would have objected to it as an eyesore. Now a few humdred years later and the locals are diggin deep into their pockets to fund its repairs.

And lets not forget the bigger issues which drive all of this. I'm not going to start another debate on climate change, but there the bigger issue of peak oil, which is a fact and can not be denied.

Not only do we face a future where our supply of easy and cheap energy is starting to decline, we are entering into a world where we are going to be priced out of the market. I for one don't like being held to ransom by middle east. Just look at petrol prices lately, we really need to gain energy indpendence.

moonrakerz

celerity wrote: »

If you mean technically then that is not such a big deal.

Sorry, I don't wish to sound rude, but that really is "head in the sand" stuff.

I probably have exactly the same worries about where mankind is going as you do.
The main problem is being ignored by both politicians and the "green" lobby:

There are too many people on this planet - we are eating ourselves out of house and home !

Rabbiting on about wind turbines in the Lake District or wherever does absolutely no good. The UK has signed up to reduce its carbon o/p by some huge amount by some date in the future. This is absolutely futile !
1. It is not achievable.
2. The developing world is building (mainly) coal fired power stations faster than Tesco are opening shops. Anything we (UK) do is lost in the blink of an eye.

Wind turbine costs are rising, NOT falling. EU figures show that in 2005 it cost €1100 per kW of generating capacity, in 2007 it cost €1300 - the real "elephant in the room" is that with an efficiency of around 20% this cost rises five fold for power that is actually generated.

I don't know what the long term answer is- wind certainly isn't; nuclear is the only short/medium term solution, if all the lights in the UK don't go out before we build some more PDQ ................

PeterZ_2

moonrakerz wrote: »

As for the economics ! The latest off shore wind farms are producing electricity at 3 times the cost of land based wind farms which are, themselves, several times more than the cost of conventional generation. The developers are now trying to get more direct subsidies from the German Government (the taxpayer!) so that the "headline" price can be kept down.

Nuclear will certainly have to be part of the mix, but not many people are aware of just how heavily the nuclear industry is subsidised. This comment found elsewhere sums it up nicely:

"Oh well, I suppose we might as well carry on spending a large proportion of our GDP supporting our friends in the Middle East and Russia so that they can continue to provide us with our energy requirements instead. Whilst we are at it we can continue providing vast subsidies for nuclear whilst absorbing their insurance liabilities and continuing to ponder what to do with the waste."

If the nuclear industry were made to insure themselves properly the cost would rise dramatically, there was a report released recently but I'm unable to find it again.

I'm not against nuclear, but people need to be fully aware of the full facts.

celerity

moonrakerz wrote: »

Sorry, I don't wish to sound rude, but that really is "head in the sand" stuff.

No need to apologise, this debate seems quite balanced and constructive to me.
I do think you are slightly guilty of taking one tiny part of my posts in isolation though - please read what I went on to say about future efficiency improvements.

Rabbiting on about wind turbines in the Lake District or wherever does absolutely no good. The UK has signed up to reduce its carbon o/p by some huge amount by some date in the future. This is absolutely futile !
1. It is not achievable.
2. The developing world is building (mainly) coal fired power stations faster than Tesco are opening shops. Anything we (UK) do is lost in the blink of an eye.

With this kind of thinking nobody would bother to do anything.
You have to take the long term view - if the developed world makes a success of cleaner-energy sources, the developing world will follow.

Wind turbine costs are rising, NOT falling. EU figures show that in 2005 it cost €1100 per kW of generating capacity, in 2007 it cost €1300

What sceptics always seem to conveniently ignore is that fossil fuel costs are the ones that are rising.
The point with wind and solar is that the price will inevitably reach parity with fossil fuels as the technology and infrastructure improves.

For example:

"For every kilowatt-hour of power fed into the
grid, from a wind turbine erected in 2006, [German wind farms]
receive 8.36 cents from the local grid operator at
least for the first five years and 5.28 cents after
this. Without this state controlled minimum
price, the wind energy sector would have had
no chance against the billion euro heavyweights
of the coal and atomic energy industries on the
cartel-organised energy market. Since the feedin
tariff for new installations decreases by about
3.5 percent per year in real terms, in ten years,
wind power will already be cheaper than fossilfuel
power in the middle of the next decade."
[Source: http://www.wind-energie.de/fileadmin/dokumente/English/Broschueren/BWEImageEngl_2006.pdf#page=10]

Another reference showing cost comparisons for the UK is here - even the current state of wind technology doesn't look too bad to me, and it will improve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_cost_of_electricity_generated_by_different_sources#UK_2010_estimates
(the original reports linked in the footnotes is worth a look too)

moonrakerz wrote: »

I don't know what the long term answer is- wind certainly isn't;

In my opinion you have failed to demonstrate that wind isn't part of the long term answer, which is the only claim I am making.

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celerity

Another point of view that wind sceptics might like to consider is that there is a good argument to set up wind farms near sources of hydrogen (the sea!) and use the generated power to extract hyrdrogen for use in fuel cell technology.
This neatly solves the problem of storing electrical energy or having to pay for costly extra power lines to remote farms.

An example of such an installation is in Holland, the Lolland Hydrogen Community. Note this is still more of a "proof of concept" than a fully productive plant. The asscoiated PDF on that page gives more useful info.

The point I am making is that by investing in wind power, it opens the avenue for related but perhaps not obvious benefits.

/\dam