Re: Tilting At Windmills
From: Tim O'Flaherty (pinwheelsfudge_at_gwi.net)
Date: 11/26/04
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Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:34:27 -0500
"Eunometic" <eunometic@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:e935396a.0411232103.36559df7@posting.google.com...
> "Tim O'Flaherty" <pinwheelsfudge@gwi.net> wrote in message
news:<tNydnXx-bJEc3j7cRVn-tA@gwi.net>...
> > "Eunometic" <eunometic@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
> > news:e935396a.0411222028.71c03e4e@posting.google.com...
> > > "wly1017" <wly1017@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> > news:<9MidncXZf7-WuzzcRVn-3A@centurytel.net>...
> > > > Tilting At Windmills
> > > > Germany is the world's top producer of energy from wind power......
> > > >
> > > > http://www.wenmarcorp.com/windmills/
> > >
> > > Germany is almost certainly NOT the biggest producer of windpower per
> > > capita.
> >
> > You are right, Denmark is in first place in that catagory, Germany is
second
> > but growing rapidly.
> >
> > >
> > > Wind power is bit of a sad joke. Windmills typically produce power at
> > > 38% or less of their peak capacity. IE it take a 2.4MW windmill to
> > > produce the same power as a 1MW power station.
> >
> > You are comparing apples and oranges.
>
> No I am not.
>
> >
> > 1. For windturbines the fuel is free and though intermitant, widespread
and
> > abundant. The fuel does not require transport to the generating
facility
> > nor does it require a separate facility such as a refinery, nuke fuel
plant,
> > or coal mine and the pollution and environmental degradation, capital
cost
> > and O&M costs associated with those facilities and the associated fuel
> > transportation resources.
>
> Maufaturing cost of conventional power plants are around $0.6/Watt and
> includes all major handling and storage facilities.
Only in your dreams. First you need to define "conventional power plants".
Do they burn conventions? How many conventions per kWh? I can't find
anything specific about "conventional power plants" but I did get some data
for new nukes ( you don't even want to mention old nuke capital costs so we
won't go there unless you insist) .
>From the EIA, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/issues_6.html
1. Capital Costs: GE estimates the cost of a new ABWR at $1400 to $1600 per
kW, that's more than double the cost you propose for "conventional power
plants" and that is the vendors estimate. BNFL (recently rescued from
bankruptcy by tax payer subsidies) estimates the cost of its AP1000 at $1210
to $1365 per kW, still more than twice the figure you cite for "conventional
power plants". Worth mentioning is that GE expects subsidies to pay......
[" 50 percent of the first-of-a-kind engineering costs, and BNFL's
estimate assumes that the government (or someone other than the purchaser of
the plant) would pay for all the first-of-a-kind costs." ]
Did I hear something about subsidies? Do you work for FOX, you know, "Fair
and Balanced" ?
Let's continue, the Canadians, AECL, have estimated the cost of an updated
CANDU, ACR700, at $ 1100 to $1200, still about twice your figure for
"conventional power plants".
That was the vendors estimates, some new nukes have recently been completed
in Asia .....[ "There are two marketable Generation III light-water reactors
currently in operation, and another four are under construction in Asia
[79]. Thus, the starting point for an estimate of building the "next" new
U.S. advanced nuclear power plant was the realized cost of the two operating
light-water nuclear units in Asia. In AEO2004, $2,083 per kilowatt
(inclusive of all contingencies) is used as the realized cost for these two
reactors [80]."]
$2,083/kW , that's REALIZED cost as in real money. I guess these weren't
the "conventional power plants" you were referring to. To be fair and
balanced that *is* a vast improvement over the costs we (the US) paid for
our current fleet.
You asserted that 60 cents per watt for "conventional power plants"
"includes all major handling and storage facilities". The figures for the
new nukes above doen't include anything but the plant itself, not
reprocessing facilities. Japan has some recent experience in reprocessing
plant capital costs.......
http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-2/takagi.html
[" JNFL's latest estimation of the construction costs is 1.88 trillion yen
(about $17 billion)"]
BTW,this plant isn't capable of dealing with all of Japan's waste so it is
a partial solution at best.
>
> Windmills coast $1/rated peak watt or about $2.5/average watt plus
> some installation costs.
>
Average watts? What the hell is an "average watt"? That's misleading. If
you want to stress relative capacity factors the proper place for it is in
output as kWh. If you want to cite $/kWh then you need to incude all the
costs including O&M, subsidies, financing costs (a function of lead time
which is higher for bigger plants), fuel costs and waste disposal and
environmental costs including a carbon tax and charge for using the
atmosphere as a dumping ground. Like I said, apples and oranges.
>From the EIA,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo99/assumptions/tbl44.html
The cost of wind is estimated between $776 and $1109 per kW. (1997 USD)
Also from that table, biomass is from $1448 to $2205 , Geothermal $1831,
Solar thermal $1907 to $2904 and solar PV from $2903 to $4162. (1997 USD)
So these can't be the "conventional power plants" you referred to. Let's
keep looking.
Again from the EIA,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/aeo99/assumptions/tbl43.html
We see coal (2 technologies) ranging from $1091 to $1606 per kWh and Nat Gas
(3 technologies) from $325 to $575.(1997 USD)
It appears that you define "conventional power plants" as natural gas fueled
power plants. How convenient for your argument. Fine, we know where the
price of fuel (natural gas) is headed, how about the price for wind turbine
fuel eh? Once again apples and oranges. That price doesn't include LNG
terminals which are sprouting up along our coasts. Here in Maine there have
been several thwarted attemps to build terminals to recieve liquified nat
gas from overseas. The opposition cites security risks, potential
disruption of fishing grounds and the industrialization of rural/tourist
economies. No energy choice, including wind, is free of downsides.
> >
> > 2. Windturbine do not release significant waste as part of the
generating
> > process, no CO2, no CO, no SO2, no mercury or other heavy metals, and no
> > piles (2k tons/yr US currently) of spent nuclear fuel. They do not
require
> > scrubbers or smokestacks nor do they require reprocessing plants or
Yucca Mt
> > style storage for waste.
>
> Yucca Mountains would not be required but for the absence of
> reprocessing and/or transmulation burn up of wastes in only slightly
> more advanced reactors. Both developments have been curtailed by
> political issues rather than serious economic or technical ones.
>
>
Sure thing. I forgot to mention that the cost of running that reprocessing
plant in Japan, the one that isn't big enough to let them catch up with
inventory on hand, much less the yearly waste being produced, is $180
billion for 40 years. Whether or not that is affordable, it isn't free.
> >
> > 3. Windturbines can be (and have been mind you) placed in locations not
> > suitable for other uses such as off shore or in the midst of working
farms.
>
> Of shore turbines must be massively super sized so that they can be
>placed in deep enough water. This increase the amount of material
>required with the square of power or rotor disk area and becomes self
>limiting.
>
Nonsense. If you have big turbine you of course need a bigger foundation
and tower, so what? You improve the economics of wind by going to larger
machines not the opposite. They aren't "massively super sized so that they
can be placed in deep enough water." They aren't located in deep water.
> >
> > 4. A windfarm being made up of smaller generating units begins to pay
off
> > investment faster since individual units can begin generating before the
> > entire installation is complete, not so half a fossil fuel or nuclear
plant.
>
> These small windfarms are also excedingly noisy and ugly and have
> fallen out of favour compared to larger units that can more easily be
> isolated in a far away field especially in Europe where ugly
> california style windfarms have generally been unacceptable.
>
As the technology improves larger machines become available. Denmark
recently acted to replace many older smaller turbines with larger, more
modern turbines resulting in increased output at the same sites. The same
will happen again as turbines become larger and more efficient.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > If they ever had to
> > > opperate without conventional power and needed energy storage systems
> > > the cost of power would quadrouple or more likely increase by a factor
> > > of 10 at least. All the wind turbines in the world have never
> > > supplanted or replaced one nuclear or fossile power station.
> >
> > 40+ GW of wind online today and still growing rapidly.
>
> Almost all of which is subsidised unless you count old style windmills
> that pump water.
>
As was all the conventional power, nuclear and fossil fuel similarly
subsidised.
> >
> > >This is
> > > becuase they have to be backed up by power stations that are
> > > underutalised.
> >
> > Windpower below 20% of total power on a grid does not require dedicated
> > backup.
>
> Sure wind power doesn't but that effectively works out as wind energy
> of 8% becuase the wind doesn't blow all of the time.
In Denmark it worked out to 20% of electrical demand period.
The factor comes
> from the fact that conventional power stations and networks are
> oversized by 20% for purposes of power factor correction and network
> stabillity anyway.
>
>
> >
> > Who's backing up Davis Besse's missing 900MW? That's the risk of having
all
> > your eggs, or watts, in one basket. That's a big chunk of power taken
> > offline but somehow the system has compensated.
>
> Diversity of power stations supplies it. If there are 20 large power
> stations the loss of one is insignificant. Windmills can not
> practicably energise an network on their own nor backup a conventional
> power station they must be backed up by at least 5 times as much
> conventional power generating capacity.
"5 times as much" eh? I don't suppose you have a link to back up that claim
do you?
>
> Those conventinal power stations all cost money and interest payments
> to build and that is money and interest that can not be paid back when
> such power stations do not earn money when wind power stations are
> supplying power and forcing them to be idle. They meet their payback
> requirements the only way they can: by increasing charges: another
> hidden subsidy to the wind turbine industry.
>
>
> >
> >
> > >Windmills in the kind of numbers needed are ugly and
> > > noisy.
> >
> > I've stood under a 50kW machine while it was operating, just a faint
whoosh
> > when near it. Certainly not what I would call noisy. Not like a train
or a
> > freeway or even one diesel tractor-trailer rig.
>
> You can hear 1MW manchines quite a few hundred meteres away and if you
> should be unforuntate the blades will reflect pulsing light into your
> bedroom window.
>
>
> >
> >
> > Ugly? Like a belching smokestack or an oilfield or a nuke cooling
tower?
> > You can see one of those big boys for miles around.
>
> There are very few power stations and they are isolated in small
> pockets. Windmills to have any serios impact will need to be placed
> everywhere and so densely that they will be unavoidable. Many will go
> in some of our most pristine and natural environments.
>
Lke the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge? Wind is already having a big
impact in Denmark, I suppose the Danes (with a population density over four
times that of the USA) must be stumbling over them with every step. As long
as they are happy and keep shipping blue cheese here it's fine with me.
> Windmills in anycase do not relace oil fields.
>
Why not? They sure are prettier.
>
> >
> > > Even the paltry amount of power provided in Germany has come
> > > at considerable aesthetic cost and noise pollution.
Try replacing them with oilfields.
> > >
> > > The wind associations have become however substantial entities and
> > > agressive lobbiests and propagandists in their own profiteering
> > > interest.
> >
> > Unlike the nuclear or fossil fuel industries who operate for something
other
> > than profit, just big public interest groups ;-)
>
> The nuclear industry has few public friends. Left wing groups have
> hijacked the environment for political gain while trumpeting
> immaginary 'wind power' in the same way they used to trumpet their
> immaginary and impossble socialist utopias.
So windpower is now a left wing conspiracy? I suppose the directors of
Vestas or Bonus (just purchased by Siemens) start their board meetings with
a rousing rendition of "The International" and march with red flags on May
day.
They can always blame
> the failure of windpower on some capitalist conspiracy rather than
> physical and reality. Nuclear power has been quite a quiet success:
> supply some 20% or more of the worlds electricity.
>
You fail to notice that windpower hasn't been and isn't currently failing.
It has been and continues to expand rapidly. Thes people *are* capitalists.
> >
> > >(they have to be as they are dependent on public subsidies)
> >
> > Every energy source is subsidised to a greater or lesser extent. You
want
> > to claim that nukes haven't been subsidised? Of course that's crap. I
know
> > coal has been subsidised by all the fresh water fish here in Maine which
are
> > loaded with mercury and all but inedible. Windpower is attracting lots
of
> > private investment, stating that they are dependant upon subsidies
without
> > considering the subsidies given to the competition is misleading.
>
> Nuclear energy has been subsidiesed mainly as a side effect of its
> abillity to power nuclear military vessels and create atomic bombs.
> Civilian muclear power is a different matter. Civilian nuclear power
> has unavoidably benefited though I would say it has been more of a
> curse then an advantage as military technology adopted to civilian
> purposes has distorted greatly the direction of the technology.
See above regarding GE and BNFL's plans for new nukes.
>
> While nuclear power if developed properly can supply clean, nuclear
> waste free energy night and day season in and season out irrespective
> of lattitude wind power can not.
>
> Wind power can supply at most 20% and realistically at most 8%
In reality 20%, perhaps more as it is still growing Denmark made a
comittment to show it can be done and have so far succeeded.
>of a
> nations power without even more serious subsidies. If wind power can
> not realistically do more than that why waste time and effort upon it
> at all? To feel good?
20% of electric power without fuel, without CO2 and other pollutants,
without 2000 tons of spent nuclear fuel a year, without reprocessing,
without fuel terminals, oil spills and wars to secure supply, those aren't
reasons enough to feel good about windpower?
>
> As far as merucury contamination is concerned:-it is possible to
> recapure mercury in flues and to opperate coal washeries in such a way
> that heavy metals are not released into the environment.
At a greater cost per kWh which is why the coal generating utilities resist
cleaning up their act and pay so much $ to politicians like Bush.
Most of the
> problem I blame on the unbelievable immigration driven population
> growth seen in the west. The environment can sustain a certain amount
> of abuse but as the population is increased the weight of the burdens
> means that higher and higher standards are needed.
>
> This growing population incidently is also what makes wind power
> ultimetly futile and inadaquete. 50 or 100 years ago the landscape
> could have been dotted with windmills in isolated or localised areas
> that would have been out of eyeshot of the most pristine of natual
> environments and population centers. Now they would have to be
> everywhere.
100 years ago we didn't have to look at freeways, super malls, skyscrapers,
smokestacks, power poles and transmission lines , dams, microwave and radio
transmission towers. Times change. If you want to push for worldwide
population control I'm with you all the way but in the meantime we need
energy and wind is a source.
>
>
> >
> > Here's a subsidy for you.....
> >
> > http://costofwar.com/
> >
> > There should be another counter there for lives lost. How many wars you
> > figure we'll need to secure our supply of wind and sun?
>
> Potentially quite a few wars could be started as people start seeking
> wind capacity, ocean rights, wind shadow effect or sunny landscapes
> etc to provide the electricity to synthesise hydrogen or whatever.
Nonsense.
>
> The recent Iran/Iraq business is about the US Israel first lobby as
> much as anything else.
>
>
If that was true we would have attacked the Palestinians or Syrians. The US
policy towards Israel has as much to do with oil and Israel's location in
the mideast as with anything else.
> >
> > > and look like ongoinly promoting their self interests come hell or
> > > high water.
> >
> > Unlike nuclear and fossil fuel interest eh?
> > That's capitalism.
>
> I am merely saying that the wind industy agressively lobby their
> product and propagandise in favour of it while prending they are
> greener than the rest.
>
And I am merely saying that the nuclear and fossil fuel industries
agressively lobby their
product and propagandise in favour of it while pretending they are
cheaper than the rest.
> >
> > >
> > > The Green-Left in Germany are ugly Marxists full of ignorance,sound,
> > > fury, malice and pumped up self righteousness.
> >
> > Unlike you who, so obviously fair and open-minded.
>
> The description of the Green-Left holds. They are not sincere
> environmentalists but marxist swine that have hijacked the
> environmental movement. I have supported my points with some basic
> data.
Like your bogus claims of "conventional power plant" costs?
Wind power has not replaced one conventional power station and
> it can only at cosiderable cost supply more than 10% of a nations
> power.
That too is bogus, 20% in Denmark and still growing.
Regards,
Tim O
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