Re: Research: Wind power pricier, emits more CO2 than thought

On Jul 16, 11:03 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 16 Jul, 08:11, "rlbell.ns...@xxxxxxxxx" <rlbell.ns...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jul 15, 2:13 am, disgoftunwells <disgoftunwe...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 13 Jul, 03:52, Bill Ghrist <notmyn...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Regarding the arguments about whether wind power is mature...

If you go back and read the article originally referenced by this topic
you will find that the premise has little if anything to do with the
maturity of wind power technology. Rather it has to do with the amount
and type of back up generation that must be provided if wind power is to
be a major portion of total generation. The article specifically
addresses the situation in the UK, and shows that it is not unusual to
have periods of calm winds over all of the UK and continental Europe,
sometimes for days at a time, meaning that you need an amount of backup
generating capacity equal to the total wind capacity.

Back on topic! Thanks.

And my response was it's an excellent article but there are several
points that the author misses. He concedes he doesn't analyse the
impact electric cars, which with a 30% market share might provide
10KWhrs x 10 million = 100 GWhrs flexible storage capacity.

Let me get this straight: During some parts of the winter when I plug
in my hypothetical electric car, not only will I not get any charge,
but the electric company will siphon some charge out of it. Even
better, it can last every night for a week.

If you agree yes. Probably the easiest way is when you park your car,
you set a time for when you want it fully charged. Cheap, complex
software does the rest.

So the vehicle battery is used not for storage, but the charger
interacts with the grid to manage the load curve, eliminating some of
the need for peaking units that wind supplements fuel for. This makes
the economic model for wind worse, not better. Baseload unit produce
very inexpensive electricity that wind generators cannot compete
against.




He also misses domestic boiler generators / micro CHP, though to be
effective that will need improved gas storage facilities.

He did address those when he discussed the kind of gas turbines needed
to track varying wind output.

But he was focusing on GW turbines, not KW turbines (or PEM fuel
cells).

No the GW turbines are the combined cycle units that are practically
baseload units, with thermal efficiencies of up to 60%(GE H1).
Tracking variations in wind output is for small peaking turbines in
the low-to-mid MW range (5-50), with efficiencies less than 40%. CHP
turbines have even worse efficiencies than the ones he referred to,
and only make economic sense as a topping cycle for a forced air
furnace where its high quantities of waste heat are a feature, not a
bug (CHP = Combined Heat & Power). As CHP's are typically 15-50 kW,
there would need to be hundreds of thousands of them.



And the weather analysis didn't cover all of UK and Continental
Europe, but covered some of the UK and Denmark / Germany, which will
put a premium on wind farms further away, like Lewis. Personally, I
think Norway has the best potential for Wind Energy in Europe.

Pity about all that hydro developement that economically fills their
needs and allows them to export surplus power.

No - BECAUSE they have hydro, building wind allows them to export
more. Every KWhr of wind energy can add a almost a KWhr to what they
export (or about 0.8KWhr if its stored as pumped storage). And they
don't have to worry about additional capacity. (Though for large
scale, they might want to increase the power capacity of their hydro
resources - i.e. add more turbines)

The problem is that they do not need the capacity and, as a money
making venture, it is insufficiently lucrative. Selling a kWh of wind
power is only a gain if they can sell it for more than it cost to
produce. They also have the happy situation of buying cheap wind
electricity when producers have too much of it and selling dear when
there are wind electricity shortfalls.
.

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