THE Wind Power Thread pt 2 (merged)

[yesplease]

Sure ya did your part, and no one can fault ya for using figures w/o checking them out V.

1.25% was for 2008, which had ~15GW installed at the beginning of the year, ~20GW at the beginning of the fourth quarter, and ~25GW by the end of the year. The weighted average for that is probably a bit south of ~20GW, say ~18GW. W/ current capacity at ~35GW, and the drop in total generation, wind for 2010 w/ ~35GW installed is probably going to be about twice the 2008 figure, or ~2.5% give or take. The EIA projected it would hit ~5% in 2012, which seems possible provided we continue to add an average of ~12GW each year for the next three years.

Naturally, if ~70000MW provides 5% of all generation, then ~1400000MW would provide all generation (although realistically it would be capped at a much lower number w/o the adoption of a lot of storage ala PHEVs/EVs). This would require ~900,000 1.5MW GE (or whoever else) turbines. No form of electricity generation is perfect w/ accidents and everything, but w/ coal taking tens of thousands of lives every year, wind, or just about anything else, would e an improvement.

With sufficient transmission between farms, not even a national grid per say, half of what wind farms make could be counted on as baseload, and w/ a national grid this could be higher. As of right now, 20% wind is probably feasible at an additional cost of ~3% compared to baseline, but I wouldn't be surprised (especially if PHEVs/EVs can capture a few percent of the auto market) if this was revised upward in another decade provided oil prices stay high and/or go higher.

[TheDude]

As a percentage of the total "Other renewables" 2002-2009 contributed a cumulative 1.47% of power supplied, .01% less than NG did alone in 2007. This isn't just wind, of course: "[4] Wood, black liquor, other wood waste, biogenic municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agriculture byproducts, other biomass, geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind."

As a percentage of the total this sector shrank in 2009 too, working off the rolling average the EIA provides - 0.48% in 2008 to 0.36% in 2009. Must not have have been enough stimulus money for that black liquor.

[VMarcHart]

Alright, let's say my math was wrong, as prefaced.

I can candidly say your math will not work. There is no large project in the history of man that was finished within the baseline budget. You can double the 900K GEs, beef-up the inter-wind farm transmission, and expect EVs won't be here for this generation.

Nobody is saying that, but according to your (re-corrected) math, it would require 2M WTGs to power the current life-style. And I wonder where all the flight fuel would come from.

Whether it's 900K WTGs, 2M, 4M, it's still a lot of them, plus all the materials and disturbances, plus all the EVs and theirs materials and disturbances, there's still no free lunch.

[Phildo]

This is the one I bumped into.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Wind_Farm

Anyone claiming that these things can't pump out enough power to matter really need to spend an hour or two driving one from end to end.

If you all do not mind an RTS (return to sanity) for this thread. . . . .

SOS -- I had No Idea you were playing and roaming around this part of the world.

Yes, indeed -- West Texas is Big Wind Land.

For the folks that do not track that -- They made So Much Surplus electricity this last Spring -- they had to PAY the grid operators just to take the Surplus. (No Joke -- yeah I know it sounds like Texas Bragging, but it is really the truth). You know ERCOT is heading more lines out that way and up towards Pampa (SWPP turf) just to tap into more of the surplus.

Was doing power designs for some of that last Spring, as well. Big open, Windy Area.

And now I see from the Electric Transportation side of this conversation, where you are heading (and why any self-respecting Doomer would have to shun you ).

My bias is Solar Thermal over Big Wind, but there is plenty of both, and work well together. And for folks following along -- yes we could take the majority of US ground transportation fully electric across 20 to 40 years, very smoothly and would likely cost us less than Oil does now. Appears it would be along the lines of taking ground transportation from Horses (1900) to Oil (1940 or so)

But there is probably already a thread on here somewhere, before I jack this one, huh?

SOS, you are alright.

[shortonsense]

SOS -- I had No Idea you were playing and roaming around this part of the world.

Yes, indeed -- West Texas is Big Wind Land.

Drive up to Salinas Kansas sometime, they do wind good too!

And yes, I cruise through Texas upon occasion...and other states which happen to have counties in them I have never traveled to before. I'm a county counter. In April its probably going to be New Orleans, see some of the hurricane damage, maybe wander down to Galveston, maybe a quick stop into Tyler Texas, or Longview, check out an oil and gas museum?

And now I see from the Electric Transportation side of this conversation, where you are heading (and why any self-respecting Doomer would have to shun you ).

Yes...I am shunned. I don't feel bad about it though, science isn't run by consensus, and I don't care how loudly someone shouts 2+2=5, the volume level doesn't make them right.

My bias is Solar Thermal over Big Wind, but there is plenty of both, and work well together. And for folks following along -- yes we could take the majority of US ground transportation fully electric across 20 to 40 years, very smoothly and would likely cost us less than Oil does now. Appears it would be along the lines of taking ground transportation from Horses (1900) to Oil (1940 or so)

But there is probably already a thread on here somewhere, before I jack this one, huh?

SOS, you are alright.

YOU LOUSY CORNUTROLL!!

I do my best. But don't forget my warning....I changed your quote to cover your boo-boo.

On topic, 40% increase in the US in 2009 and still going strong!

http://pr-canada.net/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=58

[Phildo]

And yes, I cruise through Texas upon occasion...and other states which happen to have counties in them I have never traveled to before. I'm a county counter. In April its probably going to be New Orleans, see some of the hurricane damage, maybe wander down to Galveston, maybe a quick stop into Tyler Texas, or Longview, check out an oil and gas museum?

I should have some play time in April. Maybe put "Upshur" County (Texas) on your list, too? It is just north of Longview. And the test site for our Electric Farm project.


YOU LOUSY CORNUTROLL!!

[TheDude]

From the European Wind Energy Association - EWEA: Annual Wind Statistics. 9 years to add 7.7% of capacity to the total, so about 4 decades to supplant coal? Note that coal has grown over the last 9 years. Page 8 of the report shows growth in wind by year, which has been fairly steady, to judge from eyeballing the chart.

Also these are nameplate numbers they throw around. It would be more accurate to use error bars to delineate the margin of actual output from the farms, but usually these press releases don't even bring this up, of course.

[Phildo]

From the European Wind Energy Association - EWEA: Annual Wind Statistics. 9 years to add 7.7% of capacity to the total, so about 4 decades to supplant coal? Note that coal has grown over the last 9 years. Page 8 of the report shows growth in wind by year, which has been fairly steady, to judge from eyeballing the chart.

Also these are nameplate numbers they throw around. It would be more accurate to use error bars to delineate the margin of actual output from the farms, but usually these press releases don't even bring this up, of course.

All sounds like a fair enough summary. The 4 decades part caught my eye. Keep in mind that wind is not the only RE intending to eat away at Coal's turf. Google's Solar Thermal target is to specifically intended to beat Coal [on unit price, right upfront] and in doing so undermine Coal, as well.

All of this at the same time overall Electricity use is Down. At this point I am calling it all to be a Race to the Bottom. Whoever can produce the cheapest will win the game big time. Only savior I see for the Electric Industry overall is to take the Ground Transportation Energy Source Market away from Oil.

[isgota]

From the European Wind Energy Association - EWEA: Annual Wind Statistics. 9 years to add 7.7% of capacity to the total, so about 4 decades to supplant coal? Note that coal has grown over the last 9 years. Page 8 of the report shows growth in wind by year, which has been fairly steady, to judge from eyeballing the chart.

Using power capacity alone to compare coal/wind trends may be misleading. Non-manageable energy sources like wind don't reduce coal power capacity very much, what they do is reduce coal consumption "turning off" those plants. An example is the trend here in Spain. In page 5 can be seen that while coal capacity remains constant, electricity generated with it is falling. Actually, last year this trend accelerated with coal generation falling near 24% while capacity was the same (wind increased 13%).

And this is not just in Spain, BP stats show that since year 2000 coal consumption in the European Union has fallen about 5%, even if power capacity grew.

And I don't think it's so simple to extrapolate future wind grow in Europe to the past. Wind development depends a lot of the country here, there are countries with great absolute numbers (Germany and Spain), others with great percentages (Denmark and Portugal), and another 23 countries where wind power is still pretty underdeveloped. 4 decades it's so much time when exponential grow can kick in, here we had to raise the 2010 target 2 times in one decade due to it:

Best.

[Hawkcreek]

When I first started visiting this forum I was fairly convinced that Peak Oil was a problem, BUT, with a lot of effort we could mitigate the worst effects through conservation until things like wind, pv, etc got hooked up.
I had totally missed the possible effects of a major depression on the required transfer to the new power infrastructure.
Ok, now I see how hard it will be to save a workable automobile based civilization before things really go to hell.
HOWEVER, I still get all of my household power from the sun, and also know how easy (and relatively cheap) it is to do so. I also know for a fact that a farmer can use 20 percent of his farmland to provide oil to run his tractors to allow him to till the other 80 percent of his land (much like farmers used to do for hay for their horses).
If we had a decent political structure in our country -or in the world, that believed in speaking the truth and educating the population about that truth, I think we could handle the crisis pretty easily.

But we don't. So I think we will have major problems. But plenty of people in the developed world will have power to their houses, books in their book shelves, and food in their pantry when this is over. We will start over, hopefully after the politicians and their corporate masters have been rendered down for bio-diesel.

[yesplease]

From the European Wind Energy Association - EWEA: Annual Wind Statistics. 9 years to add 7.7% of capacity to the total, so about 4 decades to supplant coal? Note that coal has grown over the last 9 years. Page 8 of the report shows growth in wind by year, which has been fairly steady, to judge from eyeballing the chart.

If the 2010 installed figures drop down to the 2000 figures and ramp back up like they did from 2000 to 2009, sure! That said, it seems highly unlikely that the EU will drop back down to the ~2000 levels for installed wind. They'll probably continue to install ~10+GW/year, maybe more. If they flatline at ~10GW+/year, it'll take ~20 years to surpass coal. If the growth trend of an additional ~2+GW/year beyond what was installed in the previous year continues, wind will surpass coal in less than a decade.

Also these are nameplate numbers they throw around. It would be more accurate to use error bars to delineate the margin of actual output from the farms, but usually these press releases don't even bring this up, of course.

Nameplate is all they can use because no one knows what the capacity factor of a specific resource will be. That's true of all generating sources, from wind to coal. There isn't as muh variation w/ wind as there is w/ FF generation, since it could be baseload, load following, or peaking, but the best someone could do is go project by project.

[TheDude]

If the 2010 installed figures drop down to the 2000 figures and ramp back up like they did from 2000 to 2009, sure!

I don't know what you're getting at. I'm not implying that wind installation will fall off a cliff or something, just that it has historically exhibited linear growth by and large; see page 8 of that EWEA doc. The curve for the world is raising faster as a whole but that of the EU is more steady. Lester Brown provides some data on wind, too: Eco-Economy Indicators - Wind Power | EPI

See also the graph on page 32 of this summary doc, "Pure Power": European Wind Energy Association - EWEA: Reports Forecasts for growth in wind in the EU vary a bit.

Regarding CF Jerome a Paris provided this handy graph in a piece posted over at TOD:



Not insurmountable but far from conventional baseload. The issue of what to do when wind begins to displace all those sulfates emitted from coal burning is a wild card as well. Theoretically this could defang a good deal of climate sensitivity when the cooling effect of the sulfates is removed.

[yesplease]

I don't know what you're getting at. I'm not implying that wind installation will fall off a cliff or something, just that it has historically exhibited linear growth by and large; see page 8 of that EWEA doc. The curve for the world is raising faster as a whole but that of the EU is more steady. Lester Brown provides some data on wind, too: Eco-Economy Indicators - Wind Power | EPI

For wind to take four decades to reach the same capacity as coal it would have to increase at about five percent per decade (it's at ~9% now, so adding ~20% over four decades would put it past coal), which is roughly equivalent to it dropping back to 2000/2001 installation levels and staying there. Currently, it's increasing at ~1.3%/year, so even if new installs stopped growing and stayed at ~10GW/year, in four decades it would reach ~40-50% of installed capacity, way more than coal at ~30%.

Not insurmountable but far from conventional baseload. The issue of what to do when wind begins to displace all those sulfates emitted from coal burning is a wild card as well. Theoretically this could defang a good deal of climate sensitivity when the cooling effect of the sulfates is removed.

There would supposedly be a jump upwards of ~.75C by 2100 if we removed all aerosols, since they cut CO2e by ~80ppm. Course, over a century or so, this would come at a high price of a couple hundred ppm of CO2 from coal anyway. Aerosols have a much shorter life than carbon in the atmosphere, so I think the whole ounce of carbon prevention versus a pound of aerosol cure comes into play.

[VMarcHart]

The issue of what to do when wind begins to displace all those sulfates emitted from coal burning is a wild card as well. Theoretically this could defang a good deal of climate sensitivity when the cooling effect of the sulfates is removed.

Hang on, Dude, are you saying we can't live without the sulfates, CO2 and the other toxics?

[VMarcHart]

For wind to take four decades to reach the same capacity as coal...

I wonder how many decades would take for wind capacity to reach the same baseload energy as coal, without all the technofixes like smart grids, EV battery storage, etc.

[yesplease]

For wind to take four decades to reach the same capacity as coal...

I wonder how many decades would take for wind capacity to reach the same baseload energy as coal, without all the technofixes like smart grids, EV battery storage, etc.

That's an odd way to phrase the statement. All coal doesn't provide baseload energy. Some of it is baseload and some of it is load following. Overall the capacity factor of coal as of 2009 was ~64%. Recently the capacity factor for wind power is probably around 35%, so in terms of comparing net generation, we need about twice as much nameplate wind as we have of nameplate coal. We have ~300+GW of coal, so we would need ~600+ GW of wind (~400,000 1.5MW turbines) to see the same net generation from both sources. In terms of supplying (very roughly, since we don't know how much coal is baseload and how much is load following) baseload, interconnected wind farms can supply about half of their total generation as baseload w/ higher reliability than coal, so in that case we would need ~800,000 (I'm using the 2009 production figures for coal, so in order to replace it we need fewer turbines because coal generation has dropped) 1.5MW wind turbines. Like you mentioned, we could approach using ~400,000 wind turbines to replace coal, baseload or not, if we had a lot of energy storage or a smart grid, but those are still in their infancy. Wind power and transmission are both relatively mature, so they could work for now if we wanted to replace coal with wind.

[VMarcHart]

I'm totally splitting hairs, and I know you're making educated guesses, but...

I think wind NCF is below 35%, closer to 30% than to 35%. I'm working on a project in Wisconsin that we'll be lucky if the real, produced NCF breaks 30%.

Then there's population growth, energy demand growth, and in all reality, there will be changes in life-styles, smart grids, EVs* storage, etc, to balance the energy lust, but something will have to power them. In terms of supplying baseload --the "~800,000 1.5MW wind turbines"--, let's just round that number to 1,000,000 1.5MW turbines. That's 1,500 GWs. Again, lots of splitting hairs.

The conservative spacing rule of thumb still is 100 acres per turbine. That's 100,000,000 acres. Kansas has 52,657,279 acres. Two Kansas to displace coal wind wind. Let's say I'm off by 50% in terms of installed capacity and turbine nameplate, so we just need one Kansas to displace coal. Then there's the other white elephant, nucular , and the smaller, more domesticated animal, NG.

Nobody's saying it impossible, and the alternative is even worse, but it's not something that will happen overnight.

*EV storage: I wonder how many EVs would be required to act as a functional and reliable form of readily available power.

[TheDude]

The issue of what to do when wind begins to displace all those sulfates emitted from coal burning is a wild card as well. Theoretically this could defang a good deal of climate sensitivity when the cooling effect of the sulfates is removed.

Hang on, Dude, are you saying we can't live without the sulfates, CO2 and the other toxics?

Sulfate aerosols act as negative forcings on temps, counteracting GHGs to some extent. Otherwise global temp anomalies would be even higher than they are. Definitely a mixed blessing, of course.

[yesplease]

I'm totally splitting hairs, and I know you're making educated guesses, but...

I think wind NCF is below 35%, closer to 30% than to 35%. I'm working on a project in Wisconsin that we'll be lucky if the real, produced NCF breaks 30%.

It could be. The farms referenced in the Stanford paper I linked earlier had pretty high capacity factors, around 40% IIRC. The only way to figure it in practice is to go project by project, kind of a pain, or just use the EIA's numbers once new additions are a relatively small part of the total installed capacity. As of 2008, wind had a capacity factor of ~25%, but that includes all the new generation, especially the stuff added in the fourth quarter, that gets counted as capacity but only generates for a fraction, sometimes a small fraction, or the year. In that case, ~15+% of wind in 2008 wasn't counted because it had no time to generate and the rest was still ham-stringed being put in whenever it was during the first three quarters.

Then there's population growth, energy demand growth, and in all reality, there will be changes in life-styles, smart grids, EVs* storage, etc, to balance the energy lust, but something will have to power them. In terms of supplying baseload --the "~800,000 1.5MW wind turbines"--, let's just round that number to 1,000,000 1.5MW turbines. That's 1,500 GWs. Again, lots of splitting hairs.

Energy demand growth isn't too hard to deal with, and cheaper than any new sources to a certain extent. Kaliforniastan has had per capita electricity flatline because they figured out it's cheaper to invest a couple cents/kWh in public awareness, efficiency regulations, and programs to reduce demand via rebates on more energy efficient products, than it is to pay for new generation/transmission. Given the concern over GHG emissions, we might see the U.S. per capita electricity consumption flatline too. Population is expected to reach ~400 million in 40 years, increasing total electricity use by ~33% even if per capita remains flat. If you're really including change in lifestyle, smart grids, and EVs (with whatever other storage), then we won't need 800,00 turbines. It'll be closer to 400,000, or 500,000 if you wanna round up.

The conservative spacing rule of thumb still is 100 acres per turbine. That's 100,000,000 acres. Kansas has 52,657,279 acres. Two Kansas to displace coal wind wind. Let's say I'm off by 50% in terms of installed capacity and turbine nameplate, so we just need one Kansas to displace coal. Then there's the other white elephant, nucular , and the smaller, more domesticated animal, NG.

Are you counting all the space between the turbines? AFAIK a turbine only takes up a half an acre. The rest (spacing between turbines) can still be used (Nothing, farming, other stuff), even if it isn't. It's not like paved surfaces, where the total area would be ranked ~25th as a state, and that's all covered in something. Even if you count the space between turbines as used by a turbine, Kansas is about 50 million acres, while the area devoted to farmland in the country is about 2,250 million acres. I'm pretty sure we can figure out where to put some turbines in some of those 2,000+ million acres. Who knows, the economics for offshore may even be favorable by the time we get to ~20% wind. Nuclear is probably going to maintain it's share of generation because it's not as costly as coal, and nat gas is very much load following, so I imagine it can be replaced by more than just wind, although coal is still first on the chopping block. Keep in mind that if we replaced coal w/ interconnected baseload wind, the total net generation from wind would be almost all of what we consume right now from Nukes, NG, coal, hydro, and so on combined, because I assumed all of what's generated by coal to be baseload, obviously not true given the capacity factor of all coal, and in order to get all of what coal makes (~half of total generation) as baseload we would need to make twice as much from wind.

Nobody's saying it impossible, and the alternative is even worse, but it's not something that will happen overnight.

Very few good things happen overnight. If you're using that as a factor, most of what you've restricted yourself to is natural disasters. Like everything else, it'll take time, just like oil depletion and a lot of other things will take time.

*EV storage: I wonder how many EVs would be required to act as a functional and reliable form of readily available power.

That's even harder to figure out than how much coal baseload we actually have. It depends on the EV pack chemistry, connection points, charging/discharging window, kWh of storage, generation profile of the generators, and so on. A robust A123 pack that can be charged/discharged many times w/ little capacity loss and is grid connected at home and at work could be as good as ~5-10+ LG packs that are only connected at night.

[VMarcHart]

Are you counting all the space between the turbines? AFAIK a turbine only takes up a half an acre. The rest (spacing between turbines) can still be used (Nothing, farming, other stuff), even if it isn't. It's not like paved surfaces, where the total area would be ranked ~25th as a state, and that's all covered in something. Even if you count the space between turbines as used by a turbine, Kansas is about 50 million acres, while the area devoted to farmland in the country is about 2,250 million acres. I'm pretty sure we can figure out where to put some turbines in some of those 2,000+ million acres.

Yes, the space between turbines. Actually, with the crane pad, roads, transmission, substation, O&M building, etc, in average, each turbine occupies just shy of an acre.

But it's the sheer amount of the infrastructure, which IMO would take 2 Kansas to displace coal with wind, that is frightening. Once a turbine goes in, very little is built or planted nearby in order to maintain the NCF. Of course, the ironic upside is that very little is built nearby.