THE Wind Power Thread pt 1 (merged) Archived

[cephalotus]

it took Danish and German manufacturers 20 years to learn how to build large wind turbines in the MW class after the first experiments with "GROWIAN" in 1983.
http://www.ifb.uni-stuttgart.de/~doerner/eGROWIAN.html

Of course these systems also fail from time to time



That's all kind of failures, of course, not just heavy averages.




I assume that the experience generated in those years has not been worthless.

Building a 2 MW wind generator after studying what others have done seems to be manageable, building one that will last for 20 years is a different story.

[mrobert]

A bit off-topic, but last summer I drove past a huge Vestas truck transporting a large wind turbine. I got a change to look at it closely.

Those things aren't cheap electronics that can be copied in some crappy factory in Asia. There is a lot of engineering involved to make those things the right way.

[Tanada]

As one of the people on this forum who advocates building 20% grid power from Wind Turbines when I see a new article on the subject I read it. I stumbled upon a reference to the new 7.5 MWe turbine which was ordered by Queen Elizabeth II last year to encourage development of this new largest yet size WT for offshore windpower off the coast of Great Britain. While researching it I came across THIS article from a composite manufacturing trade publication. I had never given much thought to it but the fact is large WT blades are manufactured from Composit Plastics, they have to be because wood and metal, the traditional materials, are too heavy for the size blades we are talking about. Acroding to the article, which is pretty long but I found it interesting to read,

When we total the mass of the 43,777 wind turbine blades made during 2007, using the above guidelines, wind turbine manufacturers produced approximately 441 million lb or slightly more than 200,000 metric tonnes of finished blade structures last year — making wind turbine blade manufacturing one of the largest single applications of engineered composites in the world. Incredibly, 2007’s staggering volume is almost 38 percent higher than 2006 and almost double the 2005 figure.

The total breaks down, approximately, as follows:

• Glass fiber – 221 million lb (100,240 metric tonnes)
• Carbon fiber – 4.6 million lb (2,090 metric tonnes)
• Thermoset resins (primarily epoxy and vinyl ester) – 182 million lb (82,550 metric tonnes)
• Core (balsa and foam) – 18 million lb (8,160 metric tonnes)
• Metal (fittings and bolts) – 15 million lb (6,800 metric tonnes)

Discounting the Metal and Glass fiber portions of the composit blades you still get a lot of Petrochemical based Carbon fiber, Resins and foams, abut 93,000 metric tons in 2007. (latests figures availible)
2008 was larger than 2007 even with the decline late in the year for new orders, everythign that was going to be built in 2008 was already ordered long before September last year.
While these numbers are literally a drop in the barrell of overall petroleum consumption it goes to show that using Petroleum as a primary fuel is far less effective as a method of getting energy out of it. The new 7.5 MWe turbines are being marketed as 1 Mbbl/y equivelent, IOW one of these newest mega turbines produces energy equal to one million barrells of petroleum every year of operation. If that claim turns out to be true then 365*85=31,025 of them would produce as much energy as the daily oil consumption currently experienced on planet Earth. Spread over the whole Earth, or even along the coastlines of the major industrial countries that really isn't very much territory.

If I screwed up my math somewhere please point it out. Even if we decide Wind is only good for peaking electric power it should be a simple case of just building the darn things, on a per unit basis they are not excessively expensive and by building a lot of them you get economies of scale and assembly line cost reduction.

[ROCKMAN]

Tanada,

I didn't check your math but let's assume it's correct. From a very simplistic point of view: why not use wind to generate 100% of our non-transportaion energy requirements? The technology is proven so it's just a matter of building them.

But there's the rub. I don't get into the debates over the economics of wind farms. Many more smart folks around here to handle that. I make a simplistic assumtion: if the economic value were there (under current cost basis) they would be building them as fast as possible. But, in general, we're not.

Thus, assuming the economics don't support mass wind farm development, it's not a solution today. But even though it goes against my libertarian nature, this is an area where gov't intervention with mandates/subsidies could make the difference. But that's a huge issue beyond WT technology. IMO we'll experience continued energy price spikes during which times WT will look like a godsend. But then prices will drop as will interest in WT. This is where the gov't could, if designed properly, develop a method to overcome the risk of long term WT investments. But, as with so many other possible remedies, will they?

[spiritof1976]

But there's the rub. I don't get into the debates over the economics of wind farms. Many more smart folks around here to handle that. I make a simplistic assumtion: if the economic value were there (under current cost basis) they would be building them as fast as possible. But, in general, we're not.

Global wind power capacity has been increasing by 30% a year of late, effectively doubling capacity every 2 to 3 years. I don't know if that constitutes "as fast as possible", but it sounds pretty damn fast to me.

Admittedly wind capacity is projected to only grow by 15% in 2009, but that's because of the credit crunch rather than any technological obstacles.

Here's an interesting report from the Energy Watch Group:

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/Wind-Po ... 38d.0.html

Key points, for those who don't have time to read the whole thing:

- Every time the IEA has made a projection of estimated growth of wind power, that projection has subsequently turned out to be a massive underestimate.

- The IEA currently predicts that the increase in wind power capacity will slow down dramatically after 2015, but gives no reason why that should be the case (I'm guessing the IEA have Nostradamus-like psychic abilities to see what will happen in 6 years. Otherwise one might conclude that they're simply hopelessly biased in favour of the fossil fuel industry, and I'm sure they're not that.)

- Wind power continues to benefit from ongoing improvements in efficiency and economy

- If current growth rates simply continue as they are, fossil fuel-based power generation could feasibly be phased out by as soon as 2037.

[ROCKMAN]

I understand what you're saying Spirit. OTOH, percentage increases are big when you're small. I suspect your time line is as good a guess as anyone could make right now. The type of expansion I was referring to is probably untenable even with massive gov't intervention: massive diversion of capital into WF construction with associated infrastructure improvement as if oil had reached $150/bbl and remained there. Of course, economies will contract at those high prices (or from another unfortunate adventure - read sub prime) and the economic motive for such WF expansion will also crumble as energy prices crumble. But this is where the gov't (I still have my doubts about their success potential) could develop some sort of support program to keep expansion going even in the face of insufficient private financial support.

It puts us back to where we've always failed: short term political/economic concerns over riding long term solutions.

[rockdoc123]

I saw a calculation made on one of the really huge wind turbines installed in the North Sea. Basically took more barrels of oil to make all the constituent parts and transport it to site, commission etc. than it could yield in energy equivalent over its expected lifetime. Can't remember what the numbers actually were but I found it interesting. The calculation was based on Brent at $80 flat. Would obviously change at higher oil prices but remains to be seen at what price it would make sense. The main reason these are being installed now is they make some economic sense in terms of supplying offshore power to oil facilities.

[Frank]

I saw a calculation made on one of the really huge wind turbines installed in the North Sea. Basically took more barrels of oil to make all the constituent parts and transport it to site, commission etc. than it could yield in energy equivalent over its expected lifetime. Can't remember what the numbers actually were but I found it interesting. The calculation was based on Brent at $80 flat. Would obviously change at higher oil prices but remains to be seen at what price it would make sense. The main reason these are being installed now is they make some economic sense in terms of supplying offshore power to oil facilities.

It would also obviously change depending on what was assumed for "lifetime." This is the typical approach taken by opponents of renewables; choose a short time period and claim that the project can't even pay for itself in energy or money.

[dohboi]

"if the economic value were there"

And that is exactly the problem. The economy is giving all the wrong signals. We should be building like mad while oil is cheap.

And keep in mind that other sources wind is competing with are getting huge subsidies--nuclear in particular gets far more research money every year than all re-newables combined.

Unfortunately, letting the market take care of us and assuming "it" always make the best decisions has not seemed to be a very good strategy recently!

[Grautr]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 102038.htm