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"The unit... generates round-the-clock energy... producing energy in all weather conditions." Can someone explain to me how, whenever wind energy is mentioned,

"The unit... generates round-the-clock energy... producing energy in all weather conditions." Can someone explain to me how, whenever wind energy is mentioned, any sort of of scepticism, and I don't mean "snarky internet contrarian" scepticism, I mean "human being who has lived on Earth" scepticism, ceases to exist? Is there actually a large population out there who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind? Or do you... think that bad things will not happen to you if you just believe in transparent bullshit hard enough? Because I'm sorry, but they will. How. Does this Shit. Get Written? The best, most reliable sources of wind, FYI, are known by anyone in industry to be very far away from most built structures, and high.

ajross 4y ago
> Is there actually a large population out there who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind? Over a geographic area approximating typical grid distribution distances, and at altitudes reached by commercial wind turbines? Surely there's such a population, but it's a very, very small one. A "calm day" in your backyard at sea level with a bunch of trees around is still generating a ton of wind power on hilltop turbines. And if your neighborhoods hills aren't getting it done, there are gusts somewhere within a few hundred km just waiting to be milked. No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable. But the other part of your point: that building roofs are a poor place for wind, is I think more defensible. Certainly if you have $N to spend on wind power, you build more ridgeline turbines and you don't put these things on roofs. But the people spending those dollars aren't the same. If you're a business or home with a roof, and you're looking at putting solar on it for whatever reason, and this thing is better (itself very much an open question), why not?
- laverya 4y ago
  > No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable. According to [0], Germany's wind farms averaged a 36.9% capacity factor over the course of 2019. Further down there's load duration curves, and it looks like a lot of plants have no power generation for >10% of the time. EDIT I FORGOT TO INCLUDE MY CITE https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-capacity-factors https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-capacity-f...
  - ajross 4y ago
    You didn't provide a cite, FWIW. But taking the numbers as given: Those aren't the right metrics. First, capacity factor is an approximation of "fraction of maximum", not reliability at all, which is a whole-grid measurement. Find the data for any one gas plant. How often was it producing (emphasis in the original) no power? I'll bet anything that most plants are offline quite a bit more than 10%, precisely because demand itself is variable and gas is the easiest plant to bring up and down. Yet you call one a "reliability" metric and the other not, why? In fact as a whole, German wind power has been exceedingly reliable. Wind power everywhere has been exceedingly reliable. The world as a whole has been building out wind like crazy over the last decade (because it's cheap and great) and... I'm not aware of even one instance of a "calm day blackout". Not one. Have a cite for that?
    - samatman 4y ago
      I'll take the other side of that bet. Fossil and nuclear plants routinely run at 90% of nameplate capacity. If a gas plant is down more often than that, it's because that plant is a peaker, which exists to make up for things like, say, the wind dying down. I'm sure there's a somewhat tedious discussion to be had about how France's recent adventures with their decaying nuke plants affect that 90%. Have at it if this interests you.
    - hohloma 4y ago
      So you are comparing "any one gas plant", the output of which can be fully controlled, with "whole-grid measurement" for wind? As a whole grid, wind generation capacity is mostly dependent on wind, and not on demand. While gas is used usually for those cases where such power as wind does not cut it. I dont see how you can compare the two. A gasplant CAN produce 100% output if we wish, wind cannot. You can of course compensate somewhat by building out several times the capacity you need in extremely disperse geographic locations (>1000 miles distance between each farm). Could be done, but not sure how its gonna impact the climate change (those farms need to be built and require continuous maintenance). Uk has wind capacity factor "long-term average of around 27%". https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-windresource.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-win... The reason is that wind generation is optimal during a certain wind speed, and less or no power is generated if winds are too slow or too fast. And wind power blackout occurs not only during calm days, but also during very stormy days. In total there is plenty of occurrences when a specific area has no wind at all. The correlation in weather can be seen in wind farms as far as 800 miles apart. https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-windresource.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-win... 2021 was a year of very low wind speeds across whole northern europe. https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/low-winds https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/low-winds Additionally, wind power may be going down in strength... due to climate change https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843-dbe0-4724-8adf-75c66127ea80 https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843-dbe0-4724-8adf-75c66127e...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Ayesh 4y ago
It's too late for me in my time to pull my thoughts together, but this goes on the same lane as Nigerian prince scams, cryptocurrency/ICO scams, etc. It's like if your lie is so bad, and if you can still get a small amount of people to believe you, they will fall HARD to it, and you can scam them multiple times because they continue to fall for them. That's the target audience.
BorisTheBrave 4y ago
It means round-the-clock as in "it works during the day and night", rather than literally non-stop. For example, if I said that security did "round the clock patrols", you wouldn't assume they patrol every second of they day, but rather regularly through the night. The fact a few people might misinterpret it is a marketing bonus, but surely negligable, because no one could believe that.
- rendaw 4y ago
  No, that's exactly what I'd assume. That's how it's defined (MW): > being in effect, continuing, or lasting 24 hours a day : CONSTANT I'd expect that they have a rotation of maybe 12 people patrolling for 2h and then switching, so someone is patrolling at every minute.

ajross 4y ago

> Is there actually a large population out there who has never experienced outside weather conditions in which there was no wind? Over a geographic area approximating typical grid distribution distances, and at altitudes reached by commercial wind turbines? Surely there's such a population, but it's a very, very small one. A "calm day" in your backyard at sea level with a bunch of trees around is still generating a ton of wind power on hilltop turbines. And if your neighborhoods hills aren't getting it done, there are gusts somewhere within a few hundred km just waiting to be milked. No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable. But the other part of your point: that building roofs are a poor place for wind, is I think more defensible. Certainly if you have $N to spend on wind power, you build more ridgeline turbines and you don't put these things on roofs. But the people spending those dollars aren't the same. If you're a business or home with a roof, and you're looking at putting solar on it for whatever reason, and this thing is better (itself very much an open question), why not?

laverya 4y ago
> No, this is wrong. Wind power is in fact extremely reliable, especially when you remember that things like fuel distribution routinely idles fossil fuel plants too. Nothing is 100% reliable. According to [0], Germany's wind farms averaged a 36.9% capacity factor over the course of 2019. Further down there's load duration curves, and it looks like a lot of plants have no power generation for >10% of the time. EDIT I FORGOT TO INCLUDE MY CITE https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-capacity-factors https://energynumbers.info/germanys-offshore-wind-capacity-f...
- ajross 4y ago
  You didn't provide a cite, FWIW. But taking the numbers as given: Those aren't the right metrics. First, capacity factor is an approximation of "fraction of maximum", not reliability at all, which is a whole-grid measurement. Find the data for any one gas plant. How often was it producing (emphasis in the original) no power? I'll bet anything that most plants are offline quite a bit more than 10%, precisely because demand itself is variable and gas is the easiest plant to bring up and down. Yet you call one a "reliability" metric and the other not, why? In fact as a whole, German wind power has been exceedingly reliable. Wind power everywhere has been exceedingly reliable. The world as a whole has been building out wind like crazy over the last decade (because it's cheap and great) and... I'm not aware of even one instance of a "calm day blackout". Not one. Have a cite for that?
  - samatman 4y ago
    I'll take the other side of that bet. Fossil and nuclear plants routinely run at 90% of nameplate capacity. If a gas plant is down more often than that, it's because that plant is a peaker, which exists to make up for things like, say, the wind dying down. I'm sure there's a somewhat tedious discussion to be had about how France's recent adventures with their decaying nuke plants affect that 90%. Have at it if this interests you.
  - hohloma 4y ago
    So you are comparing "any one gas plant", the output of which can be fully controlled, with "whole-grid measurement" for wind? As a whole grid, wind generation capacity is mostly dependent on wind, and not on demand. While gas is used usually for those cases where such power as wind does not cut it. I dont see how you can compare the two. A gasplant CAN produce 100% output if we wish, wind cannot. You can of course compensate somewhat by building out several times the capacity you need in extremely disperse geographic locations (>1000 miles distance between each farm). Could be done, but not sure how its gonna impact the climate change (those farms need to be built and require continuous maintenance). Uk has wind capacity factor "long-term average of around 27%". https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-windresource.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-win... The reason is that wind generation is optimal during a certain wind speed, and less or no power is generated if winds are too slow or too fast. And wind power blackout occurs not only during calm days, but also during very stormy days. In total there is plenty of occurrences when a specific area has no wind at all. The correlation in weather can be seen in wind farms as far as 800 miles apart. https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-windresource.pdf https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-win... 2021 was a year of very low wind speeds across whole northern europe. https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/low-winds https://climate.copernicus.eu/esotc/2021/low-winds Additionally, wind power may be going down in strength... due to climate change https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843-dbe0-4724-8adf-75c66127ea80 https://www.ft.com/content/d53b5843-dbe0-4724-8adf-75c66127e...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Ayesh 4y ago

It's too late for me in my time to pull my thoughts together, but this goes on the same lane as Nigerian prince scams, cryptocurrency/ICO scams, etc. It's like if your lie is so bad, and if you can still get a small amount of people to believe you, they will fall HARD to it, and you can scam them multiple times because they continue to fall for them. That's the target audience.

BorisTheBrave 4y ago

It means round-the-clock as in "it works during the day and night", rather than literally non-stop. For example, if I said that security did "round the clock patrols", you wouldn't assume they patrol every second of they day, but rather regularly through the night. The fact a few people might misinterpret it is a marketing bonus, but surely negligable, because no one could believe that.

rendaw 4y ago
No, that's exactly what I'd assume. That's how it's defined (MW): > being in effect, continuing, or lasting 24 hours a day : CONSTANT I'd expect that they have a rotation of maybe 12 people patrolling for 2h and then switching, so someone is patrolling at every minute.