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The problem with this article, and nearly all others pushing for adoption of wind power, is that it ignores reality. >>When there is not enough renewable energ

by liber8 14y ago

The problem with this article, and nearly all others pushing for adoption of wind power, is that it ignores reality. >>When there is not enough renewable energy direct from source, and the stored energy reserves are insufficient to bridge the shortfall, top up the remaining few percent of the demand with fossil fuels.<< We don't have any way to "top up" the remaining few percent of demand with fossil fuels. You can't simply flip a switch on a coal fired or nuclear power plant and have it instantly produce power. These massive processes need tremendous lead time to start producing electricity. So, in theory wind could provide a lot of power, but since we have no idea when the wind will die and when we will need to "top off" the shortfall, we keep coal fired plants churning. This is one reason why, as the largest utility in Germany states[1], it takes roughly 24MW of wind power to take just 1MW of fossil fuel power offline: "As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously to around 4% (FIGURE 7). In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms." Storage, and the near-immediate ability to use what is stored, would help this tremendously, but we don't have that capability, and we don't seem to be well on our way to getting it, even by 2030. [1]http://www.wind-watch.org/docviewer.php?doc=eonwindreport2005.pdf http://www.wind-watch.org/docviewer.php?doc=eonwindreport200...

InclinedPlane 14y ago
It's a bit of a catch-22. First, you need to build wind/solar plants, which tend to be more expensive than conventional power plants to start with. Then, you either need to invest in R&D for power storage systems and build out those facilities or, more likely, you need to build out conventional power capacity to accommodate for demand when solar or wind is not producing. In the end you've spent quite a lot more money and likely you haven't actually reduced the number of conventional power plants you've built or even reduced CO2 emissions substantially (due to the reliance on less clean conventional power plants during solar/wind down times as well as the CO2 cost of constructing those plants).
DennisP 14y ago
But you can do it with natural gas. We use gas plants that way right now.
deleted 14y ago
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by liber8 14y ago

InclinedPlane 14y ago

It's a bit of a catch-22. First, you need to build wind/solar plants, which tend to be more expensive than conventional power plants to start with. Then, you either need to invest in R&D for power storage systems and build out those facilities or, more likely, you need to build out conventional power capacity to accommodate for demand when solar or wind is not producing. In the end you've spent quite a lot more money and likely you haven't actually reduced the number of conventional power plants you've built or even reduced CO2 emissions substantially (due to the reliance on less clean conventional power plants during solar/wind down times as well as the CO2 cost of constructing those plants).

DennisP 14y ago

But you can do it with natural gas. We use gas plants that way right now.

deleted 14y ago

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