Research: Wind power pricier, emits more CO₂ than thought

Isn't he missing the blindingly obvious?

Gas turbines are used to quickly produce energy when demand is needed, because they take minutes to start versus hours for other methods.

Given that we can forecast the winds DAYS in advance, then we dont need a gas turbine solution for the calm days, as we will know about them well in advance. Just use the regular but slower plants. I know it doesnt mean CO2-free production, but it isnt the panic station this fella is bangin' on about.

FIGHT

Pro Wind Theologists VS Nuclear Fundamentalist

FIGHT!

Not sure I get it.....

Not sure I get it, I dont recall anybody ever saying that Wind power would be the only source.

If it allows other power sources, more expensive money wise or Co2 polluting to be put in standby or whatever then what is the problem?

Dinorwig is in north Wales

Not in Scotland, although the Scots have their fair share of hydro power. Incidentally, nuclear power also goes mad for these pumped storage schemes, for precisely the opposite reason - they run at base load and cannot cope with the massive swings in power demand over the day.

As with all of these things, a mixture of power sources is the answer, and writing off wind power because it doesn't quite fit the bill is very un-engineering-like. And by 2020, we'll all have mandated smart appliances, or smart plugs for them at least, so that some of the curve is removed. In a world of less "peaky" production capabilities, you'll have to be less "peaky" in your demand.

@ Anyone know how much CO2 goes into building a wind turbine?

The energy payback period is what you're after. For a wind turbine, the energy payback is 80-100 times the initial energy cost, over the 20-25 year lifespan. For solar panels it is 2-4, over the same period. To work out how long it takes to pay that back, use a calculator. To work out how much CO2 is produced, use excel.

Fossil and nuclear fuelled power plants never technically pay back the energy put into them, because you're always putting fuel into them.

Isn't perspective wonderful?

@Tim

He doesn't miss the "blindingly obvious".

Wind power would still require sufficient (mainly gas turbine) backup capacity to accommodate low wind conditions.

- modern turbines are not designed for the stress of constant runup/shutdown cycles therefore failure rates are likely to increase

- most of the time the turbines would be idle -> not earning revenue -> not getting the return required to pay for them -> forcing energy companies to buy cheaper, less reliable ,less efficient generators in the first place.

- Startup only "takes minutes" (which I doubt) only if you assume the supporting infrastructure (gas pipelines) are in place and can cope with the demand surges.

I'm not sure what you mean by "slower" plants... nasty, dirty coal maybe - even worse for the green argument. And thats if you accept that weather forecasting is accurate enough to bet the UK's power stability on... yeah right!!

The blindingly obvious is that wind power is nothing more than a greenies wet dream and totally impractical for substantial, reliable power generation.

K.

Why not just convert the electrical energy into hydrogen?

To even it out just take the electrical energy during the peak production times, make hydrogen and burn it when needed. Surely better?

Look on the bright side

After a few cold miserable gloomy days in winter you'll be protected from motorway pile-ups in the fog since your car battery will be flat.

Mine's the nuclear powered one thanks.

The Wheel of Pain

"Remember "Conan the Barbarian"?"

Your plan has one big flaw - it would run the risk of creating a kind of Conan-esque Super-Chav warrior king. This person would hunt you down, because you would be his Thulsa Doom. And then you'd be run through with a sword. Nasty.

@everyone

Wind power is one of the many tools to relieve dependence on fossil fuels. It will not cure cancer. It will not make you better in bed. It will displace some of the coal and gas burnt in power stations today.

The last decade has seen greater steps forward in quality of life for everyone in the UK, but Blair was a social policy man, not a power production specialist. And Brown is just a money man, bless his little cotton socks. This is a critical time in determining the energy mix of the next 100 years in the UK. Stop bickering and go and do something, before they use rolling brownouts to force your total obedience.

Excellent Article!

Its good to see some of the problems our Electricity Generators are going to face in detail.

Personally I think that a trough of power due to a somewhat predictable lull in wind is likely to change the wholesale energy market which will provide solutions. These solutions are likely to include novel ways of storing energy when its cheap(like the Danes car battery), but also Industries whose model could be based on using the incredibly cheap energy at peak-production and shutting down at peak-demand/lull. I believe that the Fair Isle uses its Dump-Electricity to heat the local homes, and generates 85% of its winter and 50% of its summer energy needs through wind.

All this really says is that the Market may have to adapt to a new way of thinking, markets are good at this.

Car Battery Storage

I don't get this idea. It appears to imply all these batteries will have a large over-capacity with respect to normal daily operation. We you really be able to use your car for 10 days without charging? Even 2 days sounds optimistic.

Energy storage

Part of the problem is energy storage, rather than wind. Indeed, it's a problem now which is why you can get cheaper rate electricity at night (when the power stations are still running but there isn't much load) just for this reason.

There was an article in Wired a couple of months back - http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/01/S2P - where basically engineers are working on a way of sequestrating CO2 using solar power and turning it back into a liquid fuel, which can then be easily stored. There are other types of CO2 sequestration being worked on too. You could theoretically turn CO2 into anthracite, for example.

So, perhaps the long term answer is not to use the power from renewables directly, but to look into ways of storing energy and/or using them to sequester to CO2 from the atmosphere instead.

I'll pick up my MBE on the way out, thanks.

When the wind doesn't blow ...

Nothing new here I think. This is typical 'big power thinking'. It is locked to large power stations trying to deliver electricity on variable demand across the national grid. That's what power stations do.

Unsurprisingly wind turbiines are different. You match supply & demand in a different way. Two ways:

* STORAGE - the problem with hydro is that it runs out of water, not suddenly, but over a season or two. Opportunistic wind balanced with hydro gives effective storage. The water is saved on windy days and is there to deliver immediate electricity at a few moments notice when it is needed (yes, you need to change the generator/capacity ratio but this need no be expensive). It also means we could further expand our hydro option. Hydro accounts for more power than wind atm so this choice is significant. In the future electric cars charging overnight or whenever can use opportunistic wind and provide a pool of stored electricity and more balanced base load.

* DEMAND - In the domestic market we only have the crude 7hr White Meter option to offset demand. Using variable power sources (tidal as well as wind) has to be balanced with managing demand more efficiently. Fridges don't need power during TV commercial breaks. We already have a way to signal power devices to turn off/on if they don't need a continuous supply like fridges. Its the AC frequency which moves down when supply is limited and up when not. There is work going on in this area but the key is to find a way to discount this type of interrupable supply agains the non-interruptable (like the light ALWAYS comes on when you click the switch).

Frankly if we could manage supply/demand better in this way now - our emissions would be much lower without building a single turbine (but even lower if we do).

Thats nothing!!

"The energy payback period is what you're after. For a wind turbine, the energy payback is 80-100 times the initial energy cost, over the 20-25 year lifespan. For solar panels it is 2-4, over the same period"

Why is the 'energy payback period' what you are after? That's a made-up figure which measures how the energy balance between paying in and getting out works for 'free energy' generation, and has no relationship to the practicalities of useful power.

I built a small toy waterwheel on the stream at the bottom of our garden to show the kids how to generate electricity. It puts out about 1w, and the cost of the parts was about 20p. I don't know how much energy went into building it, probably none, so that payback period would be zero. And during a 25 year life, it would generate over 100 times its initial cost in electricity at todays prices.

WOW!!!

But I wouldn't propose to run the UK on waterwheels in streams......

(my coat is white, cos I'm a scientist - not green for treehuggers..)

@keith

"most of the time the turbines would be idle"...

what you on about man? 5 to 10 days a year is not "most of the time" lol

"The blindingly obvious is that wind power is nothing more than a greenies wet dream and totally impractical for substantial, reliable power generation"

Did you know that commercial windfarms already exist?? They seem to be surviving quite nicely... just because the uk government is probably going to make a balls of their wind-energy plans doesn't make wind energy "totally impractical" - by that means of comparison, computer systems are utterly worthless...

Wind power isn't the only solution, but it's certainly one of several options and is by no means a "wet dream".

@how much CO2 goes into building a wind turbine

...Irrelevent compared to the continuously operating mining and refining industries which support Nuclear power. Not to mention the nuclear waste reprocessing and storage industry.

Anyway - how come we're always talking about a 1-horse race? There are other possible technologies available (Which desperately need funding and development to get them off the ground into the realms of feasibility).

Renewable energy is by its nature governed by various cycles in the planetary systems and therefore only makes sense when considered as a combination of solutions.

Everythings Rubbish no

Wind is too unreliable

Solar is too expensive

Demand management is too much like hard work

Nuclear is too risky

and so on ...

No renewable solution is perfect, and chances are we wont be able to live exactly how we do now, but, even if global warming Isn't happening, we WILL run out of coal/oil/etc at some point and we ought to be doing something about it.

I sometimes wonder when people will stop slating the current crop of renewable ideas and either help improve them or design their successors.

Wind is the best we have at the moment, so building wind is a good idea. When someone comes along with a better idea, we'll talk about it.

An expensive figleaf

Anyone who believes that there is a role for a few windmills in the UKs energy strategy other than as a government figleaf is bonkers!

Tee hee.

@ Chris W.

The earth doesn't spin because the wind pushes it. Neither is it flat, the moon made of cheese etc. Very cute.

The Earth has been spinning since accretion formed it. It would take quite a few propellors being wafted around to counteract the spin, especially as their rotating mass is *slightly* insignificant compared to that of the planet itself. Note also that their blades aren't being driven directly by the fabric of space-time itself, rather the gas that is spinning along with the planet.

Look at it this way - the only thing that has *any effect at all* on the Earth's spin is the moon, and if the gravitational pull of an object weighing it at 7.3477×1022 kg which is "only" 300,000ish kilometres away has little effect, then the counter-rotating mass of a few whirlygigs will do sod all.

Something you should know

Gas turbines are so called because their blades are turned by hot exhaust gas (as opposed to steam). They don't run on gas, they run on kerosene...

WRT capacity, surely all quoted measures are wrong if you have to build in extra to allow for slack wind? AFAIK, wind farm outputs are stated as maxima (the minimum being zero or worse), while you know that a conventional power station can always deliver its quoted output.

It always amuses me to see proposed forests of offshore turbines, when the stuff they are standing in (and expensively designed to resist) is releasing loads of wave energy (effectively concentrated wind) right below them!

Time for a rethink?

Time Taken To Supply

Eh Paul. I'm afraid you are wrong. Cockenzie Power Station near Edinburgh can start supplying the grid from a standing start in less than 2 hours. In fact most coal fired stations can be on load within 3-5hrs depending on the kit and the size of the turbine. Gas turbines in actual fact a little quicker. Whilst the gas turbine itself is pretty fast the secondary turbine attached to the boiler (heated by the turbine exhaust) works in the same way as a coal fired station turbine (steam driven) so is still quite slow.

This article is in fact pretty damn good because it highlights the fallacy of the renewable argument. Reality is much more complicated and whilst we can use wind etc the baseload will be supplied by something else; my current favs are nukes and clean coal. Longer term favs would be fusion but I suspect I'll be long gone by the time that appears. Wind is only going to be a suppliment. I wish it could be different but the experience of the Danish (30% power availbility) suggests otherwise.

Gas plant startup

Another blindingly obvious point here. Given the article claims the UK could run off pumped storage hydro (like Dinorwig, or the Tanygrisiau station I can see from where I'm sitting) for 1-2 days, surely that's enough time to start any gas turbine plant nice and gradual-like? So you don't need to forecast the wind days, or even hours in advance. Pumped storage hydro can ramp up in seconds, so they tell me, and could clearly cover the time it takes to spin up the gas turbines.

Combine that with the other options for storage, plus better use of intermittent power (as other commenters have pointed out), and there's little doubt that we can happily use the output of all the windmills we can build.

Why no mention of demand management

It seems that no consideration at all has been given to demand management - a certain proportion of energy usage is not time critical and can wait until times of lower demand or higher wind energy availability. This would cover for example heating and refrigeration loads, charging of electric vehicles (very small at the moment but likely to increase) and washing/dishwashing on the domestic front, as well as a large number of industrial loads. These don't need to happen during the evening peak and can easily be postponed (at least in part) until the night-time low (or when wind power is high).

However without a suitable infrastructure to enable devices to know when the load is low, this is unlikely to happen as there's no financial incentive to develop suitable devices. The claim that only gas turbines can compensate for variability is a fundamental flaw in the logic of the article.