Green energy - house of cards.....

Status
Not open for further replies.
Waking up from a delusional nightmare..

"
Indeed, the amount of power they generate is so derisory that, even now, when we have built 3,500 turbines, the average amount of power we get from all of them combined is no more than what we get from a single medium-size, gas-fired power station, built at only fraction of the cost.

No one would dream of building windfarms unless the Government had arranged to pay their developers a subsidy of 100 per cent on all the power they produce, paid for by all of us through a hidden charge on our electricity bills.

The only way the industry managed to fool politicians into accepting this crazy deal was by subterfuge ? referring to turbines only in terms of their ?capacity? (i.e. what they could produce if the wind was blowing at optimum speeds 24 hours of every day). The truth is that their average actual output is barely a quarter of that figure.

Yet it was on this deception that the industry managed to fool pretty well everyone that windfarms could make a contribution to Britain?s energy needs four times larger than reality ? and thus was ?the great wind scam? launched on its way."

 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
Waking up from a delusional nightmare..

"
Indeed, the amount of power they generate is so derisory that, even now, when we have built 3,500 turbines, the average amount of power we get from all of them combined is no more than what we get from a single medium-size, gas-fired power station, built at only fraction of the cost.

No one would dream of building windfarms unless the Government had arranged to pay their developers a subsidy of 100 per cent on all the power they produce, paid for by all of us through a hidden charge on our electricity bills.

The only way the industry managed to fool politicians into accepting this crazy deal was by subterfuge — referring to turbines only in terms of their ‘capacity’ (i.e. what they could produce if the wind was blowing at optimum speeds 24 hours of every day). The truth is that their average actual output is barely a quarter of that figure.

Yet it was on this deception that the industry managed to fool pretty well everyone that windfarms could make a contribution to Britain’s energy needs four times larger than reality — and thus was ‘the great wind scam’ launched on its way."


How about the way it is here, in Michigan?

First off, we rate both PV and wind with two ratings. One rating is based upon the amount of energy that will be offset by the installation. The other is the peak power rating. Typically, a 100 MW installation will offset 29 MW grid power.

Wind turbines are getting better, now being able to produce power in as little as a 3 mph wind.

Expensive? Yep, and we are cashing in on it. Michigan now makes enough parts to make entire turbines. We are importing some, but as we sell more parts, that money stays here in Michigan.

As effeciency is going up, prices, especially installation, are going down as an entire niche profession is growing around the installation of wind turbines.

Michigan is considering mandating that 25 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources and that our rates can only be increased a max of 1 percent per year. Besides making environmentalists happy, it is another basket for our energy eggs. Right now we get energy from coal, natural gas, hydro, wind and garbage reclaimation. PV is used on a private scale, not on a grid sized scale. This gives us the ability to move from one source to the other, taking advantage of price competition between them.

We started installing wind turbines a couple years ago and now they are sprouting like daisys. So far, my rate has not increased one cent because of it.

But, let's see what happens. I think in ten years we will know if wind turbines are the way to go or not. I am betting they will be a big success, at least here in Michigan.

Here are some pics of turbine parts from Germany coming through our town on their way to the center of the state. These are parts of the largest wind turbine made.

IMG_4003.jpg


More here

www.photobucket.com/turbineblades

The nacelles, the part with the actual generators, are made in Arkansas. They will be building 100 of them (2.4 MW peak each) just for the project the pics are of. That's good, clean, well paying work for a good amount of people.

The pic above is a single blade for one turbine. This group is made in Germany. We now are making blades like that here in Michigan in, ironically, a city named Holland.
 
Last edited:

Besoeker

Senior Member
Location
UK
Waking up from a delusional nightmare..

"
Indeed, the amount of power they generate is so derisory that, even now, when we have built 3,500 turbines, the average amount of power we get from all of them combined is no more than what we get from a single medium-size, gas-fired power station, built at only fraction of the cost.

No one would dream of building windfarms unless the Government had arranged to pay their developers a subsidy of 100 per cent on all the power they produce, paid for by all of us through a hidden charge on our electricity bills.

The only way the industry managed to fool politicians into accepting this crazy deal was by subterfuge ? referring to turbines only in terms of their ?capacity? (i.e. what they could produce if the wind was blowing at optimum speeds 24 hours of every day). The truth is that their average actual output is barely a quarter of that figure.

Yet it was on this deception that the industry managed to fool pretty well everyone that windfarms could make a contribution to Britain?s energy needs four times larger than reality ? and thus was ?the great wind scam? launched on its way."


This might interest you:

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
 

gar

Senior Member
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Occupation
EE
121103-1534 EDT

Besoeker:

Very interesting useful real world data.

The following is addressed to everyone.

As K8MHZ has said we have a ballot proposal that on the surface mandates 25 % of our electrical energy be from renewable sources by 2025. The details are ambiguous and I believe that if passed will result in a legal nightmare.

The only viable source for most of that energy is wind. Is it possible to achieve that goal without a large increase in our electric rates? I doubt it.

One side point is that we have one of the largest pumped storage facilities in the country, but I am told it is virtually impossible to build any more because of environmentalists. See http://www.consumersenergy.com/uploadedfiles/ceweb/shared/ludingtonpumpedstorage.pdf
At full capacity each of 6 turbines can produce 433,000 HP or 323,000 kW. Total is about 1,938,000 kW from this calculation. At a different point in the paper capacity is listed as 1,872 megawatts. The two values are close enough.

From http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/mpsc/reports/energy/12summer/ea-summer12.pdf
Mich summer demand is about 17,000,000 kW. So Ludington could supply about 10% for 8 hours. I do not see that a single Ludington would have much effect on the need for conventional power generation when a large amount of wind power is available. I think it would take a number of Ludington size plants to greatly reduce the need for available conventional plants. More nuclear seems a better approach. By the way, the French do not have a nuclear waste problem.

At full capacity the reservoir lowers at the rate of about 6 feet per hour, and when full can operate for about 8 hours.

Present estimates are that wind in our state has a utilization factor of about 17%. This means that over a one year period the energy produced is 17% of that which could be produced if the peak capability of the source produced continuously.

Without taking into account storage capacity and the peak valley characteristic of wind and making a ballpark estimate, then the rating of the wind system has to be 0.25 /0.17 = 1.47 times the average system load. This is added equipment and will not eliminate any present non-renewable equipment because sometimes the wind does not blow. Thus, much more capital equipment is required, wind plus the present conventional.

I am leaving out a lot of detail that would be necessary to make a good analysis. But this provides an indication of the nature of the problem. The greater the required percentage of renewable the bigger is the problem of meeting the requirement.

If we could build a lot more pumped storage, then that would make a big difference in the ratio of renewable to non-renewable capital equipment required. Note, our present pumped storage is around 70% efficient from input to output and may increase toward 80% with new turbines.

The 1% per year rate increase in the proposal is probably technically incompatible with the 25% by 2025 requirement.

.
 
121103-1534 EDT

Besoeker:

Very interesting useful real world data.

The following is addressed to everyone.

As K8MHZ has said we have a ballot proposal that on the surface mandates 25 % of our electrical energy be from renewable sources by 2025. The details are ambiguous and I believe that if passed will result in a legal nightmare.

The only viable source for most of that energy is wind. Is it possible to achieve that goal without a large increase in our electric rates? I doubt it.

One side point is that we have one of the largest pumped storage facilities in the country, but I am told it is virtually impossible to build any more because of environmentalists. See http://www.consumersenergy.com/uploadedfiles/ceweb/shared/ludingtonpumpedstorage.pdf
At full capacity each of 6 turbines can produce 433,000 HP or 323,000 kW. Total is about 1,938,000 kW from this calculation. At a different point in the paper capacity is listed as 1,872 megawatts. The two values are close enough.

From http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/mpsc/reports/energy/12summer/ea-summer12.pdf
Mich summer demand is about 17,000,000 kW. So Ludington could supply about 10% for 8 hours. I do not see that a single Ludington would have much effect on the need for conventional power generation when a large amount of wind power is available. I think it would take a number of Ludington size plants to greatly reduce the need for available conventional plants. More nuclear seems a better approach. By the way, the French do not have a nuclear waste problem.

At full capacity the reservoir lowers at the rate of about 6 feet per hour, and when full can operate for about 8 hours.

Present estimates are that wind in our state has a utilization factor of about 17%. This means that over a one year period the energy produced is 17% of that which could be produced if the peak capability of the source produced continuously.

Without taking into account storage capacity and the peak valley characteristic of wind and making a ballpark estimate, then the rating of the wind system has to be 0.25 /0.17 = 1.47 times the average system load. This is added equipment and will not eliminate any present non-renewable equipment because sometimes the wind does not blow. Thus, much more capital equipment is required, wind plus the present conventional.

I am leaving out a lot of detail that would be necessary to make a good analysis. But this provides an indication of the nature of the problem. The greater the required percentage of renewable the bigger is the problem of meeting the requirement.

If we could build a lot more pumped storage, then that would make a big difference in the ratio of renewable to non-renewable capital equipment required. Note, our present pumped storage is around 70% efficient from input to output and may increase toward 80% with new turbines.

The 1% per year rate increase in the proposal is probably technically incompatible with the 25% by 2025 requirement.

.

The economic crisis was a 'blessing' to Spain, because it helps hide the fact that they collapse to near bankruptcy is primarily due to their insane level and rate of their Governmental subsidy of alternate energy resources.
 

Speedskater

Senior Member
Location
Cleveland, Ohio
Occupation
retired broadcast, audio and industrial R&D engineering
At least wind power doesn't use a food crop and a lot of tricky arithmetic to make it work. Corn on the other hand requires a lot of water and a lot of fuel for the farm equipment.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
At least wind power doesn't use a food crop and a lot of tricky arithmetic to make it work. Corn on the other hand requires a lot of water and a lot of fuel for the farm equipment.

How much electric energy is being generated from corn? There is probably some, but not on a level like wind. I know of places using soy diesel to power generators, but they are primarily standby generators, or for peak demand purposes, and not for general electrical energy production.

Demand for corn has driven price up, high oil prices and demand for ethanol have likely contributed to this, which has also driven food prices up, but I don't get how this is compared to wind energy.

Here they are also desiring somewhere around 20-25% electrical energy coming from renewable resources. Wind being the majority of renewable source.

One thing around here that doesn't quite make sense about wind energy though. The time of year when electrical energy demand is highest, June - August, is also time of year when average winds are often the lowest.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
How much electric energy is being generated from corn? There is probably some, but not on a level like wind. I know of places using soy diesel to power generators, but they are primarily standby generators, or for peak demand purposes, and not for general electrical energy production.

Demand for corn has driven price up, high oil prices and demand for ethanol have likely contributed to this, which has also driven food prices up, but I don't get how this is compared to wind energy.

Here they are also desiring somewhere around 20-25% electrical energy coming from renewable resources. Wind being the majority of renewable source.

One thing around here that doesn't quite make sense about wind energy though. The time of year when electrical energy demand is highest, June - August, is also time of year when average winds are often the lowest.

A majority of gas stations have ethanol added to every gallon of gas (up to 10%) that's quite a bit of corn.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
A majority of gas stations have ethanol added to every gallon of gas (up to 10%) that's quite a bit of corn.

I am very well aware of that, if it were not for high corn prices the past few years I'm not sure I would have had much work to do.

I don't get the comparison that was made to wind energy. Sure corn has been used to make ethanol, but how much has been used for electric energy production? How much wind energy was used to power automobiles? The two sources of energy do not really belong in same conversation as they typically are not used to power the same things.
 
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
I drive past, in my ethanol powered pickup paid for by corn producers, a beef packing plant that frequently is burning off unused methane. A byproduct of their waste lagoons from cattle that are also fed from a byproduct of ethanol. Like kwired, I most likely would not have had near the work had ethanol been absent.
 
I drive past, in my ethanol powered pickup paid for by corn producers, a beef packing plant that frequently is burning off unused methane. A byproduct of their waste lagoons from cattle that are also fed from a byproduct of ethanol. Like kwired, I most likely would not have had near the work had ethanol been absent.

Aesop has a nice tale about slaughtering the goose that layed golden eggs.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
I drive past, in my ethanol powered pickup paid for by corn producers, a beef packing plant that frequently is burning off unused methane. A byproduct of their waste lagoons from cattle that are also fed from a byproduct of ethanol. Like kwired, I most likely would not have had near the work had ethanol been absent.

The corn producers are not paying for your ethanol powered truck, the tax payers and consumers are. Everybody wants to raise taxes on the evil corporations, but those taxes are passed right on to the consumer as a cost of doing business. (Unless they are given a special exemption like GE, it's called crony capitalism)
 

PetrosA

Senior Member
Any government supported project is paid by us. Any.

Every project is supported by us, period. Either as consumers or taxpayers, we pay for everything. Money flows, and smart money makers figure out how to get as much of that flow through their back yards as possible. Traditionally, that was done (in our system) by "capitalizing" on an opportunity - by filling a need in the market. Since the early 20th century, the market has been manipulated to create needs to be filled (and that has little to do with capitalism...), but it was accepted up to a point. In the last few decades the manipulation has gotten somewhat out of hand. I think that's what this thread is about.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
To some of us, we have killed the goose. To others, we are collecting the golden eggs, and still others are tired of feeding the damn thing because it isn't producing enough eggs to support the feed costs. I happen to be collecting some of the eggs at the moment.

We are too, not blaming you, if its there, might as well take advantage of it, or someone else will.:)
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
The corn producers are not paying for your ethanol powered truck, the tax payers and consumers are. Everybody wants to raise taxes on the evil corporations, but those taxes are passed right on to the consumer as a cost of doing business. (Unless they are given a special exemption like GE, it's called crony capitalism)

To some of us, we have killed the goose. To others, we are collecting the golden eggs, and still others are tired of feeding the damn thing because it isn't producing enough eggs to support the feed costs. I happen to be collecting some of the eggs at the moment.

We are too, not blaming you, if its there, might as well take advantage of it, or someone else will.:)

While most of the country has been in financial crisis, the farming communities have actually been doing better overall than they were 10 years ago. Back then corn prices were so low most guys were right around break even. Recently we have had record high corn and other farm products prices. Along with that is increased production - more ground is being farmed than before. And for people like myself and Tom, we are staying busy because they also need facilities built to handle those operations, not just farmers themselves, there are also related industries like ethanol, grain handling facilities, fertilizer products facilities, machinery sales and repair businesses, banks, insurance, etc. that are also needed, so it is not just the farmer that is reaping profits, it is the fact that the farm prices are what is boosting the overall economy in the area.

For those not as directly effected by the farm economy, don't be jealous of us for having work recently. When things straighten up for most of the rest of the country, we will probably be slowing down. It has happened that way before and likely will again.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
While most of the country has been in financial crisis, the farming communities have actually been doing better overall than they were 10 years ago. Back then corn prices were so low most guys were right around break even. Recently we have had record high corn and other farm products prices. Along with that is increased production - more ground is being farmed than before. And for people like myself and Tom, we are staying busy because they also need facilities built to handle those operations, not just farmers themselves, there are also related industries like ethanol, grain handling facilities, fertilizer products facilities, machinery sales and repair businesses, banks, insurance, etc. that are also needed, so it is not just the farmer that is reaping profits, it is the fact that the farm prices are what is boosting the overall economy in the area.

For those not as directly effected by the farm economy, don't be jealous of us for having work recently. When things straighten up for most of the rest of the country, we will probably be slowing down. It has happened that way before and likely will again.

It's that trickle down economics that the President says doesn't work. Never seen a poor man give somebody a job.
 

PetrosA

Senior Member
It's that trickle down economics that the President says doesn't work. Never seen a poor man give somebody a job.

You don't need money to create jobs, just a plan. Most of the financing comes from banks based on business plans, not out of rich people's savings so trickle down (no one ever seems to comment on the "trickle" part of that phrase...) is not what's at work.
 

iceworm

Curmudgeon still using printed IEEE Color Books
Location
North of the 65 parallel
Occupation
EE (Field - as little design as possible)
You don't need money to create jobs, just a plan. Most of the financing comes from banks based on business plans, not out of rich people's savings so trickle down (no one ever seems to comment on the "trickle" part of that phrase...) is not what's at work.

Petro -
Where do you think the banks get this money that gets invested? It sure didn't come from anyone living paycheck to paycheck.

ice
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top