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US Becomes Top Wind Producer; Solar Next
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 03, 2009 03:43 AM
from the beneath-our-wings dept.
from the beneath-our-wings dept.
SpuriousLogic sends along a SciAm piece that begins, "The United States overtook Germany as the biggest producer of wind power last year, new figures showed, and will likely take the lead in solar power this year, analysts said on Monday. Even before an expected 'Obama bounce' from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, US wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts — enough to power more than five million homes."
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The US was always the World's top wind producer (Score:3, Funny)
and always will be.
Oh, you mean that kind of wind?
Re:The US was always the World's top wind producer (Score:4, Funny)
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Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, locations where these 'wind farms' are both out of eye sight and ear shot (as they can be quite loud) are rather rare.
But good news, because with the current economic crisis, there are fewer homeowners to do the NIMBY.
I think there was a story last year, where some rich community in Florida managed to get a off-shore wind farm denied because the towers would just be visible on the horizon...
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
The helix towers are also less efficient. And,
the higher up you go the more wind there is.
Finally, I like the standard windmills. I think they are a beautiful monument to human ingenuity.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
The helix towers are also less efficient. And,
the higher up you go the more wind there is.
Finally, I like the standard windmills. I think they are a beautiful monument to human ingenuity.
They're also a massive repair bill waiting to happen off the florida coast.
The helix ones don't have to be as efficient, they can be clustered in phalanxes and placed ANYWHERE.. this means they can be included on skyscrapers, placed on the sides of interstates, put in your back yard, on your roof, etc.
(not sure how well they'd do in water, but, if you'll allow me to make an arse out of you and me, i'll assume their resilience in turbulent winds would make them fairly resilient in water with minor modifications)
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Smart oil and coal companies have been looking at themselves as "energy companies" for a few years now but there are still plenty of ludites.
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Re:Makes you wonder...not so much (Score:4, Insightful)
***Bring on the nukes!***
I've always been mildly pro-nuclear. It's non-polluting compared to coal, and has much higher availability than a wind-farm or solar array with a similar sticker output in MW or GW.
But there are only a limited number of sites with cooling water, satisfactory geology, and where evacuation of the neighborhood in the event of trouble is realistically possible.
The US could, I am quite sure, treble our current nuclear output. We might even be able to increase it by an order of magnitude to 1000 plants although we'd have to scrounge up some fuel that probably exists, but isn't currently in proven reserves. But every time I work the numbers, I get the same answer. US energy needs are so great that we need more like 5000 nuclear power plants just to replace oil.
And we need to remember that there are 5.7billion folks on the planet who are not Americans and they are going to want to use energy on much the same scale that we do.
So -- unless we believe that the world has unlimited hydrocarbons and there is no limit to the amount of CO2 the human race can vent into the atmosphere without consequence, it isn't wind OR solar OR nuclear. It's wind AND solar AND nuclear AND conservation AND any other non-carbon emitting technology we can come up with.
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Re:Makes you wonder...not so much (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear power accounts for 19% of our electricity right now.
Trebling our capacity will push it to ~60% of our electrical requirements. 1000 plants should make it 200% of our electrical capacity.
Somehow, I doubt seriously we'd need 1000% of our current electrical generation capacity to replace oil alone....
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Re:Makes you wonder...not so much (Score:5, Interesting)
Somehow, I doubt seriously we'd need 1000% of our current electrical generation capacity to replace oil alone....
We use oil for some stuff like lubrication that, assuming we insist on using nuclear power to provide it, wouldn't be too efficient. ;)
I haven't seen an estimate either on how many kwh a year it'd take if we went to 100% EVs. Don't feel like building one at the moment either - though .3kwh a mile is one figure I've seen. You'd have to get trucks and trains as well.
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/2004/html/table_01_32.html [bts.gov]
3 Trillion highway miles a year - 900 Billion kwh required - a Gigawatt plant can be expected to produce ~7.8 Billion kwh a year.
We have just over a hundred reactors now, to supply 20% of our power. Call it 500 to supply all of our electricity, and another 100-200 to provide the power for vehicles. 700 reactors in total, for relatively carbon-free transportation and electricity. Utilize cogeneration and we'd be able to eliminate a lot of heating bills as well. Reactors by the ocean could use the ocean for cooling and desalinate water while they're at it.
We'd burn through our uranium reserves pretty quickly doing it that way with traditional reactors, but using breeders and such we'd be good for thousands of years before we'd need to start filtering the stuff from ocean water or switching to Thorium. Still, I'd definitely use wind/solar where it makes sense.
It's also suspected that with increased use of nuclear fuel and the depletion of fuel coming from weapons stockpiles that a price spike would result in more exploration ala oil and find lots more of the stuff.
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Bird kills and such. (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because dakrats and other carrion eaters drag them away ;)
I've heard is that some efficiency improvements dramatically decreased the bird kills - the older, smaller, faster, and louder turbines killed far more birds than the bigger slower(quieter) turbines of today - though those edges still end up moving pretty quick, birds evolved to at least try to dodge falcons and such are plenty fast enough to avoid them. A lot easier than they avoid our nice clear windows, at least...
The latest though, is that they kill more Bats than birds - Personally, while I don't want bats too close to me due to the whole rabies problem, I do love the little mosquitoe eaters a little further away.
Still, put the turbines up high enough and you should avoid the bats - I don't imagine that skeeters fly that high, after all, there's no prey at that altitude, and why would bats be up there if their food isn't?
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, but the real shame is that Germany is actually no.1 in solar power and was no.1 in wind power (I say this as a German).
Given the climate and the size of Germany, it's quite a joke.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
it is not, really, combined with this technology [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I rode through Germany last weekend and couldn't believe all the solar cells I saw. Balconies, rooftops, entire sides of buildings. It's quite impressive. I'm not surprised that they generate so much power even with their climate.
Devon
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
And your point is? It reduces requirements for traditional power generation just as much as it would if it were enough solar-electric to do the same job.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want to talk about shame, then here is Greece we are last in solar and wind power...and we have sunshine 2/3 of the year and winds all over the season (because Greece is surrounded by sea)...
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's shame: We were the last "friend" the neo-cons had in the international climate "debate".
We have just had a week of ~40deg celisus, three days in a row at 43deg+. Footpaths slabs pop out of the ground due to expansion, rail lines buckle and damage points. Our coastline is a shallow straight in the "roaring fourties" of the southern ocean, it has tremendously powerfull tides and huge swells.
Last weekend everyone was hoping the bushfires and heat would not cut off a major power line from the coal mines to the city, another major line was out because a sub-station exploded in the heat. No air-con literally kills people (as it has also done in Greek heat waves).
Our electricity is centralised and more or less all coal with gas/hydro backup, (same with most of Australia). Where we have the most hydro capacity it's screwed because of the "permenant drought" (accelerating shift in rainfall patterns for last 50yrs). But coal? The stuff everywhere, we even sold "coals to Newcastle" in the Thatcher era. The disinformation in this country over the last decade is only rivalled by that of the US. To overcome the water shortage we are now contemplating building another coal plant to power the humungous desal plant we are building on the coast of said roaring fourties.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I have a relative who is an executive for a solar company. It turns out that, for now, it's not about climate or size - it's about the subsidies.
Germany started giving *crazy* subsidies each year to renewable energy source, enough to make producing them viable. Each year, the amount of power delivered went up (kicking in economies of scale) and the subsidies went down.
The Germans built the seeds of the solar industry by subsidizing them get up to the scale needed where they can stand on their own (almost: right now, there's an over-capacity, so the makers have to take their product to other countries or shrink. The Germans still have a small subsidy, but the companies might even be able to live without right now).
It's the only "personal" example I have of public-private partnerships working out well. (The other "personal" example is the US ethanol industry, and it's kind of an example of what not to do).
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
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Per use, not inhabitant (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah and Denmark gets pissy about Sweden's nuclear power plant and we have to shut it down.:(
As I understood it, it was because Sweden put one (the one the danish goverment tried to shut down) 20 km from the danish Capitol and largest city, Copenhagen - see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barseb%C3%A4ck_nuclear_power_plant [wikipedia.org] AFAIK, the rest wasn't a problem.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I live alone in a 3 bedroom home in Australia and use ~1.2Kwh (yes I have a dishwasher, dryer, ect. gas heating, cooking, hot water. )
Germany is more energy efficient than Oz (who are up near the top of the least efficient list along with the US), so say each 5kwh mansion has 5 people = 100% for 25 million people.
That's just under 1/3 of their population getting 100% of their residential power from wind alone.
I don't know how many buildings are powered by solar in Germany but I do know they were pumping almost a gigawatt of excess solar back on to the grid last summer.
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it's a little more proportional on new capacity (Score:4, Informative)
The U.S. is coming closer to pulling its weight on new capacity: in 2008, it installed 8.3 GW, while Germany installed 1.7 GW, or about a 5x factor. Not quite the 30x factor of land area, but hey, 1.7 million of those sq km are in Alaska, which is kind of inconvenient for electric transmission (same reason Canada's wind power is fairly low, despite massive land area).
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
It puts the achievement into the right perspective. Outperforming a country with less than 4% surface (and similarly smaller number of citizens) is not quite as relevant as the headline wants to pretend. Whats next? "Russia outperforms Principality of Monaco in natural gas production! Film at 11!"?
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
It puts the achievement into the right perspective. Outperforming a country with less than 4% surface (and similarly smaller number of citizens)
Number of citizens isn't quite that much smaller. I think Germany has about 30% the population size of the US.
But Germany is quite clearly a front runner in clean energy. It's inevitable that larger countries will eventually overtake it in absolute numbers. And I'm glad the US is already doing that. Good job!
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abosulte figures vs relative figures. (Score:3, Informative)
Of you are lager by sqare kilometers, population and power consumtion then is is just easy to have the larger wind farms as well. Comparing absolute figures between countries is just plain unfair.
Divide by any of the three and the US won't be the winner any longer. But then Germany probably won't win either any more...
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. 99% of the time if I read a U.S. paper, I see how bad the U.S. is at everything. I see us slammed, mocked. I see how we rank behind every other country in just about everything. I am not sure where the "empty bravado" is coming from that offends you so much.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda makes you wonder if government intervention is really necessary.
We have roughly 4x the population of germany, which means, per capita, we are far behind the rest of the industrialized world in development of renewable energy.
If the disposition described in this article were applied to housing, it would be like declaring the wealth gap had closed because everyone who worked minimum wage pooled their resources and lived 4 families to a single family house.
In other words: our renewable energy production is not up to pace with the rest of the world, which various international organizations say is STILL not enough.
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
The German model of subsidising renewables is not without its problems
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10961890 [economist.com]
Most of Germany's electricity comes from coal-fired and nuclear plants. But the former are unpopular because of their relatively high greenhouse-gas emissions, and the latter because of the fear of a catastrophic accident. So in 1991 Germany adopted a renewable-energy law, now known as the EEG, which encourages investment by cross-subsidising renewable electricity fed into the grid. The law is popular with those who support the rapid introduction of new clean technology. Stefan Schurig of the World Future Council, a green think-tank in Hamburg, calls it "the best law of its kind worldwide".
The law says electricity produced from renewable sources must be purchased by utilities according to a generous "feed-in tariff" that sets higher-than-market rates and fixes them for 20 years. Roof-mounted photovoltaic systems installed in 2007, for example, can sell power at €0.49 per kilowatt-hour, or about seven times today's wholesale price, until 2027. The fixed rate allows investors to calculate returns and removes uncertainty over financing.
The utilities that buy power at these higher rates pass the extra costs back to their customers in the form of higher electricity bills. This added an average of 1 euro cent per kilowatt-hour to the price of electricity last year, increasing the typical household electricity bill by 5%, or €3 a month. For the country as a whole, the cost was €7.7 billion in 2007, up 38% on the year before. Enthusiasts consider that a small price to jump-start a new industry and start decarbonising the power supply.
Clouds on the horizon
But the government is not so sure. It has proposed a revision to the EEG, which calls for a shift away from solar and towards other forms of renewable energy, and offshore wind in particular. As things stand, the feed-in tariff for solar goes down by 5% every year. But new proposals call for a cut of 9.2% next year, and 7-8% thereafter.
The problem is not just the expense of the existing law. Cheerleaders for solar had hoped that the increased demand for panels would help manufacturers reduce unit costs, and thus make solar more competitive in the long run. Instead, the rush into solar has led to a shortage of the high-grade silicon used to make the cells, which has soared in price from $25 per kilogram in 2003 to around $400 today.
Indeed, such is the demand for solar panels in Germany that it has kept prices high globally. This is wonderful for manufacturers, but makes it more expensive to install solar capacity in sunnier parts of the world, where it would generate more electricity. The EEG's generous rates for solar amounted to "picking winners on a grand scale", says Dieter Helm, an expert on energy policy at the University of Oxford. A euro in cross-subsidies spent on wind power, rather than solar, produces more generating capacity and a larger reduction in carbon emissions.
Basically if you subsidise the wrong thing, you can potentially hurt more than you help. Picking the right things to subsidise is non trivial.
Hell if planned economies worked, India and the UK would have grown faster than free market places like the US in the 50's and 60's. Actually, despite being poorer, they grew more slowly until they implemented free market reforms.
Now traditionally greens seem to see economic growth as some kind of problem because it usually leads to more pollution, but in the case of the renewable energy industry, more growth actually means less pollution.
And actually the EEG is a fairly lightweight piece of government intervention, adding only 5% to bills.
To misquote Socrates "True knowledge exists in knowing that the Government knows nothing."
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Re:Makes you wonder (Score:5, Informative)
That's funny last I checked Indians had terrible health care and in general are ridiculously poor.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Kinda makes you wonder if government intervention is really necessary.
The summary uses words like "Surged", and "biggest" which is more than a little misleading for the overall renewable situation, given the tiny fraction renewable energy makes up of the total energy market (7% in 2006, wind 1% of that):
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/prelim_trends/rea_prereport.html [doe.gov]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda makes you wonder if government intervention is really necessary.
It's vital. Regardless of one's political preferences, a couple of things are clear:
1. Although the gap is closing, most forms of 'sustainable' energy production, such as wind and solar, are still more expensive then burning fossil fuel. Demand, (which drives innovation in both R&D and production technology) is closely linked to Gov. subsidy - for both installation cost and 'buy-back' of the power generated. That's why you've got so much solar in Germany & Japan - homeowners got massive subsidies.
2. Transmission infrastructure investment is required, since solar, wind and tidal generation locations are typically located a long way away from demand for the juice. These investments are massively expensive and difficult to do, for many reasons including NIMBY, hence the reluctance of the private sector to 'go it alone'.
The current situation is that:
* The private sector is starved of cash,
* The recent fall in oil & gas prices has once again opened the gap between fossil generation and sustainable,
* Few Govs have coherent long-term plans that the private sector can use to base investments on.
So, yes, Gov intervention is really necessary.
The cash is there - few people realise that massive amounts (billions) are given away in subsidies to the oil, and now ethanol industries. If some of this money was diverted to renewables then we'd see a big difference.
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Per capita (Score:3, Insightful)
So that comes down to 300W of solar power per capita in Germany, 83.3W of solar power in the US and 20.2W of solar power per capita worldwide. Just about enough to drive a netbook. ;)
Re:Per capita (Score:5, Informative)
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For those of you keeping track at home... (Score:5, Funny)
US wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts
Efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the US is infamous for using vast quantities of energy and using pretty inefficient devices (as a whole, not saying it applies to everyone). So some pretty serious energy efficiency measures are also called for.
And per capita? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, a country with over 300 million people, 9,629,091 square kilometers and sea on the east and west side
managed to produce more wind power
than a country with 80 million people, 57,022 square kilometers and sea on the (mostly useless) north side.
Call me when they reach 90 GW...
people seem to like nominal comparisons (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, there was a bunch of excited speculation about when China's GDP would surpass the U.S.'s, despite the fact that that would still leave China nowhere near the U.S. on a per-capita GDP basis.
Original article (Score:5, Informative)
The original article can be found here [gwec.net]. It has more figures, including some on China, and an interesting remark that Europe in total generates 66GW, which is another way to the per capita computation to moderate this first rank of US...
Moving those blades (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that wind-powered energy generation is growing in the U.S. because I see it every day (in season; see below). I don't know if they're manufactured near here or just shipping in via our port, but those gi-normous wind turbine blades are a common sight on the freeways of Houston, traveling up I-45 headed for who knows where. There's a small cottage industry in escort vehicles. I've seen every manner of tiny, broken-down car, truck, and minivan festooned with flags and feeler poles, in packs, leading and following each individual blade as it makes its way through town. You don't realize it until you're driving right next to one, but those blades are *HUGE*; I'd estimate as long as 4 or 5 tractor-trailer rigs. I'm sure someone will pop up with an accurate number. Whatever the correct size, it's just amazing to watch something that long and odd-looking moving through midday traffic, dwarfing everything around it. Up until a few months ago (I assume winter brings a slowdown to construction), I'd see at least one every day. Sometimes I'd see three at a time. I expect for the freeways to be lousy with 'em again as soon as the weather gets warm.
Re:Audit (Score:5, Interesting)
He's totally wrong. the 'energy pay-back time' or EPBT of big windmills ranges from 6 months to a year.
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Re:Audit (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/enpaybk.htm [windpower.org]
http://www.wind-works.org/articles/EnergyBalanceofWindTurbines.html [wind-works.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power [wikipedia.org]
http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html [bwea.com]
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Re:Audit (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why is it being subsidized?
Short answer: politics.
Here's a hint. You are being leeched to pay for "renewable energy" built by your good ole "energy companies" of yore.
They aren't stupid. They know that the public doesn't want to fund to build coal, oil, or nuclear power. They know that the public has a thing for anything termed "renewable" even if it is more expensive than other sources. So they get us to pay as much of their costs as possible. Even when "renewable energy" becomes price competitive to build on its own, they'll still try to use subsidies as far as possible on general principles.
I can't blame the "energy companies." I'm iffy on blaming the politicians in this case. They've actually been doing what voters want. The problem is when to stop subsidies. That's one of those trick questions in politics.
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What a load of crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Your friend is an idiot. Do you really think people who have used windmills for hundred of years did so purely for the fun of it?
"Lets spend months building a windmill", they thought, "to saw lumber or grind corn. Who cares if it costs more energy to build it then it ever delivers and we could easily saw all that wood ourselves with the same energy".
Your friends argument is similar to those who claim we don't have global warming because it is freezing cold outside. It seems superficially true but comes from such a poor understanding of the issue you can't even begin to correct.
However, presuming you ain't as big a moron as your friend, here is the reason this myth has come into being.
It costs X amount of energy to build a generator. This is far higher then you probably think because if it uses for instance aluminum. Simply put, if all energy was equal, a generator that costs X energy from the grid to produce should pump X+ energy into the grid over its lifetime.
Now comes the killer. What is its lifetime? Economic lifetime? Period it is written off in? Or shortened lifetime because it was demolished before it was obsolete/rundown?
It is very easy to claim a generator should produce its energy in say 1 year claiming that is its lifespan for whatever reason. In that case, the cost of producing it must be recovered in a year. Thanks to the way goverments work there have been projects where windmills were put up and torn down in a matter of months. Of course these never recouped their energy. The headline went into the newspaper, idiots didn't read the full article and myth is born.
This however also applies to nuclear reactors that are dismantled before they are ever brought online and countless other big projects.
A normal windmill produces far more power over its operational life then it has cost to produce. If it didn't it wouldn't make economic sense and countless windmills have come up for no other reason than that the owner wants to make money from them.
They have been doing this ever since the first windmill was invented hundreds of years ago.
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Re:Audit (Score:4, Insightful)
A friend of mine who is a mathematician told me he rad an article that showed that the total amount of energy required to create a windmill would never be recovered by the device.
Oh, and he "read an article"? I can write lots of articles that show all kinds of things. Did the article pass any plausibility checks?
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Re:Best discussions ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it's good to see your valuable, thought-provoking, high quality comment complaining about worthless comments enhancing the signal-to-noise-ratio...
Clearly, Slashdot is a US-centric website where many articles and discussions are in the format of comparing the situation on a scientific or technological topic in the US versus the rest of the world. Nothing wrong with that, since there are many positive outcomes from that if one can raise oneself above petty nationalism.
In this particular discussion it is valuable to compare the statistics which are a bit skewed by the vast differences in size, population and population density. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that being able to power 5 million US homes by wind power is an astonishing number in itself, and brings hope for a brighter future!
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