First Town In US To Become 100% Wind Powered 391
gundar99 writes "Rock Port Missouri, population 1,300, is the first 100% wind-powered city in the US. Loess Hill Wind Farm, with four 1.25-MW wind turbines, is estimated to generate 16 gigawatt hours (16 million kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. 13 gigawatt hours of electricity have historically been consumed annually by the residents and businesses of this town."
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:5, Informative)
(They aren't though, so your point of needing other auxiliary sources of energy still stands.)
big catch (Score:2, Informative)
Wind power is nice, but the rule of thumb for wind power is that it doesn't actually replace any conventional generating capacity, it merely reduces the utilization at times. Since there are times when the wind power doesn't do any good, you can't actually get rid of any of your conventional capacity.
To actually replace anything with wind, you'd need a tremendous overcapacity that was sufficiently distributed geographically to ensure that enough of it got wind all the time to meet your total power needs.
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:5, Informative)
I knew there would be a post like this. This always comes up when people discuss wind and solar. First, if they were not on the grid they could use "peak storage". There are a number of ways to do that. In areas where water and elevation are available, you can pump water back up a hill into a holding pond and re-cycle it through a turbine--augmented hydro power. Other methods of peak storage include: flywheels, batteries, and even compressed air pumped into abandoned mines that have been properly sealed to hold in the pressure. Choice of method depends on a variety of factors of course.
Now, since they are connected to the grid, the peak storage issue isn't very important. They just feed the grid when they have excess, and draw from the grid when they don't. Therefore, they are actually *over* 100% since they are expected to feed the grid more often than they draw from it. If everybody did what they did, then peak storage would be required because it is possible for calm conditions to persist over fairly wide areas--perhaps wide enough to make transmission impractical. The only difference here is that they are using the grid as a virtual peak storage system.
When wind power is sent to "town B", they can idle one of their fossil-fuel generators. The fuel un-burned by said generator is another way to account for peak storage.
Using the grid as peak storage just makes better econonmic sense than building your own peak storage and declaring independance like some kind of cult or something.
Wind power has other issues though, mostly aesthetic.
wha...? (Score:5, Informative)
More questions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Someone please tell me... (Score:2, Informative)
Because at the time [wikipedia.org], 'gigawatt' was more commonly pronounced with a soft 'g', which is still the official NIST [wikipedia.org] pronunciation. It's only since then, with the rise of computers in everyday life, that the hard 'g' pronunciation has become ubiquitous.
But seriously, you have an active Slashdot account! How could you possibly not know basic Back to the Future trivia like this?
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But think of the birds... (Score:5, Informative)
That's mostly a legend, remaining from the times of small, very fast rotating wind wheels.
Nowadays, this isn't an issue any more: The wheels are much higher (less birds) and slower
(birds can react to and avoid them). I've been to a couple of recent generation generators,
and have even climbed one (great view) - there wasn't a single dead bird lying around in the
vicinity. Yes, I looked for them.
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:5, Informative)
This lowers the cost of transmission because the largest transmission lines can be used 100% of the time at full capacity.
Re:Backup? (Score:2, Informative)
They are connected to the power grid, just like every other city. When the wind turbines fall below local needs, they consume power from the grid. When the turbines generate more power than the town needs, they pump power into the grid for others to use.
They appear to be a net producer, which seems to be a good thing.
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway the article was about wind. The big problems there are small unit sizes and short times between maintainance. A mixture of power sources is a good idea anyway. Anyone that talks about a single true energy source is either selling something or has been tricked by salesfolk.
Re:Wind can't do it. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:But think of the birds... (Score:4, Informative)
What now? It's been a few years since I took physics at more than an interest level, but that makes no sense whatsoever. If you're talking radial velocity, all parts of the blades take the same time to complete one revolution (obviously), hence the same radial velocity. That same phenomenon says that since all parts must take the same time for a revolution, the further you are from the axis of revolution the faster the linear velocity must be - so the tips cut through the air faster than the inner section of the blades.
Care to explain where the hell you got that piece of "information" from? Logic would say that the tips of the blades should be more dangerous than the inner sections due to the higher linear velocity, however maybe they're also easier to avoid. Whether birds can detect the blades or not isn't my field of expertise.
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't Iceland almost entirely geothermal?
Re:Not Really... (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe the summary overstates it a bit if you want to be anal-retentive, but this is an interesting story nonetheless. And we all know that being anal retentive just leaves you full of crap.
Re:big catch (Score:4, Informative)
And what is the average cost of wind power anyway?
According to the American Wind Energy Association's FAQ, "What are the Factors in the Cost of Electricity from Wind Turbines?" [awea.org], wind costs can be under 5 cents per KWH. I don't have an electric bill handy but I think I pay something like 10 cents per KWH.
FalconRe:Yay for wind, uh...not? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a civil engineer either, but I am training to become one. I think you're worrying way too much here. Yes, you need a reasonable foundation for the thing, but then you can put soil for farming on top of that.
But even that is overthinking the issue; just look at this picture [wikipedia.org]. See the space each turbine tower takes up? Now see the space between towers? Is the former significant compared to the latter? No. Are they, in fact, growing some kind of crops between the towers? Yes. If this weren't true, the picture wouldn't exist!
You don't want to put them close together anyway, because
- the turbine needs to rotate (in the X-Y plane) so that it's always facing the wind and you don't want blades of adjacent turbines to hit each other, and
- if they're too close behind each other, the wake turbulence from the turbine in front reduces the efficiency of the turbine behind.
Oh, and by the way: assuming you arrange the turbines in a square grid, they would have to fall in one of the four cardinal directions to risk creating "the world's most expensive set of dominos." If we assume that the zone where this would happen takes up 1 degree of arc for each direction, there's a (4/360) ~= 1% chance of that happening, assuming a tower fell over in the first place. I'd call that negligible risk.Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:4, Informative)
There are few places in the world where terrain suitable for both wind and pumped storage occurs close together.
Most wind power stations will have to rely on gas-turbine backups, which is to say building a wind power station means building both a wind power station and a gas-turbine power station.
Umm...go nuclear?
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:2, Informative)
130 turbines... (Score:3, Informative)
To put this in perspective, all the wind power generating capacity currently deployed in California is about 3/4 of one reactor at Diablo Canyon, and that's assuming the wind is blowing constantly at the average, or about 2.5 times what Cape Wind plans on deploying, if it can get regulatory approval, and prove negligible environment impact from the construction and deployment both.
That isn't a small amount of generating capacity, but the fact that this is going to take building 130 generating stations to achieve, and a huge area (as you pointed out: not chump change, with regard to ocean acreage). It's also going to only end up supplying about 75% of the overall usage of Cape Cod, and the two islands of Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket - not a lot of people.
To put that figure in perspective, that's 4.5 x 5.4 nautical miles square, or about 30 square non-nautical miles, to supply 135,000 people.
-- Terry
Re:Wind can't do it. (Score:2, Informative)
Do the math (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pro-nuclear, and I can't see that happening in California, even if the price of natural gas goes up at the California/Nevada border again, as it did under Enron. California is all about NIMBY. Now build them in some other state and run wires, and California would likely love the idea.
-- Terry
Re:Yay for wind, uh...not? (Score:3, Informative)
your other arguments seam to be wind power can't make this country self sufficient (agreed.) But their are not enough known nuclear material in the US to be self sufficient in nuclear, so it definitely can't (currently) solve the US energy problems either (unless were willing and able to kick South Africa's ass next.)
Wind [nrel.gov] can provide provide the US with a lot of energy. And an article in Sciam, "A Solar Grand Plan [sciam.com] says that by 2050 solar can provide 69% of the US's energy needs. And while I don't like nuclear power, there's no need to go to Africa, Canada [ccnr.org] has some rich uranium deposits. According to the World Nuclear Association [world-nuclear.org] Canada mines more uranium than any other country.
But thats where putting them on buildings sounds smart. IE supplement the power as close to the demand, and knock down one of the big problems of big buildings (they channel wind) at the same time.
I don't know if you saw it but one of the proposals for a new World Trade Center had a wind generator in between two buildings with other proposals also including wind power [gothamgazette.com].
FalconRe:Yay for wind, uh...not? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More questions (Score:3, Informative)
I can answer some questions from the research I have done, and can give an educated guess on the others.
Are the turbines really powering the town, or is that going into the grid in general?
The turbines are connected directly to the city's high voltage line, which is in turn connected to external generation. IE. the grid. The 4 turbines for the city (Loess Hills) are on a ridge on the west side of town. A couple miles away on the east side of town is the Cow Branch wind farm. It was the proximity to this wind farm that made Loess Hills feasible.
The article mentions the landowner that set the thing up. So is it privately owned, or part of the city?
I thought I read that the city owned the land, but all I find now is that they are installed on 'agricultural lands within the city limits'. The Cow Branch wind farm is built on land leased from local farmers. They install their tower and build a road to access it, and the owner continues to farm around them. Just like with cell towers.
What the heck does John Deere have to do with anything?
John Deere has been financing wind farms. John Deere has a name and reputation that is respected by farmers, and they are leveraging that trust and their credit business unit to get in the energy business. [deere.com] But no green and yellow turbines so far.
Again, here's a link to Wind Capital Group. [windcapitalgroup.com]
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:2, Informative)
I grew up on a farm that is not on the "grid". For more than 20 years my parents have relied on solar energy (photo voltaic). Luckily they live in a "desert", so there is plenty of sunshine.
Their panels deliver 36 Volts at 42 Amps. This is stored in a 36 Volt battery bank. From there it is fed to the house through a 4kW inverter.
The (60) panels are mounted on a huge movable structure that is manually reorientated to the sun regularly. Hot water is obtained by making fire under a drum with a gas geyser as backup.
All fridges and freezers are special low energy high efficiency and cost about 10 times what "normal" fridges and freezers cost.
We used solar water heating at one point, but the problem is that it is to hot in summer and you can't just flick a switch in winter if the water is not warm enough.
This system works fine when my parents are on the farm on their own, but as soon as they have guests, they almost always have to rely on the backup diesel generator. While they are settled into their routine, the system is quite reliable, but as soon as the routine is broken, you have problems. There is no affordable way to accurately determine how much energy is left in the battery bank and how long it will last.
Their energy costs are astronomical, compared to mine, but more importantly, their entire lives are controlled by it. Every decision that they make have to take into consideration the energy effects. It drives my wife nuts that she has to notify my mom in advanced if she wants to blow-dry her hair.
Yes, a lot of these problem may not exist if you are on the "grid". Removing the storage from the equation could make a huge difference, but it is still a very expensive exercise.
We can save fuel by making cars more efficient, carpooling, using public transport or even just slowing down. In order to get a workable solution, we have to find a balance between cost, saving and inconvenience.
At the moment, alternative energy is like asking everybody to slow down. For the average person, the inconvenience will outweigh the savings.
Re:Not Really... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Unless they're off the grid it isn't 100% (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not Really... (Score:3, Informative)
For this you need a very particular dam. You can't use a run-of-river dam because they don't store water, you need also one who's lake bed is much higher than the turbines so that the dam still has head pressure when its empty which pretty much rules out any dam that was designed for irrigation. You need a decent sized lake at the level that the power turbines discharge to which is fairly rare since collecting water underneath would lessen the head difference. Most dams like this are being used for power storage already and the current grids are relatively stable; to build enough hydro systems to balance out wind where one could easily expect that national generation might drop to 30% of its designed output or less for extended periods of time one would need to build a lot more dams which of course smack around the environment in a way that would make a Captain Planet villain weep.
You also have to figure in the transmission losses to and from the dam, the inefficiency of the pump, the turbine, motor and the dynamo there will need to be several times as much power going into this system as coming out. Of course that does not mean wind couldn't be used to make this power, simply that you will need several times as many generators as its proponents claim, which would have a massive impact on the world as they and their associated transmission lines are installed.
Re:Not Really... (Score:3, Informative)
best of all, algae live in both seawater and freshwater. so we could pump billions of gallons of seawater perhaps with giant wind powered pumps (coastal area tends to be windy enough, and you don't loose energy to electric conversion etc)
to ponds in areas that have little or not economic use (deserts, non areable soil areas, etc) algea is easier to cultivate in ponds, or closed systems, but ocean cultivation is not entirely outside the equasion either... the main problem is water is slow to transfer oxygen and carbon dioxide, so simple fishtank style areators are needed to get maximum algeal bloom density... but algea also need te be free of certain pollutants and need certain additives to grow faster than in nature... but like any technology the true cost is subject to economies of scale...
it might cost too much right now for algea to replace anything but $4 a gallon diesel right now, with just one energy company seriously exploring algea ponds, but if 50% of energy companies were running millions of algea ponds world wide the costs for all the componets needed would be less, and the profitiability would likely be better. as long as all the byproducts were used, anyways.
Re:Not Really... (Score:1, Informative)
What is even more interesting is the farm of, IIRC, 28 of these same wind turbines just east of town a few miles. It is quite a sight, breathtaking actually. I don't have all the details, merely what I've been told by my father who lives in Tarkio, 8 miles east of Rock Port. This larger farm was funded in part by local investors, but mostly by MO state tax revenue. It is connected directly to the grid. I've driven past it a few times in the last two years when visiting the folks, and as of December 2007 they still weren't *live* yet. The blades are feathered and locked. Last I heard, again around December, there were still glitches being worked out in the software that controls the "aiming" of the array. Instead of using guide vanes as on the windmills of old, these behemoths are aimed into the wind via computer.
As one would expect, it will take quite a few years for these things to pay for themselves. The only folks who have made money so far are the farmers who leased the easements the towers stand on. In late summer when the corn is tall, it's really quite a site to drive past and see 300+ foot tall wind turbine towers "growing" up out of the corn. This local corn, coincidentally, is much more likely to end up as fuel ethanol than food. Less than 15 miles south of Rock Port on I-29 is an ethanol plant in Craig, MO.
If you find yourself driving from Kansas City to Omaha up Interstate 29 on a clear day, look to the east when you see the Rock Port Mo exit signs. Not only can you see the turbines on the bluffs, but you can also see quite a few of the array of 28 off in the distance, which are at least 5-6 miles east of the interstate.