The US's First Offshore Wind Farm Will Cut Local Power Prices By 40% 267
merbs writes: The U.S. is finally getting its first offshore wind farm. Deepwater Wind has announced that its Block Island project has been fully financed, passed the permitting process, and will begin putting "steel in water" this summer. For local residents, that means a 40% drop in electricity rates. The company has secured $290 million in financing, with funding from the likes of Key Bank and France's Société Générale, in part on the strength of its long-term power purchase agreement with US utility National Grid. Block Island has thus surpassed the much-publicized Cape Wind project, long touted as "the nation's first offshore wind farm," but that has been stalled out for over a decade in Massachusetts, held up by a tangle of clean power foes, regulatory and financing woes, and Cape Cod homeowners afraid it'd ruin the view.
What a wonderful name! (Score:3, Funny)
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Deepwater Wind, eh?
Something like this: http://graphicleftovers.com/gr... [graphicleftovers.com]
Re:What a wonderful name! (Score:5, Funny)
I have serious fears that we're facing an unduly high risk of a major wind spill [dailykos.com] here. :(
A REAL electricity Spill. (Score:3)
I wonder what the results would be of some electrical glitch putting 30 megawatts of electricity into the sea surrounding the wind turbines.
Can any EE guys weigh in on the physics of this?
Re:A REAL electricity Spill. (Score:4, Informative)
IAAEE. Since sea water is a very good conductor, you would be hard pressed to put "30MW of into the sea." Assuming these are generating at 13.8 kV, and they somehow had their lineside terminals dunked in sea water, you would get a lot of noise and steam followed by the generator protection relays kicking in in like a cycle and a half. Call it 25 ms. The excitation to the generators would be shut off and the voltage would quickly dwindle. You'd have a bunch of fucked up equipment, and anybody in the immediate area might be exposed to electrocution and arc flash hazards, but there wouldn't be noticeable impact to the rest of the ocean. Hell, the generator itself would probably be OK.
Short circuit calculations are something that any power generation place deals with all the time. When you are shorted, you get a lot of current, but not a lot of volts, so your power will go down substantially. Just like when you accidentally drop a screwdriver across a battery. You get a spark, damage the battery, maybe take out some ESD sensitive components, but by and large the rest of the components on the board are OK. There's just no way for the energy to get out to the rest of the world.
In order to get 30MW of electricity actually into the sea water, well... I'm not exactly sure how you could do it. This sounds like a job for Randall Munroe, honestly. You'd probably have to only dunk one phase in the drink. Then you could at least get a little time before the ground fault and unbalanced load relays kick in. You could run the sea water through very long PVC pipes, essentially turning the water into a 30MW heater, and that would raise the temperature of the water. But that's not exactly what you have in mind. Besides, that's sort of like what other power plants do with their waste heat. They dump it into a cooling water body, although not quite at that level you're talking about.
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And hold your breath for that cut in power prices. It totally will be passed on to consumers.
Re:What a wonderful name! (Score:5, Informative)
Except the summary is compeltely misleading on the 40% price cut, let's rephrase it slightly:
Electricity rates for a small island that is not connected to the national grid and relies on diesel generatiors for power will drop by 40% once it is connected to the grid via the new wind farm.
It's not the wind farm that's dropping the prices, it's dropping the reliance on diesel generators where all the fuel has to be transported over from the mainland.
With regards to the cape cod nonsense.. (Score:4, Funny)
To "preserve the view", I vote we erect the turbines, but make them look like giant penises sticking out of the ocean.
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...I vote we erect...giant penises...
OOOOkay....
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then bride of godzilla can finally be made!
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"but make them look like giant penises sticking out of the ocean."
That's why the Kock brothers oppose these things - they hate competition.
The savings is coming from the national power grid (Score:5, Informative)
On Block Island, it’s the Block Island Power Company, whose on-island generators run on diesel fuel, which must be shipped to the island by boat.
A 2010 Providence Journal story on the island’s power system noted that diesel fuel regularly costs $1 more per gallon on the island than on the mainland.
In fiscal 2011, according to a report by the town’s Electric Utility Task Group on the fiscal costs and benefits of the wind-farm project, the average cost of electricity on the island was 47 cents per kilowatt hour. In the rest of Rhode Island it was 14.8 cents.
Once the cable is laid and the wind farm project is on line, in 2014 or 2015, Block Island Power will be able to purchase electricity from the New England power network at much lower costs.
The task group estimated that electric rates on the island -- based on a 20-year agreement between Deepwater Wind and National Grid -- would fall to 30.7 cents per kilowatt hour, a 35.4-percent decrease from 2011 rates.
(The island’s rates would still be substantially higher than those on the mainland because its customers would be paying for a portion of the costs for installing the cable and for maintenance of the island’s power system.)
The task group’s analysis noted that current power costs on Block Island have risen to 54 cents per kilowatt hour because of the increasing diesel costs. Based on that figure, the decrease would be a 42-percent drop -- about what Deepwater said in its Tweet.
The other article doesn't mention anything about how much power and at what price the wind farm will be generating it. It sounds like the public relations department is doing all the talking.
bad headline (shock!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Headline is misleading. It is not the turbines, but the link to the national grid that is making power cheaper for the island.
Until now, they depended on small local diesel generators.
You can bet that the 30MW wind plant is a lot more expensive than the diesel generators were.
I'd be interested to know the economics of the plant, but supplying cheaper power to the island will be an utterly trivial component.
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Not over the long term including running costs. Let's assume a massive hurricane trashes those windmills in a decade and compare it with a decade worth of fuel - even with that artificial constraint the windmills are likely to win against tiny little things that make as much heat and noise as electricity. We're not comparing with 500MW of coal or 1GW of nuke in such a situation so anything without a lot of fuel per
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A hurricane destroying such a windmill would need to be at least two times stronger than the strongest hurricane we have on records ...
I really womder why the power that wind plant is generating is so expensive. Well, profits for the company, considering how high the current power price is, likely is the reason.
Production cost of wind power per kWh is in germany meanwhile around or below coal.
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Yes, I'm just providing an artificial example of a short life for the windmills, but they still beat tiny diesel things even with such a short life.
Yes, retail price not price of production. In Australia for an example we've got some of the cheapest to produce non-hydro electricity in the world but the r
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Headline is technically correct. That's a large step up for /..
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Unless they really screw up then the wind turbine and connection to the mainland is going to be cheaper than using diesel generators. There is an up-front cost but amortized over the life of the turbine and cable it will be less than the (rising) cost of diesel fuel.
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Actually offshore wind is cheaper than diesel. Diesel internal combustion generators is just about the most expensive way to produce electricity, by a long shot.
The problem is offshore wind is just as unreliable as onshore. It does produce more electricity, but it oscilates just the same, so need large battery packs to store electricity (no pumped hydro on cape codd), and that's the really expensive part. With a reliable connection to the national grid, it might be possible to produce 5x island demand resul
Re: bad headline (shock!) (Score:4, Interesting)
You are wrong about offshore wind. It does not fluctuate in the same way as wind over land. Also the term 'unreliable' is completely wrong. Wind is reliable. For that you have a weather/windforecast, that is updated every 15 mins and is used to adapt the plant and the grid for the next few hours.
Storage at a plant side makes no sense at all, for that you have a grid.
Demanding storage is just utter nonsense. No one would build a renewable plant if the plant itself would be required by law to have a fall back (be it storage, magic or a nuke plant) means of energy production.
The whole point of a power grid is that many plants together are orchestrated to provide the power for that grid.
Mandatory storage would only complicate that orchestration instead of helping.
Also, get a clue about terminology: e.g. read up what base load is. Wind plants are by definition base load, as you can not 'dispatch' them. That means: they are not load following, nor are they used for balancing (peak) power, so: they are base load plants. Hint: base load does not mean what you think it means.
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Do you sail or do anything where you sense the wind in realtime ?
Probably not. Weather forecasts give a mean wind intensity, cause that number varies. It varies in realtime, second by second. As a competitive hobbie cat sailor I know first hand. Forecast says 25km/h wind, that means 20-30km/h if the winds are well behaved. The stronger the forecast, the stronger the wind gusts are.
Wind Turbine output is proportional to wind speed cubed up to around 45km/h. Wind above 45km/h is extremely rare.
So even a mere
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Do you sail or do anything where you sense the wind in realtime ?
A single sailboat on the water surface cannot be compared to large windfarm at high altitude.
Wind IS NOT BASELOAD. BASELOAD RULES !
Obviously, yes. But that doesn't mean wind is useless. You just need to keep in mind the wind forecast, and its reliability.
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I never said useless. Wind can surely contribute up to 1/3 of peak electricity demand with plenty of load following to match it, but it can't be the bulk of your energy supply, even solar PV performs much better than wind as far as predictability go. The cubed factor is huge. Wind oscilates, even at 50 meters at the center of a turbine blade. Gusts aren't exclusive to surface. Oh, I'm also a private pilot, although I haven't flow in a decade.
Winds oscilate plenty from 0-100 meters. In some areas there is a
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You are wrong about offshore wind. It does not fluctuate in the same way as wind over land. Also the term 'unreliable' is completely wrong. Wind is reliable. For that you have a weather/windforecast, that is updated every 15 mins and is used to adapt the plant and the grid for the next few hours.
I'm afraid you're missing the elephant in the room here, or more likely painting over it. No matter how you rebalance the grid you still have a bunch of exceptionally expensive-to-maintain wind turbines out of service for a period of time. When anything is out of action it is expensive and no amount of grid rebalancing paints over that. It is simply inefficient.
nuclear is better (Score:2, Funny)
So much more efficient, in every sense of the word!
Subsidized? (Score:3)
Any information on if this project is subsidized or not? I checked the articles briefly but I didn't see anything either way. If this project is being built without subsidies, that's great, it means that technology is catching up and this kind of energy is finally becoming economically viable on a large scale.
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All wind is subsidized. Can't compete with natural gas electricity.
Wind subsidies should be progressively cut over 10 years down to zero. This would greatly rationalize wind turbine installations, and make nuclear more interesting than wind long term. Nuclear is more expensive than natural gas or coal today, but coal is going away, and low natural gas prices are far from a sure thing long term. I wish natural gas suppliers were forced to offer long term fixed price contracts instead of floating as today. In
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> All wind is subsidized. Can't compete with natural gas electricity.
Unsubsidized (onshore) wind is less expensive than natural gas:
http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
Look on page 2.
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Wind capacity factor 52%, that's a bold faced lie. Show me a single wind farm producing above 40%. typical is 20% - 35%.
Those numbers are crazy, it a pretty report with unreliable or fabricated data.
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Nuclear can't compete with anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The plant you cited is a boondoggle of an outdated design, would expect it got built by highly motivated politicians. In general fission power is expensive due to excessive regulation, put there with the intent to make it expensive. Idiotic bits like things less radioactive than humans, being treated like deady contaminated objects.
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Hinkley Point C is Areva EPR. If I could, I would kill that reactor from the market. The nuclear experts claim its the posterchild of doing nothing to decrease costs, rejecting any simplifications, and just adding costs with complex engineered safety instead of passive safety.
Part of the problem is Areva buying that German nuclear supplier, and the engineers from both sides failing to agree on a rational solution, essentially having two solutions for everything. Insane.
Post Chernobyl and Fukushima regulator
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Think about this. A GE ESBWR should cost a few billion if you add up the rational costs expected. Instead its offered to a USA customer as a USD 10 billion project. Its the most economical reactors offered by North America and western Europe (Russia and India have cheaper designs, specially when they are built and installed locally).
Westinghouse AP1000 are budgeted at US$ 4 billion for China installation.
An ESBWR is 1.6GW, while an Areva EPR is closer to 2GW, so even at twice the GE projected cost with USA
Re:Subsidized? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are forgetting the free insurance provided by the government. It's priceless, in the literal sense. No commercial insurer will cover the liability, you can't buy it.
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Solar in Ontario is suicide... Above 40N, bellow 40S solar is crazy stupid, yeah, that includes you Germans. Between 30N and 30S its good specially on a country that has lots of hydro to load follow.
I would imagine that wind up in Ontario would be more economical with the very strong winter winds.
But I do prefer nuclear and hydro anyhow. Ontario has one of the most rational electricity mix in the world. And the greenies keep insisting nuclear is too expensive.
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Depends what you mean by "solar". Large scale commercial plants, possibly... But small installations on individual homes and buildings? They are worth it pretty much anywhere on the planet. There are very few places where the cost of the installation won't be more than covered in the lifetime of the panels.
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30MW is by no means large scale.
That is the equivalent of 300 car engines, if I might pull a car analogy.
Depending on what they plan it is 6 x 5MW wind turbines or even only a single oversized "25MW" turbine.
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All energy production is subsidised. Coal, nuclear, gas, wind, solar, everything. So yes, it is subsidised.
Don't claim false numbers (Score:2)
Re:Don't claim false numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article a bit closer, they're talking about a 40% electricity drop for the 1800 or so residents of "Block Island", who are currently serviced by diesel generators(mostly). Additionally, part of the project would be running a power line to the mainland, that could transmit power not only from the wind farm to the mainland, but bring energy back when needed.
Between the two, I can easily see a 40% drop. Diesel for electricity is expensive.
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You forgot the cable to the mainland to sell electricity to other folks. Having an order of magnitude more customers spreads those costs a bit more. What are a mere 1800 customers going to do with all those MW anyway?
It could be argued that linking to the grid would have the same effect of driving down the costs for those customers but there hasn't been enough incentive until now to build the link.
"Clean power foes"? (Score:2)
From TFA:
Who exactly are "clean power foes"?
This seems like using an epithet to delegitimize others.
I'm sure there are people who oppose this project for stupid reasons, like "it'd ruin the view". But I am equally sure that absolutely nobody opposes this project because it is too clean.
I suppose that if you looked and looked, you could find someone who is so certain that an ice age is c
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I'm sure there are people who oppose this project for stupid reasons, like "it'd ruin the view".
I'm sure their real concern is how the change in the scenery will effect the resale value of their property, not how the view itself will be different.
Re:"Clean power foes"? (Score:4, Informative)
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> Who exactly are "clean power foes"?
Well, Americans For Prosperity for one. More generally, anyone with a coal plant that doesn't have easy access to natgas.
An Old Proverb (Score:2)
Don't count your ergs before they are generated.
Interesting, but it shows how bad wind is (Score:4, Informative)
Block island has a population of 1051 people and has to ship in diesel for power generation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
So currently they using just about the worst system for commercial generation, paying high fuel and operating at a scale that is barely viable to begin with. The article also doesn't mention just what they are doing for energy storage or backup.
Either way if that is what is needed to make wind viable I wouldn't hold my breath.
From the linked information (Score:2)
http://www.politifact.com/rhod... [politifact.com]
The actual price for the power would be 30 cents/ KWHR.
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In 10 years Li Ion battery storage will be cheap enough that above US$ 0.20/kWh it will be cheaper to go off grid. Most roof top solar PV is selling to the grid at US$ 0.03/kWh, but today storage is way more expensive than the solar panels.
Plus compressed air energy storage will drop in price.
That's the real purpose of the subsidies today, we have the base scientific knowledge to achieve lots of things, but investors don't put their money on hopes and dreams, they demand return on investment.
Over the next 1
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Well
http://ilsr.org/technological-... [ilsr.org]
http://ilsr.org/wp-content/upl... [ilsr.org]
Lithium storage pricing / watt hour seems to have flatlined in recent years, but energy density still has a little positive slope to its curve. The cheap enough in 10 years looks like it needs more to support the statement.
What prompts you to say compressed air storage will drop in price ? That process is very mature and has been for a very long time
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Then why would have Elon Musk put billions towards the Giga Factory, with two essential goals:
- Assure Li Ion supply for future growth
- Achieve a substantial Li Ion US$/kWh drop
This is a single plant with capacity equal to 2013 worldwide production.
I've seen plenty of markets that seemed mature, but the fact those were stagnated due to lack of interest in innovating.
We need thousands of GWh scale storage solutions. At costs closer to pumped hydro than Li Ion storage.
Could be the chicken egg
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> I've seen plenty of markets that seemed mature, but the fact those were stagnated due to lack of interest in innovating
Or investment. PV is a clear example of this - panels are selling today below the cost that was predicted only a few years ago to be the lowest possible cost of product. The mad rush of money into the market raised production so much that supply/demand pressed all the input costs way down, while the manufacturers were slitting each other's throats squeezing costs out of their lines. I
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I like rooftop solar PV. It's making good use of otherwise wasted roof space. ...
But I don't like utility scale solar PV, way too expensive for wholesale generation.
rooftop solar PV competes with retail electricity prices.
grid scale solar PV competes with natural gas, nuclear,
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In 10 years Li Ion battery storage will be cheap enough that above US$ 0.20/kWh it will be cheaper to go off grid. ... more likely i
You forget that the price for lithium itself barely will fall, and that refining and transportation is the main reason for the battery prices.
I really wonder why americans always think the price will approach zero if you simply built enough of the items.
I have no clue what a kWh storage in lithium costs right now, but I doubt it will be ever cheaper than half the current price
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Li Ion batteries is mostly Nickel, comparatively a cheap metal. Lithium has the spotlight because its the critical breakthrough, but very little is necessary.
I'm Brazilian BTW.
The bet has been that Li Ion cells will reach US$ 100/kWh anywhere between 2020-2025.
That would mean an actual 20kWh storage system @ less than US$ 5000.
20kWh allows people to fully live off grid in sunny areas.
Look into why Tesla/Elon Musk is investing billions on the Li Ion Giga Factory. A big part of the gamble is economies of scal
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But in your previous post you said lithium ion batteries would approach 20 cents per kWH storage, or did you typo?
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What I hoped to say was that with retail electricity above 20 cents / kWh energy storage will soon be cheap enough to live off grid with solar + Li Ion storage in sunny places (like 30N to 30S lattitude). That's assuming USA price structure. Solar in Brazil is too expensive due to heavy import burden and in order to do net meterid we must have an outgoing meter sending everything we produce to the grid and pay state energy taxes including electricity we generate with solar, it pushes payback for solar over
Ruin the view is bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The sound would be unacceptable though, if that's still a problem.
you have a choice (Score:2)
wind farms or frack drills.
Fuck it, you're getting both. One'll be a hundred foot white elephant every 200 feet, the other'll fuck up your water supply but you won't be able to sue anyone because your local government has already taken the backhander for the immunity.
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Re:Don't worry, the Republicans will block this... (Score:5, Informative)
Other opponents have included Senator Ted Kennedy,[57] Sen. John Kerry, former Gov. Mitt Romney, and businessman Bill Koch,[58] who has donated $1.5 million to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind
But after more than a dozen years, the $2.6 billion proposal remains on the drawing board, thanks in large part to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, of which Mr. Koch is chairman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10... [nytimes.com]
Lying by omission is still lying. Just saying.
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Lying by omission is still lying. Just saying.
That assumes he knew about Romney and Koch, while considering Koch and Romney conservatives(not all do).
As is, it seems about 50-50.
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That assumes he knew about Romney and Koch, while considering Koch and Romney conservatives(not all do).
It what bizarro world are those two not conservatives?
Well, considering we have a faction in this country who would make Mussolini look like a radical leftist, i suppose it's the anti-intellectual, anti-education bizarro world we're stuck in in the US currently; Sinclair was right about the whole wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible thing.
What i find most amusing is when the idiots trot out that Lincoln was a republican, therefor all the ills of the world are because of democrats... their lack of education and common sense really divorces them from the r
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Not so hard to reduce prices 40% when ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not so hard to reduce prices 40% when ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:4, Insightful)
Turbine bird deaths are a red herring. An estimated 10000-40000 birds die each year from turbines. But, they kill the least birds of many manmade structures. About ~150 million birds each year die from powerlines. An estimated ~500 million die from hitting glass windows. Cats kill several hundred million. Pesticides: ~70 million. Cars: another ~70 million. Radio towers: 45 million. I don't see anyone calling for any of those things to be scaled back because of bird deaths. So why single out wind turbines?
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm
Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:5, Interesting)
My problem with wind turbines isn't the dead birds.
Coal kills 13000 humans in the USA alone every year, 200k yearly worldwide.
I'd rather kill 20000 birds than kill 10000 humans.
I hope they make this endeavour happen. Offshore wind farms are the only type of wind farms that produce electricity with some real consistency. Most wind farms oscilate from 20%-40%-20% power output within minutes, do you know what that means for the grid ?
Without economical, large scale energy storage, wind can't scale. Right now that means pumped hydro, which is very limited depending on geography.
In the meantime, wind+solar helps take the focus away from the real problem, which is ending coal burning in the world without increasing natural gas consumption. Only nuclear can do that right now.
If you really are concerned about climate change, you should be demading solar+wind+nuclear+biomass+geothermal, aka all of the above solution.
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Most wind farms oscilate from 20%-40%-20% power output within minutes, ... That is nonsense, also you forget the 60% 80% 100% and 200% etc. do you know what that means for the grid ? it does not mean anything for the grid. ... 500000 washing machines finishing their washing, around the same time: have the exact same effect.
500000 washing machines switched on around the same time
2million toasters, coffee machines, ovens etc. jumping on in the morning around the same time, and dropping off from the grid an h
Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:4, Informative)
You're wrong. Wind turbine output is wind speed cubed. So a tiny wind speed generates a much larger % in power output. That's fairly trivial to handle if your grid have a lot of very powerful load following sources, but that will make wind+solar getting over 50% of your grid production pretty much impossible without very advanced energy storage, ideally a power source that can be charged/discharged very quickly.
You're just embarrasing yourself.
I have a lot of relatives and friends who work/worked in the electricity utility business. And I have some engineering background, which you don't seem to have.
When Germany electricity prices get close to France's, then we can talk about if energiewende has succeeded or not.
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You're wrong. Well, calling you are wrong and then answering: you are wrong ... leads to nothing. Wrong about what btw.? ...
Wind turbine output is wind speed cubed. Depends how you want to say that. Ofc. it is not speed cubed. It increases with the cube of the speed, perhaps you meant that
So a tiny wind speed generates a much larger % in power output. No it does not.
You have "rated" speed. For easy math we can just take 10m/sec as rated speed and assume the turbine generates 1MW at that speed.
Now you doub
Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:4, Interesting)
BRAZIL has all the load following it needs. Its called big hydro. Brazil's peak electricity demand is around 100GW, with over 80GW of installed big hydro generation capacity. The critical aspect is water supply (reservoir status). Its what pumped hydro should be instead, an actual generation asset instead of a purely storage solution.
We don't have a boatload of wind cause our govt is very inefficient to do its thing. Matter of fact in many ways I'm ashamed of being Brazilian. But we could easily add 30 GW worth of nameplate wind. We also have the big advantage of the wind being the strongest when its dry, so it compliments hydro perfectly.
We also have 2GW of nuclear (2 reactors), another 1.3GW nuclear in construction, and tens of GW in various fossil plants (mostly natural gas).
This storage argument is very interesting. You are ignoring the fact that Denmark imports lots of hydro electricity from norway/sweden, nuclear from France, without big imports the system would break down. Local storage is far from sufficient.
The final fact is Denmark / Germany / Spain have the most expensive electricity in Europe, part of the extra cost is taxes, but even without taxes, Germany electricity is more expensive than France. If Energiewende was that cost effective, then why isn't Germany cheaper than France ?
I'm not making up lies, you're the one ignoring the inconvenient facts to your side.
I wish solar+wind could do the job, but it cant. The problem is the side that can't recognize that nuclear is essential to get rid of fossil fuels worldwide. China is burning more coal than the entire rest of the world combined. Still they are doing solar,wind,nuclear and hydro as fast as they can. They are adding clean electricity to their grid much faster than Europe or the USA, cause the govt doesn't care about NIMBY nonsense.
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The final fact is Denmark / Germany / Spain have the most expensive electricity in Europe, part of the extra cost is taxes, but even without taxes, Germany electricity is more expensive than France. If Energiewende was that cost effective, then why isn't Germany cheaper than France ?
Firstly because France is largely nuclear, which has historically been very cheap on a large scale, so a comparison to France would be tough for many countries, and secondly because it's a long-term project. The fact that it's not as cheap now doesn't mean it will stay so. But you can't build new infrastructure on a whim. For example, PV module cost is steadily going down. So when they get, say, three times cheaper in the next two decades (UMG cells, packaging improvement, manufacturing improvement...), if
Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, 5% of the whole mix is trivial. Scale that up to 1/3 overall, with some regions above 50%, and see what happens. Above all it is too expensive.
Perhaps you should learn a thing or too about reactive charges.
Your talk about software shows you have no technical expertise in the area. I'm a computer infrastructure expert, and I know a thing or too about solar,wind,nuclear and the electrical grid. The problem isn't a software to switch wind off and something else on, the real problem is doing extremely agile load following. That's easy to do with hydro or fossil fuels. But most countries don't have large untapped hydro sources. And we need to get off fossil fuels.
I'm not interested in a grid that will depend from fossil fuels forever.
We must get rid of all coal usage for electricity and heating.
We must radically reduce natural gas usage too.
Can't do that with solar+wind.
Need lots of nuclear. Some countries like China and Brazil still have tens of GW worth of untapped hydro, but most countries don't. Brazil was at the verge of a collapse in the past few months with very little rain leading to your hydro reservoirs close to that critical point where hydro plants must shutdown ! No wonder we have one large nuclear reactor in construction and plans for another half a dozen.
At the same time we are deploying wind and solar. But we have lots of hydro to load follow solar and wind. The USA, UK, France don't.
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> I don't get why people who have no clue always write nonsense like this.
Because an ad campaign funded by the Koch brothers told them that if they don't believe this they're liberals.
Like this one: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/wont-anyone-think-of-the-seniors/
Apparently, being associated with "the kids today" is far more scary for old people than anything pollution or GHG might do.
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There are now quite a few 50MWh class utility scale battery installations at wind farms around the world. Japan has the most, but there are some in Hawaii as well I believe. They are sodium sulphur based and smooth the output of the wind farm to make it easier on the grid.
Having said that, offshore wind doesn't vary as much as 20% within minutes. In fact even on-shore wind ins't that variable. The UK national grid actually considers large wind farms to be more reliable than coal or nuclear plants, because w
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Then why don't they build a few more wind farms and go full throttle on wind ?
I said a few times, prove me it works, a whole large country using at least 1/3 of its electricity from wind. But the UK has zero plans to get rid of nuclear, instead they are actually building nuclear and planning more.
Hawaii very difference scenario, since wind is competing with very expensive electricity from oil, and in Hawaii all fossil generation is peaking anyways, with the fuel dominating costs, so every extra MWh not gene
Re:Comparing Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, way to not link to a study, but rather a Smithsonian blog talking about a Wordpress blog talking about a study. You clearly love your primary sources!
FYI, the study is just one of many. The study itself cites others, including:
20,000 birds/yr (Sovacool, 2012)
10,000–40,000 birds/yr (Erickson et al., 2001 and Manville, 2005)
20,000–40,000 birds/yr (Erickson et al., 2005)
440,000 (Manville, 2009)
573,000 (Smallwood, 2013).
The latter two include lattice towers, which are largely being decommissioned as unsafe to birds.
But hey, having varied numbers clearly means that if you can find a blog linking to another blog linking to a study that shows high numbers (among many different studies), then clearly the GP is "plain wrong", right?
And yes, even if we go with your choice study's mean of 234,012 annual bird deaths, that's still orders of magnitude less than many other types of human activities.
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Said the anonymous coward that cares more about bird deaths than coal killing humans.
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> First priority for electricity is big hidro / biomass from biodigestors+other natural wastes.
> Then nuclear.
> Then rooftop solar PV.
> Then wind.
[snip]
> it will take 20 years just to license the first MSR reactor
So, is your argument that we should do nothing for 20 years? No, I know, I'm being silly. But the point in there is valid: nuclear is too slow to fix the problem.
> US NRC and their NATO counterparts are working really hard in making nuclear as expensive as they can
This tired old b
Re:Cape Wind Will Die (Score:5, Interesting)
China is building new nuclear reactors in a little over 5 years.
And its not just China, South Korea, India, Russia, are all doing nuclear at sane costs and sane schedules. That's called have a rational nuclear regulator.
I'm not a nuclear professional, but after all the anti nuclear crap that hit the media after Fukushima that got me so pissed off I decided to study nuclear, and all I studied showed me nuclear is being unfairly targeted. Massive lies and miss information.
Even today, the most expensive nuclear project in the world, Olkiluoto in Finland is still cheaper then energiewende, with all of its overruns. And I've heard plenty of arguments why Areva EPR is likely the most expensive reactor on the market today. GE ESBWR and Westinghouse AP1000 seems much cheaper. Yet the anti nuke types take Olkiluoto as the reference to discuss.
Wind $1.25 per peak capacity Watts... If your effective capacity factor is 20%, then you're up to $ 6.25 per Watt, and then you must add the fossil backup costs. Must talk levelized costs.
Then you need to account for the fact that a nuclear reactor can be built fairly close to its primary market, while wind turbines must be built where the wind is, then you must add transmission line costs, substations, lots of things the greenies conveniently ignore in their calculations. When you add all of that up, even with wind capacity factor of 30% it is more expensive even than Olkiluoto that you love to quote as poster child of nuclear too expensive.
Nuclear doesn't have to be expensive.
The current Westinghouse reactor offering, the AP600 and AP1000 started development work before Chernobyl. It took 26 yrs from conception to certification of the AP600 cause the US NRC didn't know how to certify a passively safe reactor, so it took them 16 years to certify it.
This isn't an intrinsic, unavoidable nuclear problem, but rather how the US NRC is setup to certify it, it can be improved.
There is a lot of vested interest in nuclear failing, or at least not innovating and continuing to be expensive.
You can either pretend we don't need it like the Germans, do nothing to help like American politicians or demand we make it more rational which will reduce nuclear costs substantially in the short term.
If you listen to actual energy professionals even those that do utility scale solar and wind, the actual technical professionals admit the same problems I'm pointing out to you. It's a fact.
Nuclear doesn't need GW scale to be economical.
Water cooled nuclear likes GW scale plants.
Gen IV reactors work just fine at 250MW scale, and they do load following, so a site with 4x 250MW reactors can reliably supply power to a market with 1GW demand without need for fossil backups while load following wind/solar if needed. But once you have a nuclear reactor, wind and solar aren't useful.
It's helpful to actually learn about nuclear from factual nuclear sites, instead of from anti nuclear sites, those are not environmentalists, but rather shills paid to bash nuclear to keep coal and natural gas in power for as long as possible.
I sugest:
https://www.coursera.org/cours... [coursera.org]
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Even if it was bad, what's the alternative? Pumping CO2 in the atmosphere?
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Not suggesting we have a better alternative. But so many things that seemed like good ideas at the time look bloody awful with 20-20 hindsight and a lack of understanding of the true costs. For the record I am all for harnessing wind and tidal power, but I still wonder whether we are just painting another coat of lipstick on the pig and praising it for its new found beauty.
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I agree with you on nuclear. We need more nuclear plants. However, I also feel it should not be the only solution.
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I am saying CO2 is bad. The fact that some climate change believers use hype and crap science to support that conclusion does not change the fact that it is true.
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Considerably less than the cost in lives of all the American soldiers who have died protecting the "rights" of US-based oil companies in the Middle East.
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> This heat warms the atmosphere
No it doesn't. Waste heat rapidly radiates into space. Temperatures only rise if you interrupt the radiation, say though GHG's that trap it.
> The more wind energy we use the stronger the winds
Premise incorrect, conclusion non-factual by default.
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They currently use diesel generators. That is so expensive it is not even on the chart.
Besides, the real incentive here is the government subsidies and tax breaks. At least they are not polluting while vacuuming up the money.
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$0.14 per kWh has little to do with it. They are saving money because they can shut down the expensive ($0.40 to $0.50 per kWh) diesel generators that is their only current generating source. The cost of the wind power generated is well below that regardless of connecting to the mainland or not
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Graft is everywhere (Score:3)
Nuclear power is in the billions to build a plant. We have 2 in the USA that are not coming cheap. It NEVER includes all the free or really cheap government services that nuclear power gets and needs. You complain about wind but nuclear burns money and costs more than solar; graft is always included for both. Thing is, with big massive centralized power generation you have a few powerful players who's political pull is greater than smaller more distributed alternatives (unless the smaller players can un