As America's Solar Power Surges, Wind Power is Struggling (staradvertiser.com) 77
America "is now adding less wind capacity each year" than it was before the passage of a climate-protecting bill in 2022, according to the New York Times.
Since then "solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the U.S., as are batteries that can store energy for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean." Some factors behind the wind industry's recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities... [M]any areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Energy companies want to expand the grid's capacity to transport even more wind power to population centers, but getting permits for transmission lines and building them has become a brutal slog that can take more than a decade... Because they can reach the height of skyscrapers, wind turbines are more noticeable than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition from local communities.
The wind industry has also been hampered by soaring equipment costs after the pandemic wrecked supply chains and inflation spiked. While those factors initially hurt solar, too, the solar industry has adjusted much faster, with China nearly doubling its manufacturing capacity for panels over the past two years. Wind supply chains, which are dominated by a few manufacturers in China, Europe and the United States, have yet to fully recover. The cost increases have been devastating for offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where developers have canceled more than half the projects they planned to build this decade. Wind isn't languishing only in the United States. While a record 117 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online last year globally, virtually all of that growth was in China. In the rest of the world, developers weren't installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020...
It's still possible that wind power could rebound. In fact, some experts argue that the recent slowdown is only a temporary artifact of tax policy... [John Hensley, vice president for markets and policy analysis at the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group] said that U.S. wind manufacturing was beginning to ramp up thanks to new tax incentives, while costs were starting to come down. Last year, orders for new turbines increased by 130%, although many of them won't be delivered until 2025 or later. Some states are now trying to make it easier to build renewable energy: Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota have all passed laws making it harder for local governments to restrict wind and solar. The federal government has issued new rules to accelerate the planning of transmission lines.
Demand for wind could also rise as a growing number of states, tech companies and hydrogen producers are trying to secure clean electricity around the clock, rather than just a burst of solar power in the daytime.
Many plans for moving America off fossil fuels "envision a large expansion of both solar and wind," the article points out, "because the two sources generate electricity at different hours and can complement each other. A boom in solar power alone, which runs only in daytime, isn't enough."
Since then "solar panel installations are indeed soaring to record highs in the U.S., as are batteries that can store energy for later. But wind power has struggled, both on land and in the ocean." Some factors behind the wind industry's recent slowdown may be temporary, such as snarled supply chains. But wind power is also more vulnerable than solar power to many of the biggest logistical hurdles that hinder energy projects today: a lack of transmission lines, a lengthy permitting process and a growing backlash against new projects in many communities... [M]any areas are now crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Energy companies want to expand the grid's capacity to transport even more wind power to population centers, but getting permits for transmission lines and building them has become a brutal slog that can take more than a decade... Because they can reach the height of skyscrapers, wind turbines are more noticeable than solar farms and often attract more intense opposition from local communities.
The wind industry has also been hampered by soaring equipment costs after the pandemic wrecked supply chains and inflation spiked. While those factors initially hurt solar, too, the solar industry has adjusted much faster, with China nearly doubling its manufacturing capacity for panels over the past two years. Wind supply chains, which are dominated by a few manufacturers in China, Europe and the United States, have yet to fully recover. The cost increases have been devastating for offshore wind projects in the Northeast, where developers have canceled more than half the projects they planned to build this decade. Wind isn't languishing only in the United States. While a record 117 gigawatts of new wind capacity came online last year globally, virtually all of that growth was in China. In the rest of the world, developers weren't installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020...
It's still possible that wind power could rebound. In fact, some experts argue that the recent slowdown is only a temporary artifact of tax policy... [John Hensley, vice president for markets and policy analysis at the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group] said that U.S. wind manufacturing was beginning to ramp up thanks to new tax incentives, while costs were starting to come down. Last year, orders for new turbines increased by 130%, although many of them won't be delivered until 2025 or later. Some states are now trying to make it easier to build renewable energy: Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota have all passed laws making it harder for local governments to restrict wind and solar. The federal government has issued new rules to accelerate the planning of transmission lines.
Demand for wind could also rise as a growing number of states, tech companies and hydrogen producers are trying to secure clean electricity around the clock, rather than just a burst of solar power in the daytime.
Many plans for moving America off fossil fuels "envision a large expansion of both solar and wind," the article points out, "because the two sources generate electricity at different hours and can complement each other. A boom in solar power alone, which runs only in daytime, isn't enough."
People hate living near transmission lines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: People hate living near transmission lines (Score:2)
It's just classic NIMBY. People afraid transmission lines will make chem trails and fluoride. Even for wind farms as well, though less the conspiracy thinking and more the scare of a changed skyline. A classic example is the big pushback against construction of the Eiffel tower. Try tearing it down now. It's the main reason California is in love with those piece of shit cracker box houses that they built in the 50s, which were cheap even by their standards and make modern manufactured homes look like a luxu
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Re: People hate living near transmission lines (Score:2)
So don't put them in tornado prone areas? A bit like saying solar won't work in Hawaii because lava.
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Re: People hate living near transmission lines (Score:2)
I don't speak petty street gang.
Re:People hate living near transmission lines (Score:4, Informative)
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Offshore wind is double the price of onshore. For the USA onshore wind and solar makes sense in the in areas with a low population density. These are primarily red states and well funded anti-alternative energy groups try to stop it. I live in a deep blue state and these operatives have stopped projects here by disrupting local board meetings. Town board members everywhere are dominated by people working in real estate that are mainly concerned with property values. They gladly comply with these groups.
Bullshit. From: https://apnews.com/article/off... [apnews.com] "The Danish wind energy developer Ørsted said this week it’s scrapping its Ocean Wind I and II projects off southern New Jersey due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits the company wanted. Together, the projects were supposed to deliver over 2.2 gigawatts of power.
The news comes after developers in New England canceled power contacts for three projects that would have provided an
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VA's Dominion Power did a pilot wind farm off VA Beach. It was literally *cheaper* to run the project out of Canada than out of immediately nearby VA Beach.
Good podcast on the problems of the Jones Act for anything US offshore related linky [apple.com]
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Re: People hate living near transmission lines (Score:2)
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Re: People hate living near transmission lines (Score:2)
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Offshore wind turbines have some advantages. They can be larger and more efficient and the wind blows faster and there are no hills or buildings blocking the wind. But they are also more expensive to build and maintain.
Onshore turbines are cheap and quick to build, but don't always produce electricity due to occasional lack of wind.
Both forms are growing all over the world.
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Wind opposed by NIMBY - red or blue. (Score:2)
These are primarily red states and well funded anti-alternative energy groups try to stop it. I live in a deep blue state and these operatives have stopped projects here by disrupting local board meetings.
BS. It's NIMBY not red or blue. You had a wind project delayed off of Massachusetts for nearly 30 years because it would spoil the ocean view of Kennedy's.
In the wealthiest bluest of the blue neighborhoods you will get resistance.
Boom of solar power (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, if solar "wins" the competition too much, as I've predicted in the past, this could result in day time power being cheaper than night time. This would have "implications".
For example, the idea of charging EVs at night, when power is cheap - nope, the best time would be around 9-4 or so, depending on exact geographical region, latitude, longitude, time zone, season, daylight savings, etc...
This means that "most" EVs you would want to charge during work instead. For commercial vehicles, the bread truck which is done delivering before noon would have it better than, say, an Amazon truck that works like 8-6. Or the postal delivery vehicle. Of course, postal delivery vehicles get so few miles that you might be able to keep them charged on lunch breaks alone.
For air conditioning - this would be nice because the need for it is generally at its highest during the day. So go ahead - cool away.
Note: I've always considered creating a heating/cooling "reserve" in some sort of mass object so you can keep heating/cooling even with a tiny power draw for just a fan to be an interesting thing. Create a bunch of cold/hot water, and use that instead when electricity is expensive. Doesn't even have to be water, sand or such works too.
This is, of course, to avoid the losses and expenses of batteries as much as possible.
But we'd still need batteries for things like the surge in power use just after sunset, when people are still up, making/eating dinner, watching TV, on the computer, etc...
Re: Boom of solar power (Score:2)
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In order for the heat exchangers (coils) to move heat, there have to be decent temperature differences between the refrigerant temperature and the temperatures of supply air (around 14C) and ambient outside air (typically rated at 35C). So, for a typical air-cooled home A/C, the temperature difference between the refrigerant entering the evaporator (5C to 10C) and the refrigerant entering the
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Scaling to personal residence level is a bit trickier to retro fit, but conceptually building the sand storage into a foundation or garage floor would be perfect for new construction.
Converting that heat back to electricity is less efficient but still possible. As with any renewable, fuel free, source, the only cost is one time infrastructure to
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Storing heat is very easy. There are many, many houses in the UK that use storage heaters -- they take advantage of cheap electricity at night to heat up bricks and then extract the heat from the bricks during the day. If a house in the UK does not have a natural gas supply, it's very likely to use storage heaters, although the UK is now strongly pushing heat pumps.
While most of these use individual room heaters (probably multiple per room), the first house I owned had a heating system with a central stored
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The real golden scenario is to use the EV batteries as night time power sources, charged whenever. The size of EV batteries for all cars will *dwarf* the size of batteries we need to run the rest of the grid. 2-4x more in EV battery sizes.
But realistically, we probably need battery storage at/near the commercial solar plants to handle the day time over supply and deliver that through the night.
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The storage is now getting built at a rapid pace. Up to a certain point, renewables can be used whenever they run. But once past 20-30% there will be times they over-produce, and the excess gets wasted. California reached that point a few years ago, and started installing lots of battery farms. Now they can time-shift mid-day sun to early evening when peak load in the summer happens.
Re: Boom of solar power (Score:3)
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This is how it works here in my state in Australia. We regularly have negative power prices in the middle of the day due to surplus from (mostly) solar.
People with batteries can charge and use it later - or, as is becoming slowly more common, sell it back to the grid at a significant profit later in peak hours. It's almost like a proper market now!
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There is no need to make a prediction about that. I live in one of the solar capitals of the world, and electricity prices are generally negative when the sun is shining. This is a graph of wholesale prices. [aemo.com.au]
It is fun to try and figure out where all this will end up. If battery prices go through a couple of halvings then perhaps it possible households solar + bat
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This was a sensible, coherent explanation, that didn't require a lot of in-depth technical knowledge to explain. It's shame Peter Dutton doesn't read Slashdot, you could save him some embarrassment.
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All members of the federal government, and especially the leader of the opposition has access to best advice in the country. For example CSIRO made it's position is very clear when asked. I'm pretty certain Dutton accepts that advice and has no intention of letting a nuclear power plant being built, let alone funding the build with government money. If you listen carefully to what the opposition says, that comes out between the lines. For example they say over and over again they will not build a plant
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What's isn't "maybe" is the effect renewables have on economics of nuclear. Before renewables came along, you when you built a plant and you had an almost guaranteed income stream for 24 hours a day. Now solar removes 1/3 of your sales during the day. That happens right now where I live now. If households install a battery to get them through peak hour, then in the future you're going to lose another 1/3 of a day. The remaining 1/3 is in the small hours of the morning when consumption is smallest. If nuclear sells it's power for 24 hours a day, it pays back it's debt in 20 years and makes enough money for the next 30 to pay for it's decommissioning and a profit. 20 years ago being about sell power 24 hours a day looked like a pretty sure bet. Now for 1/3 of that time the market may charge you for dumping the power into a grid that's already oversupplied because you can't follow the load fast enough. Nuclear can't follow even follow the normal functions in load that occur over the course of a day. My how times have changed.
You're victim to a couple of common misconceptions. For one, nuclear power can load follow, even reactors that aren't explicitly built for it. It's done in several facilities in the US, with the savings being reduced fuel burnup. Why it isn't commonly done is most of the costs of a nuclear facility are sunk. The actual running of the plant is a pittance cost-wise, and as such power prices have to be very low or even negative to justify reduced output. But if a utility has, say, a state mandate to hit some a
solar is more dependable (Score:2)
Re: solar is more dependable (Score:2)
If the temperature is changing, the wind is blowing somewhere.
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What I have seen from a lot of renewable energy advocates is that there is a bit of a "dirty little secret" that in the macro economic sense personal energy generation like small wind turbines and rooftop solar don't actually make a lot of sense.
For wind most people simply cannot put the turbine up into the airstream high enough to really capture that wind, at ground level as you said it can be extremely variable as mentioned they are simply not big enough, its simple physics that a larger turbine equals bi
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The thing that shows how good solar is:
What do you pay annually for power? Most homes probably run $1200-1500/year.
If you put $15,000 into a solar array, after 10 years it's paid for itself (very very rough est obviously). And the
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That's the exact micro vs macro though, your personal ROI is just that so if it makes sense for you there should not be anything stopping you from doing solar panel but the fact seems to be that in the aggreagate the $25K would have installed more kW of solar energy in a utlity scale project versus the rooftop.
Now again, that shouldn't matter to you, you are the manager of your own finances but the question is if rooftop solar is something we should be subsidizing and promoting from the top down, the eviden
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Home based solar reduces the needs of additional transmission.
However, since even few single family homes have enough available space to fully power via solar, both things seem useful to me.
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Distributed solar is also going to require quite a bit of infrastructure as well as it expands, especially if we are going to deliver on the true promises of it which is distributed storage and net metering, we don't have a grid designed for that so we need a lot of smart grid equipment and really just a rethink of how we deliver electricity in general, so it's still infrastructure and we should do both, just a case of what we want the outcomes to be.
If the outcome we desire is a more distributed power grid
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There's also the option for community/neighborhood based solar. That was largely the case in Florida as I recall, where the one community continued to have power even after one of the hurricanes tore through the area and killed power to everyone else.
Re: solar is more dependable (Score:2)
And then you realize that you need another 25k of batteries and another 10k of power electronics per residential install in order to be able to actually utilize the power from your panels.
Most people don't get those and rely on "the grid" to be their battery and inverter. Which works when the grid is backed by something reliable like hydro, nuclear, or gas/coal/oil. Then the "battery" and "inverter" is simply the power plants powering down during the day as solar picks up some load, and powering back up whe
Re: solar is more dependable (Score:2)
Call any installer and they can set you up with actual facts cuz you are quite literally a nut job.
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Obvious Troll is Obvious.
Call any installer and they can set you up with actual facts cuz you are quite literally a nut job.
RightwingNutjob actually undersold costs by orders of magnitude.
The grid is merely a market for the buying and selling of electrons. It is NOT a storage battery. PV only works as an investment today because on the margins it is cheap to simply dial back dispatachable generation when cheaper suppliers are available. As dispatachable generation is crowded out by synchronized intermittent sources expect the equation to shift dramatically.
$25k for a professionally installed code compliant battery isn't anywh
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PV works exactly how I laid out. You likely pay over $1000/yr in electric bill. Put that money towards panels to offset that and after payoff, which is almost always under 10 years, it's free power.
Batteries can certainly enhance that but aren't required.
Re: solar is more dependable (Score:2)
And how exactly do you use your solar panels at night?
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Except he's not. I *never* mentioned batteries. He made the claim that to actually *use* my solar panels I somehow need batteries? Utterly false.
Your solar panels are used by the grid not by you. They don't work at all without the grid and you have zero control over where the energy goes.
PV works exactly how I laid out. You likely pay over $1000/yr in electric bill. Put that money towards panels to offset that and after payoff, which is almost always under 10 years, it's free power.
This only works due to huge amounts of existing dispatachable energy on the grid. As more PV is deployed the value of PV decreases while costs of dispatachable sources increase further eroding ROI.
Your basically getting in early on something akin to a Ponzi scheme. It works for you now... yet is ultimately unsustainable as more PV comes online. The rooftop sola
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If you're producing more than you use, then batteries are an *option* but definitely not required. Most people won't be able to install that size an array, especially in AC heavy locations.
Re: solar is more dependable (Score:2)
Again, this works for you because you're only lowering your daytime usage while the fossil-fuel powered grid picks up the slack.
If the fossil fuel plants go away, as the greenies would like them to have done yesterday, if you want to have the lights come on at night, you need to pay for those batteries somewhere.
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Because a grid based/scale battery is literally the exact same thing as a fossil fuel plant...to the end user. Just a source of power.
Are they fully ready yet? obviously not. But CA has done 40% renewable base load for 24 hours.
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Your solar panels are used by the grid not by you. They don't work at all without the grid and you have zero control over where the energy goes.
They work 100% of the time there's sun. Now, for safety reasons, if the grid goes down, the solar system shuts off. They are still producing power, it's just not being used.
This only works due to huge amounts of existing dispatachable energy on the grid. As more PV is deployed the value of PV decreases while costs of dispatachable sources increase further eroding ROI.
Your basically getting in early on something akin to a Ponzi scheme. It works for you now... yet is ultimately unsustainable as more PV comes online.
Ponzi scheme? Reducing my bill isn't a ponzi scheme. It's absolutely guaranteed return. Instead of $150/month it's $30/month bill. That is absolutely unaffected by the amount of PV on the rest of the system.
Done with this convo as you're into stupid territory.
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They work 100% of the time there's sun. Now, for safety reasons, if the grid goes down, the solar system shuts off. They are still producing power, it's just not being used.
They do not produce power without the grid. You can verify this fact by checking temperature rise on the panels. They will be about 10f hotter than the same panels which are actually completing a circuit and exporting energy.
Ponzi scheme? Reducing my bill isn't a ponzi scheme.
The grid is a marketplace. It is NOT your personal battery. If everyone had rooftop solar you would never see an ROI on your investment. The market would be completely saturated when the sun was shining and your electrons would have no value or assuming the grid didn't kick your in
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As is all too often pointed out. Solar only works during the daytime. Wind may in fact be intermittent, but it's usually blowing somewhere and excess wind power can charge batteries just as easily as excess solar power.
Given my druthers, however, I'd really like to see a focus on developing and building out tidal power and deep geothermal, both which would provide a near constant source of power.
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Every hour, enough energy hits the earth than we use in a year. There are 8000 (ok 8765) hours in a year.
So yes, it doesn't shine 24/7, but there are vast amounts of efficiency/storage loss available and still have oodles of left over power.
That's *just* solar.
geothermal is very interesting from a heating/cooling perspective (and that's a huge chunk of our usage), but for power generation it's tougher since you generally need higher temps than we
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The fact that energy is hitting the earth somewhere doesn't matter a lot if I'm using solar that's sitting in the dark. The ideal would be a massive, worldwide system connected by UHVDC such that power is always being collected and going to where it's needed...
But that's a major, major, major MASSIVE infrastructure project, and would probably depend on a level of cooperation we don't see much of today.
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CA has already run it's entire grid on 40% renewable for 24 straight hours. It's coming.
There was a proposal for a 48 state UHVDC network. The thinking is you can offer every state a supply of *very* quality power and now industry can relocate wherever they want. The cooperation and foresight is still unfortunately lacking as you say
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Skyscrapers in cities get the wind tunnel effect higher up that makes helix type rotors reasonably decent.
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the wind is not consistent i seen days where the wind hardly moves, or gusty days where one moment the wind is 20 knots the next barely 2 knots and i talked with people that bought bothd wind turbines and solar panels and they said solar is more dependable, wind might be a worthwhile investment if you can scale it up HUGE and get a windmill big enough
With wind scale is everything. PV is usually a way better option for small operations, small windmills are a maintenance headache and only work when the wind is blowing.
Huge windmills with hub heights in the 100M range is an entirely different universe. The primary advantage of size is power output quadruples for every doubling of blade size. At that altitude there is also way more wind more of the time. For anyone interested here is an interactive map where you can look at differences between say 10M a
Reflect obstruction in insurance prices (Score:4, Insightful)
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If NIMBYs wanna block much needed infrastructure to mitigate harm from climate change that affects everyone, then that should be reflected in their insurance fees, i.e. to pay for the damage caused by extreme weather events & for increases in food prices due to crop failures.
OK, let's put a nuclear power plant in your backyard
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If NIMBYs wanna block much needed infrastructure to mitigate harm from climate change that affects everyone, then that should be reflected in their insurance fees, i.e. to pay for the damage caused by extreme weather events & for increases in food prices due to crop failures.
Or maybe coasties should pay through the nose for their "great weather" and seaside amenities, all while expecting the rest of the country to feed, power, and water them. .
Available wind power will surge later this year (Score:3)
due to the amount of hot air generated by the election.
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After solar panels on the White House Jimmy Carter's next plan was wind turbines over the capitol.
Breaking Bad Wind (Score:2)
NIMBY (Score:2)
What is NIMBY? NIMBY is really YIYBY, yes in YOUR back yard. Everyone is real quick to want something put in SOMEONE ELSE'S back yard, and if the someone else takes exception, then they smear them as NIMBYs. Almost as good a smear as "racist."
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That's the problem everyone has with NIMBY's though, they usually are in fact dictating what other people can do with their property. If a bunch of people get a developer to stop work on housing projects what is that but a bunch of people saying what a property owner can do with their lot. Zoning laws are just that sentiment written into law.
If your neighbor want's to sell their lot to a developer who want's to replace it with a quadplex, do you have some sort of right to stop that action if it's legally
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I thought the term was coined for people who were actively, politically pushing for some infrastructure and turned into vehement opposition the moment the project considered their vicinity for said infrastructure.
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Unfortunately, "backyard" all too often expands from backyard to neighborhood, town, city, county, and state. Witness the number of people who were complaining about offshore wind... when it wasn't, in fact, on their land or property at all.
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I suggest that you listen to a recent episode of the Reveal podcast:
https://revealnews.org/podcast... [revealnews.org]
This discusses how residents of one town are NIYBYs (Not In Your Back Yard).
grid scale versus residential (Score:2)
Noting (Score:2)
In round numbers (Score:2)
To have a reliable power generation system using only wind, storage needs to cover calm periods of days due to high pressure weather systems, when generation will fall to a few percent of faceplate, and also whole seasons with very low winds.
The UK Royal Society considered the actual historical weather of the UK. It estimated that the UK would require 100 TWh of storage for a system with peak demand of 45+ GW. This was to go to a system using only wind and solar. [Put it another way: you have to be able