Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006. But while wind power is making steady progress in Europe, the U.S. gets less than 1% of its electricity from wind power,
Spain now gets 9% percent of its electricity from wind power, with turbines generating 44% of electricity in the province of Navarra. In Germany turbines generate 7% of electricity, 36% in the coastal state of Sleswig-Holstein. In Denmark, wind turbines produced an average of 18.5% of electricity in 2004. Denmark aims to have 50% of its electricity demand supplied by wind turbines in 2025.
So, are the Danes wrong, or is the US public being fed the wrong ideas? Those with vested interests in the status quo have gone to extraordinary lengths to fabricate arguments against clean technologies such as hydrogen and wind power. They claim that wind power was unreliable as the wind does not blow continuously. Indeed, the contribution of wind power fluctuates with the wind, so when it is windy, the contribution of wind power can increase. On September 15th, a particularly windy day, wind turbines accounted for 70% of Denmark's electricity measured around midday. On windy nights, Denmark transfers excess electricity along interconnected grids into Germany and Sweden.
Wind power works best in combination with other technologies, such as solar and hydro-power. Furthermore, electricity can be stored in many ways, such as by pumping water back uphill. Do wind turbines make too much noise? Virtually noiseless systems can be installed in your backyard. Storage of water, heat and electricity can result in huge savings. For household hot water usage, there are low-tech thermal solar systems that heat up domestic water tanks, requiring no electricity. Many other 'low-tech' alternatives are being tested for use in developing countries, such as flywheels, springs and weights. Mobile phone and other electronic devices can be powered by hand cranks.
Using more advanced technologies, electricity from wind turbines can be stored by compressing or heating substances in tanks. One of the most promising ways to store surplus wind power is by producing hydrogen. Hydrogen can be stored under pressure in tanks, to provide fuel for industrial or domestic use or in cars, all without creating pollution. As discussed in more detail in an earlier article, electric vehicles can also run on Lithium-ion batteries that can be recharged from the solar panels on top of the roofs under which they are parked.
Anyway, more electric cars means that we need to generate more electricity, and wind power is one of the easiest and cleanest ways to do so. We can choose the times when best to recharge the batteries or produce the necessary hydrogen, so we can do so when it's windy and when there's little further demand, so it will take little or no electricity away from other usage. Look at it this way and claims that wind power was unreliable and that hydrogen was inefficient do not hold.
Once you look at the wider picture of a mix of technologies, the 'problems' that opponents of wind energy and hydrogen like to bring up will quickly evaporate. Similarly, many perceived problems are purely the result of the way the power grid is currently organized. A more distributed and intelligent system will allow a multitude of points to act as suppliers, with net-metering allowing households to earn money for feeding surplus electricity from their wind turbines back into the grid.
Oh, and do wind turbines kill birds? Does nuclear radiation kill birds? A recently completed Danish study using infrared monitoring found that seabirds steer clear of offshore wind turbines and are remarkably adept at avoiding the rotors.
Wind power does deserve more attention and should get more marketshare, while the share of fossil fuel should be reduced. The quickest and most effective way to achieve this is by taxing fossil fuel and using the proceeds to subsidize supply of wind power and other clean and renewable alternatives.
References:
- Wind power in Denmark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
- 50% Wind Power in Denmark in 2025
http://www.windpower.org/
- On a windy night, Denmark exports elctricity
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22500426-23850,00.html
- European wind power companies grow in U.S.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18310987/
- Wind power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
- Massive Offshore Wind Turbines Safe for Birds
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18167/
- Solar power and electric cars, a winning combination!
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977115548
- Tax greenhouse gas emissions!
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977030740
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Comments: 49
As a result, a renewable source that reduces demand on the grid may diminish the energy footprint of that application by many times its nominal value.
The Navy did limited research on power produced similarly to those 'no battery' flashlights, using floats to make magnets pass thru coils (or vice-versa) taking advantage of the waves in the ocean. Yet another power source ignored by the American Fossil Fuel contingency who are afraid we would become independent and thus have no reason to go to war and feed the people who thrive on war and its profits.
Independence starts with independent thinking.
I prefer the vertical turbines, because the can withstand more sheer and have a lower profile. But you need different styles in different areas, so I like that we have so many smaller business in the field to work with a variety of technologies.
Shari. Good for your family! I read that many of the surviving family farms are putting wind mills up as a welcome source of income - real "wind farms".
Gerry: "I am concerned about the large transmission lines needed to the mega wind farms and wish we could concentrate on smaller-scale units near people's homes using the existing grid."
As Sam writes: "many perceived problems are purely the result of the way the power grid is currently organized. A more distributed and intelligent system will allow a multitude of points to act as suppliers, with net-metering allowing households to earn money for feeding surplus electricity from their wind turbines back into the grid."
Distributed generation is much more likely with wind farms - and even small wind turbines for residential use - than with... say..., a nuclear plant.
"Winning the Oil Endgame", p.240.
http://www.oilendgame.com/
I wouldn't mind wind turbines on the farm bordering my backyard. On the other hand, I do mind dumping nuclear waste on the citizens of Nevada, and I do mind kicking people out of the homes so that coal companies can mine coal by taking the tops off mountains. Neither of those affect me personally - but from a moral point of view, if it's happening to any of them, it's happening to me.
USA Population 300,000,000 PLUS
'nuff said.
Figures can be compared by population and percentages:
US (300+ people) less than 1% of electricity comes from wind power
EU (500 million people) 3.3% of electricity came from wind power in 06
http://tinyurl.com/2efgkf
Or, if you look at MW, Spain with about 45 million people produced more wind power in 2006 than the USA. The top ten wind producing nations:
1. Germany - 20,622MW
2. Spain - 11,615MW
3. USA - 11,603MW
4. India - 6,270MW
5. Denmark - 3,136MW
6. China - 2,604MW
7. Italy - 2,123MW
8. UK - 2,034MW
9. Portugal - 1,716MW
10. France - 1,567MW
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6344215.stm
So, is the US public being fed the wrong ideas?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10695864/
Investors should hear more about the merits and potential of wind power. It's time the media stopped publishing the myths that those with vested interests in the current situation keep feeding them.
California leads the nation in the production of wind energy. Four major wind farms, employing more than 13,000 windmills, covering several thousand acres, produce 2.9 billion KW per year.
By contrast, a single coal-fired plant near Knoxville, Tennessee, produces 10 billion KW per year.
Or, better said with a single word: MONEY ! ! ! !
The good thing about solar and wind is that once you get past the investment, the electricity will just keep flowing. the bad thing about coal is that you have to keep digging and burning forever until all the ice at both poles has melted into seawater that sits over the bottom third of Florida.
The tone of this article implies that there is a reluctance to invest in wind-power in the United States. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The greatest impediments to wind-power generation was the Democratic Congress that put all wind-power projects on hold last year because Sen. Kennedy got upset about a planned project near his family compound.
In Minnesota we have had several large scale wind-farms scheduled to come on-line last year delayed because of Kennedy's temper tantrum.
Currently, the big problem is getting on the schedule for equipment. The lead-time is approx. five years.
For the future, we are looking to major alliances to solve some of the back-log manufacture problems. Suzlon is now working with John Deere to manufacture turbine blades, and several other such cooperative ventures in the works.
Which brings us to another problem - spare parts.
It can take years to get a turbine blade. It can also take years to replace gear-boxes that were suppose to last for twenty years but are wearing out in five.
Enthusiasm is great, but so is accuracy
The most radical projections of the effect of Global Warming predict a 15-20 cm rise in sea-level over the next century. Most of this rise is attributed to thermal expansion of sea water.
No credible scientist has suggest otherwise.
Source
One could also ask the question, if the sea goes up 12 inches this century, what about next century? Ice melt from warming is cumulative, and there is enough ice at the poles to add ten to twenty feet to sea levels.
It's people like Bobby Kennedy Jr who think that the aesthetics of places like Martha's Vineyard and Cape Code are more important than the benefits of inexpensive wind energy.
GET IT?? Hot air? LMAO
Alright, not funny. I'll stop blowing smoke up your ---.
ROTFL.....No seriously.....Did anyone else hear that?
I farted.....wind energy!!!
Quick....bottle it up!
I can see in a hundred years we will have turbine preservations instead of wildlife refuges.
Give me something more with this article. Make me a believer. I don't see enough energy being produced to spark any interest and as far as GE or other companies investing in this, UH....don't you think they do that anyway knowing the PR aspect of it?
That's like Bush backing the "Clear Skies Initiative".
http://news.gather.com/
It's great that articles like this receive some publicity - articles with a message are all too often hard to find, as they attract opponents who will give low ratings.
I mentioned ten of them in my article at:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976925383
The conclusion should be that emissions of greenhouse gases should be reduced. The quickest way to achieve this is this: Tax fossil fuel and meat, and use the proceeds to subsidize local supply of better alternatives!
In case you wonder why meat is in there, read may article at:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977123673
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977115548
Storage could play an increasingly important complementary role, e.g., the Great Lakes could act as an energy storage facility. Surplus solar and wind power could be used to pump water back from a lower lake into a higher lake, so that hydro-power can help out at times of peak demand.
Another way to use surplus electricity is to produce and compress hydrogen, for physical distribution in tanks around the country. The tanks could subsequently fuel cars, as well as industrial equipment, heating and cooling systems in buildings, etc.
http://hydrogeneconomy.gather.com/
Free markets are best in working out the when and where, but for free markets to work well, there must be customer choice, entrepreneurial freedom and easy access to technology and entry to the market for new suppliers, all of which is hard in a centralized model. We should work towards a more distributed network with numerous access points that act both as consumer and supplier, feeding power back into the grid and getting paid according to the demand at the time.
Investors are "getting it". This from Lovins:
"Why is micropower winning? Well, as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 2007 wind review (PDF) found, the median price of power provided by new U.S. wind farms added during 1999-2006 was 3.4 cents per kWh in 2004 dollars, while the cheapest cost less than 2 cents. If you take the higher median price, "firm" that variable wind power to make it fully dispatchable whether the wind is blowing or not, and take away its 0.86 cent Production Tax Credit (far less than nuclear's subsidies), it still costs less than half of what Keystone found new nuclear plants would cost. Wall Street understands this arithmetic."
"In 2006, distributed renewable power sources worldwide got $56 billion of private risk capital; nuclear projects got zero. As Peter Bradford rightly notes, recent industry efforts to entice the U.S. Treasury to give it $50 billion are a desperate response to private capitalists' unwillingness to finance plants they consider too costly and too risky."
https://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Climate/C07-09_NuclearPwrandClimate.pdf
jJack, I hope you take notice!
As to birds. Wind farms are killing birds and bats by the millions. The newer turbines kill just as many as the old. The blades on the new turbines only appear to be turning slowly when in fact they are traveling at over 200mph at their tips. A brand new wind farm in NY has shown to have killed 10,000 birds and bats in its first year of operation. A brand new wind farm off the coast of Norway was responsible for wiping out the breeding population of the endangered white-tailed eagle in ten months including all of their babies.
That doesn't mean that we should ignore bird and bat casualties. But as the Danish study shows, well-located turbines can minimize this. There are plenty of studies into ways to minimize birds and bats being killed. Some report show that more careful siting, design and selecting of the location of the turbines can make a lot of difference.
http://www.nationalwind.org/events/avian/summary.htm
Another recommendation is to make the wind farm responsible for maintaining the population of birds and bats at certain levels. This may involve making the wind farm purchase a habitat and look after conservation of specific species of birds and bats.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/reports/500-04-052/500-04-052_09_CHAPTER-09.PDF
Studies show that modern wind farms with sensitive siting
have no significant adverse effect on bird populations. The
wind energy industry is investing in closely monitoring this
important issue and continues to work vigilantly to avoid any
significant impact.
http://www.canwea.ca/images/uploads/File/NRCan_-_Fact_Sheets/6_wildlife.pdf
Environmentalists agree that the industry has made major progress on wildlife issues since Altamont. "I don't think there's any question that we're doing a better job of siting wind power now than we did a quarter-century ago," says the NRDC's Cavanagh. "I've watched a real evolution within the industry in terms of their sensitivity to this issue."
http://magazine.audubon.org/features0609/energy.html
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=50137
Wind Turbines Not a Threat to U.S. Bird Population, Says Study
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=48393
I think the solution to our energy problem is have a viable mix of all solutions wind, water, solar, nuke.
I always wondered why there is no huge campaign for solar here in Las Vegas. No power isn't incredibly cheap because we live near Hoover Dam. My guess would be something political.
No need for nuke - it's an extremely expensive distraction.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977131568
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977118748