Wind Energy's Ghosts

[Xringer]

Very depressing! It sure sounds like the government has screwed up wind power to a fair-th-well..



American Thinker: Wind Energy's Ghosts


"the US Department of Energy estimates mandate-and-subsidy-driven wind capacity would rise to 28,635mw.

That much coal or nuclear "capacity" would power 28.635 million homes, but wind "capacity" is calculated assuming perfect wind 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. At the best wind sites, such as Kamaoa, newly installed turbines generate only 30-40% of "capacity". At most sites, the figure is 20% or less. After 30 years of development, wind produces only 2.3% of California's electricity. "

[Ryland]

I'm not sure where those numbers come from but at least in Wisconsin your wind turbine rebates are based off of output, not what the label says and that output is based off a site assessment, wind maps and compiled data and in real world testing those numbers are within a few percent of the real world data.

after skimming that page it looks like a rather skewed piece.

[roflwaffle]

No one assumes wind power is constant 24/365. On average the capacity factor of new wind is ~33% or so. Currently wind is installed at a rate that's sufficient to power ~10 million households every year and it's still growing. The wind ptc (subsidy) is ~2c/kWh, which is about 1c/kWh less than the externalized costs of coal, not counting GHG emissions and whatnot. Like Ryland said, it's just a skewed fluff piece.

[Xringer]

Maybe only when they are trying to sell their product?

What I find most interesting is,
"After 30 years of development, wind produces only 2.3% of California's electricity."..

Which indicates (to me anyway) that our government can't get anything right..

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by Xringer

Maybe only when they are trying to sell their product?

I'm not trying to sell anything in the wind power area, but I have lived with wind power for over 25 years along with the fact that I have taken a number of classes on turbine design and site assessment.
That piece takes alot of people out of context and uses examples where someone was trying to make a quick buck, standard maintance is figured at 1% of system cost per year, you will not have to spend that exact amount every year but that is what you should be setting aside.
One of the other things we've learned from the past is that before you put a turbine up you need to have a site assessment done, there are alot of installers that will not even talk to you until you do that where in the past if you had enough money they would put up whatever you asked for, even if it would not work for your site, why did they do this? because they want to do things that work.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by Xringer

Maybe only when they are trying to sell their product?

What I find most interesting is,
"After 30 years of development, wind produces only 2.3% of California's electricity."..

Which indicates (to me anyway) that our government can't get anything right..

Nah, it doesn't have much to do with government, it's just that wind power wasn't really competitive until recently. Cost dropped to a fifth of what it was in 1980 by 2000 IIRC. From 1980 to 2004 there was only ~7GW of wind installed. From 2005 to 2009 there was ~28GW installed, w/ ~10GW of that being installed last year.