Twisting in the wind
If one of the most senior executives from the world’s largest wind farm developer says that the wind industry has an image problem, then it’s probably likely wind has an image problem.
According to various reports from the Future Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi last month, the comments were made by Vestas vice president Morten Albaek, who conceded that the industry had underestimated the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) syndrome, and had done too little to fight the “rumours and conspiracy theories” around wind turbines.
But how far does this image problem extend? Enough, Albaek suggested, to affect political decision making. The newly elected Victorian government’s stance on wind suggests this is starting to take hold here, and many proposed wind farms may now be threatened by its proposed planning laws. In any event, the strength of the NIMBY syndrome in Australia, and the ability of the wind industry to state its case, is about to be tested with Senate Inquiry into wind power, sponsored by Stephen Fielding, the Family First Senator.
Fielding is a noted climate sceptic, and like many who share his stance, can’t stand the idea of wind energy. Neither can the pro-nuclear lobby. These are often, though not exclusively, the same people. It’s not all about ideology though. Submissions to the inquiry, which close today, suggest others just can’t stand the sight of them. Some say it’s the noise and vibrations that makes them sick; others, just the thought of them. Some claim it is causing land values to fall, others begrudge the fact that their neighbours are earning income from wind when they are not. Some just want clarity about planning rules.
And there are plenty of submissions from individuals, local communities and corporations that offer a completely different perspective, and underline wind power's importance as a renewable fuel, providing local jobs and its role in reducing carbon emissions. The Clean Energy Council has filed a detailed report answering the concerns about health, land values, the planning process, carbon emissions and costs.
About one quarter of the objections lodged by Wednesday came from individuals overseas, many from climate sceptics. Some are absurd, such as the contention by noted sceptic Lord Monckton that investing in projects such as the $2 billion Thames offshore wind project in the UK will subtract up to $830 trillion from global GDP. A group of artists led by Peter Russell-Clarke fears the loss of turbine-free landscapes to paint.
Still, what worries the industry most is that some of the more fanciful claims are being accepted without question by the mainstream media. An example is the editorial in the Weekend Australian on February 5-6 which stated, as a matter of fact, that carbon abatement costs for wind were $500 a tonne of CO2e, compared with $15 for gas.
This just happens to correspond with the submission from the Australian Landscape Guardians, a well-organised group with alleged links to pro-nuclear and climate sceptic lobbies, who base their estimate on a series of assumptions that are rejected by the wind industry and declared to be just plain wrong by the market operator.
The chief among these is the claim that wind needs a like-for-like back-up from other power sources – which should be added to its costs. The AMEO, the market operator, confirms that there is no more stand-bye capacity now than there was before wind was introduced to the grid (there is now 1.8GW of it). In fact there is less, because it has learned to manage the network more efficiently.
Wind may be intermittent, but it is predictable. The AEMO is using systems that deliver 96 per cent accuracy on wind capacity, which means that wind does displace output and emissions from coal-fired stations, and not just gas. Most gas plants being built now are designed to respond to peak energy demand, rather than as a back-up to wind. And while wind can’t simply be switched on to respond to peak demand, its presence can lessen the pain – on February 1, when peak prices surged to $12,500 a megawatt hour in Victoria, they remained at around $50/MWh in Adelaide, which still had temperatures well into the 30s that day.
The point of all this, the industry says, is that it is wrong to simply add the costs of wind power on to the cost of gas plants and other stand-by facilities, and then declare this to be the cost of wind abatement. The Clean Energy Council says the cost of wind abatement lies at around $50-$100 per MWh, depending on the location and whether the wind is displacing coal or gas.
The wind industry contends that the high wind capacity in South Australia (22 per cent) has actually caused average wholesale market prices to fall. And the industry is also delighting in a recent incident in Texas, where 7000 MW of coal- and gas-fired generator capacity was suddenly lost due to freezing weather. The state’s wind turbines continued at capacity, replacing more than half of the lost load and keeping the lights on for most users.
Much of the criticism, the wind industry says, comes from people who don’t understand how the market works. AEMO’s Senior Manager Strategy & Economics, Craig Oakeshott, in a detailed report (written in a private capacity) says: “The assertions of very limited greenhouse gas abatement from wind turbines is based on a limited analysis of the behaviour of the overall generation supply portfolio to match demand and the false assumption about coal consumption not varying with generation output.”
It is often claimed that countries that have introduced a lot of wind capacity – such as Denmark – have failed to reduce emissions. But Denmark, which sources 24 per cent of its electricity from wind, has cut its CO2 emissions from electricity by a third – from 477 grams per kWh in 1990 to to 308 grams in 2008, according to the International Energy Agency Over the same period, Australia’s rose from 815 g/kWh to 883 g/kWh.
There is no doubt that the wind industry has its challenges. Wind energy parks will be built in areas which don’t deliver as much wind as expected, diminishing returns, and the European wind industry – including Vestas – is under huge pressure from the emergence of lower cost Chinese producers. And policy changes and a fall in the gas price has caused investment in new wind parks in the US to decline dramatically, even while they are soaring in China and other countries.
Wind is recognised as being more expensive, but costs are coming down. The US Department of Energy says the costs in high-resource areas in the US is now falling towards new gas and coal developments, with the best at $59/MWh. A recent survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance also showed this to be true in strong resource areas in the US, Brazil, Sweden, and Mexico, which displayed a levelised cost of energy below $68/MWh.
There are about 150,000 turbines around the world, with an installed capacity of some 194GW, and that number, according to the IEA, could grow by another 40GW a year out to 2030 to provide between 12 and 20 per cent of the world’s energy requirements. That represents an annual investment of more than $80 billion. It’s a prospect that terrifies wind's industry opponents.
In Australia, wind is expected to account for the large part of the 20 per cent renewable energy target – an investment of more than $20 billion over the next decade in around 12GW of new capacity, with construction jobs for more than 17,000 people, according to the Clean Energy Council.
In the meantime, though, the industry needs to deal with its critics, and what Ken McAlpine, the head of policy and government relations at Vestas in Australia, describes as “the false, defamatory and misleading claims of anti-wind energy groups who have gone to great lengths to divide rural communities and create fear among local residents in recent years.”
And, as evidenced in the extraordinary scenes last October, when several dozen protestors were involved in a spiteful protest against the Hepburn Wind Farm, a two-turbine facility that got 95 per cent community support, and is owned by the local community, there will be no lack of emotion.
Comments on this article
wind again
When people can hear them 20 km away dont tell me they are wonderful. Try doing research like europes ill wind, rare earth mineral mining in China and then tell me wind is great. So many people have fallen ill and many are now walking off their farms. Not because they could accept money to have turbines but because it made them ill. You do not walk off a farm which has taken years to make a showpiece and worth well over $1 million. DO THE PROPER RESEARCH AND FIND OUT ABOUT ALL THE PLACES WITH PROBLEMS ALL OVER THE WORLD. If they are so wonderful why do they have to have backup from coal or gas 24/7 running at half speed in case there is no wind or too much and usually when needed most are not running but using generators to keep going without turning blades.
The point of all this, the
The point of all this, the industry says, is that it is wrong to simply add the costs of wind power on to the cost of gas plants and other stand-by facilities, and then declare this to be the cost of wind abatement. The Clean Energy Council says the cost of wind abatement lies at around $50-$100 per MWh, depending on the location and whether the wind is displacing coal or gas. find big files
The "Amount of Salt"
Using figures from the ZCA report, I calculated that they would need a minimum of 18 million tonnes. The actual figure would be more like 20 million tonnes.
The report quotes that this would give 24 hours storage - they should have written "up to" 24 hours storage. The average storage will be about a third of this.
Tanks would need to be dimensioned to give us more like 48 - 72 hours of peak storage to give us continuous power.
The amount of solar power they quote we would need, is based on growth figures that are too low.
A more realistic amount of salt mixture required would be closer to 50 million tonnes.
Fertiliser grade nitrates are too impure. Salt mixtures for MSS usage, are sold pre-mixed, or separated, in 40kg and 100kg packs. Annual production figures from companies around the world are quoted in 1000s of tonnes, not millions.
The amount of salt????
David - "The amount of "salt mixture" needed is incredible."
The salt that is used is a mixture of pottasium nitrate and sodium nitrate otherwise known as fertiliser - at least the KNO3 part.
http://www.sandia.gov/Renewable_Energy/solarthermal/NSTTF/salt.htm
I can't see a problem with the amount of salt required - what is your objection?
France 5, Denmark 1
I didn't include it because it's not on the page that I linked to. Not that I'm necessarily disputing the sentence as quoted, I just haven't seen it before, nor the report you refer to.
The more I look into this issue, the more it appears that an apples/apples comparison is not that straightforward. The Danish example is especially clouded because of factors like how their import/export profile has changed over that time (e.g. the role played by Scandinavian hydro), in addition to if/how the direct heating is accounted for, among others. Be that as it may, the main point (as far as I'm concerned, anyway) remains that because of its superior nuclear/renewable generation mix, French electricity's CO2 intensity is many times lower than it was pre-nuclear (never mind 40%), and is at least four times better than Denmark's, now.
France wins the World Climate Mitigation Cup by a street.
Wind farms are not the answer
There is enough commercial roof space in Australia to produce all our energy requirements using solar. Ten year pay back and get free electricity for 10 years. Energy companies don't want this because they won't own the infrastructure. Equity companies don't like it because they can't build and sell wind farms to the energy companies and Government solar incentives are not available. Our taxes pay for the wind farms that are sold to Energy companies and consumers pay higher electricity cost. 20% power loss delivery wind energy - 0% solar power and building owners get cheaper electricity. Wake up Australia, we are being conned.
Denmark 1, Australia 0
Very good, Mark, but why don't you include the rest of the sentence from that report? Here it is: One kWh of electricity sold in Denmark in 2009 led to 567 grams of CO2emissions. In 1990 CO2emissions amounted to 937 grams per kWh of electricity sold. This corresponds to a reduction of 39.6%." Different figures (adjusted for your heating), but same result. It's a fascinating report, I'd suggest people read it.
Personally, I like my Weet-bix cold.
Danish wind energy is a mirage
There was a recent article in this website that contrasted Denmark's decision to go wind versus France's decision to build conventional nuclear power plants.
Europe is just like Australia - it consists of many little countries. The only difference is we call our "Economic Union" a Commonwealth, and we call our countries "States".
Power sharing in this Commonwealth is rather pathetic. This is because each state has been individually responsible for decision making regarding the generation and the distribution of electricity.
Well it is the same in Europe. They have some load sharing but the inter-country links do not have high capacities
Whilst much of Europe has some great wind resources, unless they can share the power generated from it with other countries using wind, they are wasting valuable money that would've been better spent building conventional nuclear power plants. Very sad, but true.
Countries like Australia, the USSR, the USA and Canada can build large energy grids because we have such huge land masses. The politics of Europe make this task seemingly impossible.
Peter Lang is not the only critic of the BZE report
Peter Lang is not the only critic of the ZCA2020 report.
I too have criticised that report. I have serious doubts as to the claims made regarding their MSS heat storage. The amount of "salt mixture" needed is incredible. There were some other aspects as well that seemed dubious.
Unlike Peter Lang though, I am optimistic that there are heat storage solutions in evolution that will make solar concentrator technology viable soon.
I have the same view regarding IFR (Gen IV) reactors. Someone will build one soon and prove they work.
Right now the only known, working, methods of producing reasonably large amounts of electricity are conventional nuclear power stations, and wind. Without a large energy grid, the latter is a waste of money.
A large energy grid also helps the nuclear political process because it will allow you to build them anywhere where there is sufficient coolant.
We need to do something now. I say we should try to get the education/political process started on nuclear power AND build a national electricity grid, AND build windfarms.
Danish electricity emission intensity
"Denmark, which sources 24 per cent of its electricity from wind, has cut its CO2 emissions from electricity by a third – from 477 grams per kWh in 1990 to to 308 grams in 2008, according to the International Energy Agency..."
Funny, that's not what the Danes' own figures say, here: http://www.ens.dk/en-us/info/factsandfigures/keyfigures/sider/danishkeyf..., which give their 2009 electricity CO2 emission intensity as 567 g/Kwh. Giles, I think you've been misled by the IEA figures' lumping of electricity with heat generation, which say more about how the Danes get 82% of their renewable energy from biomass than they do about wind.
And really, it shouldn't have taken Peter Lang to point out that your 'western deserts' notion blithely glided over the implied need for transcontinental distribution. (I also seem to recall that electrical resistance rises with temperature - can anyone say how significant this is?). Never mind the question of how you're going to microwave your Weet-Bix on those cold, still winter mornings.
Run the Numbers?????
Peter Land - "You clearly have never tried to run any numbers youself. The cost of a distributed wind farm system across Australia, interconnected with a national grid, would far exceed the cost of providing reliable, clean energy with nuclear."
And neither have you. You have done nothing but 'back of the envelope calculations' loaded against renewables and minimising the cost of nuclear. Yours is the ONLY critique of the BZE plan and basically could not be more wrong.
BTW the OZ energy site that Barry assists on has a very interesting post in the Tea Room:
http://www.oz-energy-analysis.org/docs/BMcM_Jan2011_transmission_analysis_tearoom_draft.pdf
It shows that the cost of 75% wind solution including optimised tranmission lines is approx $6000/kW which is far less that the real cost of nuclear which is approx $8000/kW at the moment.
Giles, you haven't crunched the numbers
Giles,
You clearly have never tried to run any numbers youself. The cost of a distributed wind farm system across Australia, interconnected with a national grid, would far exceed the cost of providing reliable, clean energy with nuclear.
And even if you did build such a system, you could still not get reliable power from wind.
Adding solar doesn't solve the problem as clearly shown in the ZCA2020 report (Figres 41 to 4.5 from memory). Read one of the many critiques here (and try to understand it):
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
The answer is in the west
Mark, you said: "Except that peak demand on hot summer days is not at noon. Far from it, in fact - more like 4 pm, just as insolation is beginning to plummet."
Which is why it's jolly fortunate that the deserts and best solar radiation in Australia, the US and China are found to the west of the major population centres, and therefore working later into the evening - a point made in some detail by those rabid greenies and no-nothings at Siemens, GE, Alstom and elsewhere.
More facts less wind
Many nuclear proponents, including some commenters on this page, seem to think that Fast Reactor technology is available.
This is not the case. The US were building a pilot one, but, tragically, it was cancelled as being "unnecessary" during the Clinton administration.
In my view, it would be very good if our government would contribute funding towards building one in Australia. If it can achieve what its proponents argue, then it has to be a good idea.
What attracts me most to the technology is that it is supposed to be able to use existing waste and decommissioned nuclear arsenal as fuel whilst producing little or no waste.
I believe though, that we cannot wait for this to happen. We need to act now. With a national energy grid, wind power can give us baseload power. Without a grid, it is just a waste of valuable resources. We should start to build a proper energy grid first - windfarms can come later.
Solar technology, for many reasons, is not yet ready. Geothermal needs to prove itself first. We have little altitude and less water so Hydro is not an option for us.
Not so obvious - heat does not equal light
GP said "...power sources that respond to heat waves, I would have thought the answer was obvious - solar!"
Except that peak demand on hot summer days is not at noon. Far from it, in fact - more like 4 pm, just as insolation is beginning to plummet.
Peter, this is what i mean
Perhaps you should read to the end of the sentence. In this instance, wind was blowing so the SA customers were lucky enough to pay not much for their energy, while wholesale prices in Victoria went through the roof. There is no dispute over intermittency. Wind is an asset when it is blowing, but most people with a proper understanding of the energy market dispute your contention that it is a liability when it is not. As for power sources that respond to heat waves, I would have thought the answer was obvious - solar!
Stephen Gloor - quote from Barry Brook answers your assertions
"I’ve been forced to conclude that these so-called environmental organisations are not actually interested in climate change mitigation or clean energy supply.
Their founding principles are to oppose nuclear technology in all forms. They are immune to arguments based on logic or scientific evidence.
They ignore technological developments that solve the long-lived nuclear waste problem (it is burned as energy in fast spectrum reactors).
They can’t seem to accept the fact that there is enough uranium to provide the whole world with zero-carbon power for millions of years.
All they care about is being anti-nuclear.
Fortunately, the world is passing them by. Australia should too. It’s time to go nuclear green."
Sophie Vorrath, what does he mean
Sophie what does "lessen the pain" mean when talking about wind energy? What are the units of pain?
Surely, you must realse that this is nonsense. Wind power does not help at all when it is not blowing - which happens across the NEM from time to time. Recently, during very hot weather in Adelaide, all the SA wind farms stopped generating - they produced negligible output. This happens frequenly in heat waves when most needed. I linked to the charts in an earlier post. Look for yourself.
Wind Farm image problem
So fascinated by this that I visited Waubra wind farm - just about Australia's largest - today. Moderate winds turbines turning steadily if not briskly. Sound from turbines at boundary of farm say 150 metres from nearest turbine as good as imperceptible.Credible, readily available independent studies have demolished all the arguments of the anti-wind farm agitators. No wind-turbine syndrome but some evidence of psychosomatically generated symptoms in a minute minority. No loss of property value due to wind farm proximity. High community acceptance of wind power and wind farms, and so on. Nevertheless the fences in the vicinity of the Waubra windfarm(s) liberally sprinkled with hand painted signs expressing vehement opposition to the wind farm(s). Go figure. My conclusion? These people have been lied to big time. Commenters demanding evidence of this and that should simply educate themselves there is a great deal of balanced credible material available on the net.
Some Facts please
Typical annual capacity factors for windfarms are between 20-40% depending on location.
Along Bass strait, West coast of Tasmania, Sth West WA, you would be looking at the higher end of this scale. Inland NSW you would be looking at the lower end of this scale.
BUT, what is more important, is what is the worst case value over a set of windfarms.
In November 2010? we had a particular day where the actual output of all the windfarms in NSW, Victoria, and SA dropped to something like 2% (ouch!)
The fact is that a high pressure system can be that large.
Unless you can aggregate wind power over an area the size of Australia, you will not get anything like 20-40% minimum output.
It is important to remember, though, that large High Pressure systems have strong fronts, so the worse the situation is in one region, the better it will be in another.
Stephen Fielding, the Family
Stephen Fielding, the Family First Senator who went to America for some climate sceptic training before the last election- oh yea ok then I have complete trust in him to solve the issue!
Facts Please
I would like to be able to form an opinion regarding wind farms. I see lots of reference to installed capacity, however without details of generated Mw per annum, these figures are useless. I've now seen wind farms in several parts of the world. It seems lots of the turbines are not rotating.
Unreliable turbines, national grid again
Turbine technology is constantly evolving.
The two largest windfarms in the world, the Roscoe Wind Farm and the Horse Head windfarms currently use older technology turbines and they are not experiencing reliability issues(as far as I am aware). This may be the case for newer windfarms coming online soon, using newer generation turbines.
A technology to watch is that developed by AMSC. They have developed wire technology that is 100 times less resistive than copper. This will make 10MW turbines small enough to be easy to mount, and, in theory could make long distance transmission very efficient without the need for UHV voltages, ie EHV DC would be sufficient to cross the Nullarbor with 10GW pair links for instance.
A true national grid would give us a sustained 30-33% capacity factor from windpower.
The reality is that we will use nuclear, wind, some hydro, some PVA, maybe solar concentrators, and maybe geothermal. The mix will vary with geography and the rate at which technology advances.
Building a national grid has to be useful no matter which technologies we use.
FUDmaster at his best
Peter Lang - "When demand peaks, the wind power is frequently zero."
I am sure it is however most, if not all, largely renewable plans for Australia include many different generators. Hot weather is usually very sunny where the rooftop PV and large scale solar plants will be taking up the slack. And again if you are actually reading the comments often large thermal power stations have to shut down or reduce their output because of cooling water concerns.
Wind is not the only answer and no one single power source should be thought of as the "answer". Thinking nuclear is the one and only solution to all the world's problems is the main example of your myopia.
Twisting the wind facts
Giles,
If noise is not an issue why have Stanwell Corp purchased and demolished homes at Toora? Why has Acciona bought off Trish Godfrey at Waubra and made her sign a gag order?
If the cost of wind energy keeps coming down, why is a figure of $100/mwh now quoted when a few years ago it was $75? If costs keep coming down why does the industry keep mewling for increased subsidies? More profit?
Vestas was happy to take tax credits off the federal government and then promptly shut its local manufacturing operations and shoot off to China.
Rather than criticising the position of the Baillieu government and their desire to protect rural communities from these carpetbaggers you could expend some journalistic energy in seeing who has made millions from Bracks/Brumby soft planning laws, open access to awesome landscapes and bulldozing local communities.
You cannot escape the fact that wind energy is intermittent, unreliable, expensive and totally reliant on subsidies to be viable. Unfortunately green tokenism and rampant profiteering rules many sectors without proper scrutiny.
Thank God for The Australian. Where were you on
It’s a prospect that terrifies wind's industry opponents.
It is definitely terrifying when people promote wind power; costly, dangerous, bird-killing, budget-busting, ineffective wind power. Here are some reasons to terrify you -
The Perils of Wind Farms: http://tinyurl.com/6dg9lat
Editor's note -- Clarification
*Regarding the disputed quote about peak power in the summary for this story: "Wind power is expected to play a big part in helping Australia meet its renewable energy and peak power needs." Giles Parkinson did not actually assert this in his article, it was written by a sub editor, and has since been corrected.
What Giles does say in his article is that: "while wind can’t simply be switched on to respond to peak demand, its presence can lessen the pain."
John Hill talking about cognitive dissonance
"...who can only see the nuclear option. ... The is cognitive dissonance at its best."
That is not a correct interpretation of what I am advocating. I suggest France has the mix about right. It has low-cost, reliable, clean and near zero emissions electricity. The cognitive dissonance is displayed by those waho cannot accept this. It is also from nuclear deniers like Stephen Gloor, the Greens, and the ACF, FoE spokespersons who want nuclear banned completely.
Gear Oil
John Hill - Can anyone add to this? Has a solution been found?
Sure has - don't have gears.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon
Puts all the compexity into the electronics which are orders of magnitude more reliable than mechanical parts.
Martin Strandgard - wrong!
Martin Strandgard,
Sorry you are dead wrong. Look through these charts showing wind power and demand (select the wind farm outputs by month). http://windfarmperformance.info/
When demand peaks, the wind power is frequently zero.