83 Replies to “Giai Blows A Gasket”

  1. Got stuck in traffic and now in a pissy mood huh Pete? Maybe you could take the bus or train tomorrow.
    Oh the humanity, not public transport.

  2. Poopforlife, do you happen to know what the cost per kilowatt hour is from those frakin’ giant bird blenders is?
    Oh wait, never mind, I forgot. You don’t admit that money is a legitimate concern when Mummy Gaia is at stake.
    I’ll redirect my earlier Jeffie poo-boy question to you instead. Why is it do you suppose, if wind power is the greatest thing since Karl Marx, that those good brothers in arms of yours over there in ChicomLand are bringing a new coal fired generating station on-line every week?
    Just sayin’.

  3. Actually Phantom, it might be worse than you think.
    Google “”china 2030 Co2 emissions”
    From Wired:
    “Coal power has been driving the stunning, seven plus percent a year growth in China’s economy. It’s long been said said that China was adding one new coal power plant per week to its grid. But the real news is worse: China is completing two new coal plants per week.”

  4. Dave in AB at February 25, 2008 10:19 PM
    “How much steel”
    A fraction of the steel used on an oil pipeline.
    “concrete goes into building a single wind turbine”
    A tiny fraction of concrete in a nuclear power plant, a coal power plant or a hydro electric dam.
    “Multiply that by thousands”.
    Ok let’s take a look. China’s Three Gorges Dam used 27,200,000 cubic metres of concrete. That means that one dam used the equivalent concrete that would be used in about one million wind turbines. But the dam puts out about the equivalent power of 23000 wind turbines similar to the one at the CNE grounds. As long as the wind blows for the wind turbines or there is water for the dam of course.
    “How much energy does that take to fabricate, transport, build on-site?”
    The turbine is transported only once. How much does it take to transport thousands of tons of coal across thousands of miles EVERY DAY.
    Connect it all to the grid?
    It depends on the location of the farm. But it would be no more than any other form of generation.
    “How much land does all this use?”
    The land under a wind farm is dual use, it shares the land with agriculture. How many other forms of energy can make that claim?
    Does this still sound green to you?
    Why, yes it does.

  5. cgh:
    “The cost for wind you quote doesn’t include the 1.8 cents direct subsidy to the producer paid by the federal government.”
    Where do you get the 1.8 cent figure? Following is the Wind Power producers Incentive (WPPI)
    Commissioning Date (WPPI for 10 year period)
    April 1, 2002 to March 31, 2003 inclusive (1.2 cents per kWh)
    After March 31, 2003 and on or before March 31, 2006 ( 1.0 cent)
    After March 31, 2006 and on or before March 31, 2007 ( 0.8 cent )
    http://www.cbsc.ic.gc.ca/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1081944217575&pagename=CBSC_ON%2Fdisplay&lang=en&c=Finance
    “The commitment of funds for wind energy projects under the WPPI program ended on March 31, 2007.”
    http://www.canren.gc.ca/programs/index.asp?CaId=107&PgId=622
    “Further wind only exists in Europe because of a highly consumer unfriendly measure called feed in tariffs. Go look it up.”
    I know all about feed in tariffs, in Ontario it’s referred to as the Standard Offer Contract or Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP). RESOP pays 11 cents per kWh for wind, biogas and small hydro with inflation protection limited to 20% of the CPI. Solar photovoltaics have a rate of 42 cents per kWh with no inflation protection.
    At a recent conference, a spokesman from the Ontario Power Authority stated the entire RESOP cost approximately 0.075% of the total cost of electricity. Hardly breaking the bank. BTW – the reason for the high solar rate is to encourage a knowledge base in Ontario if/when solar costs drop. I was doubtful but given a recent announcement by Nanosolar that they can now produce thin film panels for as little as 99 cents per watt, who knows.
    “it also ignores the fact that the turbine is always turning, even if the windspeed is too low to generate anything. Wind turbines require excitation current for the converter and to power the gearbox”
    Interesting given the sites I’ve visited (e.g. Shelburne and Lake Erie Shores) in light winds where the turbines have been still.

  7. Several people have commented as if wind power could supply a high percentage of required power. Even people in the industry acknowledge that wind power is a niche player that could supply perhaps 10% of total energy.
    Lev: “Those white tubes that the turbines are on top of are fiberglass, those in souther Alberta are made in Crossfield, AB.”
    I’m surprised although I know the blades are GRP. All of the turbines I have seen have steel towers. Here is excellent background information on turbine construction:
    http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/manu/towerm.htm
    cgh: “A typical wind turbine has a capacity factor of about 20 per cent. “
    A typical wind turbine is not considered economic at 20% capacity. The cut off figure is in the 30% range based upon long term weather data. Wind does have a problem (in Ontario at least) in that it’s seasonal with low production during summer and peaking during winter.
    “Tom Adams says Ontario’s wind turbines are not performing up to expectations. In fact, they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. The wind does not blow all the time or at the optimum speed, so wind turbines are expected produce at 27% to 32% of what they could do under perfect conditions.”
    “In their first year, Ontario’s turbine fleet operated at 29%. This compares with 27.4 % in the U.K., 24.6% in Spain, 24% in Denmark and still less in Sweden and Germany.”
    http://www.financialpost.com/money/rrsp/Story.html?id=119666

  8. This is so simple.
    The designer allowed too much prop flex and not enough clearance from the main frame or a combination of both.
    The model A Ford was much better than the model T. = TG

  9. jeffy
    “””””yah! cuz 6 storey smokestacks spewing poison into the atmosphere is way more attractive and far safer than a windmill.”””””
    wot poison, wid klean burn technology, no poison jeffy my boy
    I’m em bare assed to have to point this out to ewe!!!!!

  10. Libforlife, you’re using only a few of the numbers. First, you’re ignoring capacity factor. 3 Gorges makes power essentially at 100 per cent capacity factor, wind at best at a quarter to a fifth of that. Second, the expected service life of a dam is more than a century. The service life of a wind turbine is 20 years at best. Third, 3 Gorges would be completely necessary even without any power generation whatsoever. It’s called flood control.
    No libforlife, the T and D requirement is not the same. You have to build lines to meet the maximum capacity but you’re only delivering a fifth of the time. Hence, far more transmission infrastructure per unit of energy produced. Your comments on transport costs are silly. They’re factored into the construction and operating costs of wind and coal, respectively.
    John, the Ontario numbers are not indicative of a large fleet performance. Ontario has a handful of optimum sites built in such generally ideal locations as exist in the province. Start building thousands or tens of thousands of the things and you have to use less than optimum sites. Read the EOn report, its all in there. Read the OPA power supply report and try figuring out just how costly the enabler lines will be. Moreover, you quote Ontario but conveniently don’t mention Quebec. The windfarms in Gaspe have produced less than 20 per cent in supposedly a better wind regime. Next, the OPA’s comment on proportion of costs is utterly absurd, and you should know it. The OPA is calling for more than 3000 MW of the things. How much of a cost escalator do you think wind and solar will be creating when they’re 20 plus per cent of Ontario’s electricity supply rather than the trivial less than 1 per cent now? Keeping trivial the costs of renewables is entirely dependent upon a large supply of things like nuclear producing most of the kWh.
    “Even people in the industry acknowledge that wind power is a niche player that could supply perhaps 10% of total energy.”
    If only it were true. Instead, too many of the politicals, including the OPA who should know better, talk in terms of much higher proportions of the total mix. You’re aware I trust of the EU’s renewable energy standard.
    Glad to hear you know all about FITs. Since that’s the case then presumably you agree that they are utterly and entirely hostile to consumer interest.

  11. Dave in AB, I like these technologies too. But they can only be used on the scale for which they are appropriate. As soon as you see large scale FIT programs, along with the huge interest free loan programs that the German state banks dumped into creating them however, you start to realize that what has been created is something of a monster. These are all signs of a technology being forced by policymakers (mostly of the Green persuasion) into a role which it cannot function economically and effectively.

  12. Greenneck is a true conservative.
    He has chosen to be self reliant at his own expense.
    I thank you for doing your part. If we all did something along these lines our massive energy web could be more easily maintained in top condition.
    Can*t understand all the emotion and name calling over a mechanical design failure.
    Wind generation has it*s uses and it*s weaknesses, just as all other man made machines do.
    I want to welcome all the Liberal converts to SDA. Heated emotions will calm down somewhat over time, I hope. = TG

  14. This thread really points out the difference in liberals and conservatives. The cons present facts and reasoning in pointing out the real time problems with wind power. The liberals react with their emotion, attacking those who give the factual analysis of why wind power, at this time, is not practical. This infuriates the liberals who stamp their feet, pout and demand that wind power be implemented anyway no matter the cost.
    We all would like clean, non polluting power but as Pete has so aptly pointed out leftists constantly obstruct and delay anything like modern incinerators or nuclear power plants as Miller and his comrades have in Toronto.

  15. “Does this still sound green to you?
    Why, yes it does.”
    Let’s examine that…
    “But the dam puts out about the equivalent power of 23000 wind turbines”
    But 23000 turbines isn’t enough to generate 24 Gw as that assumes 100% full wind blowing 24 x 365 which is not realistic.
    Using John B’s numbers of 30%, that means you need more like 80,000 turbines, and even with that means you still have to deal with:
    1) What happens when the wind doesn’t blow when you need power (you need backup generation capacity)
    2) What happens when the wind blows but there is not demand (you can’t store power on a large scale, at least with hydro you could pump water back behind the dam)
    3) Where is your power is being generated (if you are producing electricty far away from a city, you have to deal with tranmission losses – Manitoba Hydro uses DC transmission to move power from it’s large hydro dams, but the hardware is expensive)
    4) How do you deal with peak demand (wind remains unpredictable, you can’t increase it on demand if the wind isn’t blowing hard enough, so you need sufficient backup peak capacity – this is no different from nuclear or coal but the amount of peak capacity is lower as the baseload you can produce is higher)
    Regarding your material argument “A tiny fraction of concrete in a nuclear power plant, a coal power plant or a hydro electric dam.”
    Google “Constructing a lot of nuclear power plants is not material constrained”
    Nuclear power plants:
    40 metric tons of steel, and 190 cubic meters of concrete, for each megawatt of average capacity.
    Modern wind energy systems with good wind conditions:
    460 metric tons of steel and 870 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt.
    Modern central-station coal:
    98 metric tons of steel and 160 cubic meters of concrete — almost double the material needed to build nuclear power plants.
    Natural gas combined cycle plants:
    3.3 metric tons of steel and 27 cubic meters of concrete
    So…wind requires 10 times more steel and 4 times more concrete per megawatt than nuclear.
    Multiply that by tens of thousands of wind turbines and 3 Gorges looks like a cheap deal.
    So, with all that I’ll ask again – Does wind still sound green to you?
    Because it doesn’t look like it to me.

  16. Why 80,000 wind turbines in a single grid?
    One problem and everybody is in the dark. How stupid is that?
    80,000 wind gen sets on farms and rural properties would blend in easily and a massive outage would be impossible.
    You never get something worth having for peanuts. = TG

  17. No, TG, the centralized grid system has evolved for very good reason. If you do what you suggest, you don’t have 80,000 going out all at once, you have lots of little grids going out all the time. Shrink the size of the grid and you increase the amount of total reserve generation required to ensure reliability. What’s worse, power quality becomes very difficult to control on lots of little grids, particularly if they’re interconnected.

  18. Cgh: you brought up the issue of cavitation and I am not sure that it is applicable here. Cavitation is caused by pressure dropping below the boiling point of a fluid. Air does not have a similar boiling point so cavitation does not take place or have I missed something.
    For what its worth, I have no objection to nuclear power plants as a transitional phase. If we are to move away from fossil fuels it will require a large number of different strategies. For example at current prices I think that OTEC may be worth another try where a sufficient thermocline exists. Is the plant in Hawaii still operating? Solar as appropriate, etc. The only one I am skeptical about is wave energy and – to a certain extend – tidal power.
    John

  19. “Even if there was severe climate change that would kill off a large chunk of population of Earth, wouldn’t that suit the people hating Left just fine?”
    Aren’t you the one who’s always advocating genocide? Quite whining. At best, accidents like this will kill tree-huggers, which is what you want, right?
    That video’s a photo-shop job. An obvious and inept fraud.

  22. “Don’t be utterly stupid, CBCfan.”
    What? I’m just trying to fit in:
    “Someone brings a fan to a windmill fight.
    Rotor envy there Fanny?”

  24. Wow, one video and all the “experts” come out of the woodwork and the leftoids start to try and psychoanalyze Kate not to mention the ad hominem attacks.
    Fact is that propellers, rotors and wind generators utilize something called pitch to maintain a controllable rotation speed. Overspeed a prop on an aircraft and you sort of get the same (catastrophic) result.
    btw, in the technology world, expert is defined as the combination of “x” which is an unknown quantity and “spurt” which is a drip under pressure.

  25. Many greens support wind turbines over nucular power plants even the WORLD WILDLIFE FUND put on a dumb TV ads supporting windturbines but these things are bird killers so wind turbines are not enviromentaly freindly so why dont the eco-freaks go take a hike AND WATCH OUT SQUAWK SQUAWK IM ON THEIR WAY SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK

  28. Dave in AB at February 26, 2008 12:43 AM
    Worried about transport of that power are you? How far is it from Toronto to Abitibi? There is always a demand somewhere on the grid Wind is the cheapest and most efficient means of producing power but only when the when the wind blows, so naturally it couldn’t be the only form source of power. But it is a very rare day when there is no wind at any of the wind farms and when the wind is blowing it alleviates the demand on dirtier and more dangerous forms of generation.

  29. Lib: Trust me, I’m not “worried” about power transport. Everything can be done for a cost. It is just that if you find a good location with lots of wind (like off shore), don’t be surprised that it is far away from where you want it.
    Why does Manitoba sells lots of hydro power to Minnesota rather than Toronto? Not because they don’t want to sell to Toronto, but because it isn’t cost effective to run a tranmission grid all the way through Ontario.
    My point of all the posting is to say that if you look at all the numbers (efficiency of costs and materials used) wind will be little more than an expensive niche power producer. Too few people seem to be thinking about how to generate the other 90% of power required.
    Now, you can disagree, that’s OK. And I wouldn’t refuse someone dropping a large contract on me to build all those wind turbines and the distrubution network.
    But because I don’t see wind as the big fix, I don’t “hate” the environment. I just think there are more effective ways to conserve resources (and money is a limited resource) to generate power.

  31. Besides there are lots of good locations along the lakes being used now with many more acres of land that can be developed near existing transmission lines. Much closer than Manitoba, Abitibi or James Bay.

  33. Actually, just go to the projects page here:
    www dot hydro dot mb dot ca
    Current MB Hydro production capacity 5000Mw (98% of total capacity is hydroelectricity) and the province will be adding another 2200 Mw of hydro over the same time period.
    Currently, the St Leon MB wind farm (100 Mw Capacity) is the only operating facility. There is currently a proposal to add another 300Mw of capacity, but no projects have been approved yet.

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