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And the biggest hazard and killer of people involving windpower,is all the vaccous hot air from greenies and leftards in the eco-nut movements.Just ask all the kids in Africa who died from a preventable disease,malaria.Oh wait.
The wind farms they have in Southern Alberta are a death trap for birds and bats. And not from the blades.
The birds and bats are basically blowing up inside due to pressure changes caused by these turbines.
When you couple this with the fact that wind power is costing us almost 2x’s as much as basic power, it doesn’t sound like such a great solution to their “global warming” issues.
I like the term “Bird Blenders”.
If my bird doesn’t shut up I might install a ceiling fan.
“When you couple this with the fact that wind power is costing us almost 2x’s as much as basic power, it doesn’t sound like such a great solution to their “global warming” issues.
Posted by: Aizlynne at December 17, 2008 3:10 PM ”
Ah yes. But don’t forget,Aizlynne,the eco-freaks expect us,the taxpayer,to pay for this,so inefficiency and cost doesn’t matter.Ain’t special interest groups fun?
The loon’s hatred of nuclear power is proof enouph for me that the AGW Boogieman or ManBearPig doesn’t exist.
oops typo
*enough*
I think one of those wind turbines would add considerably to the aesthetics of The Nobel Mr. Al Gore’s Tennessee home.
And just think of the increased assessment in property value.
I will give Mr. Gore a discount on Wind Turbine Credits, so he can have the turbine built on somebody else’s property. Please send me your cheque, Mr. Gore. Thank you.
I have a picture of my Dodge Ram pick-up next to one of those HUGE frickin’ windmills in Minnesota. If the door was big enough I could have parked inside the base of the thing. The blades are -much- bigger than a school bus.
Picture three school buses whipping around 200ft in the air, that’s a windmill. Giant rotating mass plus the added fun of 5 megawatts of electricity flying around.
I wouldn’t want to work on it, that’s all I can say.
I’ve been strenuously debating against a bunch of eco nuts on facebook recently over the Saskatchewan plant, and although I demolished a number of their myths, I had to back down on some of my own beliefs…namely that Nuclear power is vastly cheaper than wind power.
Wind is becoming far more affordable even with the added need for an inefficient storage system. It makes more sense to use base line power generation with larger plants like nuclear, and then supplement it with wind rather than invest in costly energy storage plans, but I think that the future may be wind power. There’s alot of promising storage technologies coming through that although they are still a decade off from being commonplace, they’re definitely past the prototype phase.
You need a shitload of these farms in order to generate enough green energy to fuel cities the size of Calgary.
For example, the McBride Lake Wind Farm that Enmax has in the Crowsnest Pass generates enough to run about 29,000 homes.
For that, you need 114 of these wind turbines. The project costs to install the turbines was over $1M.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe wind power is superior to gas or oil. Nope … I don’t buy it.
That rate of 29,000 is per year by the way.
“I had to back down on some of my own beliefs…namely that Nuclear power is vastly cheaper than wind power.”
I’m assuming you’ve got some statistics? Last I heard, wind power was one of the more expensive ways of creating electricity, even without taking storage into account. If you’ve got a link to a credible source that shows otherwise, I’d love to see it.
“I had to back down on some of my own beliefs…namely that Nuclear power is vastly cheaper than wind power.”
I’m assuming you’ve got some statistics? Last I heard, wind power was one of the more expensive ways of creating electricity, even without taking storage into account. If you’ve got a link to a credible source that shows otherwise, I’d love to see it.
“My tipping point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed since I first set my mind against it” ~ Mark Lynas: the green heretic.
So Mr. Lynas has felt the repercussions of going contrary to the most fundamental element of leftie philosophy namely:
Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind’s made up!
I understand that there are at least 1 million people in the NE US that are not thrilled with wind power, combined with ice, today.
No doubt this ‘living-off-the-grid’ stuff picking up steam over the next few years.
I have looked at it casually but maybe its time for a serious look. Its not nice spending 6 ot 12 hrs with no power at 20C below or colder.
Did you know? (2008 edition)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8
Aizlynne,
Looking at the McBride Lake Wind Farm (just google that for the stats on the project) it appears that they have built an _extremely_ cheap wind farm from the numbers that they post. It cost 100 million to build a facility that is rated at 76 MW. I was under the impression that wind usually cost around 2.2 million per MW, but it seems that number may be old since they built theirs for 1.32 million per MW. Here’s a quick breakdown of their numbers:
235,000 MWh per year * 1000 = 235,000,000 KWh
235,000,000 KWh per year * 20 years = 4,700,000,000 KWh of electricity over its lifetime
4.7 billion KWh / 100 million $ = 2.13 cents per kilowatt hour.
I’ve read on wikipedia that about 1/8th the cost of wind power is maintenance and repair, so tack on another 0.3 cents to make the grand total 2.43 cents per KWh.
For nuclear power, I’ve seen numbers that range from as low as 2.5 cents per KWh to as high as 30 cents per KWh. If we look at Saskatchewan’s proposal, it doesn’t look good:
10 billion $ for a 2 GW plant. This works out to 5 million dollars per MW, more than double the 2.2 million per MW that is the average for wind power, and 4 times that of the McBride wind farm. Even if we decide to be nice and assume that these costs include fuel costs, decommissioning, and waste handling for decades to come, (which is not included in the 10 billion, but since 10 billion seems high, I’m going to include that in the cost),and assuming it runs for 35 years with no upgrades or extra costs (which definitely won’t happen) we get these numbers:
2000 MW * 365 days * 24 hours * 35 years * 90% uptime = 551,880,000,000 MWh over its lifetime
10 billion dollars / 551,880,000,000 MWh = 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour.
Now, thats assuming no fuel costs (which are usually around 10% of the cost per kilowatt hour), no decomissioning costs (around 400 million is reasonable, some plants in the U.K. have cost 1 billion due to mismanagement), and no waste storage or operating costs, merely the cost to build the plant.
So all in all they seem fairly equal. Load issues with going completely with wind power can be an issue, which is why I still think we need significant base load power generation capacity until storage technologies become more viable, but I’m just saying its competitive.
I still support the nuclear plant in Saskatchewan, along with some large wind projects to help phase out some of our older natural gas and coal plants.
Clean Coal isn’t fully realized yet, but they’re close. The U.S. makes ~50% of their power from coal, and they have about 200yr supply. Coal is the cheapest way to produce electricity.
Bar_jebus, I prefer this method of calculating the profitability of a wind farm:
Current cost in Alberta is 11.8 Kwhr(according to google)
235,000,000 X .118 = $27,730,000
Or, a 27.7% rate of return, not a bad investment.
You also have to consider upkeep, and even more importantly, land rental.
reg dunlop wrote: “Clean Coal isn’t fully realized yet”
In your estimation, is enriched air (i.e., higher than 21% O2) needed for this to happen or is it all scrubbers or both?
Exactly how many of these windmills are required to replace on nuclear plant?
Cost of the wind farm calculation does not include buffering the power grid against surges. This is the same grid that went down from Chicago to T.O. to NYC a few years ago because a transformer blew someplace in Ontario. Its old, its rickety and it can’t handle power spikes and dips.
Every time the wind picks up or drops a few miles per hour, which is to say pretty much constantly, the generators surge. These fluctuations are more than large enough to blow breakers and -melt- things. Things like inch thick copper bus bars.
So you have to have a mega-capacitor or battery bank to soak up all the surges and dips, or you have to pump water up hill and use it to run a nice smooth turbine, or you have to compress gas and use that to run a nice smooth turbine.
We don’t have any of that. What we have is dozens of multi-million dollar wind generators spinning uselessly, because they AREN’T HOOKED UP. You true believers head up to Bruce peninsula and ask some questions of the guys building those machines, they’ll tell you some interesting stuff.
Wind power as currently being implemented is snake oil.
bar_jebus, you’ve left out a few things. First, thing left out is the capital cost of the $100 million, so what you’ve got is an overnight capital cost only.
Second, for that performance claimed by Enmax, a 35% capacity factor is required. That is unattainable in most of the world. In Quebec’s Gaspe wind farms, the capacity factor averaged about 18 per cent over their first two years of operations. The world average for wind fleets is about 20%.
Third, you’re mixing some apples and oranges with the expected cost of future nuclear power. The Enmax project was contracted for and built prior to the large escalation in the cost of concrete and steel in 2007, both have roughly tripled in cost over the past 18 months. Current estimates for new nuclear are based upon pessimistic assumptions about material and labour costs, while Enmax’s actual costs incurred in the past are not relevant to the current cost of new wind installations. This is particularly important for wind power, as it uses about 50% more steel and concrete per installed MW than does nuclear.
Fourth, the $10 billion number you cite for nuclear came from a US estimate which included transmission costs. The Enmax estimate does not. This is important because transmission requirements for wind is higher because of low generating point density.
Fifth, the 30 cent top end number for nuclear you cite has no credibility, unless you can provide a source. In Ontario, Bruce Power’s contract with the province for reconstruction of the Bruce A plants was 5.8 cents/kWh, for a $10 billion project across four reactors. That includes cost of capital, fuel and fuel disposal and Bruce’s share of site decommissioning. And it’s amortized over 25 years.
Sixth, with respect to costs/kWh, the province of Ontario has been offering standard purchase contracts to wind generators at 14 cents/kWh. At this year’s APPRO conference, the wind folks were saying that given the cost of capital and materials, 14 cents wasn’t enough. They now want cost-plus contracts.
Seventh, you’d best check the real source for that wikipedia reference on maintenance costs, because it is a severe underestimate. The availability (different from capacity factor) of wind turbines is about 85 per cent, dropping to 60 per cent for offshore wind turbines (specific example, the performance of the Horn’s Reef wind farm. Salt water is severe on mechanical rotating devices.) 15% and 40% outage rates mean maintenance costs much higher than what you’ve cited.
Tim, the answer to your question is quite simple. A single Darlington 880 MW nuclear reactor in Ontario produces approximately 7 TWh annually at a capacity factor of about 90% annually. In Ontario, given the province’s wind regime, you need approximately 4000 1 MW wind turbines operating at 20% capacity factor. What has not been factored in is the cost of backup generation for wind power to maintain power quality. The experience in Germany (EOn, the largest wind operator in the world) is that with wind over 10 per cent of total generation on line, it has to be matched by about 90 per cent of its total with backup generation. So, your 4000 MW of wind in fact needs about 3600 MW of backup generation. Far better just to run the backup generation and forget about the silly wind mills.
Nuclear power is relatively safe. The problem comes when something does go wrong. It’s not a little spill, it’s potentially catastrophic with long term effects. The odds of a disaster become more likely as time passes.
I have little fear about the safety of nuclear power. What I do fear are cost overruns, mismanagement, and waste clean up problems in the future. Even so, Ontario has proven they can run a successful nuclear industry, so with proper regulation and oversight I’m quite sure Saskatchewan can as well.
You raise excellent points cgh, and its why I’ve been arguing for nuclear power. I just wanted to point out that I truly do believe that wind power will become a viable alternative as storage technologies become viable in the next decade.
As to costs, I can clearly see your point about the price of labor and construction costs having changed drastically recently, however I don’t believe that its impact would be felt on building a wind farm as much as it would be felt building a nuclear power plant due to the substantial amount of concrete and steel required for one, and also the enormous amount of time required to build them (as opposed to wind power) which is what makes cost overruns such a danger since the labor market is extremely variable.
I just spent a bit of time googling how much concrete and steel is required for 1 MW of wind power and for 1 MW of nuclear and it apparently requires something like 4 – 10 times more steel and concrete for wind power? Thats nuts!
“Nuclear power is relatively safe. The problem comes when something does go wrong. It’s not a little spill, it’s potentially catastrophic with long term effects. The odds of a disaster become more likely as time passes.”
Complete rubbish. We’ve already had the worst possible nuclear plant disaster in Chernobyl in 1986, and its consequences were far less in terms of human injury and fatality and environmental impact with respect to severe industrial or energy system accidents.
“Potentially” is a eco-fearmonger weasel word, meaning nothing unless probabilities are applied. When quantified, they are sufficiently small as to be meaningless. Equally eco-fearmongering is the phrase “more likely as time passes”. You must surely be aware that all industrial processes become more safe, not less safe, over time.
Please be aware that even though you may not share their catastrophic world view, you too have been trapped by the eco-weenies into their apocalyptic mindset and language.
bar-jebus, the 4-10 times number is a bit higher than estimates I’ve seen. The smaller the wind turbine, the greater the amount of steel and concrete for the power generated is what is going on here, I expect. I’ve always used an estimate of 50% more of both, particularly steel, which may be excessively conservative. Just as illustration, the concrete foundation for a wind tower is about five times the size of a city bus. Add those up by the thousands, and you’re talking about a huge load of concrete.
Credit to you bar-jebus, not too many would trouble to look this one up. But that’s the way the energy business is; a lot of things turn out to be counter-intuitive.
Cost overruns? A legitimate concern; it should be noted that cost overruns are endemic to any kind of megaproject, not just nuclear ones. You just have to look at what the oil companies experienced building upgraders in the oil sands. The real issue about overruns is this; to what degree do they affect the economic value of what the facility is supposed to do or to produce?
It’s not really the construction itself that’s the problem, it’s the politics. We’ve all heard of cost overruns with Ontario’s nuclear plants. What most of us haven’t heard is that much of this was purely political. When Darlington was about 1/3 built in 1984, a new government came into office in Ontario. First thing it did was order an 8 month suspension of construction so they could hold a legislative review panel. After that, they ordered that construction be resumed (they decided it was necessary after all) but that two of the reactors be delayed for two years. Remember that this was all financed at 11-17 per cent interest rates, with the interest itself financed. Those two delays alone added billions to the cost and had nothing to do with any difficulties or failings of the project itself. It was pure politics.
The key in Ontario’s case could be that too much government oversight resulted in project delays, rather than just letting the engineers and contractors get on with the job once the decision to build had been made. It’s inevitable really. Megaprojects of any kind usually run longer than a single term in office. Which means that the new gang coming in often wants to stop everything to see what’s going on. Megaprojects also tend to have a LOT of different jurisdictions having some responsibility and capable of bringing it to a halt.
Waste cleanup problems? The biggest one is nuclear fuel waste. That’s the responsibility of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. But, any nuclear plant has to pay for fully the complete cost of its nuclear fuel waste storage and disposal. I can think of few other industries that have been required to assume such responsibility.
Piper Paul.
I think they’re talking a lot higher than 21%, close to pure from what I read. And they have competing methods like gas injection and the weirdest one of all–total gasification, where it’s broken down to co- and hydrogen.