Y2Kyoto: We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Fans

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I love good research...

Yeah, but with wind farms you're view isn't obscured by those pesky red-tailed hawks sitting on fence posts.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3803594

One of the suggested mitigation methods is to shut down the turbines in strong winds. Thanks a bunch.

Gonna need more gopher traps.

I have known it for a while, but it just may be becoming common knowledge, part of the vernacular if you will, that nuclear costs less than wind.

T Boone Pickens also doesn't need no Stinking Giant Fans. See Today's WSJ article

Pickens Shelves Texas Wind Project

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704675104575001290675508802.html

Numbers fumbners..... I feel wind power is the way to go.

the greenhouse gas effect is also built into the price. those turbines cost alot of concrete , alot of melting and forming steel and alot of plastic.

While the thesis may be correct, the numbers here are suspect.

For starters, the AREVA Finnish project (in REALLY serious trouble) had an original budget of 3.3 BILLION Euros, NOT 3.3 Million dollars.

I'm too lazy to crunch the rest of the numbers.

Also, the it's capital cost, not capitol.

In addition, the lifespan of wind power is 25 years or about half that of a coal or nuclear plant.More expensive, less power, unreliability, bigger footprint, shorter lifespan...wind power is a ridiculously expensive public relations exercise. I doubt that our windtowers appearance next to the TransCanada highway was a mere coincidence.

BTW, two of Sask's three coal plants are designed for additions. Since the infrastructure is already there, the costs for expansion are much lower than building brand new wind or nuclear facilities. Of course, to go against the gods of carbon conformity and political correctness would be politically embarrassing. I think Brad Wall is getting bad advice but its not like the politicians are spending their own money.

I suppose encouraging low cost, reliable power is soooo last millennium. After all, it might lead to higher disposable income, new business and provincial prosperity.

3.3 BILLION Euros, NOT 3.3 Million
Thousand millions are billions in English-English (contrasted with North American-English).

And you should look for data on the 'carbon footprint' of concrete, Eric, and not just the steel. I know I've seen mentions of it being huge, but can't recall exact facts about it. [And as a minor aside, it's capital in this case, not capitol.]

Oops. Didn't see Political Junkie's capital correction. Excuse the redundancy, all.

I've tried to find stats on how many hours of operation are needed by the wind turbine to offset the GHG emissions used in producing and transporting these large fans.

At only 0.72 MW average I'm guess it's a long time.

Anyone have these numbers?

Political Junkie, the report says:

"... built by Areva had a budget of $3,300 million that is now 50% over budget at $4,950 million.

That is 3.3Billion!

At least the Wall government had the brains to tell Bruce Power to take a hike. The cost of such a project would have been in the billions and generations of Saskatchewanians would have been paying for it. Not to mention the long term effects on the environment of such a project with the storage of radioactive waste. Ontario said no to any further Bruce Power development plans there, so they thought Sask. would be ripe for the picking. We do not need a nuclear reactor for power generation. As Minister Boyd stated in one of his more intelligent press conferences that all alternative sources of power generation would be explored, however, not nuclear at this time.

I sincerly hope a few environment/energy ministers see this comparison, one has to be very slow not to see that nuclear coal and hydro are the better power generators. Nothing against these giant windmills, the land owner finally gets a little revenue, beats cattle or grain which have been the same price for 25 years, 500 to 550 a calf in 1985, 450 to 550 in 2009. Barley 2.80 to 3.25 a bushel still, so you see why a land owner would jump at the monthly revenue on a tower or 40. They create a lot of jobs and as long as the taxpayer continues to help fund them, well go for it. Like I said before, within 20 years the farmers will be recovering the scrap metal and tipping these over once the world regains its senses and jails the charlatans Gore/Suzuki/Strong and all the supporting cast of this giant money sucking hoax driving this insanity. Nuclear and clean-coal are the future of power generation, take a look Renner, how he kept his job is unreal, running over to the Copenhagen dorkfest to help save the world while wasting millions should get anyone fired in these economic times.

Well I have a suggestion. Why not built a nuclear power plant specifically to run the wind mill turbines that way they would work with or without wind and that way the eco idiots would have power and their beloved windmills.

Now, I think the next item on the agenda should be to figure out how incorporate Solar wind into the equation. It blows all the time. That way we could use the sun's wind to run the turbines. That would eventually eliminate the need for the nuclear plant.

This is the kind of thinking that would impress Al Gore and David Suzuki and even that gorgeous genius Elizabeth May.

I disagree, T, nuclear power is an excellent source of electricity generation. But it cannot compete with coal in Sask.

But, if you had to choose between nuclear and wind/solar then nuclear is the better choice. Unlike existing alternative energy, nuclear is reliable enough for baseload power and(from what I've read)cheaper on a per MW scale. Choosing proven technology over experimental is always the wiser way to spend taxpayer dollars.

All these green technologies require what are called rare earth metals or rare earth elements. They are a collection of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, namely scandium, yttrium, and the fifteen lanthanoids. A utility scale wind turbine uses more than a ton of heavy-duty and lightweight magnets, 700 pounds of which is neodymium. . An electric motor in a Prius, for instance, requires 2 to 4 pounds of neodymium and dysprosium for its drive motor and lanthanum in its rechargeable battery.

The problem is that more than 90% of these metals are in China and they could become the OPEC of rare earth metals, and restrict supply. The price of these metal have already gone up.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/china-tightens-control-over-rare-earth-metals-vital-for-green-technology.php
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=china+is+the+opec+of+rare+earth+metals&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Gotta love the gotcha numbers on the fans. Unfortunately those numbers will never see the public forum of the MSM. Maybe we should all chip in and buy full page adds in the papers. Do the medias work.

In Saskatchewan one only needs to speak to an operator working at one of the coal fired or gas power plants to learn of the problems that wind generation causes for the rest of the system. They are continually starting and shutting down coal fired units to compensate for the fluctuation in the wind. This can become very expensive as these large generators are not made for this type of operation. In the USA there are already concerns regarding energy sprawl. According to one Senator addressing a forum of Conservationists, to produce 20% of Americas energy needs by wind 186,000 wind turbines would be required on 25,000 square miles of land. One hundred nuclear reactors on 100 square miles of land could do the same thing also carbon free and without the ups and downs associated with wind power. That doesn't include the 19,000 miles of transmission lines that would need to be built to get to where the tower projects need to be.

Here is the Environment Canada Wind Atlas (Yes, there is such a thing).

http://www.windatlas.ca/en/index.php

Saskatchewan does not appear to be a particularily good place for wind farms.

The Greenie Jihadis have such a knot in their knickers about the Oil Sands when the Chinese mining of rare earth minerals makes the oil sands look like the poster kid for environmental management.

Time to sell your Toyota Pius . . . you are killing the planet.

"The crude refineries squat along the valleys north of the town, surrounded by partly frozen red-coloured 'tailing lakes' up to a square mile in size where rocks are kept before being processed.

The land is scarred with toxic runoffs from the refining process and pock-marked with craters and trenches left by the huge trucks that transport the rocks across ice and mud. Rusting machinery lies scattered along the valley floor, giving it the appearance of a war zone.

Around 100 miles south of Baiyun Obo, larger rare-earth refineries sit around the banks of the world's largest tailing lake, Baogang - seven square miles of evil-smelling toxic waste that shows the shocking extent of this industry's impact.

It is a scene that Chinese officials, and particularly those from Baotou Steel, do not want the world to see. Several villages close to the lake have already been relocated because of pollution and only minutes after we reached the lake, security guards hired by the mining company arrived to hustle us away.

At a remote processing plant called He Jiao Mu Qu, in nearby Guyan county, workers showed me around what must be one of the most toxic factory floors anywhere. They earn relatively high salaries - 1,600 yuan (£145) a month for removing rare-earth from rocks.

Inside the factory, boiling sulphuric acid flows in open trenches and boiling yellow lava spews out of kilns at the end of rotating steel pipes. The sulphur-filled air stings the eyes and burns the lungs. Workers' clothes were peppered with acid burns.

'We start out with uniforms but they soon get burnt away by the acid,' I was told by one worker whose trousers were a honeycomb of acid burns. 'They give us gloves and masks. But the masks don't do much. I have trouble breathing at the end of every 12-hour shift.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1241872/EXCLUSIVE-Inside-Chinas-secret-toxic-unobtainium-mine.html#ixzz0cbWNxuW4
"

It has been known for a long time that the capital cost of wind is 3X nuclear/installed capacity which actually works 30% or less.
Without subsidies no wind projects ever get built because the numbers are so so stupid.
Pickens has wind-mills in storage waiting for subsidies....
Nuclear has the advantage over all because the fuel is minimal and construction adjacent to the load eliminates the need for transmission line.
Churchill Falls and James Bay both involve massive transmission infrastructure.
The problem is the eco-whachos have misrepresented nuclear as hazardous as most folk cannot understand the physics----reactors are not nuclear weapons waiting to happen and the waste is miniscule.

Thinking of leasing land to a wind farm ?

Be sure to have a decommissioning bond in hand first.

Otherwise you will be faced with this when the inevitable subsidy cuts begin.

We we're there in 2002. It was disgusting.

Andy, the carbon content of concrete and steel is indeed large. Here's some typical values:
Steel: 4300 kWh/tonne recycled, or 47% of production of steel from iron ore.
Aluminum: 64,000 kWh/tonne recycled, or 96% of production of aluminum from bauxite.
Cement: 3-6 million BTUs/tonne (880-1760 kWh/tonne)

The carbon content obviously is dependent upon the kWh source. For steel and aluminum that can be hydro generated electricity, with no carbon content, however, not so for concrete.

Typical values per MW are:
Nuclear: 40 MT steel, 190 m(3) concrete
Coal: 98 MT steel, 160 m(3) concrete
Wind: 460 MT steel, 780 m(3) concrete
Comes from this UC Berkely source:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3127/2626852887_3b54f5d0ed.jpg?v=0

That's only a comparison on a raw MW basis. Since wind operates on 20% capacity factor, and nuclear and coal operate as base load 80% capacity factor, the wind numbers have to be inflated by a factor of four by comparison for a per unit of energy measure.

I realised the cost was in billions not milllions for the reactors, that is why a used a comma, not a period, in the costing of $4,950 million.

So, here is the math without commas:
$275,000,000.00 for a wind complex divided by the 60 MW generated = $4,583,333.33 per MW generated.

$4,950,000,000.00 for a reactor complex divided by the 2,880 MW generated = $1,718,750.00 per MW generated.
___________

The tonnage quoted for the turbines did not include the concrete bases, only the turbines themselves. While I am not sure of the amount of concrete; considering you need to stabilise a 489,510 pound moving object, and then need 4,000 of them, I am assuming there are some considerable GHG emissions in making this - like a reactor.

___________

I did not mention, and probably should have included, that; since we need power 24/7 to power our schools, hospitals, jails, homes, businesses, etc - with wind only being periodic and not working past -30, we need to also build a complete natural gas or coal back-up to the wind, to pick-up the slack when the wind does not blow.

Hey, "capitol" costs exist. That's when you need to pay off U.S. politicians and lobbyists.

Thank you, cgh and Eric. Good work.

(And funny jokes, Abe and CJ. LOL.)

It's about time I created a new T-shirt slogan:

     Nuke me, please.

You're welcome.

Garth

The wind turbines are to appease the greenies. The government also has to represent them. However SaskPower has the numbers and the only people willing to pay the 15% premium for green power is government and a few believers. It is a waste, but a political necessity.

capital?

The killer is, as Eric mentions, not the cost of wind thought it's high, so much as the fact that you have to back up EVERY SINGLE MW of Wind with coal/nuke/gas turbine/ something reliable.

So Wind generation costs are IN ADDITION to what you need.

Adding cost is DUMB. Even if your wind is "reliable" the dormant capital of, say, emergency gas turbine facility that can take over - FAST - when the wind dies is VERY expensive.

I can't believe there are wankers out there for whom this is not blindingly obvious.

What is worse T;

the pending global catastrophe caused by anthropogenic Global Warming(that you believe is enevitable) or three-eyed fish?

Surely the *pending disaster* takes precedence over the hypothetical disaster that *might* be caused by storing spent nuclear fuel. If you were serious about combating AGW, you and your ilk would be demanding the zero Carbon emitting nuclear plants, and more focus on recycling the spent fuel.

The bottom line is you don't have the wits or the know-how to respond to my question and statement, so I won't hold my breath.

If your parents read any of the drivel you spent so much time writing, they would be woefully embarrassed of you, and ashamed of themselves for raising such an ignorant and uncouth child.

Have some respect for yourself, your parents and everyone else and GROW UP!

Eric

You forgot to mention the costs of stringing electrical infrastructure from 4,000 turbines across an accumulated 1,440 km2 (or more, considering there would be more than a single wind farm) versus the resources required to connect a single nuke plant.

This is a nice quote from the WSJ. It is about Australia's Tony Abbott, an opposition leader, who prevented the cap'n'trade scheme:

"His case is not an appeal to do nothing, but to avoid doing something stupid. And unilateral Australian action in a post-Copenhagen world would be stupid: Economic Pain For No Environmental Gain. Not a bad slogan during an election scare campaign."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703652104574651610217495546.html

When this topic came up on the Jan 12th Y2Kyoto thread, feeling a bit mischievous, that little fella sitting on my left shoulder thought I should respond to Sask Power's Request for Qualification (Kate's link- 'But nobody bothers listening').
Here's my submission:

-------------------------------------------
Are you brain dead?
The looming crisis of AWG has shown to be a farce, and nothing more than a huge money grab/wealth transfer Ponzi scheme. It would appear you are willing participants.
Furthermore, wind generated electricity is unreliable, uneconomic and extremely costly....nothing more than pie-in-the-sky dreams of the econuts; not to mention the blight it imposes on the countryside!
Why don't you show some foresight and develop cost effective power generation, and expose the green alarmists as the frauds they are?
This province has the fossil fuel resources, a bounty of nuclear capability, and probably even more potential hydro developments to exploit.
This kowtowing to the scaremongers is ridiculous. Perhaps your advertising/PR budget would be better spent on informing the public of the real issues regarding our energy infastructure.
The place to start- the schools!!

------------------------

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for a reply. Yeah, right!

Try the math on energy production via various methods, most renewables suffer from the same problems, lack of consistent kinetic input leads to reduced production and no storage capacity.

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469

"Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential."

andycanuck:

In English-English, a billion is 10^12 (i.e. a MILLION millions), whereas in North America, a billion is 10^9, or a thousand millions.

Two nations divided by a common language.

There is enough wrong with wind that we can do very well without spurious analysis, as some of this certainly is.

Specifically, the footprint of the turbines would only be as stated if the area involved is not useable for their previous purposes of farming, ranching or whatever. The true area used by a turbine consists of about a quarter acre base and about the same for an access road. This yields a wind power footprint of about 400 Mw/km2, which is 200 times larger than that of the analysis.

The turbines proposed 1/2 mile down my road (Ottawa area) are behemoths totalling 600 feet, higher than a 40 story building. I have never seen turbines this high, apparently they have to be so high because the wind is weak below that level. They can hardly be described as wind mills giant or otherwise. The scale of such a project gives some idea of the idiocy of such planning. Calculate the tonnes of cement and steel necessary to support such structures. Studies I have looked at rate Wind power 3 to 4.5 times as expensive as nuclear, requiring massive subsidies to get built. As Britain is finding out, they only work part-time.
To plan for such development, instead of building nuclear capacity, is not planning at all, but wistful thinking. Only an idealogue like Dalton McGuinty could propose such ideas. The problem is that in his remaining 2 years he may actually build more wind facilities.

The turbines proposed 1/2 mile down my road (Ottawa area) are behemoths totalling 600 feet, higher than a 40 story building. I have never seen turbines this high, apparently they have to be so high because the wind is weak below that level. They can hardly be described as wind mills giant or otherwise. The scale of such a project gives some idea of the idiocy of such planning. Calculate the tonnes of cement and steel necessary to support such structures. Studies I have looked at rate Wind power 3 to 4.5 times as expensive as nuclear, requiring massive subsidies to get built. As Britain is finding out, they only work part-time.
To plan for such development, instead of building nuclear capacity, is not planning at all, but wistful thinking. Only an idealogue like Dalton McGuinty could propose such ideas. The problem is that in his remaining 2 years he may actually build more wind facilities.

If only we could harness the hot air from the AGW crowd.

Al I can say about it is E=mc2

http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469

Checking nuke values...

Where are the 440%^ hidden running cost subsidies tax payers must supply?

Where are the intensified nuclear wastes in security lockdown storage costs mentioned.

Who will pay for the eventual transport and secure storage of hot nukes waste to the depths of abandoned mines in the Cambrian shield and the guarding thereof?

Oh wait! Lemme guess. I think it could be..

Numbers are really handy when EVERYTHING is calculated.

Pickens Shelves Texas Wind Project

Mr. Pickens in May 2008 announced plans for the biggest wind farm in the U.S., by amount of installed megawatts, to be located in the Texas panhandle. But Tuesday he said he would cut his order with GE to 333 turbines from 667 machines and use them for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.
That means the Pampa Wind Farm slated for north Texas—and postponed last summer until at least 2013—won't happen under current conditions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704675104575001290675508802.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

Hey Tony !!
Here's a deal for ya to charge up that Tesla!

1.5Mw Wind Turbine System complete with Generator, Controller, Inverter, Tower & Blades.:
SAIP S-77 (used) $985,000

Competitive Price on a similar Configuration
SAIP S-77 (new) $1,900,000

Cost Savings of $915,000!!!

http://www.mywindpowersystem.com/2009/09/used-wind-turbines-for-sale-used-wind-generators-for-sale-vestas-enercon-suzlon-ge-energy-micon-nordex-tacke-siemens-windmax/

(Where are the used ones coming from?? TB Pickens maybe???)

Oh, The sites got damp land for sale too!

tg...or tony guiter,is your head that far up the ecoweenies ass? Hot nukes? Nice try at a scare tactic.The amount of nuclear waste created is less in a year then you crap in 30 seconds.Now go back to your mommies basement in Vancouver,and stop trying to steal my tax money with your green scams.And take your Prius with you.Hard working adults are talking here.

Justthinkin..or are you?

That may be your opinion, but it seems more emotion and wishful thinking.

Your opinion suggests the world has gone mad because all major economies are going EV in a big way except for Canada.

If you are not aware of that, I'm not surprised.

Justthinkin..or are you?

That may be your opinion, but it seems more emotion and wishful thinking.

Your opinion suggests the world has gone mad because all major economies are going EV in a big way except for Canada.

If you are not aware of that, I'm not surprised.