Hmm... since we're talking problems:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSWNAS1045

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL25844382

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/79742.php

http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/349831.html

Guess traditional power methods aren't reliable either. Maybe we should shut them down and quit building them too?

Not surprising at all.

This recent clean technology is on a shakedown voyage to higher reliability.

Just as new ships are in shakedown mode for the first year or two before the bugs are ironed out.

To be expected. = TG

Wind power, while being inovative and great for grinding flour should not be looked at as the great answer. Sometimes the wind doesn't blow and it seems that in Saskatchewan, it sucks. (Me bad, I know but it ties in the tornado link).

Being a mechanical device it can and does fail. That is not unknown and to be expected but making it sound like they have to ground the fleet is more MSM sensationalizing than anything else.

Like everything else there are also downsides to wind power like wacking daydreaming birds and actually being quite noisy. You don't have to be that close to hear them.

Ouch !!

Quality and accelerated life testing on any popular "green technology" is fairly scarce.

Green tech is deemed to automatically be a superior..unfortunately green tech contractors on goverment vendor lists shave quality as much as anyone.

This proves the old saying that there are no perfect solutions. Wind energy is only produced when wind of sufficient strength is blowing, and they can only provide supplementary energy at best. In addition, they are structures and mechanical devices and can fail as shown above.

I believe that wind power makes sense for smaller rural individual installations (when used in combination with other green technologies such as solar and geothermal). It certainly doesn't hurt to have a turbine charging up your battery bank on a blustery day.

It's easy enough for one family to keep an eye on the power meter and run extra loads of laundry when the wind is high, but the wind just isn't reliable enough to run a power grid off of.

Sean,

With a storage buffer, it is more than reliable enough...eh? = TG

the costs of battery banks on anything is prohibitive. as is the cost of the inverters to convert it to a useful 3 phase cycle.

actually one of the coolest things about windpower is that the largest wind "resource" lies in dirty old Alberta again. more izzy money .

Two words ...

Nuclear Power

Hydro and nuclear.

"the costs of battery banks on anything is prohibitive"

I'd rather buy batteries made in North America than jihadi oil, thanks. The latter will be more expensive than anyone realizes.

I used to drive past the mega bird grinders in Minnesota on the way to Sioux Falls SD. I have a picture of them here, in the photo the blades are about four times longer than my pickup truck.

They feather them when the wind gets strong, because otherwise the tips will start breaking the sound barrier and the shock will shatter the blades. My picture here was taken at ~ 1/30th of a second exposure on a not particularly windy day, you can see the tips blur a bit.

Always wondered what would happen if one of those blades came off. Now I know.

haha..oh jesus..now Kate takes on wind power probably for no other reason than that she sees it as a construct of left leaning people and God knows that everything is completely black and white and anything that can be associated with the left should be vilified and hated even if the issue (ie. this one) doesn't need to be politicized because both capitalists and the evil greenies win. Because its not real electricity unless it comes from a non renewable resource. To do anything else would be to give in to the leftist greenies even if it meant making a boatload of cash. :P

I now expect Kate to report from here on all the deaths and injuries from the extraction and processing of coal.

Thanks, I look forward to it.

Ya gotta admire Kate. Just the fact that she posts an interesting article is enough to get leftie steve all in a tither. And I'm sure that some one will correct or clairify but these was more that a couple of threads on coal mine accidents of late.

btw, Sean, I prefer Texas Tea or Athabasca Sand to jihadi oil any day. It was PET who bought ME oil for more than he was willing to pay Alberta back in the NEP days.

I wonder how much that smoke billowing from the turbine contributed to heating up the earth?

I don't get it--so a few failures and you want to write the whole thing off? What a bunch of fringe rightwing wackos on this site. Freaks, hiding from society and using attacks on progressive causes as a pretext to cover their alienation. I can't imagine how incarcerating the prison of your mind you've constructed for yourself is.

Nuclear reactors melt down, oil tankers spill their cargo, hydro turbines burn out etc etc.

You have nothing to say except " new things scare me."

Fellow Winston,

How exactly is windpower a 'progressive cause'?
There is hardly anything progressive or new about harnessing the wind for power.

You have to admit, wind power is still incredibly cool. Likewise solar. The thought of throwing a solar panel over a tree branch on a Northern island to power my LCD TV and satellite dish while I fish on the shores .....

But reliability isn't a problem with the technology. It could be a problem with cheapskate companies with employees who specialise in risk management.

My old computer here still crashes and burns at every turn, but the technology is good enough to power everything in the military.

Ya, just one failure ---- wind power itself !!

[Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.] Eric Rosenbloom

http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html

Wind and Solar Power works really, really well ---- in Popular Mechanics :)

So did Super Milage carburators.

Wind power is new !!??

The only thing new about it is Al Gore.

[Denmark is just dependent enough on wind power that when the wind is not blowing right they must import electricity. In 2000 they imported more electricity than they exported. And added to the Danish electric bill are the subsidies that support the private companies building the wind towers. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe.] Eric Rosenbloom

That link Kate put up says that one problem these had was "gear boxes that fail in less than 5 years."

OK, not fair.

My hard drive has a 5 year warranty. Bearings fail.

Would you like to take a guess how long it takes before the engine of a commercial jet is rebuilt?

Things fail. If these companies are too stupid to perform preventative maintenance then that is their fault.

Glad they don't run an airline! Wait until the airplane falls out of the sky because it is cheaper to write it off.

My lefties are so cute when they get riled up like that.

[Throughout Europe, wind turbines produced on average less than 20% of their theoretical (or rated) capacity.] Eric Rosenbloom

[In high winds, ironically, the turbines must be stopped because they are easily damaged. Build-up of dead bugs has been shown to halve the maximum power generated by a wind turbine, reducing the average power generated by 25% and more. Build-up of salt on off-shore turbine blades similarly has been shown to reduce the power generated by 20%-30%.] ER

"I don't get it--so a few failures and you want to write the whole thing off? What a bunch of fringe rightwing wackos on this site."

- fellow moonbat

After billions spent, the massive German wind farms are considered a failure. You see, in order for these wind farms to be considered even slightly efficient they have to be running at 30%. The German installations have never run above 18%.

But I reckon you'll have to be excused. Afterall you're a leftard. So therefore, with the recognized mental deficiency that marks your illness, you obviously aren't able to comprehend things like that.

Some advice. You probably shouldn't spend too much time on this blog. It'll only confuse you further.

[Eon Netz, the grid manager for about a third of Germany, discusses the technical problems of connecting large numbers of wind turbines [click here]: Electricity generation from wind fluctuates greatly, requiring additional reserves of "conventional" capacity to compensate; high-demand periods of cold and heat correspond to periods of low wind; only limited forecasting is possible for wind power; wind power needs a corresponding expansion of the high-voltage and extra-high-voltage grid infrastructure; and expansion of wind power makes the grid more unstable.] Eric Rosenbloom

[Issues of icing, noise, and structural damage and failure, particularly as they determine setback requirements, have been extensively documented by John Mollica in response to the proposed expansion of a wind facility on Wachusetts Mountain in Massachusetts (between Princeton and Fitchburg).]

"Freaks, hiding from society and using attacks on progressive causes as a pretext to cover their alienation"

An amazing concidence. I have that on a tee shirt. It's a really long, oversized tee shirt.

"Ya gotta admire Kate. Just the fact that she posts an interesting article is enough to get leftie steve all in a tither."

Not in a "tither" at all. I'm more so in awe that Kate has taken issue with wind power of all things. Even more hilarious is that she doesn't attack it's viability as an alternative, but rather it's safety record. As others in the comments have aptly pointed out, there are technological challenges and dangers in all forms of the production process. Next time a hurricane puts a bunch of off shore oil platforms off line, I expect a post about it.

Her post would make sense if wind power had a starkly worse safety and technical record than more traditional methods of energy production, but I'm guessing it doesn't. In fact, I'd bet money that there are a greater degree of problems proportionally in most other energy generation processes(ie. coal extraction)

Like I've said before, Kate makes a good point on occasion, but if she's going to have a "Best of SDA", she may want to consider having a "worst of SDA" where she can lump in poorly thought out arguments such as this one.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that wind power is a solution or total alternative in the grand scheme of things, but cripes, if there's anything that should demonstrate to right leaning people the validity of such a technology, it should be the barrage of wind farms in North America that have been started by private enterprise that go on to make a buck. I'm not sure why anyone would suggest we can only have one alternative. From my eyes wind power works in some places but not others, but where it does work, its an a-politcal issue. Capitalists win as do greens. That's why I'm baffled that Kate takes issue with it. I guess it's not a win if it makes everyone happy. Someone has to lose in her world.

heres another good bit from calgary, the LRT here is supposed to ride the wind, so the city has signed up for more expensive wind power, realisticly of course all the electrons are just pulled from the grid and nothing other than money really moves. better yet though, when they bought new LRT cars a few years ago ,they bought AC cars not DC as were already existing , so they had to install big inverters on the tops of the new ones, you can tell because it looks like they were built in my garage instead of in germany. so the AC grid is converted to DC in the lines and back to AC again for the wheels. another 10% loss of efficiency.

Its the REVENGE OF THE BIRDS too many of their brothers and sisters have been killed by those things so they just jumped up and down on it till it fell over SQUAWK SQUAWK

[Despite their being cited as the shining example of what can be accomplished with wind power, the Danish government has cancelled plans for three offshore wind farms planned for 2008 and has scheduled the withdrawal of subsidies from existing sites. Development of onshore wind plants in Denmark has effectively stopped. Because Danish companies dominate the wind industry, however, the government is under pressure to continue their support. Spain began withdrawing subsidies in 2002. Germany reduced the tax breaks to wind power, and domestic construction drastically slowed in 2004. Switzerland also is cutting subsidies as too expensive for the lack of significant benefit. The Netherlands decommissioned 90 turbines in 2004. Many Japanese utilities severely limit the amount of wind-generated power they buy, because of the instability they cause. For the same reason, Ireland in December 2003 halted all new wind-power connections to the national grid. In early 2005, they were considering ending state support. In 2005, Spanish utilities began refusing new wind power connections. In 2006, the Spanish government ended -- by emergency decree -- its subsidies and price supports for big wind. In 2004, Australia reduced the level of renewable energy that utilities are required to buy, dramatically slowing wind-project applications. On August 31, 2004, Bloomberg News reported that "the unstable flow of wind power in their networks" has forced German utilities to buy more expensive energy, requiring them to raise prices for the consumer.] Eric Rosenbloom

http://www.aweo.org/ProblemWithWind.html

Needless to say, activity at de smog blog has probably just spiked ---- trying to figure out a way to smear Eric Rosenbloom.

Same thing happened to Patrick Moore, Tim Ball, Bjorn Lomborg, Steven MvIntyre and countless others.

The only tactic that works when cornered :)

They should have a political "WIND FARM" set up around Ottawa.

Efficiency should be in the neighborhood of 125%!!

Imagine all the power to be generated by the Mulroney Schreiber inquiry.

The mean time between failure (MTBF) for this wind farm should be of the order of several billion years.

Cheers

Once upon a time I drove through the desert near Palm Springs California, home of the windiest place in North America. Its a desert valley where the breezes blow virtually without cease. They have the mother of all wind farms there, its been there a loooong time. Like, since the Seventies, man.

The desert is the most perfect environment available for wind machinery. No bugs, no birds, no vegetation, no corrosion from rain or salt spray, just steady wind and sunshine.

I'm pretty sure that wind farm has yet to break even. But I could be wrong. If I am wrong, I bet y'all a donut the return on investment is less than leaving the money in a savings account.

I know for a fact that the 100 mile long wind farm in Minnesota is a black hole for public money. Kinda like the gun registry but more expensive and less useful.

Reality tends not to conform itself to the wishes of wild eyed environmentalists. Bummer, dudes.

Surely no one is saying that the wind turbine projects are a waste of time or money!!

The projects are very well planned long before any systems are bought or towers built. This planning includes wind audits that are more than sufficient to build engineering models for any configuration of machines in any location.

Frankly the bleatings of some power company execs bemoaning the problems they have to deal with do not impress. As one of the biggest opponents to windgen adoption are the established power utility groups.

This is because wind farms can be built by relatively small groups or communities that subsequently achieve a measure of independence from those utilities.

As someone who has been actively involved in several initiatives for windgen studies and projects along with a a number of other alternative energy technologies .... I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the investment pays. I'll go one step further and opine that based on my experience the single biggest threat and obstacle to these projects are government bureaucrats and regulators trying to justify their existence combined with ignorant members of the public casting about ridiculous theories of risk.

If anyone is going to try to make the case that a few tower collapses or turbine failures have any impact on the long term viability of wind gen they are full of crap.... might as well try to argue that because power lines go down or transmission towers collapse or controls occasionally fail that the distribution system is a waste.

A logical failure that would parallel the hysterics over Three Mile Island or even Chernobyl on the nuclear power generation front.

Comes from a mindset that seems very similar to the Classic Luddite. Chicken little said .... "bwaaaak!"

Absolute hogwash!

wind farms tend to beat the pi$$ out of bats as well. no one know why they seem to be attracted to these structures because the insect population tends to be low at the blade area.

The sand that is blowing in the Palm Springs wind, erodes the propeller blades at a horrendous rate. The Sand Blaster alters the blades critical profile and ---- junk.

Wind power is fine on a small scale in remote areas but it is increasingly obvious that it doesn't scale well and the environmental impact is huge. Environmentalists go into hysterics when a handfull of ducks are covered in oil but seem unperturbed over the hundreds to thousands more birds that are macerated by wind turbines.

The money would be far better spent on higher energy density clean sources of energy such as fusion power. Robert Bussard, the originator of the Bussard Ramjet concept, has been quietly working on a device based on the fusor (http://fusor.net which is already capable of producing D-D fusion), and has already demonstrated that he can produce signficant amounts of fusion in a small device which, when scaled up, should be capable of producing practical fusion power. http://www.rexresearch.com/bussard/bussard.htm
All he needs is $200-500 million to build a prototype; chicken feed in the multi-trillion dollar worldwide energy economy.

Fusion power is clean, non-polluting and anthropogenic global warming fanatics were should be tossing money at Dr. Bussard to finish devloping his device (the fusion results I speak of were produced in November 2005). Yet, Al Gore says nothing about fusion power and I suspect he probably is totally clueless about it and I'm sure Dr. Fruitfly would be totally opposed to it as his hidden agenda is to put people back into a romanticized stone-age mode of existence.

There's an excellent article about fusors in the Jan/Feb 2008 Analog. "The world's simplest fusion reactor revisited" by Tom Ligon who spent 4.5 years working on the project with Dr. Bussard. It was probably the most exciting news I've heard in some years as I've been waiting for fusion power to happen for almost 40 years now. Unfortunately tokamak's are a dead end, but this seems to be where all the fusion research money is going. To demonstrate fusion in your own home, you can build a fusor which just produces neutrons when filled with deuterium gas and operated at the right voltage (certainly not a source of energy), but something that can be built by a high school student and which was first described in 1920! Interesting how science can get totally sidetracked sometimes.

If you don't mind paying 10 cents/KWH and if you can tie them into a grid with preferably hydro power to compensate for the average 26% capacity factor and if you have enduring winds between 12 and 40 kmh (operating range) within an economical distance of a transmission grid and if your greenies will allow you to chop up a few birds now and again and if your NIMBYs aren't close enough to complain about the landscape alteration and your regulators only make you jump through afforable EAs, no problem - go wind power!

OMMAG: I was about to give Kate a blast for taking a political shot at a purely technical problem about which she knows nothing but, a response to your babbling takes prescedence.

"wind farms can be built by relatively small groups or communities that subsequently achieve a measure of independence from those utilities"
- as long as they remain hooked to the grid so that power is available when needed.

"I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that the investment pays"
- provided that it receives a comfortable level of subsidy.

"biggest threat and obstacle to these projects are government bureaucrats and regulators"
- who have a duty to protect the integrity of the power grid for the public good.

Yes, all generation systems have their faults and break downs.

The point here, is that WP generation is horrendously expensive (3X, 4X or more than conventional) and is not feasible, even with huge taxpayer subsidies.

So, the WP scam allows Gore Inc. to take excess money out of our electric bill pocket in order to reduce CO2 emmissions by an infinitessible small amount (compared to the Earth's natural systems) which would have a negligible effect on greenhose warming anyways and even that, if it occured, would be beneficial, if one could detect it, because Canada is such a frggin cold country in the first place.

I think Kate was just pointing out that we are going to a lot of trouble for no gain, all pain.

Precedence; Must - use - spellcheck

I have to agree with steve on this one: this is a bad post, which boils down to not much more than, "Ha ha, some wind turbines fall, others break, so wind power sucks!"

A malfunctioning alarm system and poor maintenance of tree growth around power lines led to the 2003 blackout. So do conventional power generation systems and their controls suck more because of that catastrophic failure?

How does one get a job as a wind auditor? Is it related to a fresh air inspector?

The main point is let the market decide on wind power without the subsidies.

As far as I'm concerned I'd rather invest in electricity power from nuclear or coal fired generators, instead of some politically correct trendy "progressive" pet project the government has to sweeten in the first place, for "private" investment even to occur.

Sean hit the nail on the head, private wind power is the way to go, a farmer near here put up a large wind turbine (used from Holland), and I'm fairly sure when it comes to being private it meets the meaning of the word fairly square on. Much more squarely than the wind farm being constructed just down the road from where I live.
It's bad enough you can't take a landscape picture here without a cell phone tower in it, now it's huge groups of even worse "eye sores", someone like McGuinty endorses - which should speak volumes.

I don't know maybe its just me but seeing groups of these things popping up like the plague, just doesn't make me all warm and fuzzy inside.
Just like the two co- gen stations (pet projects)being built near Sarnia that are soon going to be sucking up the same commodity I heat my home with, and which have been stated by the liberal government as only being operated when they are needed- which is code for all the time.

Oh and the biggest solar farm in North America (McGuinty endorsed)that's a whole other story, we had some of the most beautiful cloudy days this year lots of them, and it is going to be built right under them, and they already signed a twenty year contract at 42 cents a kilowatt.We pay six at the meter?

"Brilliant", warm and fuzzy.

Guess you have to be "progressive" to be hood winked.

dont hope for any fusion in the new future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

the only energy from fusion for the next few decades will be from a hydrogen bomb.

Ok Zog and Ron in K... I'll engage you on this!

1) Subsidies - Capital project subsidies are needed to get many of the projects off the ground. This is true especially for the smaller projects such as rural communities. The other side of that is the fact that subsidies available to these communities are often not used or are used for projects with far less intrinsic value. There are enough viable projects in play to attract BILLIONS of private investor dollars.

2) Power Utility connections - These connections are still critical Yes! The other side of this is that the utilities charge a very substantial fee to the operators to have that connection whether or not the windgen operators take or provide power .
3) Regulators - MY experience with these regulators indicates anything but due diligence in their motivations. I say this not to denigrate their responsibilities but rather to question their approach to those responsibilities. The Utilities simply do not want to deal with the complications.

There are more considerations at play than simply the cost of electricity. Viable projects exist and will continue to be developed and managed.

Questioning the planning and management of these systems is probably a good thing. However, failure to adequately research, plan or manage any system in no way justifies the blanket condemnation of the technology in question.

You have to love it when the moonbats come on and invent Kates take on the links, when in fact she said nothing, simply posted the links. It is up to us - the readers - to make our own minds up. Or in the case of the moonbats, start accusing the right of being Anti-Wind. We said nothing of them - the moonbats - being in the pay of Big Wind, no one even inferred it, but they all sprang to the defense of Big Winds, methinks they protest too much!

Wind power is an interesting technology that has merit in supplementing the current production of electricity. It has been tried much longer in Europe than in North America, we should learn from their mistakes and profit from their successes. If they have found that it is not reliable or that it damages the Grid then we need to find a work around or limit its implementation to areas where it does work.

It is always amusing to watch the reactions of people like "Steve @ 2:27" and "Fellow Winston @ 3:24" and to realise that they don't get it. All the comments up until their BDS rant where actually positive, much like their hero - DeYawn - they cannot understand the work "YES"....

Re Wind Audits.... Yes they are a real thing.
Step ONE in determining if a proposed project is viable.
Want to be a "Wind Auditor" ? Then get an engineering degree or something related in geo-science.

We start with NR-Can Studies then go and build towers to take measurements ourselves.

As for those of you who think you need to come to Kate's defense..... she's a grown up and she can do for herself if she chooses.

Defend myself against what precisely?

the wind turbines may kill bats but they seem to attract moonbats.

let the free market reign.
free the west.

Ommag makes some convincing points while..

Ron says.. **The point here, is that WP generation is horrendously expensive (3X, 4X or more than conventional) and is not feasible, even with huge taxpayer subsidies. **

Ron, I missed your link for that..

Kate presents both sides in the post..

** A spokesman for ScottishPower said it was believed to be the first time a turbine had collapsed in the UK. He said engineers would be trying to find out whether the faulty turbine was in operation at the time of its collapse on Thursday.

Wolf-gerrit Fruh, a senior lecturer in energy engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, described the incident as **EXTREMELY UNUSUAL.** [Reliable Expert?]

First hand info: A radio operator living in the coastal Oragon mountains relies on his WindGen and Battery system and is never off the air. Totally satisfied! Says he will never go back to the grid and monthly bills.

Sean makes a good point at 1:45

Cal2 at @:06 - **the costs of battery banks on anything is prohibitive.**

New power storage consists of a white building the size of a house. It contains vats that hold both anode and cathode in liquid form.. no plates sitting in acid at all. Very cheap big battery.

Legit Corporate indistrial website. I need time to find it though.

Damn, I should have bookmarked it. = TG

No, I only presented one side. Or aspect, actually. It's what I'm best at.

This has nothing to do with anything other than piss poor engineering.

I hope the turd who put his stamp on that (assuming the engineering profession is governed somewhat similarly in Scotland as it is in Canada) is hung out to dry.

This says something about the all liquid battery. [ The Flow Liquid Battery ]

Flow liquid battery is considered to be an ideal device for the energy storage because it has high energy efficiency (over 80%) and can be used in large ...
linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0378775306022956

Still looking for the industrial applied ... [ Practical ] link. = TG

Thing that got built fell down.
Big news.
Would have been bigger news if it was a nuclear reactor.

Apologies to all for the NRCan Link ... used to be some easily located links to data from wind survey's on NRC site....

For example here's the Ontario resource:
Wind Resource Atlas

Loki stated: "Environmentalists go into hysterics when a handfull of ducks are covered in oil but seem unperturbed over the hundreds to thousands more birds that are macerated by wind turbines."

All studies I have read state that turbines have a fairly minor effect on birds - usually in the range of two bird kills per year per turbine. Anyone concerned with bird mortality should deal first with house cats, high rise buildings and electrical transmission wires.

Ron in Kelowna states: "The point here, is that WP generation is horrendously expensive (3X, 4X or more than conventional) and is not feasible, even with huge taxpayer subsidies."

Sorry to burst your bubble. I recently discussed natural gas generation costs with an engineer with one of Canada's largest private generators. Gas costs alone, excluding all other costs in developing new generation, are in the range of 5-6 cents per kilowatt hour. Current wind projects I expect are about 9 cents per KWHr and private industry is developing small projects in Ontario for 11 cents.

Mugs says: "Oh and the biggest solar farm in North America (McGuinty endorsed)that's a whole other story, we had some of the most beautiful cloudy days this year lots of them, and it is going to be built right under them, and they already signed a twenty year contract at 42 cents a kilowatt.We pay six at the meter?"

Regarding the Standard Offer Contract, and I expect you are referring to the OptiSolar project near Sarnia, the total proportion of such projects relative to total electrical costs is tiny. When the proportion is broken down, it amounts to a fraction of a penny on one's hydro bill. The SOC for solar was proposed to see what would happen and is only in place for a short time before re-evaluation. As technology proceeds, the revenue paid will decrease.

BTW - solar photovoltaics has excellent load matching characteristics and achieves maximum output at the same time demand peaks from summer air conditioning.

Regarding the farmer with the used turbine, is this the one near Forest? I've heard there are problems with it but I haven't substantiated it.

TG: Regarding battery technology, check "vanadium redox battery". This has very good potential and is being commercialized by a Vancouver company (http://www.vrbpower.com/). I first read about it a few months ago in the Financial Post. They are building a pilot project for a 33 MW Irish wind farm to shift load from evening (highest winds but low prices) to later in the morning.

wave generators were becoming popular at one time, and road gens. some guy made his house drain with a micro gen inside.

TG: Here is some more information on the vanadium redox battery and the Irish project.

http://secure.theengineer.co.uk/liChannelID/8/Articles/298818/Irish+energy+storage.htm

John- yes the turbine I was talking about is by Forest closer to Arkona actually. Last I heard it wasn't working out to bad for them.

My hydro bill is still pretty wild, and I'm one of the people that was buying fluorescents when they where 25 bucks a piece, I think there are way to many fractions of a penny on my bill already from mismanagement - expand the coal plant.

John I'll believe it when I see it for some reason I can see 400 acres of broken run down solar farm in twenty years or less, and a candle factory in its place. :)

OMMAG

""""There are enough viable projects in play to attract BILLIONS of private investor dollars.""""

ever hear of tax write offs:-))))

and as far as batteries go, try a fly wheel

haha..oh jesus..now Kate takes on wind power probably for no other reason than that she sees it as a construct of left leaning people and God knows that everything is completely black and white...Even more hilarious is that she doesn't attack it's viability as an alternative, but rather it's safety record. ~ steve

Ya gotta admire Kate. Just the fact that she posts an interesting article is enough to get leftie steve all in a tither. ~ Texas Canuck

Surely no one is saying that the wind turbine projects are a waste of time or money!! ~ OMMAG

You have to love it when the moonbats come on and invent Kates take on the links, when in fact she said nothing, simply posted the links. It is up to us - the readers - to make our own minds up. ~ commsguy

Defend myself against what precisely? ~ Kate

So we've got "lefties" disagreeing with what they've read between the lines on this post, some supporters coming to Kate's defense, other supportive readers concurring with the lefties for once, and yet more supporters denying that there are even lines to read between.

I'm curious, Kate: what was your point in this post? I'd love to hear you come out and say it just once. Personally, since you contrasted blurbs like "Wolf-gerrit Fruh, a senior lecturer in energy engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, described the incident as "extremely unusual" with multiple photos of fallen turbines, I suspect the truth is closer to "steve" than to, say, "commsguy." But that's just me. What say you? =)

"now Kate takes on wind power probably for no other reason than that she sees it as a construct of left leaning people and God knows that everything is completely black and white"

I just assumed she has an oil furnace and gets Haliburton to ship her a barrel or two of oil every winter for certain considerations :-)

John B, Thank you.. I*ll follow up. The Van-Redox is in the top of the mix. The sites you point to are new to me. thanks.

The Fox is in the hen house.

In the first quarter of this video he plays along with the host re Al Gore and the N. Prize, but gets into How to get America off oil. PEV the grid, and he*s right on. David Sandalow / Freedom from Oil - Author [Top Creds]

www.eenews.net/gw/

Snooty site though:

Academic institutions that have institution-wide access to our services include:

* MIT
* Stanford University
* Georgetown University
* Williams College
* Yale University
* Colby College
* University of Wyoming
* Vermont Law School
* New York Law School
* Carnegie Mellon
* Harvard University
* Indiana University
* University of Michigan
* U.C. Santa Barbara
===== They offer a two week trial to their site.

I*ll wait until I really need it... maybe.

Students get a patronizing message. Yuk! = TG

OMMAG, still ignoring the sheer cost per kilowatt of wind generators (no cheating, you've got to calculate total cost of ownership), AND the fact that their intermittent nature means they can never be anything other than a supplement to fossil fuel or nuclear generation.

Same goes for solar and for wave generators. Intermittent, supplementary, extremely expensive.

Should fossil fuel become so hideously expensive that these kinds of supplementary generators become cost competetive, then you know what? They will be economically attractive, and there will be one on every bump in the landscape.

Oh, and our lives will SUCK, because for wind power to look good, one hell of a lot of people are going to be freezing in the dark up here in Kanuckistan.

Gets cold here in the winter dude, or had you forgotten that part?

I bet the Windmills were backed up by good old reliable coal. I wonder if the UK will meet their Kyoto targets with the whole wind farm down.

For anyone contemplating leasing their land to a wind power company, this is the most important clause of all;

[Decommissioning cost (if capitalized). (FYI, I generally urge that landowners insist that decommissioning costs be covered by cash bonds held by independent third parties because many wind farm “owners” turn out to be LLCs with few assets. Because tax breaks for wind are heavily front-loaded (depreciation – 5-6 years; production tax credit – 10 years), there are huge incentives for sales of facilities after tax breaks are used, or for abandonment if costs of maintenance, repair and/or replacement rise substantially. There is little protection for landowners from surety bonds that depend on premium payments or cash bonds held by an LLC-owner – in case of insolvency or abandonment.)] Minnesotans For Sustainability©

Link for the true cost of WP ?

From; Minnesotans For Sustainability©

A. True Cost of Electricity from Wind
1. Capital costs, which are generally specific to equipment, site and owner
2. O & M, Repair and Replacement
3. Income Taxes
4. Cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
a. Capacity Factors
b. Useful life of turbines
5. Extra costs of electricity from wind because of intermittence, variability, unpredictability and uncontrollability of electricity output from wind turbines
a. Cost of backup generation
b. Transmission costs
c. Extra grid management burden
d. Arbitrary assignment of costs
e. Penalties in competitive markets
f. Who bears the costs?
g. Shifting of costs from “wind farm” owners to electric customers by regulation
6. Tax breaks and subsidies for “wind farm” owners
a. Tax breaks
1) The Federal Production Tax credit
2) Five-year double declining balance accelerated depreciation (5-yr., 200% DB).
3) Reduction in state corporate income tax due to federal accelerated depreciation
4) Reduction in state and local property, sales, and other taxes
b. Subsidies for the wind industry
1) Federal subsidies
2) State subsidies
3) Renewable portfolio standards – an insidious subsidy
4) “Green” energy programs
B. Availability, Capacity Factors and “Homes Served”
1. Availability factors
2. Capacity factors
3. “Homes served”

http://www.mnforsustain.org/windpower_schleede_costs_of_electricity.htm

Did you know that if the city of Toronto was converted to wind power, the windmill farm would take up the same amount of land as big as the province of PEI. Now who would want that.

Everyone seems to forget that buffering takes care of on - off winds.

Ron, That list is a fraction of the Nuke-Gen list. = TG

OMMAG et al:

Wind power is a distraction to the issue that really matters - base/peak load generation.

If the peak demand for an area is say 1000 MW, then 1000 MW has to be provided by either of the following: Coal, Oil, Biomass, Biogas, Hydro, Nuclear or Natural Gas. Period.

Wind and solar are not reliable enough to be counted on to be a part of the base load supply. They are a nuisance and a distraction to what should be the singular task at hand - providing base/peak load supply at the absolute lowest cost possible as reliably as is reasonable from acost standpoint.

Of the above, coal is currently hands-down the cheapest provider. To say that wind or solar are only a multiple of the cost of coal completely misses the above point - wind power is INFINITELY more expensive than the above alternatives because it ISN'T an alternative. Wind and solar subsidies are a complete waste of money as they only reduce the cost efficiency of coal and other similar generation methods that have significant power output when idling that is sold for less when wind power is a competitor.

Subsidies - capital subsidies via short-term generation subsidies for renewable base/peak load generation - (biomass, biogas and hydro) makes perfect sense as once thay have paid off the capital cost the generated power cost is usually very low - particularly Hydro -
(provided, of course that the subsidy is repaid to the subsidizing entity).

And for those reading this who are aghast at my supporting 'dirty' coal, please be advised that zero airborne emissions coal power is less than a decade away from widescale commercialization. At that point coal will be the cheapest, safest AND CLEANEST power choice with reserves of at least 400 years in N.A.. By then fusion - which the first pilot project in Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER) is due to be completed in 30 years - will be able to replace it.

P.S. - it should be noted that Wind and solar can be a part of peak/base load capacity if it is coupled with a pump hydro storage facility (i.e. water is pumped up the hill during lower demand periods). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage_hydroelectricity) But I haven't heard or read much discussion of this option, unfortunately.

Gord Tulk --- exactly.

Patrick Moore has been saying much the same thing.

So, tell me --- why does Suzuki get all the headlines ??

Ron:

because "green" is about fashion, not facts. Remember just a few years ago the same "green" media stars were smoking cigars and just a few years before that they were starring in movies about the corrupt practices of the tobacco industry.

Ron:

It should be noted that Patrick Moore thinks Nukes are the answer - the traditionally designed kind not this much safer option:(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor), not 'clean' coal - something he should reconsider.

Gord and Ron .... I run up against people who put up these same objections all the time. Of course if anyone has unreasonable expectations about the outcome of such things as wind power generation, then they will end up very unhappy. That does not mean that people give up and go home. What we do is adjust our expectations and work toward realistic goals while addressing problems that can be mitigated or better eliminated.

The simple answer is that a properly conceived and planned project will be successful.

You are correct in many of your observations but incorrect in thinking that they can be applied broadly and in all cases.

One huge assumption almost everyone leaps to is that windgen will be used in massive applications. Not so! We already know the pitfalls and limitations. Another is costs to implement the systems. Current and soon to be available hardware is and will continue to be less costly and more reliable. Oh yes ...all sources of energy are going to coast more.

Other sources of energy as you note are cheaper and some will continue to be cheaper. ALL energy sources will increase in cost.
Guess which ones will increase at the greatest rate!

But I tell you this with confidence and the sure knowledge that BILLIONS of private investment capitol are being allocated for windgen projects right here in Canada .... you're going to see more towers somewhere in the very near future. Take that to the bank.

Europeans aren't taking it to (taking from) the bank anymore ---remember, when it comes to being "green", they are ahead of us.

[Despite their being cited as the shining example of what can be accomplished with wind power, the Danish government has cancelled plans for three offshore wind farms planned for 2008 and has scheduled the withdrawal of subsidies from existing sites. Development of onshore wind plants in Denmark has effectively stopped. Because Danish companies dominate the wind industry, however, the government is under pressure to continue their support. Spain began withdrawing subsidies in 2002. Germany reduced the tax breaks to wind power, and domestic construction drastically slowed in 2004. Switzerland also is cutting subsidies as too expensive for the lack of significant benefit. The Netherlands decommissioned 90 turbines in 2004. Many Japanese utilities severely limit the amount of wind-generated power they buy, because of the instability they cause. For the same reason, Ireland in December 2003 halted all new wind-power connections to the national grid. In early 2005, they were considering ending state support. In 2005, Spanish utilities began refusing new wind power connections. In 2006, the Spanish government ended -- by emergency decree -- its subsidies and price supports for big wind. In 2004, Australia reduced the level of renewable energy that utilities are required to buy, dramatically slowing wind-project applications. On August 31, 2004, Bloomberg News reported that "the unstable flow of wind power in their networks" has forced German utilities to buy more expensive energy, requiring them to raise prices for the consumer.] Eric Rosenbloom

"ALL energy sources will increase in cost" ? Sure about that ?

[RIYADH — The world's biggest oil producer thinks the price of crude should be closer to $60 (U.S.) a barrel than $100, pointing specifically to the cost of production in Alberta's oil sands as a likely long-term benchmark for the commodity.

“The price today really has no relation whatsoever with the fundamentals. The fundamentals do not support the current price,” Ali al-Naimi, Saudi's Arabia's powerful Oil Minister, said Tuesday.

Mr. al-Naimi's expansive thoughts on the volatile oil market – for which he blamed “pessimists,” “gurus” and “experts” preaching Peak Oil that are “agitating the speculators” – were one of several factors that sent oil tumbling $3.45 or 3.6 per cent to $91.17 Tuesday after nearly hitting $100 last week.] Globe Investor

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071113.wenergyopec1113/GIStory/

"Billions of private investment capital will be invested."

The interesting thing here is -- by whom ??

Why are the Power Companies (Manitoba Hydro, ect) so willing to let "investors' in-on-the-deal if there is so much money to be made ?

When the music (subsidies) stop (as already in some European countries) it will be time to head for the hills !! --- ones still free of windmills :)

OMMAG:

And not one of those towers would be built if there weren't for subsidies upon subsidies - from direct per kW payments to aggressive capital writedowns - money that could go towards developing REAL alternatives and technology.

Until it can provide peak/base load the net effect of windpower is more expensive power and arguably less reliable / poorer quality power.

Gord, at 10:27 you said,. . .

** coal power is less than a decade away from widescale commercialization. At that point coal will be the cheapest, safest AND CLEANEST **

Correct, except that *dirty* coal-gen is widescale today with hundreds of new plants being built worldwide including Canada and USA.

Correct. Coal is a most abundant and inexpensive energy source.

It is also the world*s most predominant dirty pollution generator.

Clean coal tech is a human moral obligation, yet because it is very expensive, governments continue to build Coal- Gen WITHOUT clean coal tech.

Somehow, ** cheapest, safest and cleanest ** looks difficult when you include the costly Clean Tech part. Governments don*t want to.

Do you see economy of scale? volume?

Tends to keep wind-gen in the mix.. eh?

I*m with you though. Nothing I would like more. = TG

for every kw generated by wind or solar you have to have a reliable source of generated power not just backup batteries. a real hard wired plant, oil, coal, gas or hydro or nuke. other tech will not keep the lights on dependently.

TG et al,
As I said before, wind power can augment but never replace the conventional power sources, at least in the forseeable future. As to the storing this energy for less windy days, the cost of this storage is very high and not exactly "green". If you check on the world's largest battery (okay 13,000+) in Alaska that is to help the Alaska power grid for short outages, you will see that even that is designed to give 40Megawatts for all of 7 minutes. I think the wind stops for longer than that, except in Saskatchewan. The mining, refining and chemical production to make all those ni-cad batteries and subsiquent disposal of them would keep a greenie up all night.
like finding a cure for cancer, there is no one single answer out there.

I agree with comments above, wind generation is good for small, closed applications like remote farms and cottages. Large scale systems connected to the grid are vastly overrated.

The problem is that electricity cannot be stored. Once generated, it has to be consumed. In a previous life, I worked as an industrial engineer for a few power utilities in Ontario. If a large transmission line feeding off one of our nuclear plants would go down, all those megawatts would have nowhere to go and bounce back, causing major damage. You'd have only a fraction of a second to shut down, and it would be a major operation to restart it.

With wind, you need a back-up power source: nuclear, hydro, thermal. Since these cannot be shut down at a whim, the wind farms end up producing superfluous power.

Three more protesters and not one verifying link?

Texas Canuk thinks MegaWatts are stored in NiCads. Check this thread.. Flow Liquid storage!

GreenNeck the engineer working in the tech wonderland of Ontario says electricity can not be stored.

Never heard of the Edison battery bank system where battery equipped public buildings are charged at night with energy used during the following business day.

Wonder why engineers elswhere persist in adding Wind-Gen projects. Just learners, I guess. = TG

TG, batteries? "Buffer" systems? Yes, such things are -possible-... but have you considered the cost of building a buffer system sufficient to feed Toronto on wind and solar, 24/7? Plus the cost of maintaining it. Oh, and plus the cost of replacing it when it wears out

Ok, never mind Toronto. How about Stelco? Tell me about running Stelco on batteries. Or compressed air. Or water pumped uphill. By a windmill.

Please don't forget that Stelco has to SELL that steel they make in the same market as Chicoms who burn brown coal and don't care how many babies they suffocate.

Ain't. Going. To. Happen.

"GreenNeck the engineer working in the tech wonderland of Ontario says electricity can not be stored."

TG, I should have been more specific. Cannot be stored on a large scale basis. One car, one house, one building... sure. A whole city? Good luck.

Storage issues is what plagues the electric car. Typically a fully-charged battery set is good for 200 km, and won't last more than 5 years.

FYI, I am off-grid at my location (Algonquin Park) and have both wind and solar. And I do use batteries. I'm not really a granola, I'm more of a gulcher (Ayn Rand fans will know what that means). I just got tired of paying through the nose for electricity that was not even reliable.

Posted by: Kate at November 14, 2007 4:02 PM

"My lefties are so cute when they get riled up like that."

If they don't get riled then you are not doing your job. Then again, it's so easy that you should be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage.

If not for the existence of the moonbat lefties one would not recognize the boundaries of reasonable sanity, civility and personal responsibility. Yet, if they were to suddenly become reasonable wind turbines might be endangered by squadrons of flying pigs.

Gord: "Wind and solar are not reliable enough to be counted on to be a part of the base load supply"

Correct, but solar does have very good load matching characteristics with respect to peak demand (which nuclear does not). Ironically, if anyone is interested in solar power, it's most economic application is very low tech - hot water heating. Solar pool heaters have a payback of 1 to 2 years and domestic water heaters are marginally economic at current electricity rates.

BTW - I'm not anti-nuke, but just what is the full cost of nuclear power? Living in Ontario, I've been burned by OPG (formerly Ontario Hydro) who are incapable of giving an honest assessment of costs or timetables. I would also be more confident in nuclear power if the industry wasn't limited to a maximum liability of $75 million.
http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9611
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/showdoc/cs/N-28/bo-ga:l_II//en#anchorbo-ga:l_II

GreenNeck,

I appreciate your calmness. Good that you are happy being free of the old fashioned grid like my QSO contact in Oregon.

Auto battery packs are warranty protected in most states for 8 eight years and in a few states for 10 ten years.

AutoBlogGreen.com

Battery packs lose their required *auto-zip* at about 80%. They are not scrap at that stage however. 80% packs are traded in for use in public buildings *buffer* power systems.

That*s where the untilities like Edison get them. [same link or EDTA ] = TG

TG, the megawatts I was refering to is an actual facility that opened up in alaska a little while ago. Those were actual outputs and time duration I quoted. My question about disposing of used materials is still valid like the costs of replacing the batteries on those electric cars... and don't say they last forever.

John:

I live in Red Deer AB area. Tghis time of year solar definitely does NOT match the load.

As for nukes, all of the traditional systems that use water as the heat transefer medium and mechanical methods to control the core's activity while cost effective on paper, are fraught with cost and safety issues.

The CANDU system is the worst of the worst as it uses heavy water as the cooling media which is enormously expensive to replace if it gets contaminated.

And the environmental remediation costs of the facilities after they have reached their useful life expectancy (or in the case of Pickering prematurely reach it) are almost incalculable - well into the hundreds of billions in Ontario certainly.

TG:

The first zero airborne emissions coal plant is due to go online in 2012. http://www.futuregenalliance.org/

Once proven, the technology is generally transferable to existing facilities. Thus it is most sensible to be building coal gasification facilites which are essentially as clean as natural gas and not prohibitively expensive compared to the traditional systems, and then add-on the injection technology once it is ready. Dalliance with wind and solar is drawing funding away from this process and thus slowing it down.

Gord,

Excellent post. I read about that and there is a smaller proto-type on the go at some University or research site. [lost link]

Expensive at first. Let*s hope they can retro-fit existing Coal-Gen at reasonable cost eventually.

TC,

OK, I will not say battries last forever.

They do trade in with rebate at 8 years or 10 years, depending on the state.

New Lithium Polymer are non-toxic, so that*s kinda nice,... eh? = TG

Gord: While I can't speak for Alberta, in Ontario peak loads occur during summer due to air conditioning. Twenty or more years ago peak loads were during the winter due to electric heating.

Gord, do try to learn a few things about a system before you knock it. First, heavy water is cleaned up and recycled if it becomes contaminated. It is NOT associated with the heat sink for steam condensation in the station turbines, it's only used for the flow between reactor and boilers. Second, your claim of hundreds of billions for decommissioning is also more antinuke mythology. Reactors have been fully decommissioned back to greenfield in many cases in the US, Britain, Germany, France. In all cases the cost for decommissioning was much less than a billion. After decommissioning Berkeley, the UK energy minister at the time commented that, being the first one Britain had ever done was much less costly than anticipated. Third, your nonsense about "fraught with cost and safety issues" also won't withstand the light of day. Come back when you've got something other that Greenpeace rhetoric to spout.

Oh, and as for John B and OMMAG who seem to love wind power so much and dismiss scornfully Kate's posting, it is a fact that to the end of 2005 wind power's construction and operation has been the direct cause of 22 fatalities world wide, 13 in construction, 8 in maintenance and 1 bystander (a parachutist in Germany). On a per-unit energy generated, that makes wind power slightly more lethal than the direct fatalities produced from coal mining, albeit still much safer than hydro.

cgh

What is it that makes Hydro so much less safe? I would have guessed otherwise.

Woodporter,

The historic safety record of hydraulic power is very bad. Dam breaches. Since 1900 there have been more than a thousand of them worldwide. As evidence that you and I and everyone else on this blog has been thoroughly brainwashed by green propaganda, everyone's heard of TMI, but no one in North America ever heard of Gujarat. Same month in 1979 as TMI, a large power dam in the province of Gujarat in India ruptured and flooded the valley downstream. About 5000 people were drowned, but the press was full of TMI stuff because Walter Cronkite had labeled it the "worst industrial accident in history".

Just look at Canadian recent history. How many people have been killed by nuclear power? None. How many by hydraulic? Two as recent as 2002 when two people were drowned by the spilling of water from the Barrett Chute in 2002 in Renfrew.

None of this is to say that hydraulic energy is bad. What it says is that real risk has nothing to do with perceived risk.