Facts and reason will never trump emotions and wishing. North America is marching in blind faith towards adopting alternative energy sources that have yet to be developed to the point of being viable.

Now is the time to build wind farms in city's plagued with unemployed and homeless unfortunates.
If we pay these people a minimum wage to spend their idle hours in front of a wind turbine and blow 8 hrs a day, just think, no more unemployment and lower health costs.

just another darn case of a brilliant dream being rudely interrupted by a dose of reality.

dat hiz not fair!!!

Here in Knox Co., OH, a horse farm has recently installed a wind turbine. We are supposed to be in one of the better (but far from best) areas for wind power in OH. The tower seems to be around 60 ft high, and it placed on top of a hill in a clear field. The turbine blades might sweep out a circle 30 ft or so in diameter. The blades seldom turn, probably around the 4% of the time the Germans get. The set up must have cost a least $100,000. Ohio gets the great majority of its electrical power from cheap, reliable coal, with a little nuclear thrown in for flavor. I will be interested to see how long it takes for the farmer to go bankrupt and lose his farm to foreclosure.

What happened to the Can-do! spirit that the West--you know, apparently the greatest, most entrepreneurial, most innovative, most ambitious, most prosperous, and on the whole most superior culture e-vah--is so famous for?

I think you would all be surprised by how many huts can be powered by just one village turbine.

It would be interesting to get hold of Spanish wind power statistics. Spain has little oil (notwithstanding Repsol being Spanish), and (I think) no nuclear power. There are a few wind turbines in La Mancha (and quite a number of old disused windmills, as per Don Quixote), but many wind turbines in southern Andalucia. I suppose that has to do with the reliability and constancy of wind in that region. Anyway, their oldest wind turbines go back about 20 years, so their data, if available, should be useful.

John, Spain has a lot of nuclear power, eight nuclear plants in total supplying 20% of the country's electricity.

The EOn report shows several additional factors. First, the performance of wind generally declines with each additional increment. It's like hydro, you build the best sites first; hence, by definition, performance of all the subsequent ones is worse.

Second, the variability problem is enormous. Energy produced varies with the cube of the wind speed, meaning small variations in speed produce huge surges and sags in production. What this means is that the greater percentage of supply you have from wind, the more backup generation you need and the more that backup is used. EOn's report estimates that the generation displacement by its wind system (more than 9000 MW) is less than 10 per cent of other sources. Hence, EOn's expectation of a drop to just 4% guaranteed capacity by 2020. Variability can be extremely serious. The Danish wind fleet typically experiences power drops and surges of about four to five times current generation within a space of about half an hour. This makes voltage and frequency regulation difficult to say the least. Denmark can only manage its problems by dumping surplus power into the Scandinavian grid and backing off Norwegian hydro generation.

Third, you can't blackstart a modern wind turbine. It needs a constant supply of electricity from the grid for its converters and other internal electrical equipment. Thus, as frequently happens on hot sunny days, the blades may be turning but the generation is significantly less than the turbine is drawing off the grid. During the week long heat wave in Ontario in 2007 and 2006, the wind system (about 350 MW) was generating less than 10 MW throughout the day. There would be some pickup at night to about 40 MW, but nothing more than that.

Not to disparage the argument that is trying to be made to be fair Germany land mass is about 3% that of the US so I think that Pickens might have a little better opportunity to develop optimal wind power potential.

I guess it is only a matter of time until the Gore and Suzuki's of this world have the rest of us back to the DARK AGES. PUNK BIT__ES!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of us on this site patiently explained why wind power is not a viable option for a main source of power at this time and many tried to shout us down. Engineers deal with these problems every day and we have to be realistic. There has been entirely too much wishing for something to be true and thinking that will make it happen, instead of dealing with reality.

It really drives me crazy that our politicians are pandering to these people as well. Give them the reality and facts, if they can't deal with it, too bad. We need to stop treating ignorant people with kid gloves because we are being polite. Tell them they are wrong and why. If you even get through to 1 out of 10 you make a difference with word of mouth. I have said it before and I will say it again, if you are going to have a strong opinion on something, make sure it is informed.

Pickins? Sierra club? Wind power? There is something wrong with that picture. Either Pickins has some huge financial stake in this idiotic plan or he has been taken in by the Illuminati that rule the world and has been promised immortality for him and his family using alien technology.

That's how stupid that is!

I think the fuss over wind power systems is driven by two factors: (1) the usual uninformed advocacy for so-called “green solutions”, and (2) the purported 18:1 energy return on energy invested (http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3810) to make the systems. I have not bothered to validate that number, but it shows how relying on a single metric badly distorts proper characterization.

Invest in coal, ladies and gentlemen. We will be using an ever-increasing amount of it over the next 20 years.

And the Wind they call Pariah.

the pariah of the wind is availability - it aint there 99.9% of the time which is what utilities need as a service factor.

Is this maybe why Ted Turner is buying up massive amounts of land in the mid-west?

Wind power is perfectly suitable for small-scale operations are remote rural areas. Scaling it to major power production is a different story.

I have installed a 1.5 kW wind turbine a few years ago and have been very happy with it. Along with a few PV solar panels I get all the power I need.

Every time there is a storm all my neighbours lose power, sometimes for days. I always have lights.

Sure it is not cheap.
Cost of the installation: $22K (and only because I did everything myself)
Not being at the mercy of Hydro One, their ever growing costs for unreliable supply, and being able to call and ask them to come and remove the meter: Priceless.

I hear wind farms in SW Ontario sit idle because it costs too much to put them on the grid for the short period that they would be generating power. Talk about a waste of taxpayer $$. But does Squinty care? Heck no. He promised alternative sources & delivered, sort of. So they can't use the potential power - let the next schmuck worry about that.

Pickens is no fool; he can smell the drift of cash coming from subsidies. Pickens will spend some money to create hysteria of alternative energy. Then he will find ways to cash in on the government program.
Consider this article “T. Boone hard-wired for subsidies”.

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=675273

While wind power is clean and usable, it is only a weak auxiliary to the conventional power generation, due to the nature of the wind patterns. Sometimes it’s windy, other times not.
Even in places known for wind, the windless periods are longer than windy.
Of course, in near future the environ-mentalists will start arguing that wind power is consuming all the available wind and there is going to be none left for other purposes, for the birds and other various and sundry needs they will no doubt come up with.
The same will happen with the solar panels; those things will cover the earth. How can farmers grow anything when the sun does not shine on the crops? They will say.
Better junk all those things, they will say.
Do you think this sound stupid? It does.
That has not stopped environ-mentalists from doing anything.

So does the "." in E.on stand for "nr"? Just asking.

Pickens just found Enron's old plan after putting the shredded paper back together.

For you number crunchers out there, Vattenfall Germany posts wind power infeed to their grid on a 15-minute basis to excel spreadsheets which can be downloaded here:
http://www.vattenfall.de/www/trm_de/trm_de/178444netzk/178703downl/index.jsp

Vattenfall is no small potatoes operation: installed wind capacity was 8970 megaWatts at the end of 2007: the equivalent of 8 or 9 good sized coal fired power plants.

Data is available from 2005 to the present, updated on a nearly daily schedule.

Use files from this group:
Hochrechnungsistwerte Windenergieeinspeisung (IST) in der Regelzone

The language is German, but it is pretty easy to figure out what the numbers mean.

One can see from the actual data just how unreliable and unsteady wind power is.

Geeks and nerds, amaze your friends with your quantitative knowledge of wind power.

It is unfortunate that people are not being given accurate information on the limits of alternative energy like wind and solar. Nature is just too unpredictable to be relied upon. Baseload power will have to continue to come from coal, NG, hydro and nuclear for now. Maybe someday nature based energy will have evolved but for politicians to dangle this renewable energy dream in front of the pubic as a realistic solution for today is either ignorance or dishonesty. At best wind and solar are pilot and research projects but mostly they are a public relations exercise.

Realistic people are just going to have to accept the fact that there will have to be areas set aside that will be polluted if we wish to continue a reasonable standard of living. Electrical generation technology can be improved and new pollution controls can be developed and installed but this will require money. Money will be lost to carbon taxes, cap and trade or feel good green projects if the Kyotoists continue to dominate the political and environmental agenda.

Tim, E.On is one of the largest gas and electric utilities in Europe. It's headquartered in Dusseldorf, but among other things owns PowerGen in the UK as well as being one of the four big electric utilities in Germany. So yeah, unlike Enron, they actually have most of their capital tied up in real assets like generating stations.

Don't imagine for one moment that E.On much likes having such a huge wind inventory. They have to carry the turbines on their system and absorb the loss from the feed-in tariff. Not all of the German states allow the feed-in to be passed on to the customer, so the utility simply has to eat the loss.

Momorider @ 10:20: "Not to disparage the argument that is trying to be made to be fair Germany land mass is about 3% that of the US so I think that Pickens might have a little better opportunity to develop optimal wind power potential."

Sorry, but that's not the argument. Wind is unacceptably variable as a source in either place. All that more real estate in the US means is that there is more room to park great white elephants. There are a few locations where they can perform with greater reliability, particularly mountain passes. However, 1. these tend to be remote locations, and 2. because the airspace is restricted they tend to have a greater effect on bird populations.

GreenNeck @ 11:59: That may be fine for you, but most of the world's population lives in cities and this will grow as a proportion over time. Your solution is useless for urban centres. Worse, if you advocate your favoured technologies and resist inclusion of any high density sources such as nuclear or coal you are simply engaging in the worst form of selfishness. Finally, quote me the outage rate of Hydro One and I might believe your nonsense about unreliability. While you're at it, please quote the voltage and frequency performance of your home system and how it exceeds those of the province-wide grid.

Keep your eye on VRB Power from Vancouver and their vanadium-redox battery.

'The VRB Energy Storage System (VRB-ESS) being sold to Tapbury Management Limited for Phase II of the Sorne Hill Wind Farm in Ireland has been increased in size to a 2MW x 6hr system. The deal confirms Sorne Hill as Europe’s largest energy storage project."

"The study anticipates internal rates of return to purchasers of VRB Energy Storage Systems in Ireland of up to 17.5%, increasing the economic appeal of wind power in Ireland and potentially across Europe and beyond."

"The study also concluded that the optimum size of the system is 2MW of power with six hours of storage and the ability to provide 3MW of pulse power for 10-minute periods every hour in order to deal with short-term volatility in wind generation."

"The study highlighted the fact that the VRB-ESS will allow wind power to be dispatched in the same way as 'base load and peaking plant' generation. It will enable the integration of large amounts of wind energy without causing grid instability, thereby improving the economics of wind generation."

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/298818/Irish+energy+storage.htm

http://www.vrbpower.com/docs/media/Renewable%20Energy%20Monitor%20REM%20Apr%2012%202007%20(story%20only).pdf

This is Ireland of course and not Ontario where wind resources are marginal and highly seasonal (i.e. fall, winter, spring peaking).

So why have so many been duped by wind power ? (Biofuels also)

Simple.
Uninformed, if you read the newspaper. Misinformed, if you do.

So why do most MSM dumb-down information? Either they have an agenda or they are just plain dumb.

Batteries: There are only so many of these. Look at the periodic table. Pick two reactive elements. Poof - there is the possible battery. The more reactive the substance the more power it can generate and the more horrible it is to handle.

More land area for wind turbines means a larger number of turbines and thus a larger and more variable problem. Not a smaller one. Weather is not randomly distributed. If there is no wind at a given site, there is likely no wind at an adjacent site. You need to construct backup power which can come on line at a moment's notice and completely replace the turbine, perhaps for days. That is generally a gas turbine (or batteries.)

The most economic battery is a lead-acid battery. The environmental consequences of lead-acid battery backup of the entire North-American power grid stagger the imagination. These are REAL consequences, not imaginary gas-vapour consequences.

People will die in mining accidents. People will die in sulfuric acid accidents. They do already in order to provide our way of life, but with battery backup it will be more so. Acid spills. Refining of sulfuric acid plants. Gah.

On the other hand, "vanadium" is neat. It is even fun to say that word.

sum facts about wind power

power rises and falls with the wind, or as lieberals start and stop talking

wind power fades as the FN lay land claims on the land were the windmills are located, as in just NW of Shelbourne ON

there is an easy solution to energy storage to back up unrelieble wind supply, it's called "mechanical batteries", just a little complex and thusly darn expensive, but that wouldn't stop the leftards

we could emulate the Indians from India and try burning cow sh!t:-)))))

Ron in Kelowna,

You’re being a little harsh on people. For whatever reasons, most people don't think about electricity other than when it's time to pay the bill. The rest of the time, you flip a switch and through PFM, the lights come on. For the vast majority, that's all the knowledge that's needed.

If any thought is given to electricity, it will be about power lines and maybe generation and then only in relation to something new going in an area we like. It will never be about base load or spinning standby because most of us do not need to know these things.

I must point out here that until one of Kate's pesky engineers brought up base load a few months back, I'd never heard the term. As for spinning standby, I first read that term this morning in the linked story. Obviously, I'm not alone in my electrical illiteracy.

So, not knowing how electricity is generated or any of the reasons for different types of generation, I can easily see how people would jump on the solar, tidal, wind, whatever alternative.

What's needed is information - factual and easy to understand. The hard part is finding someone to pass on that information. The agenda-driven ideologues won’t do it, the media won’t do it and the politicians won’t do it. The power companies might, but if there’s a chance they might lose out on government subsidies, they won’t. Kate and her pesky engineers are a good start but it’s not their job to educate the rest of us on electricity. They’re a great resource, but only for a very few, so they’re not the answer either.

William: I suggest you do some background reading on the vanadium redox battery. Will it eventually work on an industrial scale? Who knows but it looks promising. It can be scaled for both duration and power and has an extremely long lifespan since only one electrolyte is used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
http://www.electricitystorage.org/pubs/2001/IEEE_PES_Summer2001/Miyake.pdf

As for sulfuric acid, it's a well known product that is routinely handled on an industrial scale. That's how INCO, et al get rid of their SO2 from smokestack scrubbers. A friend of mine used to work for Noranda selling the stuff.

The other aspect of conventional energy sources that goes unrecognized is how much they have improved over time.

For example, older coal plants were far more inefficient, unsafe and polluting as compared to anything built since the 80's. Newer generation power plants built in Alberta and Sask are even more environmentally friendly with zero effluent systems, particulate control and complicated pond systems to reuse waste water. Some even incorporate the use of residential sewage by creating man made wetlands and then use it for feed water. Mined land is quickly reclaimed and restored. On top of that, there is a mountain of environmental monitoring and pollution regulations that have to be followed. The biggest hurdle is the flyash. Some can be sold and used but the rest just piles up.

That is where research money is needed - to improve existing and proven electrical generating systems and build new units more environmentally friendly .

John B, I have personally handled Sulfuric Acid as part of my job. It is very dangerous, as a few careless and now disfigured operators have discovered. Read its MSDS.

Lynnh: I too have worked with sulfuric (as well as nitric, hydrochloric and the mixture aqua regia) when I was in both the university lab and later as an analytical chemist. All concentrated and nasty stuff if precautions weren't taken. My point stands about the industrial uses of the acid:

"Sulfuric acid is a very important commodity chemical, and indeed, a nation's sulfuric acid production is a good indicator of its industrial strength.[5] The major use (60% of total production worldwide) for sulfuric acid is in the "wet method" for the production of phosphoric acid, used for manufacture of phosphate fertilizers as well as trisodium phosphate for detergents."

"Sulfuric acid is used in large quantities by the iron and steelmaking industry to remove oxidation, rust and scale from rolled sheet and billets prior to sale to the automobile and white-goods industry."

"Ammonium sulfate, an important nitrogen fertilizer, is most commonly produced as a byproduct from coking plants supplying the iron and steel making plants. Reacting the ammonia produced in the thermal decomposition of coal with waste sulfuric acid allows the ammonia to be crystallized out as a salt (often brown because of iron contamination) and sold into the agro-chemicals industry."

"Another important use for sulfuric acid is for the manufacture of aluminium sulfate, also known as paper maker's alum."

"Sulfuric acid is used for a variety of other purposes in the chemical industry. For example, it is the usual acid catalyst for the conversion of cyclohexanoneoxime to caprolactam, used for making nylon. ... Sulfuric acid is also important in the manufacture of dyestuffs, pigments (such as titanium dioxide), solutions, and is the "acid" in lead-acid (car) batteries."

"Sulfuric acid is not considered toxic besides its obvious corrosive hazard, and the main occupational risks are skin contact leading to burns (see above) and the inhalation of aerosols"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfuric_acid#Manufacture

From an safety perspective, the acid's properties are well known and it's routinely handled on an industrial scale.

I am well aware of its industrial applications but using it in an industrial scale is far different than research applications. We used to bring it in by the tanker full.

Your implication was that because it is used routinely that it is no big deal to use it more extensively in battery cells. This is may be misleading to people with little chemical or industrial experience. The stuff is nasty.

http://www.bu.edu/es/labsafety/ESMSDSs/MSSulfuricAcid.html

Since batteries must be regularly recharged and it is quite an involved procedure both from a safety and practical standpoint.

Rosco at 12:40

There are probably a dozen test towers within ten miles of where I live in SW Ontario. Lots of farmers have signed contracts already. Not far from town six eyesores have been erected already.

The trough is deep, and we have a dimwit more than ready to keep it full no matter what.

There has been entirely too much wishing for something to be true and thinking that will make it happen, instead of dealing with reality.

Most leftist comprehensive plans (whatever the goal) take 10, 20, 30 years to come to "fruition". There's a reason for that, and I'll leave it up to readers' imagination to figure out why this is.

That is where research money is needed - to improve existing and proven electrical generating systems and build new units more environmentally friendly.

But there are far too many agenda-driven NIMBYs and BANANAs who are willing to screech against ANY kind of progress.

These are the type that believe in some kind of energy fairy that can provide power for their lifestyles while harming nothing.

And unfortunately, they also seem to be the type that believe in conspiracy theories, so there's no convincing the loonies.

"I have installed a 1.5 kW wind turbine a few years ago and have been very happy with it. Along with a few PV solar panels I get all the power I need."

I suspect that your turbine and panels keep your batteries charged and you get your power from the batteries.

But will that work on a large scale?

Horny Toad