Saturday night, Alberta’s wind power collapsed, again.
But on Friday, wind in Saskatchewan actually had a good day, if you consider operating at one-third capacity good.
If you were taking out your turkey in Alberta Saturday evening to get ready for Thanksgiving, it’s almost certain your lights were not being powered by wind.
That’s because at 9:18 p.m. on Saturday, Alberta’s fleet of 29 wind farms capable of a nameplate capacity of 2,734 megawatts was contributing five megawatts. That’s 0.18 per cent. That’s 18 ten-thousandths of its capacity.
It also accounted for only 0.05 per cent of Alberta’s total power generation at that time, or five ten-thousandths of total power production. That’s only slightly more than solar, which was zero.
And those expensive batteries didn’t come to the rescue. But they did the day before – for 9 and 10 minutes apiece. And that was it for those 24 hours.
How much electricity is consumed by the gearbox oil heaters of those idle windmills?
If you burn big pools of oil at the base of the windmills, the rising heat convection currents will slowly turn the blades.
See? “Free electricity”!
Maybe Elon Musk will develop a three turbine generator. Wind driven at one end and natural gas and steam at the other. The exhaust of the natural gas stage would heat water for the stem turbine. There would also be the deluxe environmentally friendly model without the bird chopper end.
As you may know, the power generation in any heat exchange system is complicated.
In simple description, you have the heating to super hot steam to push blades of turbíne at maximum push, right after the steam gets past the turbine, there are coolers to cool the steam immediately to actually suck the hot steam through. The steam hast to go to the coolers and recycling system to heat up again. That consumes about 40% energy that is produced. At least in the coal power plant.
If they could somehow pipe the cooled steam or the hot water generated by the hot steam in the cooling towers to houses and buildings, that would add a lot of value.
To generate electricity is very, very expensive proposition. In practical terms less than 50% of it is used up before it gets to the plug.
It is though amazing that it is steady and profitable with all the expanses.
Maybe the aim is to degrade it, make the plebeians get used to not having power, maybe an hour in the morning and half an hour at night. It would certainly make some severely mentally compromised people happy.
Natural gas turbines run around 96 % efficiency. The other 4 % produces waste heat that can be used in a combined cycle plant to heat steam.
So a lot more than 50 percent gets to the plug in the wall.
Check your sources.
Even simple reason will tell you it’s nonsense, unless you include the utilities of the power plant and power transmission into efficiency. In that case why not 100%?
Cooling towers use copious amounts of power.
The first thing that comes up when you do the search.
“These power plants are the most efficient power plants operating on the power grid with an efficiency between 45% and 57%. ”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/natural-gas-combined-cycle#:~:text=Natural%20gas%20power%20plants%20are%20attractive%20to%20the,short%20compared%20to%20other%20types%20of%20power%20plants.
What I like most about wind farms is that they are at least a double fraud.
The first fraud of course is that climate change will be bad, the second fraud is that wind farms will help avoid climate change. There are probably more and better frauds involved sufficiently secret, subtle and clever that they are not that obvious, at least to me. Without question politicians are getting some mix of power, perks, ego boost and cash out of this but most of them are not being fraudulent , just stupid
As that great man, Canada Bill Jones said: “It is immoral to let a sucker keep his money.” Our voters are suckers, it is immoral to let them keep their money and that’s why I like the fraud. Fraud victims ALWAYS bring the fraud on themselves by a toxic mix of fear, greed and stupidity.
Let me say this about that.
To run economy, industry, country on solar and wind power is complete nonsense at this time and in a long future.
Period.
It is a political position of woke idiots that insist that people should live primitive lives, they got too much comfort.
The two modes of power generation are very appealing to the plebeians because of course the power comes out of your living room plug. How it gets there is not a mystery, it’s just there, every time you turn on light or the idiot box, just like that.
In the first place, as luck would have it there is this thing of day and night and the mostly tranquil times where there is mostly gentle breeze at best.
If it ever gets to be used on wholesale bases somebody somewhere will have to develop a battery to conserve the generation of the produced power that is not used at the time.
The energy has to be stored for the night and windless time and cover half the earth with solar panels and windmills (sic).
As it is now, there is no such animal and there is not going to be for a looong, looong (sic) time.
While the solar and wind power is good, it’s not practical for today’s needs and they can’t prove it, though they will tell you endlessly about their fantastic new world.
Vito
“..To run economy, industry, country on solar and wind power is complete nonsense at this time and in a long future…”
Nope: Neither or combined, will said Green BS EVER be capable….there is no “science” that can he…regardless of any “future”
To run an economy..??
Use Hydro – NUCLEAR & support w/Nat Gas/Coal.
The rest is GARBAGE.
When is this madness going to end???
Trudeau needs to be dragged up on the carpet and asked point blank, do you want to bring Germany’s energy problems to Canada?
We know what his answer would be, a resounding yes, for climate change.
A country where we could have 25c/l gas forever.
Self sufficient in energy forever.
Self sufficient in food forever.
A totally independent and good willing free country forever.
But no, the dickheads are in the way.
They are the problem.
Saskatchewan and Alberta are buying into the wind and solar just as much as Turdeau. It doesn’t matter if it is so called conservative or NDP. They have all drank the global warming kool-aid. And we all pay the price.
Solar that far north is just nonsense. It’s not too bad in summer, though the lower angle of the sun hurts since the light’s got more atmosphere to get through, but long days help make up for that. But short winter days and snow? What idiot thinks solar will even manage to break even before the cells have degraded to less than half their output when new?
Well said
Obviously Alberta needs a lot more windmills, or a lot more wind.
Wow, I thought we had the monopoly on wind, as anyone that lives close to the mountains, on this side of the Rockies, can attest to!
One of my parents is from Rycroft, they said the battery may the most exciting thing to come along in 80+ years!
Also, agree w Bob Daye, above!
Is there a link?
A pantload of people out there don’t do fractions.
The point of grid instability is to control the end user. Everybody important in gov’t knows this. If a TV gasbag doesn’t admit to knowing this, they are either lying or unimportant. We need to find and elect people who want to break this cycle.
The point of grid instability is to control the end user. Everybody important in gov’t knows this. If a TV gasbag doesn’t admit to knowing this, they are either lying or unimportant. We need to find and elect people who want to break this cycle.
Windmills produce 100% of nameplate capacity carbon credits whether the wind blows or not.
In order for the grid batteries to charge they are going to produce much more energy than we need.. Sounds wasteful.. Then if the batteries can only carry the load for a small time.. Sounds useless.. A few winters ago Germany went through 6 weeks of no wind and overcast.. If they were not able to bring in energy from other countries the lights would have went out.. Lucky this capacity was available..
You cant just say nuclear.. You generally have to be rich to run those expensive toys.. Long before you get into the black (profit) they have to be retrofitted.. Maintenance whores.. Big rich cities can take the loss and run them.. Smaller broke cities can not.. Never mind rural areas..
So, our only hope is the most expensive option.. Nuclear is unaffordable.. Net zero, where sitting in the dark is only slightly better than bankruptcy.. Your only choice is how fast you get there.. Nutcases..
An Oz motoring writer John Cadogan
Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0V99iiEJvY
refers to Mercedes as “Three Prong”.
He’d probably allow its use for wind turbines too
Alberta has that large emitters carbon tax scam which is the oldest carbon tax in canukistan. That is the reason we are being inundated with green energy scams. I have sent messages to my MLA and the new premier about the need to rid AESO of the green loons but have not received any reply yet. My MLA likely has no clue what I am talking about.