A global-warming skeptic told me he had a conversation with a guy who installs wind turbines. According to this guy, installing a single turbine requires a half million cubic feet of concrete. He also said that a turbine can never recover the installation cost; the electricity generated over its lifetime will be worth less than the cost of installation. Any potential profits are due strictly to government incentives.
How accurate are these statements?
Mortenson and Brundage recently worked together on the Majestic Wind Farm project in Panhandle, Texas, where Brundage’s Putzmeister Telebelt® TB 110 telescopic belt conveyor delivered 18,000 cubic yards (13,762m3) of concrete for 53 wind turbine foundations and pedestals. (see Fig. 1)
http://www.windsystemsmag.com/view/article.php?articleID=48
That 18,000 cubic yards is 486,000 cubic feet. For 53 foundations, or 9,170 cubic feet each.
Your third hand story is only off by a factor of 54.
Shocking!! I thought sure the warming deniers had us.
Any idea on the cost comparison? My google-fu is failing me.
http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost
The costs for a commercial scale wind turbine in 2007 ranged from $1.2 million to $2.6 million, per MW of nameplate capacity installed.
The nearest I can figure from different sources, a Coal fired plant comes in around $1.6 million per MW of capacity. Of course, they produce more of their capacity on an average basis than Wind, but this would seem to say that the initial costs of a Wind plant are not so mind-bogglingly out of line with other means of production. True, their cost of production for the average KWh is higher, but they aren’t producing radioactive waste, throwing millions of tons of Co2 into the air, or producing millions of tons of fly ash.
But it’s about right for a whole farm. Coincidence?
Coincidence that his error is off by a multiple of the number of turbines installed? Not for a global warming designer playing telephone. Half a million cubic yards of concrete is about one-sixth the amount of concrete in Hoover Dam. Historic Concrete Contractor Projects - Hoover Dam - Colorado River Black Canyon. For which, I digress, there are 19 turbines. http://www.inetours.com/Las_Vegas/pages/Hoover_Dam.html
So yes, global warming designers can be off by a factor of 54, which can more than make up the difference between profitability and loss.
I’m very much in favor of renewable energy, but two environmental strikes against wind turbines are their noise and their tendency to kill a great many birds. You’d think there’d be a way to discourage more birds from flying into them… or at least better situating the turbines where’s there’s abundant wind but not so many migrating birds.
Well I was just wondering if the OP’s story started at some point with “a wind farm requires about a half a million cubic feet of concrete” and morphed into “a wind turbine requires about half a million cubic feet of concrete” due to the Chinese whispers phenomenon.
Are there dedicated roads leading to them or are they airlifted into place?
Are there dedicated roads to coal and nuke plants, or are they magic’d into place?
http://www.thisweeklive.com/2010/07/01/time-to-abandon-black-dog-road/
What noise?
The new large turbines turn slowly enough that the birds can see and avoid them. That doesn’t help with the old cuisinart style turbines, some of which which are still in use. As for noise, I live in an area with several wind farms, and there ain’t no noise that I can hear or hear anyone else complaining about.
I’m not sure what your link is suppose to mean. Here is a satellite view of a wind farm. Note each one has a road leading to it.
I’m sure there’s economy in quantity as well. 800 wind turbines in a group probably have a much better profit per turbine than one turbine out by its lonesome.
Noise and light pollution from wind turbines.
I would get suspicious right off the bat, simply because no one anywhere reports the quantity of concrete by the cubic foot.
This kind of reminds me of those whirling 1960s main frame computers - it’s a process right?
The trouble with wind is they only average producing 24% of their nameplate capacity. Also we have no control over when the wind blows. That means that they the coal and gas plants have to be built anyway to provide power when the wind isn’t blowing.
Power companies hate having wind power feeding into their grid, since the output from wind plants vary so much, it makes keeping their grid stable a nightmare.
Fossil fuel companies love wind, since it doesn’t actual shut down any coal and natural gas plants and it protects them from the green energy that give them actual competition; nuclear power.
If you aren’t allergic to math, I highly recommend David JC MacKay’s book, “Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air”. You can read it online or download the pdf for free from here: http://www.withouthotair.com/
You can’t control how the wind blows but you can certainly predict it. Put your farms in appropriate places and you’ll get decent wind on average throughout the year. Dealing with day to day variations is a technical issue for the power companies.
This is actually not the case. I was reading an article last year where the wind power output for the whole of Germany dropped to a few percent of nameplate capacity for the better part of a month. Some months just don’t see a lot of wind and monthly and hourly variations can leave whole regions with little wind power. Hourly variations are often the most damaging, since coal power plants just can’t be ramped up and down like that.
Regional leveling sounds good on paper, but in practice it means having troughs with 5% of capacity instead of 0%.