# Are wind turbines worth it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 13, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201 "2010-08-13T23:20:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/101 "2010-08-17T11:26:21Z")
> [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > There is an interesting article in Slate about the wind farms in Texas. > > [http://www.slate.com/id/2264111/pagenum/all/#p2](http://www.slate.com/id/2264111/pagenum/all/#p2) > > > [@](#): > > > > They like everything big in Texas, and wind energy is no exception. Texas has more wind generation capacity than any other state, about 9,700 megawatts. (That’s nearly as much installed wind capacity as India.) Texas residential ratepayers are now paying about $4 more per month on their electric bills in order to fund some 2,300 miles of new transmission lines to carry wind-generated electricity from rural areas to the state’s urban centers. > > > > It’s time for those customers to ask for a refund. The reason: When it gets hot in Texas—and it’s darn hot in the Lone Star State in the summer—the state’s ratepayers can’t count on that wind energy. On Aug. 4, at about 5 p.m., electricity demand in Texas hit a record: 63,594 megawatts. But according to the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s wind turbines provided only about 500 megawatts of power when demand was peaking and the value of electricity was at its highest. > > > > **Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state’s installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most.** Texans may brag about the size of their wind sector, but for all of that hot air, the wind business could only provide about 0.8 percent of the state’s electricity needs when demand was peaking. Sounds like piss-poor planning to me, f the pattern of local availability is that consistent. This isn’t a reason not to do wind power, it’s a reason to plan it properly, install it in the right place and manage the output to make it usable. There are plenty of places in the world where wind is reliable enough to make it a worthwhile contributor (amongst a portfolio of other options) to peak supply. ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/102 "2010-08-17T11:33:19Z")
“Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state’s installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most.” If you are relying on wind energy for a significant fraction of your total generation capacity you need to pair it up with something such as a [**pumped storage facility**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/103 "2010-08-17T14:08:08Z")
And for the record, there’s no dispute that hydro is great, where it can be used. It’s not only green (at least compared to coal), and consistent on timescales up to years, it’s also significantly cheaper than all other generation technologies. The problem is that there’s a limited number of places where it’s practical, and those places are pretty well saturated already. Similar statements apply to the sort of geothermal plants used in Iceland. They’re great where they can be used, but plants of that type are only practical in places like Iceland and Yellowstone. There’s an emerging geothermal technology that can be used almost anywhere, but that’s still very much on the drawing board. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/104 "2010-08-17T14:22:28Z")
> [@qpw3141](#): > > “Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state’s installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most.” > > If you are relying on wind energy for a significant fraction of your total generation capacity you need to pair it up with something such as a [**pumped storage facility**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage). Pumped storage is an awesome resource, but you need a mountain to do it right - and most of the big wind farms are on flat land… ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/105 "2010-08-17T14:27:51Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > > [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > > > There is an interesting article in Slate about the wind farms in Texas. > > > > [http://www.slate.com/id/2264111/pagenum/all/#p2](http://www.slate.com/id/2264111/pagenum/all/#p2) > > Sounds like piss-poor planning to me, f the pattern of local availability is that consistent. > > This isn’t a reason not to do wind power, it’s a reason to plan it properly, install it in the right place and manage the output to make it usable. There are plenty of places in the world where wind is reliable enough to make it a worthwhile contributor (amongst a portfolio of other options) to peak supply. The thing is, the wind can’t be relied on to blow when it’s hot - because a) it blows more at night (at turbine elevations) when it’s not hot; b) rain and wind tend to appear together frequently and rain kills load; and c) the wind itslef helps to cool things off. So when it’s absolutely the hottest hour of the week, there’s a strong chance that the wind just isn’t blowing. IMHO, this isn’t a reason to not build wind, this is a reason to continue research into storage solutions. One thing that you could do in this regard, if interested, would be to tell your representative in congress that when they tax CO2 emmissions (via cap and trade or whatever other mechanism) - the revenue generated should be dedicated to research into low carbon energy solutions, rather than put into the general budget. ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/106 "2010-08-17T14:44:19Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > > [@qpw3141](#): > > > > “Put another way, only about 5 percent of the state’s installed wind capacity was available when Texans needed it most.” > > > > If you are relying on wind energy for a significant fraction of your total generation capacity you need to pair it up with something such as a [**pumped storage facility**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped_storage). > > Pumped storage is an awesome resource, but you need a mountain to do it right - and most of the big wind farms are on flat land… They do not need to be physically collocated. I’d concede that you might have a problem if you wanted to build a wind farm in the middle of a vast, flat, area of land. ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/107 "2010-08-17T15:06:47Z")
Fuel costs For wind, keep in mind the fuel costs are zero. That is not the case for non-renewable power such as nuclear and coal. There is signficant risk for fuel costs over the long term. Carbon costs For coal, this is currently minimal, but the writing is on the wall that carbon will be given a price at some point in North America. When that occurs, coal will be much less cost competitive with renewable generation. Spent nuclear fuel While I admire the optimism of a previous poster who speculated that future generations over the next 10,000 years will find a way to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel, I take the opposite view. If we invest in more and more nuclear plants, there will be more and more waste that remains incredibly dangerous over enormours timescales. Who’s to say that we will be able to trust all governments (hundreds of generations of governents) to safeguard this waste for the next 1000 generations? And who are we to say to those people far, far into the future that it was easier for us to pass along the burden of dealing with it than coming up with solutions in our own time? Intermitancy Agree that this is currently a significant problem for wind. As discussed, there are ways around this, ideally pairing wind with large-scale hydro. Fast ramping natural gas power generation is a decent stop gap, as gas is pretty efficient and you can site generation pretty readily. However, the first company to come up with large scale economic power storage is going to make a LOT of money. If you can store your wind/solar/run-of-river hydro generation when demand is low and supply the grid when demand (and prices) are high, you’ve got a near-perfect solution. A final note - Another problem with the integration of large amounts of wind power is that when the wind blows, LOTS of generation comes on at once, driving down prices. So, when your turbines are going full bore, they’re often selling into an oversupplied market, meaning that you consistently get lower prices for your power than baseload generation such as hydro, nuclear and coal. This sets back the eventual payback on your investment. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/108 "2010-08-17T15:13:54Z")
> [@](#): > > One thing that you could do in this regard, if interested, would be to tell your representative in congress that when they tax CO2 emmissions (via cap and trade or whatever other mechanism) - the revenue generated should be dedicated to research into low carbon energy solutions, rather than put into the general budget. Cap and trade isn’t a tax, and it doesn’t generate revenue for the government. Ultimately, it’s a transfer of money from folks who do things the dirty way to folks who do things the clean way. Which probably does end up funding low-carbon energy research, anyway. > [@](#): > > While I admire the optimism of a previous poster who speculated that future generations over the next 10,000 years will find a way to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel, I take the opposite view. If we invest in more and more nuclear plants, there will be more and more waste that remains incredibly dangerous over enormours timescales. It doesn’t take much optimism to say that, since we already have a way to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel. It’s not hard. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/109 "2010-08-17T15:26:03Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > One thing that you could do in this regard, if interested, would be to tell your representative in congress that when they tax CO2 emmissions (via cap and trade or whatever other mechanism) - the revenue generated should be dedicated to research into low carbon energy solutions, rather than put into the general budget. > > Cap and trade isn’t a tax, and it doesn’t generate revenue for the government. Ultimately, it’s a transfer of money from folks who do things the dirty way to folks who do things the clean way. Which probably does end up funding low-carbon energy research, anyway. Cap and trade can generate a lot of revenue for the government depending on how allowances are allocated - several types of plans call for the government to auction them off, which means that they are generating revenue. It may not be named a tax, but it involves people giving money to the government, so… ---
**Author:** ![phreesh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@phreesh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phreesh)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/110 "2010-08-17T15:36:05Z")
[/quote] It doesn’t take much optimism to say that, since we already have a way to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel. It’s not hard. [/QUOTE] I don’t want to come off as a dick, but I’m not sure you have a grasp of the timescales involved here. Are you speaking of Yucca mountain, which is a possible solution for American waste? A) That’s just the stuff in the US, what about the rest of the world? and, more importantly, B) No human society has EVER had to store a dangerous (potentially society ending) substance for anywhere near that amount of time. No human society has remained stable over that timeframe EVER. The only truly safe disposal of nuclear fuel is to toss it into the sun and even that means it’s strapped to tonnes of high explosives in the upper atmosphere for several minutes. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/111 "2010-08-17T15:42:52Z")
We have an unlimited amount of waste land in the United States. We could take all the world’s spent nuclear fuel and store it in a very small footprint in any desert. It doesn’t have to be buried inside a mountain. It can sit in warehouses away from populations, water tables and earthquake zones. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/112 "2010-08-17T15:45:59Z")
We’ve already stored the stuff for millions of years, what’s a few thousand more? It was dangerous before we pulled it out of the ground in the first place, too. And while we’re at it, the Sun is the most difficult place in the Universe to throw things into. It’d be significantly easier to throw our nuclear waste into Alpha Centauri, if for some reason we wanted to throw away something so valuable. ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/113 "2010-08-17T15:48:30Z")
> [@](#): > > And while we’re at it, the Sun is the most difficult place in the Universe to throw things into. It’d be significantly easier to throw our nuclear waste into Alpha Centauri, if for some reason we wanted to throw away something so valuable. What? That’s nonsense! ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/114 "2010-08-17T15:53:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And for the record, there’s no dispute that hydro is great, where it can be used. It’s not only green (at least compared to coal), and consistent on timescales up to years, it’s also significantly cheaper than all other generation technologies. The problem is that there’s a limited number of places where it’s practical, and those places are pretty well saturated already. > > Similar statements apply to the sort of geothermal plants used in Iceland. They’re great where they can be used, but plants of that type are only practical in places like Iceland and Yellowstone. There’s an emerging geothermal technology that can be used almost anywhere, but that’s still very much on the drawing board. We use to have small hydro plants on the rivers in my area. I’m guessing they used a water drop of no more than 20 feet based on pictures. I don’t know why they went away but I do know there is a legal ecological barrier preventing the construction of dams on rivers. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/115 "2010-08-17T16:33:35Z")
> [@qpw3141](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > And while we’re at it, the Sun is the most difficult place in the Universe to throw things into. It’d be significantly easier to throw our nuclear waste into Alpha Centauri, if for some reason we wanted to throw away something so valuable. > > What? > > That’s nonsense! No, it’s true (and has been discussed here several times, e.g., [in this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179054)). ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/116 "2010-08-17T16:47:13Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > > [@qpw3141](#): > > > > What? > > > > That’s nonsense! > > No, it’s true (and has been discussed here several times, e.g., [in this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=179054)). It is nonsense. Alpha Centauri (and why Alpha and not Proxima, Proxima’s nearer) is a star just like our own Sun. Chronos said it would be ‘significantly easier’ to send it into that when, in reality, you would have to do everything necessary to reach Centauri and then you’d **still** have the problem of getting your waste to the correct speed to fall into the star. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/117 "2010-08-17T17:28:18Z")
Doing everything necessary to get there _is_ the problem of getting it to the correct speed to fall into the star. And it’s easier than accomplishing the same thing for the Sun. Admittedly aiming would be a bit more difficult, but guidance systems are cheaper than rocket fuel. ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/118 "2010-08-17T17:40:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Doing everything necessary to get there _is_ the problem of getting it to the correct speed to fall into the star. And it’s easier than accomplishing the same thing for the Sun. Do you have a link to back that up? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/119 "2010-08-17T17:48:18Z")
This is getting a bit far afield for this discussion. If you want to start a new thread, I’ll go into more detail there. ---
**Author:** ![limegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/82dd89/32.png) [@limegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/limegreen)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2010, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201/120 "2010-08-17T19:28:48Z")
My BIL is fighting right now to have turbines moved back from his property line, which is very close to his house. If you’ve never heard of shadow flicker, it is very disconcerting and a property value killer. ( [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ) ) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-wind-turbines-worth-it/550201.md?page=7)