Are wind turbines worth it?

[constanze]

@Chronos

Quoth constanze, in regards to nukes:

No, thanks. Too many problems.

Such as?

Two very basic ones:

1. Accidents. Anybody who seriously claims that there is a 100% safety is ignorant about history and lacking in elementary common sense.

2. Even if we theoretically could run nuclear reactors for the next 100 years and then switch to another source, and not have an accident during all that time, we are still left with radioactive waste that takes tens of thousands of years to half-way time. There are currently no safe methods to store the casks safely anywhere for tens of thousands of years, as any geologist (as opposed to the lobbyists) will tell you.

[friedo]

@constanze

@Chimera

C’mon, we’ve had that discussion a few times. Facts don’t change their minds.

Yes, no matter how many accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island happen, the pro-nuclear lobby keeps claiming that reactors are safe and that accidents can never happen, no, we are completly sure.

How many accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have happened? I can think of two.

[qpw3141]

@constanze

@JoelUpchurch

Your comments about coal seem to be a non-sequitur to what I was talking about.

No, I used the practice of coal mining as the first example that came to mind of the Chinese cutting corners on safety to save money.

The Westinghouse Ap-1000 plants that China is building are safer than any plants currently operating in the United States. They actually are the state of the art in plant safety.

They may be safe on paper or not, I don’t trust the Chinese to build things properly given their record.

Yeah, like space shuttles and three mile island.

Oh, wait …

[Chimera]

@constanze

There are currently no safe methods to store the casks safely anywhere for tens of thousands of years, as any geologist (as opposed to the lobbyists) will tell you.

The operative words being

“currently”

and

“tens of thousands of years”
This is the same kind of crap I hear when an uneducated person listens to a science program about the Sun expanding and swallowing the Earth in three billion years and then starts getting all wild-eyed about whether or not we can do something about this TODAY. It is a total ignorance of the timeline scale and the odds or eventuality that we will be able to do something about that waste in the future. Hell, we can do something about it NOW, we just choose not to. And we’ve only been messing about with it for some 60 years. Getting jittery because something might happen a thousand years from now that we can’t predict is rather silly. We can’t predict that the people 100 years from now won’t choose to use it in the ways we refuse to use it today, and we are also short-changing our descendants to think that they’re too stupid to figure out how to resolve these issues in the future.

[Chronos]

I can think of two even bigger criticisms of coal plants:

1. Accidents. Anybody who seriously claims that there is a 100% safety is ignorant about history and lacking in elementary common sense.

2. Even if we theoretically could run coal power plants for the next 100 years and then switch to another source, and not have an accident during all that time, we are still left with radioactive waste that takes tens of thousands of years to half-way time. There are currently no safe methods to store the casks safely anywhere for tens of thousands of years, as any geologist (as opposed to the lobbyists) will tell you.

Coal plants have more accidents than nukes, and produce more waste of all kinds, including radioactive waste. Of course nuclear reactors aren’t perfect, but then, nothing is. They’re just better than the alternatives.

[hibernicus]

@Darth_Panda

Another problem with wind generation is that it typically produces more at night than during the day.

My understanding is that the opposite is true. On average, low-level wind-speeds are higher in the daytime than at night, the reason being that during the night the atmosphere is more stable (less vertical mixing) and the wind gradient (the difference between low-level and high-level wind speed) is at its greatest.

The output of wind turbines is on average pro-cyclical with the pattern of system demand in Ireland - higher in the daytime and in winter. However this is just an average, and with installed capacity now approaching 1GW in a 6.5 GW system the unpredictability of wind is a very serious problem for our system operator.

[DSeid]

My understanding is that the time of day and time of year that a particular wind resource is most productive varies greatly from site to site, even within the same region.

[Darth_Panda]

@hibernicus

@Darth_Panda

Another problem with wind generation is that it typically produces more at night than during the day.

My understanding is that the opposite is true. On average, low-level wind-speeds are higher in the daytime than at night, the reason being that during the night the atmosphere is more stable (less vertical mixing) and the wind gradient (the difference between low-level and high-level wind speed) is at its greatest.

Wind speeds are higher during the daytime close to the surface, but the situation reverses once you get a little higher in the atmosphere, between 150 and 200 feet or so.

http://www.windwisdom.net/ (check out the chart - good stuff)

The tubular steel towers range from 60 to 90 metres (200 to 300 feet) tall.

Wind turbine | Horizontal axis

So, long story short - wind turbines generate more at night because they’re built tall. Of course, wind speeds overall are higher as you go up (the 1/7 rule) and to get the capacity rating to make them economcial, you need to get that potential gen up, even if the energy value isn’t as good. (The electricity market is broken up into the capacity side and energy side.)

[Darth_Panda]

@DSeid

My understanding is that the time of day and time of year that a particular wind resource is most productive varies greatly from site to site, even within the same region.

Yes, there are definitely plenty of differences as you move around but also a couple of rules of thumb that are true most of the time. Higher gens at night, at wind turbine heights, is one of them. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions to the rule.

[JoelUpchurch]

@DSeid

@JoelUpchurch

Yes, but what is the source of the risk? It is anti-nuclear activists …

Um, no.

… consider the cautionary tale of this new-generation nuclear reactor site.

The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. The most powerful reactor ever built, its modular design was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build. And it was supposed to be safer, too.

But things have not gone as planned.

After four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor’s 3 billion euro price tag, about $4.2 billion, has climbed at least 50 percent. And while the reactor was originally meant to be completed this summer, Areva, the French company building it, and the utility that ordered it, are no longer willing to make certain predictions on when it will go online. …

… In Flamanville, France, a clone of the Finnish reactor now under construction is also behind schedule and overbudget.

In the United States, Florida and Georgia have changed state laws to raise electricity rates so that consumers will foot some of the bill for new nuclear plants in advance, before construction even begins.

“A number of U.S. companies have looked with trepidation on the situation in Finland and at the magnitude of the investment there,” …

… For nuclear power to have a high impact on reducing greenhouse gases, an average of 12 reactors would have to be built worldwide each year until 2030, according to the Nuclear Energy Agency at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Right now, there are not even enough reactors under construction to replace those that are reaching the end of their lives.

And of the 45 reactors being built around the world, 22 have encountered construction delays …

… nuclear safety inspectors in France have found cracks in the concrete base and steel reinforcements in the wrong places at the site in Flamanville. They also have warned Électricité de France, the utility building the reactor, that welders working on the steel container were not properly qualified.

On top of such problems come the recession, weaker energy demand, tight credit and uncertainty over future policies, said Caren Byrd, an executive director of the global utility and power group at Morgan Stanley in New York.

“The warning lights now are flashing more brightly than just a year ago about the cost of new nuclear,” she said.

And Jouni Silvennoinen, the project manager at Olkiluoto, said, “We have had it easy here.” Olkiluoto is at least a geologically stable site. Earthquake risks in places like China and the United States or even the threat of storm surges mean building these reactors will be even trickier elsewhere.

The risk of the investment is not those damn anti-nuclear activists. It is simply that it is a lot of money gambled and the industry has a track record of having these very big and very complex construction projects take much longer and cost much more than initially estimated.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we need some new nuclear as part of our future mix, and the only way to get it is to subsidize it. But nuclear is no more a shovel ready cheap power panacea than wind is ready to provide baseline power all on its own. We couldn’t build nuclear fast enough no matter how much we threw at it and it is not the free market choice. Alternative energy can be deployed faster while the inadequate number of nuclear plants we can build (with subsidies) are in the very slow pipeline. Utility grade mega batteries at substations can relieve some of the current strain on the system to provide enough capacity at peak demands and particularly with sudden spikes, and relive some strain on the grid while it is gradually upgraded as well, and in the process reduce the need to resort to expensive “peaker” plants as often, which are already there to deal with mismatches between supply and demand caused by demand side (and are just as functional to deal with mismatches caused by supply side).

The reality is that there is no single solution for our future energy needs. Not “drill baby drill” (obviously now), not nuclear, not wind, not solar, not “clean” (okay, “less dirty”) coal, not energy shifting. We will need to deploy a variety of solutions at the same time. And we need to get a move on. Price the carbon fairly and let them compete.

I don’t excuse Areva for what happened. The tried to build a first of a kind reactor design in a country that had no experience in building nuclear reactors and where the workforce didn’t understand French. That isn’t a reason to not build nuclear power plants; it is a reason to not have badly managed nuclear power projects. The Big Dig was supposed to cost 6 billion and ended costing 22 billion. Does that mean we shouldn’t build tunnels and bridges and roads?

I reject the idea that we can’t replace our current coal plants with nuclear over the next 50 years. Most of the current nuclear plants were build over a period of 20 years in the first place. How can we not be able to do in 50 years what we already have done in 20? The Chinese are starting a new reactor ever month; why can’t we do that? The AP1000 reactor is designed to be mass produced. It is a moodular design that is assembled at the construction site, not built. If you want some even faster, there are small 125mw reactor designs that can build in a factory and brought in by barge or train and installed.

http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2009/06/babcock-wilcox-mpower-reactor.html

With the electric demand so soft, there is going to be resistance to building new power plants right now, but that won’t last forever. As the current coal plants wear out, we must make sure they aren’t replaced. New baseload capacity needs to be from nuclear and not coal.

[Darth_Panda]

@Chronos

Darth Panda, if you insist on disasters associated with our electricity production systems specifically, rather than energy production in general, you could consider the 2008 Tennessee ash spill. Or, for that matter, any of a large number of coal mine accidents.

I don’t insist on disasters associated with our electricity production systems - I would certainly prefer that they go away

But, yes, there has been no shortage of probelms around coal lately, although not quite as bad as the gulf spill.

Point of fact, though, the last major coal mine snafu at Massey was for met coal, not steam coal.

[JoelUpchurch]

@constanze

@JoelUpchurch

Your comments about coal seem to be a non-sequitur to what I was talking about.

No, I used the practice of coal mining as the first example that came to mind of the Chinese cutting corners on safety to save money.

The Westinghouse Ap-1000 plants that China is building are safer than any plants currently operating in the United States. They actually are the state of the art in plant safety.

They may be safe on paper or not, I don’t trust the Chinese to build things properly given their record.

I trust them to look out for their financial interests. Reactor meltdowns look terrible on the balance sheet. Any contractor caught cutting corners on concrete or rebar will end taking a bullet in the back of the head.

[JoelUpchurch]

There is an interesting article in Slate about the wind farms in Texas.

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.

[TroutMan]

@JoelUpchurch

There is an interesting article in Slate about the wind farms in Texas.

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.

So the percentage of power available from wind is lower when the total power needs are higher? Isn’t that basic math?

This same argument could be used by someone who wants to expand wind power, so it could provide a higher percentage of the electricity needs.

[matt]

@TroutMan

So the percentage of power available from wind is lower when the total power needs are higher? Isn’t that basic math?

This same argument could be used by someone who wants to expand wind power, so it could provide a higher percentage of the electricity needs.

No. It wasn’t the percentage of power available from wind as a percentage of the total power need. It was the percentage of power from wind as a percentage of installed wind power. 9700 MW installed, only 500 MW actually generated in a peak demand period. It’s an illustration of the unreliability of wind power. You can install as much as you like, but you can’t guarantee getting that power level from it at any particular time. You can’t even guarantee getting one-tenth of it.

[DSeid]

@JoelUpchurch

… I reject the idea that we can’t replace our current coal plants with nuclear over the next 50 years. …

And what does this statement have to do with my post? Replacing the dirtiest coal plants as they go off line? Sure. But that’s not “fast enough” to keep up with ever increasing demands for energy nor fast enough to make the kind of impact we need on CO2 outputs (assuming you accept the climate change experts findings.)

My post was rejecting your claim that the investment risk of building nuclear was from those pesky anti-nuclear activists, (and their dog too). It isn’t. The risk is that the industry has not shown that they can reliably deliver these very big investments on time and on budget. The risk is that even an established experienced builder will do it stupid and cost the investors extra money and years before the investment produces, years that they are servicing the debt and losing money. Even if everything is done right things can go wrong in construction and it seems that for these plants they commonly do. Investors in a free market have better investments to make.

Nuclear is not shovel ready and cheap. It only happens when governments make it happen by absorbing all the risk and leaving investors the potential gain, or when governments make it happen as in China. And where are you getting that China is starting construction on a new one every month? Yes, a state planned economy like China can decide to build out power of all sorts:

Mainland China has 12 nuclear power reactors in operation, 24 under construction … At the end of 2007, there was reported to be 145 GWe of hydro capacity, 554 GWe fossil fuel, 9 GWe nuclear and 4 GWe wind, total 713 GWe. In 2008, the country added 20.1 GWe of hydro capacity, 65.8 GWe coal-fired capacity, and 4.7 GWe wind.

And China is also building out wind more.

China has identified wind power as a key growth component of the country’s economy.[2] China is the second largest producer of wind power, after the United States.[3] With its large land mass and long coastline, China has exceptional wind resources.[4] … In 2009, China became the third largest wind energy provider worldwide (behind USA and Germany), with the installed wind power capacity reaching 20 GW at the end of 2009. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the development of wind energy in China, in terms of scale and rhythm, is absolutely unparalleled in the world. The National People’s Congress permanent committee passed a law that requires the Chinese energy companies to purchase all the electricity produced by the renewable energy sector.[9] …

Again I agree that nuclear needs to part of the mix, and that wind’s role is limited somewhat until the intermittency problem is solved, either by an upgraded HVDC tied together grid, or by implementing storage solutions. (Although we are under that limit a far in most locales.) I merely object to portraying nuclear as a single or a particularly cost effective solution, and to falsely blaming its investment riskiness on activists.

[Darth_Panda]

Yeah, basically nuclear is tough because it’s only economical right now if you a) can do it with enough scale - meaning at least 2 big units at a station; and b) assume either a decent CO2 allowance cost from fossil units or incorporate a strong contango on gas and coal.

Even then, costs of capital have to remain low and you have to find a way to finance it withjout jeopardizing your balance sheet and threatening your bond and commercial paper rating.

CWIP riders could really help to get things going - that’s where you incorporate the costs into rate base as they’re inccured (costs while in production). This is compared to the current (prevailing) system of AFUDC (allowance for funds used during construction), which means that the capital expenses incurred during the build are pretty much all dropped into the rate base when the plant first fires. Even a blend with normal AFUDC and some percentage sent into CWIP with a matching contra-AFUDC account could help lessen the financial risk and allow the risk/cost of construction to be born in part by the current rate payers (the rate payers bear the entire cost either way since the financing costs get rate based too, it’s just a matter of when - which can also be a matter of who, since people move…). Anyway, some utilities will be building nuclear soon and as some more stations go under construction we’ll get a better picture of costs, time frames, regulatory envirnoment, etc. and that will help mitigate some of the uncertainty at least.

Until then, the default position is to build to meet regulatory requirements for renewables standards and fill intermediate load with combined cycle and peaking demand with CTs, with baseload units being pretty thin under construction - a little coal and nuclear. Of course, with the shale gas pushing the futures on natural gas down, and decent heat rates and VOMs on the newer units, combined cycle is looking like a borderline baseload resource - but the potential volatility on natural gas as we continue to lean on these units scares me a little bit as the shale play isn’t entirely proven just yet and an economic reovery could send loads up pretty quick, IMHO.

[Walther_Ego]

@JoelUpchurch

I don’t excuse Areva for what happened. The tried to build a first of a kind reactor design in a country that had no experience in building nuclear reactors and where the workforce didn’t understand French. That isn’t a reason to not build nuclear power plants; it is a reason to not have badly managed nuclear power projects. The Big Dig was supposed to cost 6 billion and ended costing 22 billion. Does that mean we shouldn’t build tunnels and bridges and roads?

To further not excuse Areva, Finland has experience and four working reactors. Also, the workforce came very much from outside Finland, if they didn’t speak French it is entirely Areva’s own fault. Basically, they offered at a price that nobody believed would be profitable to begin with. They just wanted the job no matter what, but dared not to tell the investors. The time-table was the same story - they even omitted any margin for weather too cold for cement work. So yes, a very incompetently run project (and their offer was partly a forgery) on many levels, but also, a price that none of the other contestants was willing to take. So it seems that nuclear plants cost more than we thought.

[jjimm]

@friedo

How many accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have happened? I can think of two.

There was a Three Mile Island-style incident in the UK in the 1950s but it was hushed up; when what happened was revealed 30 years later, nobody cared.

Anyway, there’s a simple solution to windfarm downtime during the day: use solar powered fans to drive them.

[phaemon]

Sorry about the delay in replying; I’ve been offline for a couple of days.

Regarding figures/unproven tech: I’m not sure what figures you want. Norway produces over 99% of its electricity from hydro, so clearly that works in regions where it can be used. Iceland produces 24% of its electricity from geothermal, so clearly that works where it can be used. Tidal power can be used where you’re near the sea. Wave power is mostly still in testing, but it’s certainly expected to work (I know they’re planning some farms near where I am). Solar is already used in a variety of places and ways. What exactly is unproven here?

Wind turbines certainly are worth it for at least some people, since I know people who’re trying to get some built. They fully expect to make money from them, so it’s worth it to them. Modern turbines don’t kill birds: the blades move more slowly then the old ones did.

Regarding nuclear: I resent the implication that if I’m against nuclear, it must be a knee-jerk, ignorant reaction. Yeah, I know, you meant the other environmentalists. I’m from Scotland. 50% of our energy is from nuclear. I don’t like it. Sure, I believe on paper they’re perfectly safe, but perhaps when the sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-contractors are putting in the foundations, they might not be quite as safety conscious as the original planners were…

Hydro has an environmental impact as well, but at least it’s a one-off, can be mitigated to a certain extent, and a new eco-system will arise in place of the old one. I think that compared to the joint impacts of a heavy metals mine, a nuclear plant, and a long term waste storage facility, it’s pretty minimal.