# Economics of wind power **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045 "2016-12-06T18:14:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/21 "2016-12-06T23:58:22Z")
The biggest problem with using windmills is that the wind is far from constant. They only work within a fairly narrow band of wind speeds and if the wind is too strong or too weak, they become ornaments (or eyesores) and the power has to come from other sources; sources that are not needed when the wind is right, but have to be held on standby. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/22 "2016-12-07T00:24:49Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > The biggest problem with using windmills is that the wind is far from constant. This actually becomes easier as the wind supply increases–it’s always windy somewhere. But you need to improve the grid infrastructure. Battery storage is also getting cheaper. Somewhat ironically, cheap natural gas may indirectly benefit renewables. Because gas plants can be spun up much more quickly than coal, they can act as a buffer when supply dips. Hydroelectric also works well in this regard, but doesn’t work everywhere. To some extent, industry can have a buffering effect. For instance, aluminum smelters can ramp their power input up and down based on supply (or more likely, the spot price of power). ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/23 "2016-12-07T06:37:10Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > Apparently, there’s still a dozen or so windmills in Holland built in the 16th Century … still standing too !!! I wondered if someone would mention 16th- and 17th-century Netherlands. The power generated by their windmills was used not just to process grain and grapes, but for textile fulling machines, timber sawing, etc. With the wind-driven sailing ships (at its height the Dutch merchant marine was larger than the rest of Europe’s added together) made the Netherlands a major world power based on _ **Wind energy** _. Financing mills and ships made the Dutch Republic a major banking center; it was perhaps the most prosperous country of its time. I recall a reductionist account that mapped energy source to three preeminent world powers: Dutch Wind in the 16th- and 17th-centuries, British coal and steam in the 18th- and 19th-centuries, American petroleum in the 20th-century. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/24 "2016-12-07T07:47:34Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > One way Oregon subsidies her wind farms is by outlawing coal-fired electricity … Oregon does have one coal burning power plant, the [one in Boardman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardman_Coal_Plant). It’s scheduled to be taken offline in about 10 years or so. It was built to replace a [nuclear plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant). Personally, I think they should have kept the nuke power – less carbon emission. > [@](#): > > however, Oregon is fortunate in that we have an extensive hydro-electric production where it’s also very windy … so a very minimal cost to hook up the turbines to the grid … The Boardman plant is in that area too. They should go whole hog and mount some solar panels to the sides of the windmill towers. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/25 "2016-12-07T11:20:08Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I wondered if someone would mention 16th- and 17th-century Netherlands. The power generated by their windmills was used not just to process grain and grapes, but for textile fulling machines, timber sawing, etc. In fact, the largest number of Dutch windmills were pumps that dried out low lying lands for farming. I don’t know if it was an overall majority, but it was the largest individual use. [cite](http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/article/functions-of-windmills-in-holland.htm) ---
**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:** [December 7, 2016, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/26 "2016-12-07T12:05:49Z")
Yeah, that’s the first thing I think of when I think Dutch windmills-- I didn’t even realize they were used for processing grapes at all. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/27 "2016-12-07T12:15:51Z")
How do you use a windmill for grapes anyway? ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/28 "2016-12-07T14:37:40Z")
I want to make another mention about grid infrastructure. This is the main bottleneck right now. Lots of areas that can or would be able to produce large amounts of electricity but can’t send it at all (Hello, Texas!) or not able to send it effeciently to areas where it could be best used. Sending large amounts of electricity long distances with acceptable losses can be [done](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie). But we need a lot of these intertie systems. All too often, windmills are shut off because there isn’t anyplace to send the juice. (The opposite problem of what all too many people think.) We need to think of this like the Interstate Highway System and upgrade our flaky, lossy, limited grid system. It’s always blowing somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/29 "2016-12-07T15:02:17Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > How do you use a windmill for grapes anyway? No doubt for pressing, just as with grinding wheat-flour. In Britain, and other countries with similar derivations, the name miller came from the chap you took your grain to to be ground into flour. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/30 "2016-12-07T15:40:09Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Oregon does have one coal burning power plant, the [one in Boardman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardman_Coal_Plant). It’s scheduled to be taken offline in about 10 years or so. It was built to replace a [nuclear plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Nuclear_Power_Plant). Personally, I think they should have kept the nuke power – less carbon emission. > > The Boardman plant is in that area too. They should go whole hog and mount some solar panels to the sides of the windmill towers. In the rush to get the Trojan facility built, some mistakes were made and it started falling apart within just a few years. So between retrofitting the facility to mitigate earthquake hazard and the complete replacement of the steam turbine, it was decided that it was too expensive to operate. Remember, this was back in the Dark Ages of the 20th Century and we didn’t have a place to dispose of spent fuel rods … These wind farms along the Columbia River are technically up on the Columbia Plateau, so they do see a few more sunny days than west of the Cascades, however it is up above the 45th parallel so the solar insolation isn’t very good in summer, downright terrible in winter … plus I’m only paying 7.96¢ per kW-hr as it is … one of the cheapest electric rates in the nation … so the return on investment for solar isn’t near as good as elsewhere … Did I mention the Columbia River floods on occasion … the high water mark 800 feet above flood stage is still completely obvious … although global warming has made this type of flood impossible these days … > [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > No doubt for pressing, just as with grinding wheat-flour … [snip] It doesn’t take long for these Dutch girls to be walking around in the swamps until their feet begin to stink … thus the wine produced there isn’t really popular … it you take my meaning … [wink] … ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/31 "2016-12-07T15:47:18Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > 1. Everyone admits that it’ll be very expensive to reduce carbon emissions. > 2. But the catch is that it’s even more expensive to not reduce emissions. 1. No, everyone doesn’t. That’s clear from the poster I responded to and responded to me, nowhere in those responses ‘yeah, it would be very expensive’. And it’s far from limited to one internet poster. 2. This would be the correct argument. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to quantify. I think ‘everyone’ (on the same basis as 1 🙂 ) would agree you can’t make that statement absolutely with no regard to how much the emissions reductions cost. But, yeah, in a given proposal for a set of policies that would be the justification: here’s the beneficial impact as best we can estimate, here’s the cost as best we can estimate, and the first outweighs the second. But again in the real political world the pitch is often ‘solving this problem will generate all kinds of green jobs and it’s just a win win all around’, or ‘some other undeserving person or group will pay, not you’ or some combination. And there’s serious reason to doubt IMO whether even highly green oriented societies will accept the real of cost of _big_ reductions, let alone the US electorate, let alone the developing world. IMO direct climate engineering when/if we reach that point is more realistic, in combination with yet unseen breakthroughs in _low cost_ low carbon energy, and adaptation, or perhaps we’re just screwed. Really big global reductions at today’s technology: not gonna happen IMO. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/32 "2016-12-07T16:58:06Z")
The biggest breakthrough in wind (and solar) is in battery tech, since the biggest problem is matching generation and consumption. the quality and reliability of batteries - as we see from cars like the Tesla or hybrids like the Prius and Volt - has progressed by leaps and bounds. Tesla now sells battery pack just for this purpose, and increasing grid electricity prices will only make this more promising. I suppose the advantage of wind power is that the equipment generally is reliable and keeps working. Solar power cells will drop off in output over time (although, not that much). Hydro power is subject to droughts, which can be very long cycles of limited production. Wind is moderately more reliable. (Is there any literature of windmills suffering from a prolonged shortage of wind?) It was easy to take advantage of, and needed little supervision - hence why it was ideal for draining the polders - “fire and forget”. And unlike, say, river power - it’s everywhere and scales easily to whatever amount is needed. IIRC, from a real old Disney kid’s movie set in Crete (“Moonspinners”) there was a windmill in there too? Windmills are not a uniquely Dutch invention - they just lacked hills with running water, and had a guaranteed wind from the North Sea, so it was their best choice. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/33 "2016-12-07T22:50:12Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > These wind farms along the Columbia River are technically up on the Columbia Plateau, so they do see a few more sunny days than west of the Cascades, however it is up above the 45th parallel so the solar insolation isn’t very good in summer, downright terrible in winter … plus I’m only paying 7.96¢ per kW-hr as it is … one of the cheapest electric rates in the nation … so the return on investment for solar isn’t near as good as elsewhere … Well, they shouldn’t use current generation solar panels on those windmill towers. But there are better – cheaper and more efficient – technologies in the pipeline. Google on \>\>perovskite solar\<\< for details on the next solar tech. They also won’t necessarily be flat and rigid like silicon cells. You want to wait for those to become the standard before putting them in places like windmill towers. > [@md2000](#): > > . > IIRC, from a real old Disney kid’s movie set in Crete (“Moonspinners”) there was a windmill in there too? Windmills are not a uniquely Dutch invention… Certainly not. Windmills were probably invented in Persia somewhere around the 8th century. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2016, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/34 "2016-12-07T23:39:51Z")
The cost of power in Denmark is about 4x that in the US. Most Americans aren’t willing to see their utility bills quadruple. ---
**Author:** ![HeXen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@HeXen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeXen)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/35 "2016-12-08T00:56:49Z")
What is the maintenance costs? I’ve seen quite a few broken fan blades that eventually got replaced…looks expensive just to maintain. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/36 "2016-12-08T01:00:05Z")
The cost of power in Germany is about 3x that in the US. The Germans fix this by using only one third or one quarter as much power as an American. 2015: Germany per household: 30 cents per kWh — use = 3500 kWh = 1060 euros a year America per household: 9 cents per kWh — use 11800 kWh = 1050 euros a year And other **[countries](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-households-pay-power)**. Stand easy: _no-one_ at all is suggesting Americans cut consumption — they know their own needs best. Yet some could probably stand to pay a little more per unit, no matter the source of generation, wind, coal, nuclear. And Germans pay more for power because of government taxes per unit for the purpose of having power generation in _future_ centuries, when much of the world could be stuffed. Britain has already come close to black-outs the last few years ( relying on nuclear and coal ). However Germans are no more likely to be cold in winter than Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045/37 "2016-12-08T01:18:09Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > 1. No, everyone doesn’t. That’s clear from the poster I responded to and responded to me, nowhere in those responses ‘yeah, it would be very expensive’. And it’s far from limited to one internet poster. If you’re referring to me, let’s be clear–I’m taking a broad view of “cost.” An LED light bulb is much more expensive than an incandescent. But it is also vastly cheaper due to the power savings, and likely to pay for itself in a year or less. So in that sense they have a very low cost. The capital costs of solar panels, wind turbines, grid upgrades, storage facilities and so on will be high. But they’ll pay for themselves in the long run, and then some, and that’s ignoring the costs of pollution. Some stuff–particularly storage–isn’t cheap now, but will be soon. Other stuff (solar panels) is already fairly cheap, but nevertheless getting cheaper. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/economics-of-wind-power/774045.md?page=1)