link to column: Is wind power cost-effective?
Sorry, this is wrong. You can’t just switch coal power plants off and on. Coal burning plants are generally run 24/7 and only shut down for maintenance.
Is Una not available to vet SD columns that apply to power generation? I’m sure she’d rap Cecil’s knuckles for this.
If windmills are so cheap to operate, why do most of them appear to be broken all the time?
<sigh> Luckily I live on fjord on the West Coast. The sea level ain’t gonna reach my house. Tough luck for you East Coast guys. Glad I didn’t buy a retirement home in Florida!
Don’t worry, I am involved with every column. Cecil is being a bit general here, but the concept is correct. With wind power and cheap natural gas, I work more and more with coal plants which are going into deep cycling mode. Every week we are getting more proposals into my office to perform studies to allow coal plants the ability to turn down to 20%, even 10% power when needed, so they can ramp back up to 100% and incredible rates when that is needed. I am working with a plant right now which went through more than 100 starts in a year.
True, in general much of coal power is baseload. In this case, the generalization is a bit general, but the point coal power is dispatchable, whereas wind is not.
If someone wanted to get nitpicky about the wording (and people often do here) it could be read that different units are being used in comparing wind to other sources of power.
For coal powered plants it claims 1,000 grams of CO2 per kWh, which it states is the standard way to measure these things. Then at the end of the paragraph it says wind produces less then 30 grams of carbon per kWh. I expect we are still talking about CO2, not strictly carbon. 30 grams of carbon would make 110 grams of CO2.
Really, I just wanted to come here to say Wind power, Schwinn power.
It could be read that different substances are being used in comparing …
A couple of decades ago, I worked for Ohio Edison doing several projects to increase one plant’s efficiency. While I wasn’t working the generators (I was doing things like adding running time meters to coal crusher motors so that they could schedule rebuilds based on actual time that the motor ran instead of just guessing) I did learn a lot from the other engineers there about how they ran their system.
Basically, the biggest plants (coal and nuke) ran 24/7/365. The older and smaller plants all up and down the Ohio River, which were mostly coal fired with the exception of one plant that burned used tires, were switched on and off as needed.
A coal plant doesn’t start up instantly with the push of a button, so you don’t turn one off and turn it back on fifteen minutes later. But there are a lot of plants that are switched on and off and don’t run 24/7/365. As Una said, plants can also be basically idled so that the boiler doesn’t go cold. Ramping back up from idle takes a lot less time than a cold start.
I think the point being made was this: When making decisions about whether to run the coal-fired plant at 90% today, or 100%, or shut it down completely, you usually have the freedom to choose whatever option is most cost-effective that day, based on factors like demand and maintenance schedule. But if it’s a wind-generating plant, you are also at the mercy of whether today happens to be a day when the wind is blowing strong or blowing not so strong or maybe not blowing at all. You might prefer to have your wind plant producing 100% today but the wind will only allow 60% and you’re powerless (no pun intended) to increase that.
well, you can aim some big fans at the wind turbines to keep them moving.
Actually, you first build a solar installation. Then you install lots of batteries and/or flywheels. That way you have plenty of power to drive the fans.
Build your wind farm near Washington DC
I hear this comment all the time, but in my experience, it isn’t actually true. I drive through a lot of these wind farms from time to time, and it’s pretty rare to see one that isn’t spinning on a windy day.
They stop when the pitching machine runs out of seagulls.
This varies by region. Go across the Altamont Pass and you typically see a lot of apparently inert windmills. But they were built during the 1980s. IIRC, the newer ones have electronics which permit them to run at all wind speeds. I see here that Altamont is actually required to shut down half of their turbines during the winter to protect raptors. Newer designs apparently pose less of a problem for these birds.
The article states that electricity from natural gas costs “as little as 6.4 cents/kWh” and coal costs 9.6 cents/kWh.
How does Ameren Illinois sell electricity at retail for 3.938 cents/kWh (plus a transmission charge of 0.658 cents per kWh)? And ComEd for 6.591 cents per kWh (plus a transmission charge of 1.005 cents per kWh)?
At it is, wind frequently produces more power than we can use, so we turn it off. Then we turn it on when we need more. Weird.
Dammit Una. I learned trom your posts that coal plants can’t just be turned on and off, and now you’re telling me what learned was all wrong! I’m severely disillusioned.
I prefer Trek power myself. But to each their own.
Wind mills kill birds, hydropower kills fish … and coal kills everything.
Everything has a cost. Just remember that while coal is pretty nasty stuff, it’s one of the crucial things that allowed the world you live in. Without it we would still be back in the good old days of pre-industrial humanity. You might long for that, but I’ve read enough of my history to know that I’d rather be here dealing with the clean up and ecological consequences than back then, dealing with all of the short brutish lives stuff. And before you say ‘well, that’s because you live in a 1st world country’, recall that China and India are where they are today because of coal as well.
That said, I’d be very happy if we could leave coal (and oil) behind and move forward to a next generation power system. Heck, I’d be good with leaving natural gas behind as well. Not going to happen any time soon, but every year the tech for alternatives gets better…and, maybe some day, we could build some new nuclear power plants. 
Years ago, there used to be a bunch of windmills on the Altamont that looked like giant eggbeaters. Photo taken from this article, where the photo caption says they are very efficient, but the article doesn’t otherwise mention them.
All those have long since disappeared. What happened to them? Did they turn out to be not so efficient? Or have expensive maintenance profiles? Or did they really beat too many eggs?
