I interrupt this series of Bible comments to point out another classic poor piece of reporting, part of which is because of a poor quote and part of which shows plain misunderstanding about Wind Energy usage in the UK. I refer to this story about the Delabole wind farm redevelopment in Cornwall, particularly the quote by Chris Huhne, "Wind is an abundant, clean, home-grown alternative to fossil fuels" and then the usual cheap piece of technical data, "Potential electricity generated at the site will increase to 9.2 megawatts, enough to power 7,000 homes."
Firstly, Chris, wind is generally abundant and clean but this is such a poor painting of the subject. Despite being abundant, there is very little energy in wind because the mass of air is so low. In other words, you need a very large piece of equipment to generate the same electricity as a much smaller water or steam powered alternative. In general, the water/steam equivalent is the same size as just the generator part of the wind turbine. Secondly, to say it is an alternative with no qualification makes people think we could get a lot of our energy from wind, something which is simply not true. Wind farm output fluctuates massively over short and long periods of time and there is no way to make up this slack in a short time when there is demand for electricity. I won't even mention the fact that the financial side of things never adds up: "free energy" which costs millions in installation costs and doesn't last forever (Delabole is only 20 years old and already being replaced).
The main problem is the use, again, of sloppy and incorrect information about the capacity of these plants. Despite the unfortunate use of the word "potential" which in energy usually refers to stored energy sources like water, I'll assume they mean maximum output, it is unclear exactly what they are claiming. Energy demand is measured in Watt-Seconds or more commonly Kilowatt Hours so saying that the output is 9.2 megawatts doesn't really say anything. Is this average or maximum ('potential')? If it is maximum the figure is useless because when it produces nothing in very high or low wind speeds, then it powers no houses and if it is an average, it is still useless for the same reasons (i.e. sometimes it could power 20000 houses and at other times none).
The only obvious use I can see for wind turbines with their erratic output is to crack water into hydrogen which can then be stored and used for power or to fuel cars but while the popular press reports poor technical articles, the general population genuinely (and understandably) wonder why we haven't built loads of them.
Oh yeah and 7000 houses is hardly any since it works out at £1690 per house for the installation and this doesn't include things that were already installed.
Showing posts with label wind farms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wind farms. Show all posts
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Another sad, unqualified statement
I was reading about the Thanet offshore windfarm, the largest in the UK and read one of those classic unhelpful statements, "The Thanet offshore wind farm will create enough renewable energy to power 240,000 homes."
The problem with that statement is it doesn't say 1) Whether this takes into account the fact that wind turbines might only run at about 10% installed capacity (a 2GW turbine only produces an average 200MW over a year) 2) Whether it is the best case scenario i.e. at 100% of operating output (I doubt it, that wouldn't sound very impressive) and 3) what other allowances it might take into account such as the number of turbines that might be disabled for maintenance at any one point.
The sad fact is 240,000 homes is not a great number, it is only a 3rd of Kent's homes (assuming they are 'average' in size) and bearing in mind that, particularly in winter, the farm could produce nothing for days at a time, the 40 year lifespan and the £780M cost, it is hard to determine whether this is really value for money.
Sadly these things all sound great, they are "renewable" but we must look beyond the warm feeling we get by not burning fuel and consider the inconvenience of variable output electrical plants and work out the real economics. I for one would not like to see electricity increase by 10 times the price just to pay for these "green" energies when compared to other methods.
The problem with that statement is it doesn't say 1) Whether this takes into account the fact that wind turbines might only run at about 10% installed capacity (a 2GW turbine only produces an average 200MW over a year) 2) Whether it is the best case scenario i.e. at 100% of operating output (I doubt it, that wouldn't sound very impressive) and 3) what other allowances it might take into account such as the number of turbines that might be disabled for maintenance at any one point.
The sad fact is 240,000 homes is not a great number, it is only a 3rd of Kent's homes (assuming they are 'average' in size) and bearing in mind that, particularly in winter, the farm could produce nothing for days at a time, the 40 year lifespan and the £780M cost, it is hard to determine whether this is really value for money.
Sadly these things all sound great, they are "renewable" but we must look beyond the warm feeling we get by not burning fuel and consider the inconvenience of variable output electrical plants and work out the real economics. I for one would not like to see electricity increase by 10 times the price just to pay for these "green" energies when compared to other methods.
Monday, 27 July 2009
More wind power - I love it (not)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/22/wind_intermittency_study/
Not sure why but people who are practical about such things as saving the planet don't seem to given much of a voice or they are labelled as cynics or nay-sayers but unfortunately, it is the practical people who have the job of planning these projects for power generation into the next century and they cannot plan on airy-fairy ideas or idealism. It seems fair enough to say that England could benefit from a lot of wind energy. The wind is reasonably common here and we could tap it BUT, BIG BUT, it cannot be relied on 24 horus per day 365 days per year yet the energy requirement for the country although it varies, is still required all the time. The report mentioned above basically says you cannot have a large amount of wind energy making up your output, only as much as the other power stations can make up for if the wind dies. The only way you could use wind effectively would be to use it for things like water heating or battery charging where drops in the output would not have an immediate or drastic effect but people don't talk about that. In addition, you need to litter the countryside with these things and although they have an architecural elegance, you wouldn't build the Gherkin building in the middle of the Cotswolds so why build turbines? They are not massively powerful for their intrusive size and there is only so much energy available in the wind in the best case at the optimum speed. So overall, their output might only be 40% of their rated output (or less) over a year. This means installing 100Gw to get 40Gw on average (perhaps 100Gw some times and 0 at others!).
We need to forget this white elephant and look at more useful things like reducing energy consumption in houses (existing as well as new builds) and installing things like solar water heaters as standard which are massively useful to most people!
Bring the revolution.
Not sure why but people who are practical about such things as saving the planet don't seem to given much of a voice or they are labelled as cynics or nay-sayers but unfortunately, it is the practical people who have the job of planning these projects for power generation into the next century and they cannot plan on airy-fairy ideas or idealism. It seems fair enough to say that England could benefit from a lot of wind energy. The wind is reasonably common here and we could tap it BUT, BIG BUT, it cannot be relied on 24 horus per day 365 days per year yet the energy requirement for the country although it varies, is still required all the time. The report mentioned above basically says you cannot have a large amount of wind energy making up your output, only as much as the other power stations can make up for if the wind dies. The only way you could use wind effectively would be to use it for things like water heating or battery charging where drops in the output would not have an immediate or drastic effect but people don't talk about that. In addition, you need to litter the countryside with these things and although they have an architecural elegance, you wouldn't build the Gherkin building in the middle of the Cotswolds so why build turbines? They are not massively powerful for their intrusive size and there is only so much energy available in the wind in the best case at the optimum speed. So overall, their output might only be 40% of their rated output (or less) over a year. This means installing 100Gw to get 40Gw on average (perhaps 100Gw some times and 0 at others!).
We need to forget this white elephant and look at more useful things like reducing energy consumption in houses (existing as well as new builds) and installing things like solar water heaters as standard which are massively useful to most people!
Bring the revolution.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Wind Power again!
I read this article about a proposed wind farm in Australia. It will cover a staggering 120 square miles and wait for it, provide electricity for 4.5% of the houses in New South Wales. 4.5% of the homes in one state. No offence but what a waste of space and money (even if they have loads of space). A massive amount of cost for such a tiny amount of power. For the techie aware amongst you, it amounts to approximately 4 watts per square metre of land area (maximum!) compared to the suns energy of up to 1,000 watts per square metre. Australia being where it is, you would have thought one of those solar concentration schemes or even standard solar panels or solar water heating systems would make a much bigger impact. Most energy in the home is used for heating so why not utilise what the sun does well?
For me, it is sadly another pointless chasing after some unattainable ideal in the wrong way!!
For me, it is sadly another pointless chasing after some unattainable ideal in the wrong way!!
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Wind farms - the continued debate
I saw another article about wind energy and interesting reading it made too: here.
It is always the comments that interest me. There are far too many armchair experts who not only voice, let us say, healthy pessimism or support but who spit out massively dogmatic statements that to be frank are misplaced.
For instance, the author of the article says that the claim that the new wind energy site will supply 180,000 houses is misleading since this would be only if the windmills supplied the electricity, if they were to supply all the energy required, the figure would be more like 35,000 homes. That is very correct, a common spin technique exposed for what it is. That didn't stop the comments though about how the government never 'claimed' it would supply all the energy to the homes but of course that is exactly what people read and presumably what was intended.
It still agitates me that people spout such nonsense in what will end up being a debate based in nothing more than spin, rhetoric and witch-doctoring instead of pragmatic economics and science which it should.
One of the comments was along the lines of, "anti-green rubbish, presumably you are suggesting we use fossil fuels until they run out". What an idiotic statement. So pointing out the errors in a system is the same as ignoring the problem? Nope.
Someone else starts a tirade about the costs of "tropical storm damage and freak weather events" which is of course not only conjecture but again misses the point that the problem is not in question, just the wisdom of the solution.
Then other people start saying we should all be using peat or wood burners and then the problem would be OK. Yeah nice idea, can't see it working in an office block in Central London though!
It would be nice if the government employed more pragmatic people to shovel all this BS out the way to make room for the real arguments and then let the public know that they know what they are doing. We can only dream....
It is always the comments that interest me. There are far too many armchair experts who not only voice, let us say, healthy pessimism or support but who spit out massively dogmatic statements that to be frank are misplaced.
For instance, the author of the article says that the claim that the new wind energy site will supply 180,000 houses is misleading since this would be only if the windmills supplied the electricity, if they were to supply all the energy required, the figure would be more like 35,000 homes. That is very correct, a common spin technique exposed for what it is. That didn't stop the comments though about how the government never 'claimed' it would supply all the energy to the homes but of course that is exactly what people read and presumably what was intended.
It still agitates me that people spout such nonsense in what will end up being a debate based in nothing more than spin, rhetoric and witch-doctoring instead of pragmatic economics and science which it should.
One of the comments was along the lines of, "anti-green rubbish, presumably you are suggesting we use fossil fuels until they run out". What an idiotic statement. So pointing out the errors in a system is the same as ignoring the problem? Nope.
Someone else starts a tirade about the costs of "tropical storm damage and freak weather events" which is of course not only conjecture but again misses the point that the problem is not in question, just the wisdom of the solution.
Then other people start saying we should all be using peat or wood burners and then the problem would be OK. Yeah nice idea, can't see it working in an office block in Central London though!
It would be nice if the government employed more pragmatic people to shovel all this BS out the way to make room for the real arguments and then let the public know that they know what they are doing. We can only dream....
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Wind Energy the Truth?
I've talked before about truth. Truth is absolute in most cases but what do we base our truth on? Most of the time it is based on other people's ideas, conjecture, experimentation or even lies and what a great area to visit this than wind energy. The reason I thought about it was after stumbling across http://www.windenergy-the-truth.com/ and reading through it. The good thing about a well thought out and presented treatise of the subject is you can then try and find any holes in the logic.
It is not enough for somebody simply to say, "wind farms are a good idea" or "wind farms are a bad idea" you need all the information. You are not just talking about potentially lots of money spent on something that is less than useful but electricity supply itself and all of the industry and services based on electricity, i.e. 99% of everything. We cannot afford to be blaze about something so important and I would invite others to read the article and comment on whether the man's conclusions are reasonable or not.
It is not enough for somebody simply to say, "wind farms are a good idea" or "wind farms are a bad idea" you need all the information. You are not just talking about potentially lots of money spent on something that is less than useful but electricity supply itself and all of the industry and services based on electricity, i.e. 99% of everything. We cannot afford to be blaze about something so important and I would invite others to read the article and comment on whether the man's conclusions are reasonable or not.
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