Can I point you to a wind industry's publication where they say that " Although this is a step in the right direction, it is still not enough to bear the increase in costs for raw materials such asc opper,steel,electroplates,nickel and chemical products such as paints and resins needed for wind turbine production" asking for more subsidies (From Windblatt Magazine, edited by Enercon, a wind turbine maker)
http://www.enercon.de/www/en/win.../WB-0407-
en.pdf
Here in Italy the cost of wind projects, according to an industry commisionated report, in the last two years has jumped from 1000€/KW to 1900 €/KW and this is due among other factors to an increase of the turbines price of 40%.
There is another growing issue with wind-power that should concern any investor. Land owners are becoming more aware of 'wind rights' than they were in the past. Wind rights covers the issues of compensation for use of the resource, not just leasing the land, which was standard practice in the past. This in some case could include compensation to other land owners, downwind who's wind potential has been attenuated by the placement of turbines elsewhere.
See the blog Wind Rights:Wind Resource for this and some other legal issues the site owners are facing.
DV8
My only analysis of Texas wind resources suggests that wind is unreliable when electrical systems need generating capacity the most. This is especially true on hot summer days. When wind energy drops all over the country, including West Texas where T. Boone Pickens is investing his billions. Pickens is looking to make a killing, not by selling electricity on the spot market, but out of the pockets of taxpayers, whose government is going to subsidize Pickens' wind projects. And so it goes.
I like wind generators of all sorts; I find them attractive machines. However I have come to the conclusion that their use in bringing about a low-carbon economy is limited to supporting hydro or supporting interruptible activities. Traditionally, grinding corn was an example of an interruptible activity, not having a firm schedule to meet, catching up with the backlog when the wind blew.
Adding uncontrolled variability to the supply side of the electricity equation when faced with demand variability just doubles the problems of matching the two. Wind generators should therefore expect a lower price (rather than a premium) for most of their electrical product, and a sharp ceiling (usually put around 20%) for their capacity share.
Joffan:
You bring up an excellent point. Generators that cannot schedule their production levels are suppling a product that is far less valuable than the product that comes from generators that can vary their output to match the demand.
Imagine a typical sports stadium that has a fixed number of seats. Those seats are valuable when there is an event in progress, but they are an expensive liability when nothing is happening in the stadium. By the same token, fresh strawberries are far more valuable for a bride trying to put on a good show for guests in New York City in January than they are by the side of the road in Central Florida in April.
In each case, the vendors are selling the same physical product, completely different value set by time and location. Kilowatts have a similar nature so intermittent, non scheduled kilowatts should sell at a different price than those that are there when the customer demand is there.
BTW - I know that some are going to tell me that nuclear plants cannot schedule their supply, but that assumption is only true for the large central station plants whose image pops to mind when someone uses the words "nuclear plant". It is not an inherent characteristic of using fission as a heat source.
Rod, Danish wind generated electricity is mainly generated at night, when electrical demand has dropped, It is not consumed locally but is either dumped, or sold on the spot Scandinavian market at a low price. The next day the Danes by nuclear and hydro generated electricity on the scandinavian spot market for a higher price. The Danish wind generated electricity is subsidized, even though it is not consumed locally, and the Danes have the highest electrical prices in the world.
Well a windmill needs abut 5-10x more steel, concrete and other *nonrenewable* materials than a nuclear plant for the same energy output, so one expects the wind power costs rising. Solar (thermal or PV) is even worse.
Funny how none in the established media makes this point. All the talk about decreasing costs from solar sources is highly dubious.
Small point Charles, Danish wind power is not 'dumped'...you can't do that with watts. It is only produced when there is demand for it.
What the Danes do is as you suggest, hydro in Norway. But the simply won't run the windmills, they will stand idle and simply not produce, soaking up capital costs with no revenue coming in.
David
David:
Actually, it is possible to dump the power from any one type of generator onto the grid by throttling back on the contributions that are coming from the controllable generators.
When Charles talks about "dumping" wind power onto the grid in Scandinavia, it is mostly onto a grid where the throttled power is hydro, so there is no real problem there. The water left behind the dam is ready for use later, unless, of course the system requires a certain amount of flow whether or not you pass it through the turbines to produce power or spill it around the turbines to keep the river levels within specified amounts.
In some places where there is a lot of wind power capacity, the wind power is used to displace fossil power, but often the fossil generators are simply throttled down to a less efficient power level so that they are ready to respond when the wind dies off. I consider that type of use to be "dumping" as well, especially if it results in the extreme case of continuing to burn coal to keep the steam plant warm and the internal systems functioning but where the steam plant is not producing any net power output.
OK, got it. Pumping water back up into reservoirs is "OK", albeit I wouldn't call that 'dumping' perse since most of that power is simply being "stored". But I understand the point.
In fact, wind has not really shutdown any coal plants at all, it is as you describe it, 'throttling back' on coal plants that are kept at minimum load configuration for spinning reserve and still pump out tons of CO2 and particulate. In fact...on a per KW basis, the particulate and carbon emisions are sometimes worse at minimum load because of lower efficiences at lower loads. It's a mess.
David
I've just learned today from one of my German colleagues that wind power in Germany is facing another challenge: people living east of wind mills are getting significantly more frequently divorced, there are more cases of violence and east of wind mills there is significantly more of traffic accidents.
The reason seems to be that in afternoons the blades cut sunshine, creating stroboscopic effect, which increases anxiety in people. This is alike the infra-sound induced headaches, sleeplessness and other problems. http://pantagraph.com/articles/
2...25857996033.txt
IMHO we are stating to see another spectrum of problems arising from an attempt to scale up a "renewable" resource, similarly as we are observing the biofuel disaster.
Commenting by HaloScan
