Saturday 13 August 2011

The dirty little secret of wind power: When demand is high, output is low


Robert Bryce discloses the dirty little secret of wind energy:

The wind-energy lobby has been masterly at garnering huge subsidies and mandates by claiming that its product is a “green” alternative to conventional electricity. But the hype has obscured a dirty little secret: When power demand is highest, wind energy’s output is generally low. The reverse is also true: Wind-energy production is usually highest during the middle of the night, when electricity use is lowest

This is what happened when it was really hot in Texas last week:

Consider the afternoon of August 2, when electricity demand hit 67,929 megawatts. Although electricity demand and prices were peaking, output from the state’s wind turbines was just 1,500 megawatts, or about 15 percent of their total nameplate capacity. Put another way, wind energy was able to provide only about 2.2 percent of the total power demand even though the installed capacity of Texas’s wind turbines theoretically equals nearly 15 percent of peak demand. This was no anomaly. On four days in August 2010, when electricity demand set records, wind energy was able to contribute just 1, 2, 1, and 1 percent, respectively, of total demand.
Over the past few years, about $17 billion has been spent installing wind turbines in Texas. Another $8 billion has been allocated for transmission lines to carry the electricity generated by the turbines to distant cities. And now, Texas ratepayers are on the hook for much of that $25 billion, even though they can’t count on the wind to keep their air conditioners running when temperatures soar. 
That $25 billion could have been used to build about 5,000 megawatts of highly reliable nuclear generation capacity, or as much as 25,000 megawatts of natural-gas-fired capacity, all of which could have been reliably put to work during the hottest days of summer. 

Read the entire article here

PS

Another way to describe the reality of wind power:

"Wind turbines are a poor way to harness energy - but a very good way to generate public subsidies"

No wonder wind (and solar) energy subsidies are experiencing drastic cutbacks in a number of European countries.

4 comments:

Papa Zu said...

It's not a secret, it's an intentional lie to the public by green rent seekers who still haven't studied the economic devastation caused by feed-in tariffs and other such wasteful redistribution of public monies. All one needs to do is read the engineering reports from Eon Energy in Germany and the Netherlands where wind power has not reduced the need for coal power the 80% of the time intermittent wind power is dormant.

If this were any other product the federal government would require a warning in big red letters

WARNING: THIS PRODUCT FAILS TO OPERATE 70% OR MORE OF THE TIME!!!

A K Haart said...

"That $25 billion could have been used to build..."

That's the nub isn't it? The criminal waste, and let's call it "criminal" waste because surely that's what this scam amounts to.

Antithropocentric said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
NNoN said...

To Antithropocentric:

You should remove your video if you do not want other sites to embed it, it´s just as simple as that.

I have now removed it, so please, stop spamming my sites with any further messsages.