Thanks to Steve Hunter
Thanks to Steve Hunter illustrations
Victoria’s windfarms have saved virtually no coal from being burnt.
South Australian windfarms have saved 4% of their rated capacity in fossil fuels at a cost of $1,484 per ton.
That’s only $1,474 above the current price of carbon credits per ton in the EU. They are 96% useless, and cost 150 times more than necessary for what they do (except for the times they are more useless and more expensive).
The point of a windfarm is not so much to produce electricity but to reduce greenhouse emissions.
If we built windfarms for the electricity they generate, we’d be better off paying for reliable electrons from cheap brown coal, and using the savings to research a cure for cancer. The point in putting up expensive, infrasonic thumping towers of steel and concrete that kill eagles and explode bat lungs is because it reduces our carbon dioxide emissions, except that it doesn’t really.
Mechanical engineer Hamish Cumming has written a whopper of a report (though I can’t find an online copy of it*). Because Victoria doesn’t have much of a gas powered grid, it can’t take advantage of the odd intermittent peaks of wind power. Like a huge car, the big coal fired plants run best at a steady pace, and all the switching up and down just reduces their mileage so they need more coal per kilowatt.
South Australia does have some gas power, but don’t get too excited, even there, wind farms reduce CO2 statewide by about 1%.
“Cumming references an AEMO presentation to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission where the AEMO showed that for the wind farms in SA in 2009 the greenhouse gas abatement was only 3 per cent of the total capacity of the wind farms installed.
This equated to a 0.6 per cent reduction of greenhouse gases for the entire state’s electrical generation from fossil fuels.
Since then Cumming says he has established that even with the continued expansion of wind farms in South Australia, the AEMO figures show the abatement has risen to only about 4 per cent of the installed capacity, or just more than 1 per cent greenhouse gas abatement.
This is the same figure that was established in the past three months in The Netherlands and presented to the Dutch parliament. The Netherlands report suggests the greenhouse gas used to build and maintain a wind farm will not be abated even across the total life of the wind farm.”
The four percent fuel savings (that 4% of nameplate capacity of the windfarm) is similar to experiences in the Netherlands (see Trick 5 here).
Hamish Cumming is an active campaigner against wind-turbines — so we should ask pro-wind-turbine developers for their point of view too. The Australian did, and their answer was essentially that according to modeling, wind farms “would” save 26,700 tons of CO2 emissions annually. In other words, the benefits are theoretical, but the actual data — the tons of coal burned — shows they don’t help reduce CO2.
“…owners of Yallourn, Hazelwood and Loy Yang power stations had confirmed in writing that the power stations combined consume about 7762 tonnes of coal an hour. They have confirmed that the power stations do not change the coal feed intake 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. ”
“Cumming has called for Victoria’s wind developments to be stripped of public subsidies.”
His farm may have been hit by arsonists:
“Two woolsheds and three haystacks were set on fire on Hamish Cummings’ property yesterday. One of the woolsheds had historical significance.
Mr Cummings says he has been threatened before and is positive he was targeted because of his stance on wind farms
“[I’ve] had a number of direct threats in terms of notes and bottles of petrol with notes saying costing people money and if I go to the police they’re going to shoot me and all sorts of things like that,” he said.”
Wind power is a major global industry but it’s only making in the order of 1.4% of total electricity. Often overlooked by their supporters, the emissions to construct a wind turbine are substantial — making the concrete in the huge base emits a lot of CO2, and all that material has to be transported to what are often remote locations.
Steve Hunter is a freelance cartoonist and illustrator and lives in Buderim Queensland.
*UPDATE: My mistake, after contacting Hamish to get a copy of “the report” – I find that what he’s done is two years research, collated and crunched, but not in a form he can publish in toto easily. He is most happy to provide links to sources for the data and answer questions.
Models are (of course) superior to empirical data. The empirical data is merely measuring what happens in the real world.
110
I just received an Australian Government leaflet enclosed with an electricity bill, it explains where every $100 of your electricity bill goes: “The carbon price will cut pollution and drive investment in clean energy like solar and wind power”.
$51 = Network (poles & wires)
$20 = Wholesale electricity generation (making electricity)
$20 = Retail customer service AND programs for energy efficiency and renewables
$ 9 = Carbon price
The prime minister and her ministers have been claiming that there will be no GST on the carbon tax (they never refer to dioxide)however the bill I received has 10% GST added so the $9 carbon price added into that bill becomes $9.90 and the other segments of each $100 of bill too.
It is very annoying to be subsidising businesses that profit from next to useless wind turbines etc and to be paying a tax on top of a tax and a subsidy.
41
Wow, I don’t believe it. Barely 45 minutes ago, I posted a comment at the underlying Thread of Joanne’s, and lo and behold, here’s a Thread from Joanne on the same topic. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ll copy that comment and post it again here, as it mentions some things that are in addition to what Joanne says here.
This does in fact link in closely with what is said, especially with respect to the revenue that will be raised from the imposition of this cost on those CO2 emissions, especially from those largest emitters, the electrical power generating sector, and in particular those coal fired power plants.
This main article provides a very interesting read. Luckily, I found it in full before they changed the link back to the Login article back at The Australian. I didn’t copy the article because I didn’t expect it to change, but I did however get some of the text from that article.
What it explains is that what is hyped from the Wind Generation Industry, and also from Federal Labor Government Departments does not actually match up with what is happening.
All along, I have been attempting to explain how no matter how many of these renewable power plants are constructed, especially the most common of them, Wind Plants, it will have no effect on the way that those coal fired power plants operate. I understand that this is just a case of my saying that, and some people would associate that with a particular agenda that they perceive that I may have, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Those coal fired plants just hum along all day every day, because that is exactly how they operate the best. They supply what I have said is that absolute Base Load Power requirement, and no amount of any type of renewable power plant would alter that.
This article actually confirms this, and here it’s not just my saying it, but from an Independent source, a mechanical engineer, Hamish Cumming, basing what he says on actual data.
He says here:
The article then goes on to say:
and then this:
They varied ever so slightly the power output, but the generator stayed running at its maximum, which it must do, that 3000RPM, hence the turbine kept driving at the same speed, pushed around by the same amount of steam, heated by the huge furnaces which did not change their burn rate, hence the same amount of coal was being fed into that furnace, hence the same amount of CO2 emissions from the unit at that plant.
One operator replied to a question from Cumming:
The article goes on to say this:
You can have all the Wind Towers you like but even when they are actually generating power, those coal fired plants do not even blink in the way that they operate.
So, and relating back here to Joanne’s Post, you can see that this CO2 cost and then the ETS only serves one purpose, that of raising immense amounts of money, because it most definitely does not abate any of those CO2 emissions.
Now, fast forward to the introduction of the ETS, where the main part of that scheme is to cap emissions at the start of year one, and then each year after that, lower that cap.
It is now painfully obvious what will happen. The only way to actually lower those emissions is to turn the unit off, that’s one maybe two units at each plant for the time that equates to the amount of emissions equal to the amount deducted from the cap.
Now, what that means is that for that period of time, there will be no power from that unit at that plant. It’s not an overall total for the State, but an overall total for each plant, so each plant will be generating less electricity.
It’s obvious that those Wind plants are not making that scale of power, and they cannot legislate for the wind to blow when those units are offline, so you tell me what will happen.
If Victoria, and by extrapolation the whole of Australia has vast chunks of power removed from the grid because of a lowered Cap, then that can only lead to the inevitable, rolling blackouts.
Gradually, ever so gradually, word is actually beginning to spread.
This is encouraging for me, not just the independent confirmation of what I have been saying all along, but that the word is slowly getting out there.
Tony.
100
Tony, I too was amazed to read the article.
Let me do the work for the trolls –
Before you get too excited about the MSM displaying some reason. You realize of course that Lloyd, yourself and Cumming are recidivist, not peer reviewed deniers. You are failing to see the positives in future technology (such a negative person).
Wind is natural, why can’t you see the benefits? It only costs a few hundred billion per annum and at the same time gets rid of those pesky eagles and hawks!
63
> You are failing to see the positives in future technology (such a negative person). [sarcasm intended]
Well, actually….
Future technology could make renewables a viable power supply in Australia: voluminous and constant output. (Jonovians now roll on floor laughing.) Unlike other countries we have plenty of free space for ambient power collection. For us the missing ingredient is dense energy storage. Let us go on a flight of fantasy and imagine, just for a moment, that some UltraBattery® technology is invented in the next 20 years that allows renewables (CSP/PV/Wind/etc) to collect ambient power at a rate three times greater than the grid demands it, store that vast quantity of energy on site, and release the energy to the grid during the 2/3rds of the day when the sun is out to lunch and the windmills have become garden gnomes. Backup gas fired plants would not be needed, or would have more than 24 hours notice before they had to start up. Well that would be half the objection to renewable power solved; the output quantity and quality.
The remaining objection, the sheer overwhelming amortised cost of the power generated, is still there but it is not absolutely immovable. It’s like getting a home loan. You have an enormous up-front purchase price, then you have to repay the loan over time. If newer technology gives renewables a greater delivery capacity, then they get a bigger income. They could afford to repay a larger loan over the same time frame. I have not looked into the economics of how (eg) CSP would be affected by such technology, but it does rather depend on what is technically possible, doesn’t it? You could imagine any technology you like for comparison purposes.
Electricity generators have typically started through capital ventures with government or by loans (private or public), but either way the total expense is repaid by the consumers of the electricity over time and this is built into the business plan. The moral issue with subsidies is a separate issue, since it is hiding the true cost and basically forcing people to pay for something they may not even use. But even if we were to excuse subsidising renewables based on some Clean Development nonsense, or the good and wholesome goal of sustainability, that still doesn’t justify the policy already enacted. The particular problem with financing renewables today in any way is that they can’t generate at anything better than 7 times the cost of coal power and even for that price they can’t deliver a quality product.
I would go so far as to say it is wrong to take an unqualified ideological opposition to renewable power across the board. I don’t want to sound unpleasantly contrarian. I’m just pointing out that the immorality of subsidies is a smoke-and-mirrors reaction to an economic limit which is fundamentally a limitation of present day technology. Therefore, although we are not there yet, some future discovery in energy storage may change the economic limit of the technology. There’s potential there. The potential to harvest a slice of 25 times more energy than the entire world actually needs. In theory. But that is the future. So even if you do “see the positive in future technology” that is not sufficient to excuse wasteful public spending today.
I’m trying to acknowledge the potential without losing sight of the practical. It’s quite possible that is what you meant in your comment, but I found the sarcasm ambiguous, so wished to clarify.
The bottom line: You’d have to be asleep to believe that the Green Dream has come true.
90
Unfortunately UltraBattery® technology relies on the mineral “unobtainium” which only occurs on another planet full of large, rowdy, blue skinned alien hominids with built in USB ports in their tails…
70
And our eyes are gonna look mighty similar to JuJu beans.
So… 200 years then?
Science fiction can come true, it’s just a question of whether the story is set in 2032 or 2212.
41
The other point with UltraBattery(R) and other Wonder New Tech(tm) that a lot of people fail to remember is that it very VERY rarely applies to one method of power generation only.
Any wiz bang new method to make wind turbines more effective, unless they relate to something like the shape of the blades or similar, is going to transfer over to the other methods of power consumption to make them more effective. UltraBattery(R) could just as easily be hooked up to a coal/gas station to charge up overnight.
New tech will be assessed by all, and if anyone thinks they can reduce costs by implimenting it then they will.
Hard fact kids, Big Oil is big because they know how to turn a profit and that’s by finding the most cost effective way to supply the market what it wants. If Big Oil thinks UltraBattery(R) will help them then don’t think for a moment it will stay solely in the wind farms.
30
D**n you, ExWarmist! I’ve only just stopped laughing about Unobtainium, after about twenty-five minutes. By the way, I think there may be a supply of it in my garden, since I can’t think of any other explanation for the fact that the only things that grow there are the ones that I never planted in the first place.
20
Isn’t the biosphere doing a good job of storing energy (Trenberth’s missing heat?). Plants are the ultimate energy converters and storage mechanism. We need a better means of releasing that energy in a usable form.
20
Andrew,
I can only presume that whoever gave you the ‘Thumbs Down’ accidentally missed the green thumb with their mouse, because you make perfect sense here.
With respect to the humungous problem of the energy storage battery that you postulate, if and when that is ever developed, we then need further infrastructure to convert that power being stored in the battery back to power that we can actually use.
Then we have the problem of the life of said batteries, and keep in mind here that the wind and solar plants only have a 25 year life span themselves.
The problems now snowball, as will the costs.
I actually feel sure that people are in fact working on things like this right now, but then, I’m a bit of an optimist when it comes to technological advances.
Tony.
81
I am glad if I can make sense to someone else at least once a week.
Waffle posted a link below which was very timely. 2000mAh/g density is quite nifty compared to alkaline “disposables” and NiMH.
As for the thumb down, due to the paucity of accurate data I must presently attribute that downthumb to part of natural background thumb variation and not an anthropogenic signal.
61
Thumb thing in the air, as the blades they spin around,
Thumb thing in the air, is it sight or is it sound,
Oh I know that its only fooling.
I know that it is all lies.
I know the Greenies are drooling,
As bat pieces fall in my eyes.
Thumb thing in the air …
[With apologies to whomever]
30
Andrew, interesting viewpoint but extremely sophistic. Your comment includes the phrase “an economic limit which is fundamentally a limitation of present day technology”.
Country-wide power generation and supply has absolutely nothing to do with limitations of present day technology/ies, or rather everything to do with present day technology. What it has to do with is the intrinsic attribute of energy density and what levels of energy are realisable and releasable from the different fuels we use. As we do not control nature and the elements, then we are unlikely to change these intrinsic qualities.
If we miraculously develop the storage systems about which you hallucinate, coal generation could fill them up 100,000,000 times faster than wind by the kilogramme and nuclear generation will fill them up 10,000 times faster than fossil fuels.
So the storage question for the future is really a non-starter in as much as we need the coal, gas and nuclear stations or our civilisations in their current formats will dismally fail. No amount of renewables energy or storage for that could possibly save them.
Possibly the best storage method at the present time is hydro as in reservoirs but there are many geographical, financial and technical restrictions on the use of such storage mechanisms.
Sorry, but the answer is not storage, perhaps yet another unattainable “Holy Grail”.
That is not to preclude my engineering experience from misreading the situation but I think we should invest our tax-payers monies on guaranteed proven winners before chasing the illiterate esoterics of renewable energies.
50
I’m entitled to my hallucinations for as long as I don’t force taxpayer money to be spent chasing them.
You’re entitled to keep the opinion you present because it is unlikely to be disproven for 200 years, or 1000 years if Thorium/LFTR grows legs Down Under.
We were already on the same page I think.
30
Yes, I think we were but my tongue-in-cheek was not visible enough!
The worrying part is that 60 years of possible thorium research has not been carried through from the 1950s when it was experimented with for aircraft engines. It was not like uranium from which nuclear arsenals could be accumulated to destroy the world, and thus politically a no-no.
20
Website missed my first response, Andrew.
Yes I do think we are on the same page except my tongue-in-cheek was not visible enough!
I agree that thorium/LFTR is the way to go but am disappointed that some 60 years have been wasted since the 1950s when it was first experimented with for aircraft engines. Political problem was that nuclear arsenals could not be formed from it, as was possible with uranium.
10
Andrew, a great post. Nice to read a measured, rational analysis of the issue in the comments section. Precisely the kind of open-minded, flexible thinking we need in the debate. Speaking only for myself as a climate sceptic, I naturally would like to see a solution to the problem of making ‘renewables’ economically sensible – how can it not be a good thing for all of us in the long term? I am most assuredly in no way antagonistic to fossil fuels; on the contrary, I hope to see affordable ‘sustainable’ solutions emerge.
The problem is, as you correctly state, that we are not at that stage now – yet the ‘rush to renewables’ continues amid a cacophony of misinformation and ‘green’ propaganda and, right now, for so little return, makes a mockery of common sense.
If the figures Jo quotes at the top of the piece are correct (and I see no reason to question her usual diligent reporting)…well, surely it’s nothing short of a scandal?
50
Soooo, why not just use Nuclear Power. A NPP produces 0.000, ZERO, NONE, NADA CO2 while generating electricity. Yes some is generated in the production, transportation, in building the NPP and curing of the concrete, but otherewise NONE.
20
I don’t actually care one little bit about the CO2 produced or not produced.
The reason for not using nuclear is purely that coal is cheaper on a per kWh basis right now (without stupid carbon price in place). Not only am I favour of Australia getting NEW nuclear reactor designs (no defective-by-design Fukushima trash for us) but I believe that the waste from all the world’s old nuclear reactors should be stored in the middle of Australia. No company has ever identified a site anywhere else in the world that ticks as many boxes as central Australia: tectonically inactive for a million years, arid conditions predict basically no local population, and in short term we are a politically stable country.
Basically it would be wrong to send long-term waste to anywhere else, and we’d make a fair pile of cash doing it in the short term.
It’s also a bit short sighted that Australia isn’t doing more R&D on sustainable energy collection, but I can understand the reluctance when there is probably no need for it any time this century.
50
Andrew makes some valid points about the storage of nuclear waste in Central Australia, and while not all that politically correct, that is only due to people’s total misunderstanding of this nuclear waste problem.
Consider this.
The ore is mined, and the Uranium separated from that. This is called Yellowcake, and naturally existing Uranium is already in a partially enriched state, at around 0.7%. So, even while still in the ground it is partially enriched.
150 thousand tons of rock and ore will yield around 200 tons of the Uranium.
From this first stage, that of separation, it then undergoes further enrichment.
The process to enrich it to a level where it can be used for fuel in Nuclear power plants entails 5 separate steps, and at the end of those 5 steps, it is enriched to around 3 to 5%, and most typically just that 3%.
During those processes for nuclear power plant fuel, the Uranium is converted to a powder which is then pressed into pellet form. Those pellets are then fired in a high temperature furnace to create those hard ceramic pellets. The pellets are then machined into specific sizes and a single pellet is around an inch long and round, just smaller than the end knuckle on your smallest finger.
These machined pellets are then inserted into the rods, usually tubes manufactured from Zirconium alloy material.
I mentioned that the original ‘dirt out of the ground’ yields 200 tons of Uranium from 150,000 tons of ‘dirt’. At the end of the 5 process, you will have 24 tonnes of nuclear fuel.
That 24 Tonnes of Nuclear fuel is what one large reactor might use in a year, and again, you may consider that a large amount but compare it with a large coal fired power plant that burns around 7 million tons of ‘steaming’ coal each year.
The two most common forms of reactors used in the Nuclear electrical power generating area are Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactors.(BWR)
The finished rods with the pellets in them are then installed into bundles for insertion into the reactors. The bundles for the two types of reactors are different.
For PWR reactors, there are around 180 to 260 rods in the bundle and the final assembly is around 13 feet in length. There are around 120 to 190 assembly bundles in each reactor, depending on the size of that reactor.
For the BWR reactors, the bundle of rods assemblies are different both in the rod material and they are then also further encased as well, and those used for BWR reactors would typically contain around the low 90′s in numbers of rods, and also depending on the size of the reactor, would contain around 370 to 800 bundle assemblies.
In both cases, as the fuel is consumed by the reaction, enrichment levels are diminished somewhat and when they fall back to around 1%, they are considered to be spent in relation to their use for the reaction to boil the water. The rods are removed from the bundle, or the bundle removed from the central core, and stored in the reactor, usually for a couple of years. By this time enrichment has diminished even further, and in most cases back to the same level as Uranium existing in the ground, at around 0.7%. The rods are then removed for dry storage at the storage facility for these nuclear fuel rods.
So, the Nuclear Waste in the case of Nuclear Power Plants is back down at an enrichment level virtually the same as the existing ore still in the ground, at 0.7%.
So, when you think of Nuclear Waste, it’s always such a scary sounding thing, but when you really see what it is, it’s really not all that scary at all.
Tony.
30
More to the point TonyfromOz, it’s not actually waste as such from a nuclear reactor but a raw material for reprocessing.
Even the “long-lived untouchable” isotopes can still be consumed usefully in a thorium-based reactor, which effectively “smashes” those long-lived isotopes into elements with much shorter half lives; much of which can be spent emitting neutrons to breed uranium 233 from thorium. That uranium is a ready source of neutrons to help process the further materials that are “untouchable”.
And while all of that is happening, the reactor gets very hot. Hot enough to generate lots of electricity or for process heat in chemical processing; even gas-to-liquid or coal-to-liquid. i.e. making liquid fuels that are convenient and essential for a transportation infrastructure in a big country.
20
Once again, Andrew, to agree with you. I do not care how much “polluting” carbon dioxide we generate from electricity generation because, to educate the uneducated, it is the chemical food of life without which none of this earth would exist. It creates oxygen and water vapour and a definite greening of our planet, to be able to feed the exponentially increasing populations.
31
The Australian extreme Greens referred to by a German Green and former cabinet minister not long ago as being at the outer reaches of international Greenism – reference The Spectator Australia
20
Tony and Andrew and everyone,
This is the kind of insightful discussion that keeps me coming back to Jo Nova’s blog for more.
It began with an exposition of the fraud that wind power schemes have become. A fraud to separate Joe Taxpayer from his wallet through Green guilt. A Ponzi scheme that is environmentally hateful not just because it kills birds and bats, but because it pollutes legitimate environmental concerns with corruption and dark mafia-like violence against those who would expose the fraud. These are the invisible “associates” of Bob Brown and Julia Gillard. Welcome to their nightmare.
Equally crook, government subsidies for wind energy swindles serve to slow scientific development, because where is the incentive to go beyond today’s inadequate technology when one is well compensated for simply showing up with green junk?
Then Andrew makes a wonderful point about the long view towards the horizon of the future in spite of the economic and moral catastrophe of current Green grub politics.
We are quite literally in an age of technology where future innovation is almost impossible to predict or overestimate. That’s the lesson of the last century of science. Those who say “that’s impossible” are often wrong.
Unless what one imagines violates the laws of thermodynamics, pretty much the sky’s the limit going forward. I have little doubt given another 10 to 50 years of our currently accelerating technological trajectory that humankind has been on since about 1810 Andrew’s ultra-battery is possible. Maybe it will take nano-engineering paradigms we can barely imagine at this point. Perhaps, even more likely is some kind of technology, like hydrogen fuel cells but cooler, that we haven’t even noticed yet.
I’ve long been fascinated by the heat caused by acoustic cavitation in common beer bubbles. You’d think the energy equations of a bursting bubble in a liquid would be well understood, but something very odd is going there. It might be a key to alternative energy generation decades from now. Who knows? Google it.
But here’s my point…
What we often ignore because it is so unfashionable is the fact that our universe has been obviously “designed” for the development of vastly complex information systems, ie, intelligent life. Earth can hardly be unique in the heavens. Carbon-based intelligence on worlds with massive hydrocarbon deposits- even if only one in a trillion stars supports such a world – can not be that uncommon. So the “unrepeatable experiment” of humanity’s ascent to a global civilisation must be occurring using the very same physics on worlds far, far away all across the sky.
What’s happening to us is not unique in the universal sense that the same physical laws and parallel evolution apply to all parts of the universe that we can see with our telescopes. In that sense, nothing we are doing is unnatural. We are evolving along a natural trajectory that existed long before and independently of us.
We are part of the plan of this universe, our existence was manifestly inherent in the very fabric of the universe even before we existed.
Only in the last few decades has it become clear that so-called “Peak Oil” is nonsense. The Earth has the hydrocarbon reserves – which are literally stored sunlight – to power our global civilisation growing onward for at least another century or more. We know this is a fact, but we still feel a medieval guilty about it, because we have defined “nature” as something much less than it really is.
Think about it. In another half century our technology will be so far advanced from today that we can’t really imagine where (or who) we will be. But the solar power to get there was concentrated and buried millions of years ago in the form of hydrocarbons for us to use to elevate our civilisation to the next stage. Whatever that may be.
We are nature. The physical laws of the universe don’t just allow for us to happen by accident, but are actively encouraging us to evolve towards a destination we know not.
It’s uncanny how everything is in place and seems to be unfolding as it should.
Think about it.
40
The justification for this huge expense is always something along the lines of – “OK it was a lot of money but it saved some planet-killing CO2 from being produced and that is just so beneficial that you cannot put a price on it!”
My usual response (apart from saying what crap the entire CAGW theory is) is to try and make an estimate of how much CO2 was produced by whatever mechanism was employed to ‘save emissions’.
The tricky bit is to try and work out how much CO2 is produced by fabrication of equipment,transport, concrete etc.
One idea I had was that the monetary cost of something is a pretty good estimate of the energy that has gone into making it.
Does anyone agree or disagree with this?
I just seems to me that expensive stuff is expensive because a lot of consumables have had to go into its production and consumables always come down to energy.
I would be grateful for people thoughts on this one.
40
My bet is that the concrete would be the major energy consumer. The cement is burnt in a kiln at 1500->2000 °C. The cement manufacturers calculate joules per cubic metre for the kilns. Then the clinker is finely ground in mills (that have supersized electric cables), the rock crushers (for the aggregate) also know their energy costs per cubic metre. If my memory was better I could tell you the awesome numbers (anyone out there still working in the cement industry?).
The concrete is usually costed on the basis that it lasts a 100 years or so (but to demolish concrete structures takes another massive input of energy), so energy cost of construction and destruction would need to be considered when used on relatively short life structures like wind generators.
30
Yes, and carbon tax was a factor in the closure of Kandos Cement in NSW
20
See http://climatetechwiki.org/technology/energy-saving-cement
00
Thanks. My idea is that rather than work out all that stuff myself I just assume that the accountants at the cement factory have done their homework and priced their product to cover all costs. I then assume that most of their costs come down to energy costs in one way or another.
00
Look at the full product lifecycle for a windmill including it’s component parts.
It is made of metal, the metal has to be mined, refined, shaped, shipped, warehoused, and finally assembled. All activities that consume energy and emit CO2.
So once the beast has been assembled, it is then shipped again to a warehouse, then sold, then shipped again to another warehouse, prior to delivery to site, then once on site, all the additional infrastructure, concrete base, metal tower, etc have to be constructed. All activities that consume energy and emit CO2.
Once installed, additional gas fired backup capacity must also be installed, and made operational, and largely kept running to cope with all the times that wind is not blowing. All activities that consume energy and emit CO2.
For the life of the machine up to 25 years – if we are very optimistic, a lot less if I know anything about transmissions… the machine must be maintained, by staff who have to travel to/from the site, plus install replacement parts, that are made of metal, that has to be mined, refined, shaped, shipped, warehoused, and finally assembled. All activities that consume energy and emit CO2.
When the windmill is at end of life, it must be torn down, disassembled, and its parts recycled, which means refined, shaped, shipped, warehoused, and finally assembled. All activities that consume energy and emit CO2.
Basically a windmill is a device to create CO2 emissions from cradle to grave.
Only a delusional nut could believe otherwise.
50
You forget that the blades are made from fibre reinforced plastic, which can’t be recycled, and will have to be disposed of (buried?) at the end of the machines life.
20
Why do I think that if anybody actually did any calculations (why?) then it would turn out that wind turbines actually reduce CO2 emissions?
For the record, I’m in favour of energy efficiency first, and then nuclear power. But I don’t think anything will stop the decline of arctic sea ice. Don’t you worry about that though, I’m sure its not a problem.
13
John, you may find Kent Hawkins on the website ‘MasterResource’ of interest.
Then there is C. Kees Lepair [hope I’ve spelt his name correctly, from memory] for Denmark and Fred Udo regarding Ireland.
All do calculations which show, if you are incredibly lucky, that the supposed carbon dioxide save is equal to the actual carbon dioxide generated within a proper engineering audit. If you are unlucky, renewables create more carbon dioxide emissions than they are supposed to save.
So why politically persevere world-wide with two parallel generation systems, the one inefficient at energy release [wind] and the other made inefficient by the former as it is forced to burn scarce fossil fuels unloaded much of the time and is then sent into distorted antics to load follow the mythical wind resource.
20
John,
Please tell me how much will sea levels rise if all the arctic sea ice melts?
Approximate answer in mm will be acceptable.
Crickets chirping …
10
Sea levels wont rise at all – artic sea ice is “sea ice”.
20
ExWarmist … shhhhh … it was a trap!
10
Please let us get the science right. Science predicts that the level of salt water will rise when a pure icecube floating in it melts. I’ve done the experiment – picture here:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2dhsbyb.jpg
It is suggested that Arctic sea ice has less salt in it than the seawater it floats in. If that is the case then the world sea level will rise by a tiny amount, I’d say a few mm at a wild guess.
Of course before the ice was formed, the sea level was that much higher.
This was all discussed here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/30/climate-craziness-of-the-week-msm-jumps-on-alarming-headline/
20
JB Says…
I haven’t done calculations as I don’t have access to all the data, however, qualitatively – if a process involves lots of activities that are known to be high CO2 emission activities – then it logically follows that there will be a large CO2 debt to overcome, before a windmill can pay it’s way in CO2 emission reductions. If you can point me to a full set of data, with detailed granularity (i.e. fuel use on the mining trucks, copper smelting, etc,) and calculations on the full product lifecycle than I would very much appreciate it. But, please ensure that it includes actual electricity production rates, not (fantasy) name plate production capacity.
I’m in favour of cost effective energy efficiency. I have no problem with the use of Nuclear power, however it is still not as cheap as coal.
I agree, it’s not a problem. Historically, a warmer world has seen the flourishing of civilisations, it is cold that we need to worry about, when it gets cold, agriculture loses productivity and civilisation falters.
30
Hey, I know it’s only a cartoon, but read what the salesman is saying.
I have used the new car analogy a couple of times before, but it sort of goes over people’s head a bit I guess.
In effect what they are doing is NOT telling you what that car salesman is saying.
Imagine this.
They are selling you a new car.
That brand new car (Substitute Wind or Solar Plant) may only start one time in three, or even four or more, or if it does start, it will only get you a quarter or a third of the way to where you want to. Sometimes you may get all the way, but on average it will only work for a quarter to a third of the time.
Now, if you had shelled out your hard earned on this wonderful new car, and it only did this, you tell me how happy you would be.
What they are doing is not telling you what this car salesman is telling the prospective buyer of this car.
Tony.
20
I told Steve Hunter that I liked his cartoon but to be strictly accurate the fossil fuel car should be towing the other one. 😉
50
http://hooniverse.com/2010/07/06/just-a-bunch-of-flintstone-cars/
Jo perhaps this one for Greenpeace should get a mention.
10
Well they are parked on the forecourt and not going anywhere.
The Green one in front is just for show.
10
The blue car needs to be at the rear for braking and pushing as the green car can only travel on mostly flat or downhill roads from the solar/wind power quantity produced. The green car can’t stop well due to the weight of the batteries so the blue car needs to stop it. That is why the chain is so heavy. The green car can charge as it is parked and uses no power while waiting at traffic lights but in an accident the injured occupants will be bathed in acid as the disturbed electical connections arc up a hydrogen explosion and repel the emergency services.
Sadly the averaged out replacement cost of the batteries is just a bit more than the fuel cost of the blue car.
10
The weight of the batteries: add on a hybrid the combined weight of an internal combustion engine and an electric motor and all the mechanicals combined to increase the weight of a hybrid vehicle as compared to a conventional vehicle, and the cost increase. And then check the latest fuel consumption comparisons, many of the latest conventional internal combustion engines are equal to or better than hybrids in fuel efficiency.
20
Eco-crucifixes have nothing to do with generating usable electricity , nor reducing CO2 output but have everything to do with displaying one`s devoutness to environmentalism . Much akin to the variety of robber barons of times of yore paying for the magnificent cathedrals spread across Europe , They had no effect on the “sinful” behaviour of the barons but lent the appearance of concern . The difference is that regardless of Your religious persuasions , the cathedrals are things of both architectural beauty and engineering achievement . The same cannot be said for the bat bursting , raptor smashing monstrosities that have followed in the wake of this new religion
20
Yeah, sure. It couldn’t be that we are causing it to warm, and that the warming might actually be kind of costly? And that maybe when you factor that costliness in, burning fossil fuel is not the cheapest type of energy…
No, its all a re-invention of environmentalism as a means of expurgating original sin.
You have a valid point, because for some “radical greenies”, it is just that. But you do have to distinguish between real and fake environmental issues. Global warming is a real one.
03
John, to quote you “Global Warming is a real one”, so how do you rate the Global Cooling the earth has experienced since 2000?
Both Global warming and Global cooling are natural earth feedbacks in earth systems we are no closer to understanding since Arrhenius first put forward his theory.
There is no such thing as an atmospheric greenhouse in the sky. If there was, so the space vehicles we send out would need protection from the glass bowl from which they break out of and return through!
The path of ages treats us to the incredible fact that both global warming and cooling are equally possible dependent on the stimuli received by the earth and in our lifetimes we may only be aware of one of them. After all who lives for more than 100 years, 75 if we are lucky?
20
Brooksie … it’s like this +T^ = CO2^ See ? So then how does anthropogenic CO2 cause +T^ … don’t trot out amplification, its hogwash.
30
That is if warming does prove costly. So far that theory is not working out well. I find it amusing that alarmists don’t understand the very real possibility that warming could, and has, been of benefit to the planet. Hurricane activity globally not increasing in trend(less temperature disparity between the poles and tropics should decrease activity). Ditto floods and droughts. Crop yields increasing according to long term trends. But no, that doesn’t matter. We are all still going to fry.
20
In Queensland there has been an enormous response to the solar voltaic subsidies (now wound back for new purchasers) but the large volume of solar power uploaded to the grid in some suburbs is causing problems, not least for the transformers, in the middle of the day. Then at peak household consumption times (late afternoon- early evening) the panels stop producing electricity. Coal fired stations keep running. Further, when there is a blackout your house is still blacked out. Sure you can make a lot of money out of it, but it’s still a scam.
20
I happened to hear a talkback radio conversation this past week discussing household solar electricity and that, according to the caller who claimed to have discussed this with a solar system installer and with an executive of an electricity retailer, the low output home solar system cannot feed into the grid. Households that are paid for uploading are subsidised by other consumers for nothing. I am not an expert in this field and rely on the information heard on radio.
20
I think the cartoon is generous. A closer analogy would be to have the fossil-fuel car . . . . (deleted due to redundancy). Forget it. I just read Jo’s comment at 4.1.
00
These bird shredders are one of the proofs of the CAGW scam. If it wasn’t a scam they would be collecting wind power with kites.
In terms of needing a back-up generator, not so much. They should be using wind to power the manufacture zinc, aluminium or magnesium from their oxides. The three easiest ways to transport an store energy in solid form.
Btw, anyone else hard about the recent advances in magnesium-air fuel cells and batterys? It’s giving me a warm, tingly sensation.
10
I forgot to link to this artical on magnesium-air batteries.
00
That’s awesome. It seems while I was writing my wall-of-text above you were simultaneously providing a possible solution to the problem.
Well Mr Waffle, how about I get my people to talk to your people and we’ll sort out a deal? 🙂
10
Waffle, thanks for the links, very interesting.
00
Waffle, I suggest that you believe in the technology when it is in the market-place and selling in millions, except will we have any space left on earth then on which to live. The search for a suitable storage medium of scale continues unabated with little success but somehow continues to spawn that news worthy article. Is that linked to accessing increased Government funding to carry on careers in the security of academedia?
00
Lulz. *heard* not hard… :p
00
While I was working at a radio site in South-East Asia, the replacement of a large periodic aerial became due, and we received one from the manufacturers, who were in Japan.
This was back in the days when the Japanese did not speak or write English very well, and the instructions said, “Before mounting aerial, please be laying all parts on ground as this gives good erection”.
Well it did nothing for me, I am sorry to say, and I wasn’t hard about the magnesium-air batteries either.
10
You reminded me about a Japanese accountant at a trading company in Sydney years ago, during a busy end of financial year program he turned to his Australian assistant and remarked “this is a very serious rotation but dangerous”. The Australian thought about this for some time and then asked his boss if he meant that it was a vicious circle, he did. Another was a report regarding a Japanese man driving in peak hour traffic, his car was cut off by another changing lanes on the Harbour Bridge and when the traffic stopped he pulled up alongside the offending vehicle and waved his fist at the driver shouting “foul word, foul word”.
00
There will only ever be an economic argument for wind and solar power when mankind finds something which can store electricity on a very much larger scale than a battery or a capacitor. So far, there is no sign of this ever happening. The one exception to this is for people living in remote areas, where wind power/solar panels connected to lead/acid batteries makes sense.
As for the green issues, the net saving in CO2 emissions for renewable energy is slim to none and may even be negative, when the process of construction and manufacturing is taken into account.
There is no doubt that improving technology is making both wind turbines and solar panels more efficient, but that still does not solve the problems of when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, but more important of how to store the intermittent, unreliable, energy these devices produce.
30
I would argue that wind used for (small scale) pumping water is proven technology, whether this is viable for hydro generation I would like to know.
00
You can get “portable” turbines – about the size of an oil drum – that will deliver 3 phase 400V at about 100A. You need a reasonably fast flowing stream. They are limited by size because you are not allowed to dam or build structures in the high country streams where they are used, they are designed to be removed from the river entirely, when not required. The ones I saw powered a shearing shed, and the kitchen, and gave the guys a hot shower and cold beer at the end of the day.
30
Rereke, I phrased badly.
I did not know about portable hydro.
What I meant to say/ask –
– Windmills are good for pumping water (as distinct from generating electricity). Can they pump enough water so that the water can be used for hydro? This would seem to be a way to store the wind energy for when you need it. Has anyone tried this?
11
Hi Ih,
My gut feel says nope. Too many losses in the system. I will leave it to a real engineer to do the math 🙂
10
Ahh..
Without LOTS of data, hard to say. how economical it is.
But yes, Wind turbines can be used to pump water for hydro.. It is actually being done, somewhere, I just can’t remember where.
It is the only way you can get controlable worthwhile energy from a wind turbine because bulk water is the only way to effectively store energy of large quantities. (Connection of wind turbines to the electricty grid is pointless, and as this whole thread illustrates, in most cases actually COUNTER productive.)
BUT. the pumping losses through pipes etc mean that the turbine must be close to a pair of dams so you can pump from the lower to the upper, any distance and the losses can be significant..
but it does turn totally unreliable, into a more reliable energy source so long the upper and lower storage capacities are adequate
00
ps, you also don’t need all the massive neo magnets, or the speed control mechanisms (except for safety). You can just let them pump when the wind blows. a purely mechanical system.
00
I do recall an article on the Danes selling/giving most of their wind generated power to the Swedes.
Apparently too much wind power was destabilizing their grid, so to get rid of it they sent it to Sweden, where it is used to pump hydro back up hill, for later use.
So, the Swedes would say wind can be used to pump water. It’s even economical, when you have a neighbour stupid enough to spend a fortune generating the stuff, but can’t use it.
It also helps that the government of the stupid neighbour don’t want their voters to realise how stupid their government is. To hide this they give the power away, & hope no one notices.
30
And manufacturing the magnets for all those wind turbines is SUCH a lovely clean industry.. NOT !
YUCK !!!
20
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
00
I loved the line in the article in “the Australian” on this “A SKM report commissioned by the Clean Energy Council found that a 100MW windfarm operating at 35% capacity factor would each year on average reduce emissions by 26,7000 tonnes in the national electricity market.”
All they have to do for some respectability is operate for a year at 35% and let the serious generators know in advance which year it is going to be. It won’t happen in the lifetime of anyone living today.
On their own figures, 100 megawatts at about $50 million installed cost, saving about 25,000 tonnes comes to about $2,000 per tonne. Marginal cost of production- zero, but maintenance and distribution cost?? – your guess as good as anyone else’s.
Try getting it through to a pollie though!
10
And it’s not just coal, Bishop Hill’s blog has the following quote from an engineers submission to the UK Climate Change Committee about the efficiencies – er inefficiencies of using gas which can be ramped up and down much faster than coal as a backup. His calculations suggest a 5% increase in CO2 emissions for the pleasure of paying extra to use windmills.
OCGT – Open cycle Gas Turbine, aka jet engine.
CCGT – Closed cycle Gas Turbine with heat recovery/exchanger systems bolted on.
Link to original submission.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/writev/517/m59.htm
00
This is a little simplistic.
OCGT systems don’t start up from cold quickly enough to handle wind farms -bear in mind the capacity of the gas plant v capacity of the whole wind farm – so some Gas Turbine capacity has to be running at synchronous speed ready to ramp up generation. Running a plant at low capacity reduces efficiency, e.g. a gas turbine at 40% capacity will generate 40% more CO2 per MWh, which means not 600 but 840 kg per MWh. This is above that of a modern black coal plant.
The turbines are designed to be most efficient at full capacity, mainly because the engineers didn’t think people would be so silly as to run them at anything else. Incidentally, some people would think that the actual figures for CCGT are more like 460, and for OCGT nearer 700 or 760 if oil fired. This makes the above factors even worse.
And before Tony jumps in, I point out that turbines only have a limited running time before maintenance is needed. Running an OCGT for a long time doesn’t help the efficiency.
The question that is often asked but never answered is “if we have to build gas turbines to nearly the capacity of the wind installed, why don’t we just build them without the wind towers?” Even on the above method, emissions from a mixed system aren’t much below coal. It appears that wind turbines reduce emission by about 4% of their capacity. If we modernised our coal fired power stations we would get much higher reductions of CO2 emissions, and at a far lower cost.
10
Thanks Graeme.
At last, another confirmation.
Again, as I have often said, Natural gas fired turbines are almost perfect for their application, that being (relatively) fast start, (when compared to coal fired power anyway) for Peaking Power operations, like four to 6 hours tops per day during those times of extra Demand (4PM to around 11PM), and perhaps the early AM.
Use them flat out, on a 24/7/365 basis, and you shorten their life span, and considerably at that, not because of the generator itself, as those large generators for applications like this are pretty robust, but because of the gas fired turbine itself, similar to (very simplistically speaking) a jet aircraft turbine.
CCGT uses the exhaust from the turbine to boil water to steam to drive a secondary smaller turbine/generator complex, but that secondary function means that these types of plant are slow to deliver their full power.
Perhaps now you are getting the idea that coal fired power is not as old tech and useless as we may think of it. Other than Nuclear Power, it is in fact the single best way to supply large scale electrical power ever devised.
Tony.
10
The other point that is often lost in the debate about CCGT is that they are designed to be run up just before they are needed – peak times of day, morning and night – and when another station must be taken of the grid for some reason.
So to use them as a backup for wind implies that you have to know to run them up just before the wind drops, and run them down just before the wind is going to get too strong.
It is something to do with cause and effect, I am led to understand …
10
The future of natural gas is solid oxide fuel cells. Micro-generation with combined heat and power will beat out large scale gas fired power. The main issue with gas is its energy density by volume which makes long distance transport a problem.
00
Maybe, depends where you live.
Most of the units generate electricity at 20-25% efficiency (compare with modern coal fired at 43-45% or CCGT at 60%) and use most of their ‘waste’ heat for heating circulating water to heat houses, factories etc. Overall efficiency becomes 75-80%.
You don’t have to use micro-generators either. the Falkland Islands uses the waste heat from diesel generators for circulating heated water to houses in Stanley. There are wood burning plants in Sweden that use the ‘waste’ heat for nearby houses (even for de-icing the roads). Mini gas units in Denmark supply the surrounding suburb with heating and achieve 80% efficiency, and it is these that have been largely responsible for the drop in Denmark’s CO2 emissions, not wind turbines. It’s
rather ironic that wind turbines actually disrupt these mini CHP units when they dump cheap power into the grid.
These units make sense anywhere the average annual temperature is below 15℃, e.g. Copenhagen 8.5℃, or where there is a demand for lots of warm water e.g. for a communal swimming pool. Putting them into an australian home is more of a problem – you wouldn’t normally run a radiator during a heat wave, would you?
00
SOFC is cheaper and has a longer operational life than a turbine for the extraction of energy frm natural gas. The waste heat can be used in any heat pump application around the home, eg; heating, air-conditioning, hot-water and refrigeration. The heat’s values is in the atmospheric temperature differential, not the absolute temperature.
There are better and more useful hyrdo-carbons than gas but, we have so much of the stuff that it’s going to have to play a role in the energy mix at current spot prices.
00
There is a fairly simple way to have a prima facie look at these various technologies for prospective utility.
1 For a baseload power system you need an energy supply (fuel, wind , water, wave, sunlight), an energy store to allow you to manage output to demand ( strike out sunlight, wind and wave or add another level of capex) and a conversion device ( engine, furnace-boiler-turbine, gas turbine, hydro turbine, solar panel, wind turbine etc).
2 Capex required is inversely proportional to the density of the energy supply/storage technology so low energy density ( wind, sunlight, wave ) requires more capex.
3 Unreliable energy supplies require backup ( wind, solar, wave)
Whoa! Wind, solar, wave score very badly for reliability, energy density, and energy storage. The renewables fall over at a quick glance.
How long did that take?
00
Nice analysis Ursus
00
hi Jo. How do I get a full copy of this report?
00
1. In the absence of hydro, above a low penetration [2 – 3% possibly] windmills cause more CO2 emissions than without the windmills. It’s because above ~10% of instantaneous demand [gusts] steam turbines cease to be controllable and ‘hunt’, increasing fuel use. It’s universally observed. The idea that you can have a long grid virtual power station of windmills catching wind at a distance means enormous over-capacity and even the BPA, three times the size of the UK and Northern Ireland can’t do it. Europe can’t do it even.
2. Therefore this failed technology has another purpose. It’s a symbol of totalitarian political control of whole populations, a replacement for the swastika with peoples’ lives controlled to the smallest detail by commissars. The countryside will be depleted of the proles, forced to live and die in millions in Stalinist tower blocks, and left just for the wind farming dachas of the Marxist/Carbon trading elite.
3. The fight back will have to be guerrilla warfare with the dispersed infrastructure very vulnerable. The aim will be to stop the renewables’ corporations, the rent seeking landowners and the carbon traders from making a profit. They will have to create the obvious police state repression far earlier than they plan thus making the ultimate aim visible to the proles before the task is completed. Think of it as pre-revolution to stop this vicious new fascism from becoming dominant.
4. Just look the politicians in the eye: they have bee bought up completely by the big corporations and put in place as puppets. In effect yours is a version of the Norwegian Nazi puppet, Quisling. In Europe we have our own versions, Common Purpose [Marxist/Fabian] indoctrinated with the fake CAGW scam as the main implant, a sort of Political Scientology, then compromised by sex, drugs and crime before being put in power. The common factor between the UK and Australia appears to be NewsCorp and Murdoch’s ‘environmental interests’.
10
priceless from “East Anglia” region, no less:
1 Sept: East Anglia Daily Times: Matt Hunter: Eye: Wind Turbines rejected over bat concerns
Mid Suffolk District Council officers had recommended the application for the wind turbines in Kings Farm, Cranley Road, Eye for approval.
But the chairman of the planning referrals committee, councillor Stuart Gemmill said the council had decided to change the application’s recommendation to refusal, after there were concerns that an ecological survey had not been carried out and there were worries about the effect the turbines could have on a bat colony. The joint owner of Kings Farm, Sheila Havers, said she only found out about the council’s change of position when she arrived at the meeting.
She said: “I think it’s bad that something is going for recommendation and then I find out it is going to be refused – they can change their minds like that.”
Mrs Havers said she thought the plans had gone to the referrals committee because of concerns, which were later quashed, that noise from the turbines could affect dogs at the boarding kennels business at the farm.
“They were going to discuss the kennels but by the time I had got there it was the bat issue. I have never been to a council meeting before and I can understand why.”…
But Mrs Havers said that although there had been a colony of bats on the 250-acre farm a few years ago they had now disappeared…
“Members are concerned about the number of wind turbines,” said Mr Gemmill.
“We keep getting applications for them coming in every week. I think they are difficult applications to make a decision on – there are so many. I think a lot of people are not very keen on them – but you need to provide reasons to turn them down.”…
http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/eye_wind_turbines_rejected_over_bat_concerns_1_1501450
10
drones become friendly wind energy kites. over to u, TonyfromOz:
29 Aug: WSJ: Russell Gold: Go Fly a Wind Turbine
Engineers Are Creating Kites With Rotors to Generate Energy at Higher Altitudes.
Winds are stronger and more consistent at higher altitudes, but building a 100-story-tall turbine isn’t cost effective. So engineers are working on using kites to send aloft power generators that create energy when mounted rotors are spun by the wind; they transmit electricity through the cables that tie them to the earth as a string tethers a child’s kite…
Further along in commercializing the technology appears to be Makani Power Inc., in Alameda, Calif., which says it has built one model capable of generating 30 kilowatts of electricity, enough for about 20 average U.S. homes. Makani, which is partly backed by Google Inc., is also working on a portable kite-in-a-box for the Army to deploy during disaster-relief operations…
Makani’s machines aren’t kites like the balsa-wood-and-cloth toys that kids make dance in the wind. They are basically small aircraft capable of cutting through the wind in large circles, mimicking on a larger scale the path of traditional wind-turbine blades—recreating their power-generation abilities without the expensive tower and large blades…
Even more important, unmanned-flight technology has been improving by leaps and bounds, thanks to military-funded research on drone aircrafts, with some of the Pentagon’s advances in materials and navigational software becoming commercially available.
The company, which has received $21 million in funding from Google and its venture-capital arm and a $6 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Energy Department, is working on a 600-kilowatt unit with a 90-foot wingspan that would fly in vertical circles in excess of 130 miles per hour. The blades of modern wind turbines top out at 200 miles per hour.
This larger unit—the 30-kilowatt model has a wingspan of just 30 feet— would compete with traditional wind farms for utility power-generation contracts…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444230504577617971067036752.html
00
Oh Great!
If one of those little babies ceases to remain tethered, you had better be wearing something more protective than your tinfoil hat.
10
The airborne windmill idea has been kicking around for over 20 years. As John Brignell repeatedly says, “tell us how much does the cable weigh?”
It is always the weight of the cable that will prevent these ideas from…
…heheh…
…ever getting off the ground.
00
Over the many years of research into this area I can tell you that there are three designs that overcome this problem. All three of these designs have been around for about a decade and have recieved no enthusiasm from either governments or green groups. Basically, because they don’t want wind power to succeed.
I can’t find the best links so readers will have to do their own research.
1. The kite is tethered to a winch with a generator on it. As it is let out electricity is generated. When the spool runs out the kite’s angle of attack is shifted to zero degrees so that winching it in requires almost no energy. A modificatio to this design is to use two kites so that one pulls the other at all times as their AoA is switched at the apex of the oscillation.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/adjf20/Images/generation.jpg
2. The kites opposite corners are flexed to create a tethered windmill. IE; it spins in place. The rotated tether spins a generator which is mounted on the ground and configured ahead of the winch. To get wings spans of hundreds of feet, it is my opinion that they should use a pilot kite to initially get the thing airborne and then belay the tether once the altitude is sufficient to unfurl the large bladed kite.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6616402-0-large.jpg
3. The last design is altitude limited but still functional. A very large fly wheel of hundreds of feet is mounted on the ground with a generator in the middle. Kites are attached to the circumference and belayed via software to create rotation on the arms of the flywheel. The control of the direction of the kites is identical to kite-boarding, even using the same type of kites. The mechanical advantage of the kite’s leverage of the total distance of the flywheel arm distance and the kite tethers can capture a large amount of energy.
http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/kitegen1_f.jpg
All these designs have the same thing in common. There is no suspended generator or cabling to weigh down kite to deplete the amount of energy from the wind that they can collect. There are, of course, other designs which use the latest kite boarding materials and designs which treat the kite as a wing by inflating it with helium(you could use hydrogen in industrial applications) and suspend the generator and cables above the ground using bouyancy alone.
00
more battiness:
31 Aug: GazetteXtra: AP: Federal effort focuses on bats, Wisconsin wind turbines
MADISON—Federal wildlife officials are asking the public to weigh in on ways to protect birds and bats from wind turbines in Wisconsin and elsewhere…
Department spokeswoman Georgia Parham says one solution could be to have wind-energy companies change how they operate turbines. That could include slowing the turbines when bats are near or birds are in a migration pattern.
Another solution could be not to locate wind-energy projects in areas frequented by endangered birds and bats…
http://gazettextra.com/weblogs/latest-news/2012/aug/31/federal-effort-focuses-bats-wisconsin-wind-turbine/
00
I understand that EPA are going to make a finding that bats are deleterious to the environment.
That should fix the wildlife officials quite nicely.
10
Or just not build the damned wind turbines in the first place.
BTW, have you noticed that all those turbines spin exactly in synchronization with each other? Their speed is dictated by the frequency of the power grid, 60 Hz for the USA. And to let any generator slow down, speed up or in any way get out of synchronization will bring down the whole system. This idea,
is not an option and shows complete ignorance of basic AC power systems. But of course, like many things, knowledge is not a requirement to speak out.
10
The blade speed is not dictated by the power grid but by the wind speed.
They start off slowly, in fact many of the largest models use power from the grid to keep the shaft turning slowly to prevent sagging (so the blades turn regardless). When there is enough wind speed they start generating a derisory amount, but better than nothing. As the wind speed picks up the blades turn faster until they reach a limiting speed. This limiting speed is set by the strain on the blades (see comment above about tip speed approaching 200mph [320 kph]). The longer the blades the greater the strain, so the lower the permitted top speed.
As the wind speed picks up beyond this point, the blades are rotated around the hub to ‘spill’ wind, i.e. they reduce efficiency to maintain a fixed speed. So the better the wind conditions the less efficient a wind turbine gets, until at a near gale the turbines stop generating anything. Mind you, these favourable conditions only occur about 1% of the time.
You have been misled because the wind farm starts together and runs at the same speeds. The variation is between 4 and 13 cps. The modern turbines use an asynchronous generator to avoid the old gear boxes which were less efficient and had the habit of bursting into flames, but trade that off for the need for electronic conversion of the electricity to the required frequency. It is these generators which use tons of rare earth magnets which people associate with pollution in parts of China.
Because of this strain on the turning blades, the idea that turbine blades can go on increasing in size is silly. Don’t forget that they are subject to a lot of flexing as well, caused by the different wind speeds at the top and bottom of their travel. Switching to stronger materials is more expensive, and frequently involves more expensive manufacturing processes, which is why prices for more modern turbines were increasing (until the GFC caused excess stock buildup, and ‘clearance’ sales).
10
You’re not forgetting about the speed of sound at the tips, are you?
It’s only 330 metres/second.
For a 50-metre long blade (airfoil) on a windmill turning at 20 rpm, the blade tip moves a distance of almost 105 (= 50 * 2 * pi * 20 / 60) metres/second. That’s 377 km/h. (Still wondering why birds get thwacked by them?) A significant proportion of the speed of sound. But it’s not just that circumferencial cutting through the air that produces airflow; there’s a component of the actual wind and components of airflow along the airfoils length. Those airfloils are very messy; making lots of turbulence.
Bigger blade turn more slowly. IIRC, the 70 metre ones do about 12 rpm.
Rotating the windmill when there is no wind is more than a double-edged sword. Not only does it consume energy to do so, it also fatigues the nuts and bolts holding those wings onto the main shaft. The weight of the blades is not insignificant and the fasteners go through the full cycle from pure tension when “hanging” though tension-compression while not vertical, to compression when “standing”, then back through tension-compression on the other side on the way back to “hanging”. A pain in the nuts. (I’m a Mechanical Engineer so I’m supposed to talk about nuts, screws, nipples, erections and shafts without blushing.)
On the larger windmills, there are dozens of large bolts used to attach each airfoil to the hub. The process of attaching occurs at nacelle height; which could be at over 100 metres above the ground which is not only “interesting” for assembly, but also maintenance. One can’t do it if the weather is in the slightest “unfriendly”.
Many of the windmills don’t have fixed hubs, but have one or more hydraulic motors to change the angle of attack of the airfoils by rotating them about their respective long axis. If it gets too cold, those hydraulics don’t work. So there are usually heaters provided to keep the hydraulic fluid warm. That fluid may be shared with the gearbox; also in the nacelle which increases the shaft speed for the “generator” (also in the nacelle) from a few rpm to several hundred.
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JoNova, there seems to be a plethora of professional and professionally practised knowledge available on this thread.
Bernd is an admitted mechanical engineer into all things mechanical, there are nuclear experts in our midst as well as practised economists and I admit to being a retired chartered electrical engineer.
Is there any way your website can be used to provide a downloadable compendium source for all those of us who realise that the technology of renewables used for energy generation is both mythical and obsolete, giving us all the hard facts which are being demonstrated by the knowledge of your posters?
This question is asked because on Page 2 of the UK National Planning Policy Framework [became law in March 2012], is advice on how to achieve sustainable development and the fifth and final guideline is ‘USING SOUND SCIENCE RESPONSIBLY’. Not only that but if anyone goes back to what Tony Blair signed off in 1999 they will find the UK Government publication “Securing the Future: delivering UK sustainable development strategy”. On Page 16 of this document, signed off by that technically illiterate aristocrat PM Tony Blair, the origins of ‘USING SOUND SCIENCE RESPONSIBLY’ as a fifth guideline.
Does that mean that the myths spread by all these wind vested interests are fraudulent and not sound science, and have been since 1999 at least no matter what policies the government may have thrust on us from above?
To see where that leaves the EU bureaucracy and the UK Governments research Aarhus Convention on the Internet whereby the UN is…………..
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I see that my misunderstanding of wind turbines sparked quite a useful conversation. Thank you for the information. I stand corrected.
BB
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Jo,
O/T but just up at WUWT
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/01/paging-dr-stephan-lewandowsky-show-your-invitation-list/
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We live pretty close to a wind farm that was completed in 2007. From the kitchen window, I can clearly see rust around each of the three main body sections of the closer towers, nearly 2 kms away.
Up closer on the dunes they look much worse of course.
It will surprise me if they last even 15 years.
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TonyfromOz:
from 7mins 30secs to 11.30, u can hear russell gold and see the drones …er kites, in action:
WSJ Video: Liz Heron and Google’s Daniel Sieberg discuss the search company’s presence at the Republican Convention, and Russell Gold looks at kites as a new, yet old, idea in wind power.
http://online.wsj.com/video/googles-biggest-rnc-election-2012-trends/1A0CDDC2-A4AD-4EA9-A286-9E5CD31ED4D3.html?KEYWORDS=RUSSELL+GOLD
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as much as i’d be happy to stop the bombing runs, it’s obvious no-one wants the turbines in their backyard:
31 Aug: Charlotte Observer: John Murawski: Proposed N.C. wind farm on collision course with Air Force fighter jets
Troubles keep mounting for a proposed wind farm in Eastern North Carolina that already faces questions about whether it will harm the local bald eagle population.
In the latest round of complications for the Pantego Wind Energy Project, U.S. military officials in Wayne County have disclosed that the 49-turbine wind farm would imperil the daily bombing runs of low-flying fighter jets at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
The Pantego project, which requires clearance from the Department of Defense, is set for a Sept. 10 briefing before a Department of Defense review panel called the Siting Clearinghouse…
The rotating blades on the wind farm’s turbines would extend 492 feet into the air, giving over-flying jets the thinnest margin of clearance. The turbines would be erected in an area where Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles swoop in at 500 feet as they approach the Dare County Bombing Range.
The wind farm, proposed by Chicago-based Invenergy on 11,000 acres in Beaufort County, would be the first of its kind in North Carolina. It was approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission in March, but it still requires environmental and military approvals before it can move ahead.
The proposed location of the turbines also could interfere with military radar used to track the F-15E practice runs, according to a letter Col. Jeannie Leavitt, commander of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson, wrote to Gov. Bev Perdue in July…
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Commission has its own concerns. A preliminary estimate shows the Pantego project, with 164-foot-long blades that spin at more than 100 mph, could kill between 3.4 and 20.7 bald eagles a year that fly through the area to forage and hunt…
Seymour Johnson Air Force Base spokeswoman Lt. Keavy Rake said raising the flight altitude is not an option because pilot training requires simulation of real bombing missions, which are flown at 500 feet…
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/31/3491176/proposed-nc-wind-farm-on-collision.html
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TonyfromOz, your thoughts?
30 Aug: RechargeNews: Christiana Sciaudone: First signs of trouble in the wind in the Brazilian market
The low tariffs being paid at regulated tenders — in the realm of R$100 ($50) per MWh at the last one in December — have guaranteed that developers will have to work with extremely tight margins. Many people in the industry believe some projects ultimately will not make it into existence…
“You look at those companies that have no experience building wind in Brazil whatsoever and wonder how they can really bring these projects on line at such low prices,” Gaylord says.
At the same time, the national currency, the real, which hit a high of R$1.58 to the US dollar in August 2011 — now averages more than R$2, meaning that costs will rise for turbine makers that are dependent on imported products…
Another factor is a suspicion that developers have been exaggerating capacity factors. “Some people are claiming 60% capacity factors,” says Gaylord. “It’s absurd.” He notes that Oaxaca in Mexico, one of the windiest places in the world, does not get past 50%, so “60% is mind-boggling, especially when a company has no experience”…
http://www.rechargenews.com/energy/wind/article320822.ece
30 Aug: Renewablesbiz: BUSINESS WIRE: GE Celebrates 300 Wind Turbines Installed in Brazil
GE, which this year is celebrating its 10th anniversary in the wind industry, today announced that it has installed 300 wind turbines in Brazil. Over the next two years, GE will install more than 600 additional units in Brazil as it continues to grow in the region, the company reported at the Brazil Windpower Conference in Rio de Janeiro…
Designing a product specifically for Brazil’s wind speeds has been a key investment for the region, and today GE announces its 1.85-82.5 turbine, which is based on GE’s proven 1.5-megawatt (MW) platform. Part of its $2 billion investment in renewable energy, GE’s 1.85-82.5 is designed to meet or exceed the historic 98.5 percent availability of the 1.5-MW platform and help improve project economics in higher wind regime sites by requiring fewer turbines per wind farm…
The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) reports that the Brazilian wind sector installed 583 MW in 2011, bringing the country’s installed capacity up to more than 1,500 MW, an increase of 63 percent…
http://www.renewablesbiz.com/article/12/08/ge-celebrates-300-wind-turbines-installed-brazil
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As Tony is apparently at Church, or maybe sleeping in, I get first go.
The claimed capacity factors are nonsense; the world wide average is 25% and dropping (all the best sites go first).
The price for these turbines has dropped as many manufacturers are in financial trouble with excess stock. The result has been a ‘fire sale’. Chinese manufacturers have been dumping stock too, using cheap finance to try and ride out the downturn. The European manufacturers are helped by the devaluation of the euro, and often by government subsidies. GE has put a higher output turbine on an older, hence cheaper, model.
With the drop in the Real back to where it was, there will have been some currency losses, but it will affect future installations.
$50 per MWh is too low for wind turbines. The usual “production cost” is put at $100-140 per MWh, and when the feed-in tariff dropped in Spain to equivalent to $90 there were loud wails.
But that cost depends on the cost of the turbine (drastically reduced as noted above) and the cost of the installation (cheap labour in Brazil) but even so I would think that at $50 per MWh those wind farm operators won’t be buying big Mercedes.
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Thanks Graeme, and I’ll add something to what you said here:
When I started out on this more than 4 years ago, I wanted to find realistic ways to replace that huge level of power if they were to comply with Kyoto and reduce emissions, and it was in fact monumental amounts of power, and all of it from the coal fired sector. Because I was concentrating on the U.S. who had the most accurate and up to date data with barely a three month lead time, now down to two months, I could work with that data on a regular basis.
Those monumental amounts of power to be replaced entailed virtually a quarter of all US electrical power consumption. (and note here I said consumption and not just Nameplate Capacity, so that is actual power generation) That meant vast amounts of coal fired plants needed to be shut down with an equal amount of power to be constructed to replace them. Keep in mind that I did all this 4 years ago, and in fact, not one of those large scale coal fired plants has closed. The only ones that have closed are smaller plants, mostly in the range of and below 100MW, and virtually all of them only because they are in the main 50 years old, and even older.
In the same time, there has been a considerable (and here I mean huge) ramping up of construction of renewables, and nearly 90 to 95% of that is in the form of Wind Plants.
Now, that being the case, and with such accurate data available, I could see what was happening in the way of power replacement.
So, I started an exercise that took a whole year, and each Month as the data came out, I would add a new Post detailing all the electrical data for that Month.
12 separate Posts spread over the whole year of 2010.
The upshot of it all was that for that whole calendar year, every Wind Plant in the US generated its power at a Capacity Factor of 26%.
Earlier, in 2009, I actually found a German site that detailed all the data for all the power generated by all of Germany’s Wind Plants. They averaged just on 20% for the whole 12 Month period.
Here in Australia, I have current data from the Wind Farm Performance, and I hate the way they refer to these things as Wind FARMS, sort of subliminally suggesting that they are productive, as in the thinking people have about real farms. I haven’t done the exercise for Australia, because this is just for the most recent Wind Plants, and not all of them, because those older ones have even less Capacity Factor than the newer ones. Even so, the Capacity Factor of those listed at that site is around 28%, and while they like to claim 35%, 30% would be more realistic. The newer the technology, the better the Capacity Factor, but 35% would be the upper limit. Oddly, what I have found, is that when the plant is in the proposal and construction phase, they base all their figures around a projected 38%. I saw that the first time and was curious about it, and when I went back and checked at all those sites, they all did the same, basing their data around that 38%, not close or even averaging it out over all of them, but each one exactly at that 38%. I tried to find some real data on why that figure of 38% was the one being used, but there was not all that much out there.
The upshot is that no matter what is claimed, the data I have now spread over more than 4 years clearly indicates that 30% would be the upper limit for Capacity Factor, so what that means is that spread over a whole year, these Wind Plants will deliver less than one third of their power for consumption.
If you do go looking for data, then as Graeme has suggested, you will most likely be directed to the best sites, and their dirty little secret sites that barely produce will be hidden away from eyes that might see and then raise some difficult questions.
I have links, admittedly to my own Posts, the one for Germany which has one link back to the earlier Main Post on Germany’s Wind, and I’ll link you into the last of that 12 Month series for the US data, which has a permanent link to all 12 Month series Posts, and sources for the data itself.
Wind Power – Epic Fail – Update (Germany)
Renewable Power Fail – As Usual – December 2010 (U.S.)
Tony.
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Tony;
thank you for the link and the amount of time and effort you have put in. Those USA figures are surely conclusive proof that wind turbines, even at low percentages, don’t save much, if anything, on CO2 emissions. The problem can only get worse at higher levels.
What struck me was that as older coal (and gas) plants shut down, the efficiency of the remainder would have gone up, especially as they were working longer (higher capacity). So that 4.3% extra electricity would have meant that the gas stations were working longer to meet the demand, and they have lower emissions. So the percentage rise in CO2 must include some due to the presence of “renewables”. So the 3.62% wind capacity must have been responsible for the (6.7 minus 4.3%) increase plus some of the increase in emissions. Unfortunately I can’t separate out the exact figure.
It is obvious that the “benefits” of wind power are dependent on the capacity factor, which is always overestimated at the start of the project. The farm at Albany was so unwise as to put their expected figures on a brass plate there, revealing an expected capacity factor just under 41%. It is an excellent site for wind, possibly the best in Australia, but the reality is that it is really 31-31.5% (see Warwick Hughes Albany Wind Farm under performs, December 2006). Accordingly I see little chance that extra wind turbines in Australia have any chance of reducing CO2 emissions here.
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Graeme,
what really surprised me was that CF for the whole coal fired sector did go up, and not by a small percentage, but by almost 10%, which was a huge number in sauch a monumentally large sector for power generation.
Now, what most people who have no idea took from that was debatable, as they just couldn’t explain why that happened.
However, it’s quite simple really.
All those smaller plants, up to 100MW, and nearly all of them older than 50 years closed all over the Country, and if you know how power is utilised, at the Grid level, you fully understand why that CF went up, and went up so remarkably.
It’s not that the other large scale plants are working harder and longer with less down time, which in fact made up part of that increase.
It’s just that all of those old and small coal fired plants were used as spinning reserve, hence burning and turning but not delivering power until called upon, hence giving coal fired power a low CF. Once all of those little boutique plants closed, the CF rose.
They were actually replaced by gas fired plants, and because so many new ones of those went in, CO2 emissions actually increased for that year on an overall basis.
You should have seen the chatter on some of the anti coal sites. They used that artificially low CF for coal fired power as justification that it was somehow really bad, and was going to be easy to replace. The fact that those plants closed and the CF went in the opposite direction, up, and way up, was something they couldn’t work out. They were struck dumb.
Oh nyuk nyuk nyuk.
Tony.
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Tony,
have had a look at those figures and they are worse than I thought.
Basically, a 1.9% increase in wind capacity (2005-2010) caused a 1.4% INCREASE in emissions.
This despite, as you point out, the coal and gas sectors increasing their efficiency.
No wonder figures for savings in CO2 emissions by wind turbines are so hard to find!
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Graeme,
The data I collated and then attempted to explain, can be somewhat difficult to understand.
There were reasons for that increase in CO2 emissions, especially during that one year that I did the exercise, calendar year 2010, because the following year emissions went down, and this year, they are falling again, nothing remarkable, just single digit percentages.
In 2010, despite the considerable ramping up of Wind Power, emissions did indeed go up.
When I linked those conclusions to a site that was anti coal fired power, I was chastised for putting it so simplistically, even though I explained what the reasons were.
The simplistic point was this ….. More wind power leads to greater CO2 emissions ….. which was quite obviously taken the wrong way by the readers at that site.
While wind ramped up, smaller coal fired plants closed, there was also a considerable ramping up of natural gas fired power output, not from the construction of more of those gas fired plants, but that existing ones, designed specifically for short run time Peaking power periods (4PM till 11PM) they were in fact being tasked to run for longer periods of time, hence an increase in power output over duration and from that an increase in their CO2 emissions from that gas fired sector.
That increase in CO2 emissions from the gas sector was greater than the decrease in emissions from the closing of those many small coal fired plants used for the spinning reserve that (now closed) had to be sourced from somewhere else, and that was the gas fired sector, if you can see that.
So, even though wind ramped up, emissions increased.
They were angry at me because I simplistically equated one with causing the other.
Which, incidentally, is exactly what was happening. It was just that they could not see why, no matter how carefully I tried to explain it.
(a) The gas sector increased its efficiency (CF) because they were running for longer periods of time. Hence greater emissions.
(b) The coal sector increased its efficiency (CF) because all those boutique smaller plants used for spinning reserve were closed down. Hence less emissions.
The rise in (a) was greater than the fall in (b) hence CO2 emissions from that electrical power generating sector increased overall.
and (c) Wind just ramped up, adding its own power, which, (and quite obviously so) grid controllers all across the Country were not going to rely upon when an absolute power requirement was needed, and here you need to remember the huge East Coast cascading failure of a couple of years earlier, when one grid failed, which then overloaded an adjacent grid which then failed, etc etc and most of the East Coast and North East corner of the U.S. was without power for days.
Tony.
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Tony,
if I might explain.
Between 2005 and 2010 CO2 emissions dropped 6% (5.98), while the total generated went up 0.02%.
Renewables (largely wind) went up 2% (1.97), and no sane person could claim that the drop in emissions was solely due to them.
Assuming that renewables did cut emissions by that same amount, and with minor adjustments for nuclear and hydro (also zero emission) you get a figure of 3.14% reduction. It is a simple spreadsheet calculation to work out the drop due to less coal and oil fired, and the gain from increased gas usage. The trouble is that the thing wouldn’t balance, whatever factors I used for emissions, even if I assumed NO CHANGE in efficiency from the carbon dioxide emitters.
That 1.4% was based on coal 900, oil 700 and gas at 460 (all kg CO2 per MWh).
To get it to balance I dropped coal from 900 (2005) to 700 (2010), oil from 700 to 600, and gas to 300!!! None of these figures are true, esp. the gas, so the extra “renewables” cannot be emission free at all. The figure (1.4%) is very conservative; I haven’t worked in any allowance for any OCGT which would surely be necessary.
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You can’t heat water from above due to the existence of surface tension. Surface tension repels heat. Reducing co2 is a pointless exercise since no matter how warm the gas becomes, the heat cannot influence the ocean. Remember Trenberth’s “missing heat”. You can’t heat gas and have the heat stored in the ocean. Anthropogenic global warming is impossible. If you doubt this try heating the surface of water with a heat gun.
11
Sorry, but hat sounds like nonsense ( if you’ll pardon the expression).
Blowing hot air into water may well be futile, but when the ambient temp above the surfaces raises the water will follow , by conduction. That’s not to mention radiation eg sunlight) which penetrates and heats the surface layers.
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This is the Age of Stupid. Lets spend squillians on unreliable, vista destroying technology to reduce by trace amounts, one of the quintessentially important elements to life on earth.
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Carbon dioxide encourages plants to reduce toxins in the air. More CO2 means LESS pollution.
Poverty causes an increase in population. More CO2 means more food will grow and so means less poverty. With the hockey stick now developing a handle at both ends it is obvious that any warming from CO2 is either beneficial or too small to worry about. Either way we need more not less. Sadly you are right about our effect being only trace amounts.
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No [wink] the government says “carbon pollution” is what there tax con is reducing. Why do they not mention carbon dioxide I wonder, surely not trying to deceive.
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Can anyone find anything on this Hamish Cumming?
Who is he?
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Of course, if you know what you are doing, and know where and how to look, you can find out almost anything on the web – some of it even true.
As Jo said, he is a practising mechanical engineer.
He has a number of patients to his name in the USA and Canada, involving improving the efficiency of diesel combustion engines.
He has also owns and operates a private technology company, that has been around since 2000.
His bona fide looks pretty kosher to me, if you had any doubts.
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Let’s try and be positive about WTG deployment and look for the obvious advantages, viz:
Much improved vista – lots of lovely (foreign-manufactured) 100m high towers to marvel at in the country’s beauty spots
Reduction of bird noise
Less bat colonies to affect planning applications
New musical low-frequency hum added to the rural idyll
Nice regular melodic ‘whoomph’ sound each time the elegant blades sweep past the towers
Improved road access through the countryside
‘Green’ jobs for foreign companies
More ‘green’ jobs building the back-up power stations
Saving the planet
Only a bitter old curmudgeon would baulk at the few cents per year that’s added to electricity bills!
What’s not to like?
20
Charles S. Opalek, PE wrote a book some years back called WIND POWER FRAUD
As a Professional Engineer he looked at the nitty gritty of building windmills and gave them a HUGE THUMBS DOWN!
Leave it to a practicing Mechanical Engineer to give us the real low-down on this money making scam.
10
All power stations consume electricity whether operating or not. Hence to say so of wind turbines is cherry picking (and that is being kind). The point about any energy source is that you get more out than you put in, it doesn’t matter if you also put energy in as long as the ‘budget’ is sufficiently positive.
There isn’t a single form of energy production where you can avoid putting energy in. Genuine mechanical engineers are also aware of energy budgets.
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I understand your point. Now please show us all how the energy budget for wind farms is sufficiently in the black to pay for themselves.
You see, there is another budget to worry about. Are they giving back enough to justify the investment? So far the answer is no. Wind farms are the equivalent of a merchant buying inventory at cost then selling it at a markdown instead of a markup. You can’t succeed that way.
10
PS: That question about giving back enough to pay for them is not measured only in terms of dollars but also in terms of reliability and availability. All answers have to come out showing a net real benefit.
They don’t!
00
Yes so what effect does the even greater amount of energy being stolen from convection have on climate. While CO2 is obviously not making much difference these wind breakers could be causing climate change. Are wind turbines making heatwaves worse?
00
If you search the internet you will find a report detailing how the offshore plants off Norway (?) have a net NEGATIVE output due the the required heating in the winter. Seems the motors, pumps and lubricants must be kept warm enough to prevent damage to the equipment.
10
And yet our Political gurus have decided to deploy them anyway.
It just goes to show how gullible they are and how good the snake oil salesmen are.
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The only Hamish Cumming I can find is a chicken farmer??!!
That doesn’t sound correct.
Jo is that what you found?
00
http://www.radicalgreenwatch.com/main/?p=415
00
See my comment at #27.1.
00
He may be both.
00
By the way, has anyone noticed that strange glaringly hypocritical aspect of Green thinking. They’ll lie on railway tracks to stop coal trains, they’ll chain themselves to ships rigging to stop oil exploration and generally indulge their Luddite “saviour” fantasies at our expense (usually wearing silly boilersuits). Yet they can’t see how appallingly ugly their green crucifixes are, despoiling significant landscapes and apparently killing native wildlife. The patsy answer I seem to get most often to this is “they can be dismantled and removed with minimal environmental impact”. Is that right. To be replaced with bigger more expansive versions no doubt, depending on which crony capitalist has his snout in the public trough. It never occurs to them that developing societies do not disestablish capacity unless it can be replaced or they want to commit economic suicide. They’ll find spurious reasons to oppose hydro, yet hydro at least replaces an ecosystem with a new and possibly richer one. Wind turbines don’t. They are environmentally detrimental in every sense. If I were a journalist I’d like to think I’d have the cahunas to ask a wind turbine loving polly the following question. “Are you completely stupid or bought, which is it?”.
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Entrepreneurs don’t make money from wind power. They make it from exploiting naive politicians & deluded political initiatives.
Never mind, at least the Deputy PM’s keeping it in the family. Of course his wife’s role with Spains biggest Wind Farm building company, secured within days of Nick ascending to Government, is entirely above board and without conflict.
It’s a good job there’s someone with brains in the family if Nick is really dim enough to believe in wind.
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Democracy is in intensive care. The average person gets purposefully crafted shallow soundbites from which they create their worldview. A chain is as strong as it’s weakest link….
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Let’s go back in time.
It’s the year 2008.
Windmills for Suckers:
Pickens’ Genocidal Plan
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2008/3533windmills_for_suckers.html
It’s fair to say the world is awakening to this folly.
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Dear Mr. Pollution,
You people need to learn a thing or two about Global Warming. Everyday living is destructive to the Environment. One of the most important ways people can help save the environment is to STOP HAVING BABIES. Another very important thing you can do is to euthanize your pet. Our company sells Carbon Credits which are the only hope of saving the planet.
For the sake of the planet, we need to act before it’s too late.
Please visit our company’s website for more information. http://greentremayne.com/Carbon_Free_Living.html
Namaste,
Daphne Tremayne
Vice President, Public Relations
GreenTremayne.com
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Forget about restricting reproductive rights, let’s all go straight to drinking Kool-Aid. You first…
10
Ok Daphne tell us the proof you have that Global Warming exists and we will be convinced. Nothing more nothing less.
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Waffle and Bob Massey,
You’ve been had! The whole organisation is a spoof. I actually followed “Daphne’s” link. It pays to read the fine print.
It’s a hoot. Read it and get a chuckle. That’s why I gave it the thumbs up.
00
Silly me. I thought it was another troll but yes a good chuckle and a very odd way to market a book… he he !
00
As LevelGaze said, Daphne is a satirical site.
Please at least peruse any given links, and please don’t give knee-jerk responses, leave that to the MattB and John Brookes’ of this world.
00
I saw it but decided to make a satirical response to it.
00
Daphne dear, You are either a scam artist our you forgot the SARC tag.
I went to your site, and LO! you are a scam artist of the lowest order, people on this site are a tad skeptical and have a scientific bent.
You need to advertise on a warmist site where you may find people with an IQ less than a hat size, that may take up your wonderful offers and insights.
00
Oh goody another greenie idiot telling us to make massive lifestyle changes to make you happy.
I am sure you have already eschewed contraceptives and even sex itself to prevent those babies you loathe and given up your drivers license and that car too.Sold your house and the furniture is being used for your campfire to keep you warm as you sleep outdoors in a city park.
You should be naked too because Earth was raped for cloth and instead use your own hair to make clothes with.
I despise these eco idiots for their brainless advocacy at this level.Their strident hypocrisy and their worthless solutions that obviously will fail.
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According to a talk presented at this year’s Heartland climate conference, a 300MW wind farm causes 300,000 pounds weight of radioactive waste to be generated just to make the neodymium magnets.
10
I love the back-up car! Now can we have a back-up country in case ours conk out somewhere along the road?
It would be kind of like a spare tire — just in case… 😉
10
Read this, FACTS ABOUT THE SAVINGS OF FOSSIL FUEL
BY WINDTURBINES IN THE NETHERLANDS
by Dr. Kees le Pair
on
http://www.clepair.net/statlineanalyse201208.html
more interesting info on http://www.clepair.net/
00
From that link.
Sounds about right to me. A very UNethical investment!
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Mr Cummings … is positive he was targeted because of his stance on wind farms
“[I’ve] had a number of direct threats in terms of notes and bottles of petrol with notes saying costing people money and if I go to the police they’re going to shoot me and all sorts of things like that,” he said.”
These are the progressives eh ! Or the entrepreneurs that move in to take all that Taxpayers cash being dished out..
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Just what is it about this wind generation charade then? From both local and overseas experience we find that wind results in little or no net reduction in CO2 emissions, it is many times more expensive than coal generation, it is so unreliable that it must be backed-up by gas power stations, it drives rural residents from their homes with its insufferable noise and it blights our most beautiful landscapes.
In a speech on 21 August, 2012, Senator Sean Edwards, SA helped lift some of the fog shrouding the motivational factors underpinning Australia’s wind energy industry – Hansard 21 August, 2012, page 92.
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It is very handy to have brothers and sisters cooperating together in high places, the union movement is very big business, something like a well known Italian mob.
10
“these paid ads make the point that Industry SuperFunds have pioneered direct investment in long-term assets like wind farms.”
The message is simpler than that. Pay up for higher electricity prices now, or we’ll give you less money in your retirement.
In other words “Your future health is already invested in the carbon tax rort.”
We’re being held to ransom.
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Makes perfect sense if you’re running a super fund to invest in harvesting subsidies than trying to invest in something that actually makes useful stuff.
Loads of compulsory superannuation contributions are going into those investments which increase the taxes and costs to people whose future is to be protected. But what of enjoying life while you’re still working?
And when those “investments” fall over, the super funds are empty and the people are worse off than if they’d nailed their superannuation funds to a tree in the front yard. That’s what I told my “professional” investment advisor in April 2008 before telling him that the fund “managers” investing in such wouldn’t be seeing another cent from me.
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http://www.infowars.com/global-warming-debunked-with-marc-morano/
More Morano..
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It is of no surprise that the Cummings property has been hit by arsonists. My sympathies go out to Mr Cummings.
In fact, in my dealings with wind “farm” connections, the personnel I’ve met seem a very tawdry and unhappy bunch. I don’t accuse the companies of such actions, but the cronies and troughers are a sorry story.
An officer for a company our district has been trying to fight off is notable for his inability to tell the whole truth. When his lies have been exposed, the fellow reverts to something of a sulky sixteen year old prat, complete with bog-ignorant peasant manners and sullen demeanour. The unprofessional boorishness would be laughable were it not for the planned monumental onslaught on a vast area of beautiful agricultural land and townships.
The so-called “environmental consultant” for the wind company (now that must be the greatest oxymoron of all time) exhibited staggering ignorance when questioned about his claims. He was unable to support his assertions and then became agitated when evidence from scientific papers contradicted the company propaganda.
Australia is now caught up in this racket, much to its shame. Apart from the scientific, economic and social evidence screaming danger, the very ethos of “sod your neighbour, sod your district and sod the country” is about as un-Australian as can ever be imagined.
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Bob in Castlemaine –
individuals need to convert their Super out of Investment Options and into Cash Options to protect their funds:
16 Sept 2011: The Power Index: Money Movers #6: Garry Weaven
Former union official and an architect of Australia’s super behemoth
Chairman, Industry Funds Management
One of the areas where Weaven sees opportunity for growth is renewable energy. He’s been a long-time advocate of superannuation funds using their financial might to invest in businesses that take into account the science of climate change.
This belief led Weaven and IFM to invest in Pacific Hydro, a clean energy company which garnered significant attention when the business purchased it outright for $788 million in 2005.
Weaven is still a director in the company and has been frustrated by the lack of political action on climate change, as well as the reticence of super funds to accept climate science and invest accordingly.
In a speech given earlier this year, Weaven said he believed there was a “lethal core of entrenched vested interests” in Australia and around the world who “choose to frustrate action” instead of choosing to act.
To try and help convince people he’s serious, IFM is planning to run a $2 million advertising blitz later this year promoting its investments – including clean energy.
It was reported earlier this year that the ads had led to some disquiet in the union-aligned industry funds movement, especially with the current controversy swirling around the Gillard government’s carbon tax legislation…
He’s maintained his ties with the ALP as well, having served for a three-year period as president of the party’s Progressive Business fundraising arm.
Former Victorian Labor premier and current Cbus chairman Steve Bracks is a fan, telling the Australian Financial Review last year that Weaven still has influence with ministers and government departments when it come to super…
He still has the zeal to keep growing industry fund infrastructure investments.
And why not, with a rise in the super guarantee on the table and the overall investment pool expected to hit $4 trillion by 2030, it’s an area of finance that is only getting bigger.
“It’s a huge amount of money,” says Weaven. “And it needs to be channeled in ways that maximise returns but also maximise the nation’s net benefit.”
http://www.thepowerindex.com.au/money-movers/garry-weaven
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You’re right Pat of course.
Just as one can understand Mr. Weaven’s frustration when he speaks of a “lethal core of entrenched vested interests” [who] “choose to frustrate action” [on climate change].
But I’m sure when that $4 trillion dollars of worker’s super comes along Mr. Weaven, with all his union administrative experience, will be the ideal man for the job.
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I converted mine to cash a year ago as it has been going backwards faster than I could put money in. The renewables investments are not working.
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Hosking knows full well that CO2 emissions will rise and rise as undeveloped countries develop, and he knows that trading CO2 in any way, shape or form has nothing to do with reducing emissions, but he can’t say that:
2 Sept: Bloomberg: Phoebe Sedgman: Australia Carbon Price Seen Lower After Floor Scrapped, CMI Says
Australia’s decision to abandon setting a minimum rate for carbon permits and instead linking it to the European Union market by mid-2015 will mean a lower price for carbon, the Carbon Market Institute said.
“Not having a floor price means, presuming that the price does ease off, we have a lower cost of compliance with the carbon tax,” Chairman Les Hosking told Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s Inside Business today. “In 2015, it means that we have a lower price for carbon.” …
“Artificial prices do not work, they do not eliminate volatility and uncertainty and risk, they actually increase it,” Hosking said. Still, “linking the market to a market which is in a volatile environment itself doesn’t look as though it’s an exact solution and doesn’t really solve the problem of carbon emissions.”…
In Australia, Gillard has struggled to defend a carbon price more than twice as high as the one in Europe, which runs the world’s biggest cap-and-trade plan…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-02/australia-carbon-price-seen-lower-after-floor-scrapped-cmi-says.html
22 June: RenewablesInternational: Craig Morris: China accused of underreporting emissions
In particular, statistics provided by small coal mining firms – which are plentiful in China and made up an estimated 31 percent of the coal production market in 2009 – need to be improved because these firms do not have proper skills for the task…
The news does not bode well for emissions trading in international negotiations. Essentially, emissions trading creates an artificial market for a product that is to be avoided – the exact opposite of what markets generally do.
http://www.renewablesinternational.net/china-accused-of-underreporting-emissions/150/537/39120/
headline should be: Given CO2 emissions are far, far higher than reported, and global temperatures have flat-lined for more than a decade, CAGW must be false:
10 June: Reuters: David Fogarty and David Stanway: China emissions study suggests climate change could be faster than thought
“MORE UNCERTAIN THAN EVER”
“The paper identifies a 1.4-billion tonne emission gap (in 2010) between the two datasets. This implies greater uncertainties than ever in Chinese energy statistics,” Guan, a senior lecturer at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University, told Reuters in an emailed response to questions.
That is slightly more than the annual emissions of Japan, one of the world’s top-five greenhouse gas polluters.
***Guan added the China is not the only country with inconsistent energy data…
“I would say the biggest concern about the accuracy and reliability of (China’s emissions) data is coal – and that comes from too many small coal mines supplying small enterprises and industrial plants. They have no monitoring systems and generally speaking, they are also avoiding tax,” he said…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/10/us-china-emissions-idUSBRE8590AD20120610
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can’t bear to watch it, but they come across as evasive and nervous in this transcript…read all:
2 Sept: ABC: Inside Business: Carbon scheme link ‘a sovereign risk’
(INCLUDES VIDEO)
LES HOSKING, CHAIRMAN, CARBON MARKET INSTITUTE: Well the concept of linkages between markets is a good idea in the sense that we got a patchwork of multiple markets and what we want is a global solution to emissions, so a connection to another market is a good idea, but I think there is considerable sovereign risks in connecting to Europe given the problems that they’re having with their scheme at the moment.
ALAN KOHLER: Yeah, what’s happened with Europe? What is the problem with the European scheme?
LES HOSKING: Well it seems there’s a bit of the same problem in Australia: they keep on changing their mind and changing the rules. There’s an oversupply of certificates and some of the countries that are within the scheme such as Greece, etc., are behaving differently to others, so the price is depressed. And the issue is can they relegislate or change the rules to try and stabilise the volatility of that market, but it’s very volatile and we’re going to be exposed to that volatility…
http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2011/s3581136.htm
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[…] Wind farms — are 96% useless, and cost 150 times more than necessary for what they do Thanks to Steve Hunter […]
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31 Aug: Reuters Point Carbon: Andrew Allan: Island nations signal end for Kyoto cash cow
Nations most at risk from rising sea levels told U.N. climate talks in Thailand on Friday that they would not support any move to include emissions from destroying HFC-23 in carbon markets being negotiated under a new climate treaty, likely bringing an end to the biggest private-sector cash cow originated through the international negotiations…
“We don’t want to see HFC-23 under new market mechanisms. We think we should be careful using markets for cutting those emissions,” said Hugh Sealy, a negotiator with Grenada who represents more than 40 low-lying and vulnerable nations at the talks.
Sealy added that while the alliance was opposed to including HFC-23 in new markets, it did not favor retroactive decisions that would affect the ability of existing projects to earn credits under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the U.N.’s main offset market that sprung out of the Kyoto Protocol treaty to cut emissions.
Chinese and Indian chemical factories have made hundreds of millions of dollars by destroying HFC-23, a waste gas that is 12,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide and is emitted when producing refrigerants used in air-conditioning systems.
The cost of destroying the gas is often estimated at a few cents while the resulting Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) once fetched over 20 euros.
But the credits, which have accounted for almost half of all U.N.-issued offsets, are controversial and their exclusion from a new treaty will likely close the door on what was once a highly lucrative source of carbon revenue…
Australia and New Zealand have since followed suit and banned companies using them, although some European states and China haven’t yet ruled out using the credits to meet voluntary and legally binding pledges on cutting emissions.
Many analysts think HFC-sourced credits will now trade at a discount to non-HFC 23 CERs, which are priced at around 3 euros for delivery next year…
***Delegates are discussing several ways to leverage private sector cash to cut emissions and help the world’s poorest nations adapt to climate change, such as creating new carbon markets.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-un-climate-idUSBRE87U0RQ20120831
***Andrew Allan, spare us the “helping the poor” spiel.
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Average 3MW Wind Mill emissions
1. 900 cubic meters concrete 450 tonnes CO2
2. 600 tonnes reinforcing steel 1200 tonnes CO2
3. 80 tonne steel tower 160 tonnes CO2
4. Construction (assuming close) approx 800 tonnes CO2
5. Distribution Network per 3MW Windmill 400 tonnes CO2
6. Roadwork for maintainence per tower 100 tonnes CO2
Total is 3,110 tonnes per windmill
A 100 MW windmill farm is 103,666 tonnes CO2 emissions just for erection!
Ongoing maintainence, repairs, cleaning, picking up dead birds & bats, loss of farm land for agriculture at least 1,000 tonnes CO2 PA?
And all this for $50 million! And no power delivered baseload???
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30 Aug: Reuters: Nations warn of broken promises at U.N. climate talks
(Reporting by Andrew Allan, Stian Reklev. Additional reporting by David Fogarty)
The Bangkok negotiations, which end next week, will also try to advance talks on whether countries that have refused to be legally bound to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol should be allowed access to the carbon markets launched under the 1997 treaty.
The issue is salient for the governments of Australia, New Zealand and Japan who have either given big emitting companies targets to cut emissions or plan to do so and are keen to allow them to use cheap carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism to cut costs.
Poorer countries want to use access to carbon credits as leverage to get those three nations to re-sign Kyoto.
***Earlier this month Australia’s main opposition party which is tipped to win the country’s next general election said it would not object to the country taking on another legal target to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, putting pressure on the government to sign up.
A spokesperson for Australia’s climate change minister said the country had not yet made a decision, preferring instead to wait to see how talks advance on the new global treaty, the bare bones of which were agreed at last year’s climate talks in Durban…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-un-climate-idUSBRE87T0D420120830
***how on earth didn’t i see this Coalition more supportive of Kyoto 2 than Labor story before now? there are 53 results for kyoto+coalition, with only Reuters and SMH from the MSM showing up when u click on “results” (no ABC, no TV, no Murdoch News), when u click on the “omitted results”, it shows only fairfax regional publications all around the country having published this astounding news and, if u click on most of them, u get “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”. Fairfax Canberra Times and Monash Weekly do open:
16 Aug: SMH: David Wroe: Coalition supports sequel to Kyoto protocol
THE Coalition has declared its support for Australia’s involvement in a second round of the Kyoto protocol climate pact – a pledge that goes even further than the Gillard government’s present stance.
Despite past resistance to Kyoto under John Howard, the Coalition’s climate action spokesman, Greg Hunt, has given ”in principle support” to Australia’s involvement in a second round of the Kyoto deal, after the first round expires in December.
His remarks came as new polling showed strong voter support for participation in international climate deals…
THE Coalition has declared its support for Australia’s involvement in a second round of the Kyoto protocol climate pact – a pledge that goes even further than the Gillard government’s present stance.
Despite past resistance to Kyoto under John Howard, the Coalition’s climate action spokesman, Greg Hunt, has given ”in principle support” to Australia’s involvement in a second round of the Kyoto deal, after the first round expires in December.
His remarks came as new polling showed strong voter support for participation in international climate deals…
Mr Hunt’s remarks came as a survey commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund found 58 per cent of people believe Australia should be part of Kyoto 2, compared with 21 per cent who oppose involvement and 22 per cent who don’t know. The survey by Auspoll found more Coalition voters support involvement than oppose it – 42 per cent compared with 34 per cent…
The WWF’s Will McGoldrick said the pressure was ”now on the government to end the speculation and commit to joining phase two of the Kyoto protocol”.
The polling showed that ”while Australians may remain divided on the issue of a carbon price, they want Australia to take action against climate change”, he said.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/coalition-supports-sequel-to-kyoto-protocol-20120815-2495l.html
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Pat;
in Pollie speech “in principle support” means we will agree if everyone else does, especially if the polls favour this action.
Should by some chance the Chinese Government decides to reverse the policy of the last 30 years, which would lead to the communist party being flung from office, and the Canadian Gov. reverse the policy which delivered a resounding majority at the last election, and both the major USA parties decide they need to be voted out of office by the Tea Parties, along with India, Russia, Brazil and South Africa electing to cripple their economies, then of course Mr. Hunt will sign on. As all those Governments, along with Sth. Korea have all said that they won’t sign Kyoto 2, there is a faint chance that Greg Hunt isn’t looking for a pen.
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I hope yu are right.
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Totally off topic, but …
I was doing one of my regular trolls through the Aljazeera wire feed, and came across this little gem:
Policing dissent in Tampa’s rain
“Despite an overwhelming law enforcement presence, protests at the Republican convention passed largely peacefully”.
To which I am tempted to put the footnote:
“Dang, are we are ever gonna get a chance to try out that there body armour kit they done given us?”
But I wont, because that would be unprofessional.
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You just did though! 🙂
If your quote is correct that they said, “Despite…,” then, reading between the lines, our “friends” at Aljazeera show their disappointment that law enforcement didn’t engage in violence.
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint them. But the image of the American police officer as someone anxious to beat up everyone in sight is just a myth that the left loves to push. It ain’t true. And it ain’t true in spite of the few who have lived up to that myth.
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Timely words from Prof. Colin McInnes:
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This might just be – marginally – on/T (if wind farms are somehow in the equation. But then again maybe not.)
Headline in London Times yesterday: “Thousands of financial advisers facing ruin”
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=financial+advisers+ruin§ionId=2&p=sto&bl=on&pf=all
Sorry for the long URL and it’s paywalled anyway.
I just couldn’t get over the irony. Snigger.
Blame Father’s Day.
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The cartoon is beutiful … but!
As Jonova allready suggested the “carbon car” sholud toe the “green one” with a prize tag with weight and reach added! If youre not red when your young you have no heart. If your still red when you matured you dont have a brain” If your green you never had a heart or a brain”
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Not really. The carbon price is not the same entity as the abatement cost. The proper comparison is the emission abatement cost of the $10 EU carbon price with the abatement cost of windpower generation in Australia. I think you will find that the abatement cost of the carbon price is much higher than that of wind generation ($4000 per tonne?).
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I am against any type of mandatory renewable targets. Put a price on carbon, and increase it until the desired CO2 output is reached. Let the market decide the most efficient way of doing it. If it means using wind, so be it. Most likely it will be nuclear.
However, I’m romantically attached to wind, solar, etc. I love the idea of energy efficient houses and cars. I bought a LED globe for our kitchen. Sadly a bit disappointing in the amount and quality of light, but I’m sure they’ll improve.
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John, try doing some calculation associated with the technologies and I am sure your “romanticism” will quickly turn to incredulity at how the scams are portrayed in order to politically create subsidised cash cows for the charlatans, governments and/or technically illiterate vested interests, all sucking off the electricity bill payers and tax-payers teats – its a wonder they have not all been chewed off!
Electricity companies are not technically illiterate in the main but, because it is an enormous cash cow, they will do anything to hide the truth of the scam from you, as well as demanding that governments (tax-payers) are responsible for the fossil fuel backup allowing their renewables to function in a Grid system, and give their share-holders continued dividends.
Also ask yourself why wind power stations are embedded into the DEMAND side of Grids and NOT into the supply side. There is definitely nothing the slightest bit romantic about such inclusion. It is a calculated decision because wind and solar are stochastic, intermittent, unreliable, erratic and obsolete technologies not designed for your benefit.
Energy efficiency costs money and it is up to the populace whether, within their own particular circumstances, they wish to pay for it.
My wife and I did years ago, but many thousands did not and I see no reason for Governments to tax me now but give grants to others to pay for home/vehicle efficiency unless we receive coverage at compound interest for the monies we invested years ago.
Yes, we are now State pensioners paying for our foresight years ago.
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There’s not a glimmer of hope for you, John. Some simple arithmetic will tell you it’s foolishness. I know you can do it. What I don’t know is why you don’t do it. I guess your left leaning prejudice is stuck too far up your spine.
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John Boy, you believe that CO2 emissions create dangerous global warming. You are possibly
an ignorant foolsomeone who has not actually looked at the “evidence” nor have done any serious investigation of the subjest.Answer these questions:
Is the current “warmth” any different from previous historic “warm” periods, such as 1000, or 7000 years ago?
What evidence is there that the current global “warmth” is not of natural origin, when such occurrences of “warmth” have happened before.
Which is chicken and which is egg? CO2 or “warmth”.
Why is “warmth” bad? Why is CO2 increase bad? OK, unfair, I snuck in two questions there, but the problem for you is that both increased “warmth”, and CO2, is very good for the flora and fauna of this planet, not to say agriculture.
As a Canadian, I would like you to tell me how COLD you think the planet should be? I regard Toronto as Hell; do you want Toronto to freeze over? We have agriculture up here in case you didn’t know. Do you want that to end, or to prosper, with maybe two crops per year?
Why is “planetary temperature” meaningful?
Why are the temperature records repeatedly adjusted to increase the warmth?
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Okay, I don’t have to, but I’ll admit to being suckered into doing exactly the same thing. LED is the light of the future.
And LED is… still.. the light of the future.
What annoys me is they put the cheap dim garbage into these bulbs when I KNOW there are high output LEDs available in down-light kits AND in flat panels in Europe and Asia. Less than a tenth the power and the light output looks like daylight, fo’ realz. All the good stuff is out there, JB, but they just aren’t GIVING it to retailers in Australia. You want your market failure? There’s your market failure.
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Andrew,
There are electrical equipment wholesalers around who will deal directly with any customer who knows what they want. Rexel was one Australian company that comes to mind, but they may have merged with someone else. If you are prepared to buy a box (and on-sell them to mates), they will usually get them in for you.
Supermarkets and lighting shops will only stock what people will buy, and that is usually determined on price. If you want quality, you have to get creative.
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What ever happened to the Gergis hockey stick paper that was “put on hold”?
It was meant to go out for “peer review” at the end of July according to this statement from “Melbourne University” (my former “university”).
http://newsroom.melbourne.edu/studio/ep-149
Since the study was put on hold mid May it will soon be approaching the FOUR MONTH mark.
How sweet must the life of an “academic” be when you put out a load of old dogs bollocks for a “scientific study” over a period of four years, for $400,000…
And when you [snip] it up royally and it’s pulled from publication (after making it’s rounds on the pro alarmist MSM), you get four months (or more) to fix up your [snip]-ups.
Does anybody have any more information on this “scientist” and her “scientific study”?
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The Danish experience on wind power and its effect on CO2 emissions is the longest and most telling.
Since Denmark embarked on its quest for wind power, their CO2 emissions have increased.
This should not be a surprise. As Germany and other countries have found out, wind power does not displace fossil power. Fossil power has to pick up the slack when the wind is blowing. Erratic fossil power generation increases CO2 emissions.
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I am angry that a QLD coal station, Stanwell, may fire 100 jobs. That’s because of some reduced energy demand caused by 1 in 6 households installing solar panels. I guess the Greens and others are delighted. But the solar panels were installed under a subsidy scheme until lately. And extra electricity is fed into the grid which is credited to the householder.
Lucky them.
But the amount paid to pensioners and the poor as compensation is miserable. It’s ok for the more wealthy section of society to outlay money for panels and wait years for them to pay themselves off while feeling all fuzzy about ‘saving the planet’. But again,its the underclass who carries the most burden. They and even the fuzzy panel owners still will need backup coal or gas power stations. The last few years of La Nina have seen northern summers almost completely sunless.
Let’s hope for more of them!
Just as a P.S. I notice the electric car, the ‘Volta’ is priced at around $50 000 plus. It will certainly be only ‘snapped up’ by those who want to ‘make a statement’ and display their wealth. But where is the electricity to come from?
Oh, that’s right…from solar panels just like in the above cartoon.
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Oh dear, that is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I hope they are not going to fire, as in burn, the actual incumbents. 🙂
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Hey, it will help reduce their CO2 footprint. Just throw the unfortunate into the furnaces. Yes, that’s the thing.
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The whole point of
subsidywind farms and solar panel farms is to reap in money fromcorruptgullibletaxpayersgovernments10
American Society of Meteorologists have issued an announcement on global warming:
http://ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
Of course that will just be poohpoohed away here as “antiscience” or propaganda but really the evidence continues to come in that mankind is causing the globe to heat up.
Re windfarms as these get linked by ultra high voltage DC lines they will present a steady input to the grid. This fluff about coal generators having to constantly change output was discarded years ago.
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Hi Max!!! Great to here from you again!!! /sarc off!!!
I had a look at your “definitive” link to the AMS. Great site!! Absolutely no links to any scientific evidence. No links to any papers. Just a firm “believe us ’cause we say you should”.
Still waiting for ANY paper that states that HUMAN emissions of CO2 will cause catastrophic warming!!
Hint: it doesn’t exist!!
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Maxine,
You are right this is simply antiscience propganda, and argument from authority.
What you have linked to is an “official statement” that is not backed up by any evidence whatsoever.
The real world doesn’t necessarily operate in accordance to “official statements” from the Americal Society of Meteoroligy.
Perhaps ststaments from authority are convincing to people like yourself who seem incapable of independent thought, analysis and debate, but to the many scientists, engineers and other highly intelligent and qualified people on this forum who have looked at the EVIDENCE (or lack thereof) it is obvious to see what is really going on.
I bet you are somehow profiting from the CAGW scam Maxine. If so, shame on you.
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Maxine, you say here,
Perhaps you might like to give us the benefit of your wisdom, and explain this to us. A projected cost might also be of assistance. Umm, will this new grid mean that the wind plants will be supplying a constant rate of power or just the usual 25 to 30% of their power. Also, perhaps a time line might help, and as this is the left’s precious poles and wires, perhaps also a projection on how much this will increase the cost of electricity for all of us. Oh, and perhaps where the money will be coming from for their implementation. Oh, and will this just be for Wind plants, or for the grid as a whole, and from that if it is just for Wind plants, perhaps you may also like to include how the DC will then be converted back to AC, and if for the whole grid, then how existing plants will be converted for this new grid. And perhaps a link to where this information came from.
Tony.
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Maxine,
see above comments re wind turbines and emissions caused.
The claim that putting in enough turbines will somehow result in a steady stream of electricity is wishful thinking. There have been 2 studies in Australia across 4 States (NSW, Vic, Tas, SA) which show that it doesn’t happen. Also a 5 State one in SE USA, and one which looked at Scotland and German land turbines.
None of these, as well as several single State ones in the USA, show anything like what you wish to believe.
The Scotland/Germany one was interesting in that it compared turbine output in Scotland (mostly on NW coast) with those (mostly in the old East Germany) between 900 and 1400 km away, for a whole month. Both sets had poor total output for the month, both had 8 days of very poor performance, and 3 days of better output.
Unless you propose to string wires from Cape York to Broome the long way around to service 70,000 turbines, then forget it. If you intend answering Tony, then try costing the high voltage lines at $4 million per kilometre, and don’t forget that high voltage AC loses increase when the run is over 500km.
00
Tony, I can’t recall Maxine EVER actually taking up and responding in debate fashion. Just a serial spam troll maybe even a troll-bot.
00
Maxine, some of us are widely read and take our knowledge from across the world also reinforcing that knowledge by noting posters comments on this site, which gives us an edge on analysing the situation.
Hence, in the vernacular, we are very determined independent “deniers” whose basis is not public consensus but the scientific method. Don’t misunderstand me, we know the earth warms and cools but according to natural age-old feedback mechanisms exhibiting reactions to its own intrinsic stimuli to maintain an environment which supports life as we know it at the present time. it is for the human specie to do what all animals do well and that is adapt. Remember what problems King Canute had in trying to turn back the tides and Icarus flew towards the sun and lost his wings. Surely proof that nature is King and Queen of our environment.
Is this “evidence” of the ASM as “peer reviewed” and corrupt as the Mann “Hockey Stick”?
Sometimes one wonders if “peer-reviewed” is just a scientific saying to describe the action “You scratch my back and I will scratch yours” (to keep the funding alive).
Many posters on this site do not need “peer review” because their contributions hold cogently together for the technically literate; otherwise debate is followed.
Can you supply a list of all the “peer-reviewed” publications to which this AMS article refers? After all, the AMS statement declares them as “peer reviewed” and also inserts that consensus for the masses word “unequivocal”, which was first found hiding under a stone in Ireland – the Blarney Stone. “Unequivocal” is the last word to use about anything scientific as it illustrates a complete antithesis to the scientific method.
Come on, Maxine, this impartial website run magnificently by JoNova, requires your bibliography to uphold your parroting of the AMS dogma, some of which may be fact, some of which undoubtably is not.
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[…] Also see JoNova […]
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Hey George, how are your book sales going?
The guerilla marketing is actually too authentic so it turns away your target audience.
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I will “borrow” the cartoon (no pun intended)
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[…] study has been quite widely covered, getting a run with Andrew Bolt, Jo Nova and the piece above in the […]
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Yeah, I saw this too, and I don’t think the analysis supports the findings. If you want to talk about it, read this http://evcricketenergy.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/sigh-windmills-dont-work-because-coal-is-baseload/ and then we can talk about it.
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[…] Nova credits Cumming with writing a “whopper of a report” before admitting she can’t find an online copy of it. Neither could I. Following an email query, Mr Cumming responded to me by explaining that his […]
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[…] continue reading, click here) Share this:TwitterFacebookEmailPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. Tags: 150 times, […]
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[…] carbon neutral in Victoria, you need to allow for the coal-fired power stations running as back-up. True abatement levels are around 4% of nameplate. So for the SDP to be properly carbon neutral in Victoria, to offset the 100MW will require 2500MW […]
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Wind and Solar are not BASE LOAD that is they do not supply power on demand. Storing enough power for a steel works is nonsense. Why is The Mineral Industry neglected . they genarate power and then use exhaust steam-a necessity for their process. How do windmills replace their power generation.
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[…] Wind farms start being built in S.A. Do they do any good? Read this if you think […]
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[…] Wind farms — are 96% useless, and cost 150 times more than necessary for what they do « JoNova […]
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