Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Study takes air out of wind power's sails
Finds windmill generators in Europe have problems with creating electricity when it is needed
BY MARK HARRINGTON
Newsday Staff Writer
October 30, 2006
A sharp increase in wind-power capacity in Europe is challenging utilities to stabilize their electric grids in the face of sometimes wildly fluctuating wind-energy levels, while calling into question some of the greenhouse-gas reducing claims of windmills, according to a recent study.
Based upon a breadth of data drawn from European utilities in half a dozen countries and other reports, the study by ABS Energy Research in London puts a different spin on an energy source being hailed from Long Island to Lisbon as the possible savior from global warming and dependence on foreign oil.
In one of its more dramatic illustrations, the study notes that western Denmark, which has several thousand wind turbines on land and offshore, was forced in 2004 to export some 85 percent of the wind-energy its mammoth turbines generated, often at a loss. That happened despite the fact that wind-power represents only 20 percent of the country's total power production, ABS said.
Worse, the carbon-emissions reducing potential of that power was compromised because two of the countries it exported to - Norway and Sweden - reduced their hydropower production sources to accommodate cheaper wind power. Meanwhile, Denmark's primary power was still delivered by fossil-fuel plants, ABS said, effectively "nullifying" wind power's chief benefit.
"I think the actual savings in emissions is very low," said Euan Blauvelt, research director at ABS who conducted the study and has written the report for the past three years.
At bottom is the elemental reality of wind power that all power companies must come to grips with as they build more turbines.
"You can't alter the fact that wind blows at the wrong times and it blows intermittently," said Blauvelt. But because power systems demand a steady, balanced power source at all times, utilities must carefully monitor and regulate the grid - often with energy from fossil-fuel burning plants - to counter the wind's fickleness.
Load-balancing "caused serious problems in Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal and has drawn complaints from system operations in the Netherlands and Poland [that] have been affected by variable exports of wind-generated electricity," the report says.
Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, a proponent of the wind farm proposed for the South Shore of Long Island, agreed that intermittency is an inherent problem of wind energy. But for the Long Island Power Authority-proposed project here, the number of turbines - 40, for a total peak output of 140 megawatts - is relatively small compared to LIPA's peak system capacity exceeding 5,000 megawatts.
"At this point, we're not even getting near to the saturation point they are in in Denmark," said Raacke.
Raacke agrees that wind-power alone won't solve any region's energy woes or global warming. "We've always said there's not one single technology that's the panacea ... It's not solar or wind or energy efficiency. It's all of the above."
ABS Research takes it a step further. "Given that experience is showing that savings in carbon emissions due to wind power may be considerably less than claimed, this calls into question the importance of wind power in environmental terms," it concludes.
It does, however, see wind turbines as part of a portfolio of generating sources, "with clean conventional [fossil-fuel-based] providing base load, and a range of renewables contributing different proportions at different times."
BY MARK HARRINGTON
Newsday Staff Writer
October 30, 2006
A sharp increase in wind-power capacity in Europe is challenging utilities to stabilize their electric grids in the face of sometimes wildly fluctuating wind-energy levels, while calling into question some of the greenhouse-gas reducing claims of windmills, according to a recent study.
Based upon a breadth of data drawn from European utilities in half a dozen countries and other reports, the study by ABS Energy Research in London puts a different spin on an energy source being hailed from Long Island to Lisbon as the possible savior from global warming and dependence on foreign oil.
In one of its more dramatic illustrations, the study notes that western Denmark, which has several thousand wind turbines on land and offshore, was forced in 2004 to export some 85 percent of the wind-energy its mammoth turbines generated, often at a loss. That happened despite the fact that wind-power represents only 20 percent of the country's total power production, ABS said.
Worse, the carbon-emissions reducing potential of that power was compromised because two of the countries it exported to - Norway and Sweden - reduced their hydropower production sources to accommodate cheaper wind power. Meanwhile, Denmark's primary power was still delivered by fossil-fuel plants, ABS said, effectively "nullifying" wind power's chief benefit.
"I think the actual savings in emissions is very low," said Euan Blauvelt, research director at ABS who conducted the study and has written the report for the past three years.
At bottom is the elemental reality of wind power that all power companies must come to grips with as they build more turbines.
"You can't alter the fact that wind blows at the wrong times and it blows intermittently," said Blauvelt. But because power systems demand a steady, balanced power source at all times, utilities must carefully monitor and regulate the grid - often with energy from fossil-fuel burning plants - to counter the wind's fickleness.
Load-balancing "caused serious problems in Germany, Denmark, Spain and Portugal and has drawn complaints from system operations in the Netherlands and Poland [that] have been affected by variable exports of wind-generated electricity," the report says.
Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, a proponent of the wind farm proposed for the South Shore of Long Island, agreed that intermittency is an inherent problem of wind energy. But for the Long Island Power Authority-proposed project here, the number of turbines - 40, for a total peak output of 140 megawatts - is relatively small compared to LIPA's peak system capacity exceeding 5,000 megawatts.
"At this point, we're not even getting near to the saturation point they are in in Denmark," said Raacke.
Raacke agrees that wind-power alone won't solve any region's energy woes or global warming. "We've always said there's not one single technology that's the panacea ... It's not solar or wind or energy efficiency. It's all of the above."
ABS Research takes it a step further. "Given that experience is showing that savings in carbon emissions due to wind power may be considerably less than claimed, this calls into question the importance of wind power in environmental terms," it concludes.
It does, however, see wind turbines as part of a portfolio of generating sources, "with clean conventional [fossil-fuel-based] providing base load, and a range of renewables contributing different proportions at different times."
Thursday, October 26, 2006
A Challenge to Support of Industrial Wind Power
October 26, 2006 • Press Release
Where Are the Defenders of Nature and Communities?
National Wind Watch challenges support of industrial wind power by major non-profit groups — Many advocacy groups, fighting global warming and the negative environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel or nuclear energy, have embraced large-scale wind power as part of a solution.
Those organizations are misguided in their support of wind energy, says National Wind Watch (NWW), a coalition of grass-root groups defending wild places and rural communities from industrial development.
“Groups like Greenpeace and the state PIRGs [Public Interest Research Groups] have built their reputations by speaking out against rampant development and destruction of the environment,” says Eric Rosenbloom, a Vermont science writer and current president of NWW. “In the past, they have reliably taken the side of communities against the greed of heedless corporations or convenient politics. But with industrial wind, they’ve gone to the other side. They’re effectively acting as shills for giant energy companies looking for a fast buck with a trendy but very flawed technology that destroys landscapes, ecosystems, and communities.”
According to material on NWW’s web site, www.wind-watch.org, wind power on the grid has not been shown to reduce emissions or replace other sources of electricity to any degree that justifies its own negative impacts. Because it responds only to the fluctuating wind and not to actual user demand, it adds instability to the power load, thus further burdening other sources of power to keep the system balanced.
Since the environmental benefits aren’t there, NWW questions the support of industrial wind power by so many organizations that are otherwise defenders of the environment.
“The argument that local sacrifices are necessary to save the planet just doesn’t hold up,” said Lloyd Crawford, NWW treasurer and owner of Stump Sprouts guest lodge and cross-country ski center in West Hawley, Mass. “These giant machines won’t make the slightest dent in global warming. Their negative impacts, on the other hand, are substantial.”
[Press Release continued here.]
“Wind turbines cannot possibly sustain modern societies.”
Nuclear to the rescue
Electricity is the key to a healthier, more prosperous Third World
Paul Driessen
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Canada Free Press
"The only good thing about the good old days is that they're gone." My grandmother's wisdom came from experience. As a teenager in late nineteenth century Wisconsin, she had cleared tons of rocks from fields, toiled on the family farm, and hauled countless buckets of water. If she had to select just one modern technology, she said, she'd choose running water. But electricity was a close second."
"No wonder. Without electricity, modern life reverts to her childhood: no lights, refrigeration, heating, air-conditioning, radio, television, computers, safe running water or mechanized equipment for homes, schools, shops, hospitals, offices and factories."
"Incredibly, this is what life is like every day for 2 billion people in developing countries. Viewed at night from outer space, Africa really is the Dark Continent: only 10% of its 700 million people regularly have electricity. While 75% of South Africa is now fully electrified, only 5% of Malawi, Mozambique and other countries are so fortunate. Much of poor and rural Asia and Latin America faces a similar predicament..."
[Click headline, or here, for full article.]
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Will Mass Audubon benefit from the Cape Wind project?
[Editorial published in the Standard Times, New Bedford, Mass., Oct. 21, 2006]
by Barbara Durkin
The Cape Wind project is proposed for an ecosystem and aviary corridor with documented endangered species, and that is under current and conflicting use as an essential fish habitat. "Clean, green, renewable" is not benign when it represents an industrial-scale wind facility comparable in scale to a land area the size of Manhattan Island proposed to be introduced into this ecosystem.
The magnitude of the Cape Wind project, along with the fact that this is nascent technology, merits deep consideration.
One consideration that must be evaluated is the objectivity of any agency involved in the permit review process. If, as example, Mass Audubon has a financial stake, for whatever reason, in the outcome of any inquiry, such as the process of accounting for any wildlife mortality that stems from a major power plant such as Cape Wind, then that is a prima facie reason to question the objectivity of the subsequent analysis. That Mass Audubon, or any of its members, would profit from a project it was reviewing, should clue any reasonable observer that the results might be tainted. Mass Audubon's "preliminary approval" of Cape Wind is taken at face value: "no harm to birds."
Mass Audubon's "Challenge" states: "We also propose adoption of an Adaptive Management Plan that includes a rigorous monitoring program beginning at the construction phase and continuing for at least three years post-construction, mitigation measures in the event that the project results in significant adverse environmental impacts..."
The condition Mass Audubon has imposed on its preliminary approval of Cape Wind is a monitoring contract worth multimillions of dollars. This monitoring contract language is the most strongly stated condition of Mass Audubon's preliminary approval of Cape Wind in its "Challenge."
The president of Mass Audubon, Laura A. Johnson, submitted these comments on the Cape Wind draft environmental impact study on Feb. 23, 2005, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers:
"By utilizing other bird mortality data provided in the DEIS, Mass Audubon staff scientists arrived at avian mortalities that ranged from 2,300 to 6,600 collision deaths per year."
However, Taber Allison of Mass Audubon, in his Aug. 3, 2006, letter to SouthCoast Today, has stated, "Mass Audubon scientists have never concluded that up to 6,600 birds, or any number of birds, would be killed if this project is permitted."
Mass Audubon must disclose any potential financial benefit it might have in the outcome of the Cape Wind proposal if it is to be considered an objective and unbiased reviewing agency. Mass Audubon must declare if it or its affiliations are to become the monitoring agency, or will bid on this contract, or accept this contract that it imposes as a condition of its "preliminary approval" by its "Challenge" so that we can all "get this right."
Time is of the essence.
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
"Out on the horizon a future run aground"
Editorial published in The Republican, Springfield, Mass., Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Ford Motor Co. didn't increase the size of the Edsel.
Coca-Cola didn't repackage "new Coke" in larger bottles.
A bad idea doesn't get any better by making it bigger.
But a group that wants to construct 130 giant wind turbines in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod apparently doesn't feel that way. Cape Wind Associates had proposed a bad plan, looking to build the nation's first offshore "wind farm" in the pristine waters off the Cape. Now they are proposing that the monstrous windmills be made even taller - rising fully 440 feet above sea level when the blades are at their highest point.
By way of a bit of perspective, the Statue of Liberty, from the ground to the top of her torch, stands at 305 feet.
Lady Liberty, of course, was meant to shine as a beacon for those arriving on our shores. The 130 wind turbines that would be built in Nantucket Sound would stand as testimony to nothing but the triumph of commerce over all else, the sale of the public waters to the highest bidder.
Those behind Cape Wind have repeatedly tried to tout the project as an environmentalist's dream. They talk of renewable energy, of reducing the need to burn fossil fuels. In theory they may be onto something. But their proposed project would not be built in theory; it would stand in the middle of Nantucket Sound.
It would threaten marine life and birds, fisherman and recreational boaters. And it would do irreparable harm to Cape Cod's vibrant tourist business.
To visit Cape Cod is to return in many ways to an earlier time. Even today, after decade upon decade of development, Cape Cod and the Islands stand apart from the rest of the Bay State - and not just geographically. On a visit to the Cape, people may well end the day with sand in their shoes. And they'll be happy to have it there. Lunch may have come from a tiny clamshack, unchanged from the previous visit. Even if the previous visit had been years earlier.
No one ventures over the canal to stand upon the shore and gaze out at an ocean of wind turbines.
While we believe strongly in the need to find alternatives to fossil fuels, we also feel certain that such alternatives cannot be constructed willy-nilly, with caution thrown to the wind.
Nantucket Sound is the wrong place for the planned development.
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Friday, October 13, 2006
Wind power isn't reliable enough to satisfy electricity needs
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 10/13/06
BY JAMES MCGOVERN
Ocean Township, New Jersey
The record-breaking demand for electricity this summer taxed California's razor-thin, peak-load electrical generating capacity. Power failures were narrowly averted when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered state agencies to reduce electricity consumption by 25 percent and many large industries and businesses agreed to voluntarily shut down.
If there is a benefit to emerge from California's escape from rolling blackouts, it is the growing recognition that we need to bring back the only source of energy that can provide large amounts of reliable electricity without polluting the air or contributing to global warming: nuclear power.
But before that happens, we will have to start embarrassing politicians who succeeded in shutting down California's Rancho Seco and San Onofre 1 nuclear power plants. Those two plants, which were closed prematurely more than a decade ago, had a combined generating capacity of 1,350 megawatts. If they were still operating, there would not have been an electricity emergency. Instead of nuclear energy, because of the political correctness of many politicians, the state has been relying more heavily on "renewable" energy sources, especially wind energy.
California's power shortage confirms that all of the hoopla over wind energy's credentials as a clean and renewable source of electricity is undercut by the reality of its unreliability. During an extremely hot week in August, when air conditioners were cranked up and the state was on the brink of rolling blackouts, how much help did the state get from its beloved 2,500 megawatts of wind power? Only 4 percent of its capacity, according to the California Independent System Operator, which is responsible for the state's electricity grid. Southern California Edison's 2,200 megawatts of wind capacity generated only 45 megawatts. In other words, wind energy works great — except when you need air conditioning. By comparison, the average capacity factor (plant actual operating time at full power vs. scheduled operating time) of nuclear power plants last year was 90 percent.
Wind energy has many virtues. It's clean. And the fuel is free. But no matter how you slice it, our complex society of millions of households, offices and businesses cannot rely heavily on wind farms to provide the electricity they need to keep air conditioners and factories running or, especially, their computers operating. They require virtually 100 percent reliability.
The Achilles' heel of wind power is its intermittence. Sometimes the wind blows, sometimes it doesn't. And on the hottest days, when air conditioning is most important, it usually doesn't. This fundamental flaw limits both wind energy's capacity value and its impact on reducing airborne emissions. If California, with all of its wind turbines, can't depend on wind energy, what state can?
Despite a massive investment in wind turbines — abetted by generous federal subsidies and mandates in 21 states that require a certain percentage of electricity to be provided by renewables — wind energy contributes only marginally to our nation's energy supplies. About 1 percent of all electricity in the United States comes from wind.
Wind energy is far more expensive and less reliable than its promoters claim. That's why opposition to new wind projects is growing — not just in California but in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, Michigan, Kansas and New Jersey. Producing large amounts of wind energy is relatively costly, in part because it requires a vast amount of land and back-up power from fossil fuels on days when the wind is not blowing. Another problem is that wind turbines blight the view of landscapes and seashores. The latest models are twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty.
There is a role for wind energy in the United States. It can provide clean power when the wind is blowing and reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we have to burn. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that it can be counted on for the massive amounts of around-the-clock reliable power that makes our economy work. For that, we need energy technologies such as nuclear power and possibly clean coal that are proven sources of the industrial-size power that we require for our cities and factories. And in a heavily populated, industrial state like New Jersey, that need is particularly clear. We must act forcefully to head off a California-type crisis — and not just be blown by the wind.
James McGovern, Ocean Township, has been a consultant to government and industry on energy issues.
