Industrial wind energy benefits wealthy at expense of many
Guest Post by Willem Post
The Green Mountain Power (GMP)-instigated 63 MW Lowell wind turbine facility with (21) 3 MW Danish wind turbines stretched along 4 miles of ridge lines has nothing to do with community-scale wind, everything with utility-scale wind. GMP is using blatant PR to soft-soap/deceive Vermonters. It is a capital intensive (63 MW x $2,500,000/MW = $157.5 million, excluding grid modifications), highly visual (410- ft tall wind turbines), noisy wind turbine facility that is proposed to be built on environmentally-sensitive ridge lines. It received a Certificate of “Public Good” from the Vermont Public Service Board, a mostly political entity.
The Lowell wind turbine facility would produce just a little of expensive, unreliable, intermittent, variable wind energy (63 MW x 1 GW/1,000 MW x 8,760 hr/yr x CF 0.30 = 165.6 GWh/yr, or about 2.76% of Vermont’s 6,000 GWh/yr consumption) that has little dispatch value to the grid; at least 10 percent of the year, the wind speeds are too low to produce any wind energy and most of the wind energy is produced at night during the winter.
The project has nothing to do with reducing CO2 emissions or generating wind energy. Most of the CO2 emissions that wind energy was meant to reduce is offset by the increased CO2 emissions due to the inefficient operation of the gas-fired balancing facility, as shown by this study.
http://theenergycollective.com/willem-post/57905/wind-power-and-co2-emissions
For the same capital cost a new 60% efficient combined cycle gas turbine facility would produce ($157.6 million/$1,250,000/MW) x 1 GW/1000 MW x 8,760 hr/yr x CF 0.90 = 993.4 GWh/yr, or about 16.5% of Vermont’s 6,000 GWh/yr consumption, AND no grid modifications would be required, AND no inefficient operation of gas-fired wind energy balancing facilities would be required.
The Lowell wind turbine facility job creation is largely a mirage. The facility will temporarily employ a number of people during the construction phase for about a year. During the next 20 years, just a few people will be permanently employed to perform operations and maintenance. An enormous waste of capital to create just a few permanent jobs, as shown by this Vermont Department of Public Service study.
The project would not be built if there were no subsidies equivalent to at least 50% of the capital cost. Without subsidies, the wind energy produced would be at least $0.15/kWh delivered to the grid.
The project has everything to do with grabbing as much federal subsidies as possible and “coursing” them through Vermont’s economy for the short-term benefit of the well-connected few (including high-income, non-Vermonters looking for tax shelters and foreign companies supplying wind turbines), at the long-term economic expense (higher electric rates) of the many.
Over the past 10 years, the subsidies for wind turbine facility owners have become so excessive that facilities are built in marginal wind areas, as on most Vermont ridge lines, or before facilities are built to transmit the wind energy to population centers, as in the Texas Panhandle, just to cash in on the lucrative subsidies. Here is a partial list of subsidies:
Federal government and State legislatures are pressured to provide increasingly greater state subsidies to politically well-connected renewables vendors, developers, financial entities (such as Goldman Sachs on Wall Street) and their high-income clients who use them for tax shelters.
State legislatures and state government agencies are pressured to pave the regulatory ways to essentially circumvent state environmental and quality of life laws. Pro-forma hearings, usually required by law, are held to create a semblance of democratic process but effectively are rubber-stamp approvals of pre-ordained decisions.
Willem Post – BSME New Jersey Institute of Technology, MSME Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MBA, University of Connecticut. P.E. Connecticut. Consulting Engineer and Project Manager. Performed feasibility studies, wrote master plans, and evaluated designs for air pollution control systems, power plants, and integrated energy systems for campus-style building complexes. Currently specializing in energy efficiency in buildings.
Additional Reading
VTdigger.org (July 10, 2011) – A “no” vote could scuttle Lowell Mountain wind project
Wind-watch.org (June 15, 2011) – Green Mountain Power requests modifications to Lowell permit conditions
Re: That Wales wind pic
Unreal.
And Vermonters would sacrifice their scenic heritage with monster whiriligigs like those because of FEAR of what MIGHT happen with a tiny footprint nuclear power site?? I hope they get hip real fast of the _reality_ of the corrupted natural vistas they’d be leaving their children — not to speak local property values. I can’t imagine spoiling the Catskills and Adirondacks like this! What a sight following you up the Thruway!
James Greenidge
Rod, This is our society at present, why should energy be any different?
If the sellers of natural gas want to secure long-term customers for their product, they should something similar to what cell phone companies do with their customers (free phone if you sign a 2-year agreement). Every where there’s a natural gas extraction operation, especially those the employ fracking, the the company should have to “plant” a one-megawatt or greater windmill generator. Also, the US taxpayer should not be covering part of the cost.
Everyone jumps on board the “green future” bandwagon, why should natural gas developers be any different than politicians, journalists, big environmental lobbyists, etc.?
These giant wind turbines will become rusting masses of junk, littering the hillsides, soon enough. Then it will be Vermont’s problem, all the “green cheerleaders” having moved on to other profitable ventures.
Is the federal subsidy really on 2.2 cents/kwh?
I thought it was higher.
I think this doesn’t include the added cost to the utilities for having to balance the intermittent wind output, which they are forced to buy at a higher price, the so called feed-in tariff. There’s many such press reports that say for example “Google has agreed to buy the output of wind farm X to power its facility” but these are not telling the whole story I think. Wind power is forced into the market by law. If the market were free, utilities would simply opt to run their existing plants 24h instead of using them to balance wind at extra cost.
Wind energy is an engineer’s nightmare. To begin with, the energy density of flowing air is miserably low. Therefore, you need a massive contraption to catch one megawatt at best, and a thousand of these to equal a single gas- or coal-fired power plant.
If you design them for a wind speed of 34 miles per hour, they are useless at wind speeds below 22 mph and extremely dangerous at 44 mph, unless feathered in time. Remember, power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Old-fashioned Dutch windmills needed a two-man crew on 12-hour watch, seven days a week, because a runaway windmill first burnt its bearings, then its hardwood gears, then the entire superstructure.
This was the nightmare of millers everywhere in the “good” old days. And what did these beautiful antiques deliver? Fifteen horsepower at best, in favorable winds, about what a power lawn mower does these days. No wonder the Dutch switched to steam-powered pumping stations as soon as they could, in the late 19th century.
You mean after messing up your groundwater, they should plant one of these monstrosities as a final insult.
(Actually I haven’t learned enough about fracking with horizontal drilling in shale formations to know whether this is going to be an environmental problem or not.)
I think using a capacity factor of 30% is wildly optimistic in real-world applications.
In Texas, which has far better wind resources than Vermont, “the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the state’s huge electric grid, … placed wind’s reliability at less than 9%” (8.7 to be exact).
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2159
And again from “real life” (as opposed to industrial wind marketer fantasies), sometimes just when you need it most, it falls flat:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/6957501/Wind-farms-produced-practically-no-electricity-during-Britains-cold-snap.html
At least Vermonters will still have some reliable output from Shoreham to fall back on – for now.
Wind energy benefits Obama and the Democrats for whom Rod Adams proudly voted.
Like his complaints over Jackzo whom Obama appointed as NRC Chairman, Rod Adams does tend to cry over sour grapes.
You wantto be liberal? Then fill up on the full measure of your liberalism because that is the problem.
PS, Obama stormed out of the budget talks because like all liberals he won’t compromise. No more money for new nukes now! Better start learning Mandarin. Besides, the commies in Red China aren’t all that far removed from the Dems here in the US.
Many of the old “mill towns” in New England were built next to waterfalls. They used water power to turn the gears of the factories. But as the towns and businesses grew, they added smokestacks. If your business grows, you can always add another heat engine. It’s not so easy to add another tributary to your stream.
Interesting information about the Dutch windmills. Thank you.
Re: Ioannes
Rod & Co.:
An anon in another site said “Ioannes” is really one of a couple troll owners of anti-nuclear sites “out to expose what rednecks pro nuclears are”. How does that netiquette addage go: “Don’t feed the troll”? This is my last snack.
James Greenidge
@ioannes – last warning. Stay on topic or you will be banned. I have no problem with you exposing your personal prejudices and ignorance as long as you remain relatively civil and relatively close to the topic at hand. Besides, if you think I am so wrong, you are free to find another forum.
Indeed, I’d see the war for nuclear energy as a class war, with workers and entrepreneurs on the pro-nuclear side, and rentier parasites on the anti-nuclear side.
Unfortunately, the rentiers happen to have lots of trustafarian sons and daughters to wave placards for them, while the pro-nuclear side are mostly too busy earning a living (or studying for qualifications to get the right to earn a living) to match them.
Atomikrabbit wrote:
In Texas, which has far better wind resources than Vermont, “the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the state’s huge electric grid, … placed wind’s reliability at less than 9%” (8.7 to be exact).
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2159
To clarify, this figure of 8.7% is reliability, defined as the amount of power delivery that can be expected during times of peak demand. Capacity factor is different thing. It is the average power generation compared to the rated maximum output of the wind turbines. That is why the capacity factor (30%)is higher. But this means that wind is delivering power at times when it is not needed, and sometimes when it is not even wanted. For example, here in the Pacific Northwest this spring the hydroelectic dams were running at full power just to pass all the water from the melting of a heavy snow pack, and then the wind started blowing, spinning up all the wind turbines. The BPA had a mess on its hands trying to maintain grid stability.
Ioannes is flying a False Flag? I *thought* his spelling and grammar were suspiciously correct!
Now, if he’d called the President a “radial muslin scholiast”, I might have looked twice.
Well, the site which Ioannes’s name links to seems to be that of an ultra-conservative Catholic, not your stereotypical redneck at all (which would be Evangelical, and anti-intellectual).
That is, if that link isn’t a false flag as well…