Wind energy

Global Warming Science: www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming

Wind Energy – Creating Foreign Jobs for an Unreliable Energy Source

[last update: 2011/02/17]

Obama has promised “green” jobs while killing coal and promising to make energy prices skyrocket (See: http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/ObamasGovernment.htm).

[update: 2011/02/17]: Canadian Wind Farm Fails in Cold Weather

[update: 2011/01/02]: UK Wind Farms Fail in Cold Weather

[update: 2010/10/06]: Economic Analysis of Nantucket Wind Farm

[update: 2010/06/20]: Britain’s Experience

[update: 2010/05/02]: Unreliability at BPA

Unreliability - New Brunswick Wind Farm Fails in Cold Weather

[http://www.globalmontreal.com/technology/Northern+Brunswick+wind+turbines+frozen+solid/4286952/story.html]

“Wintery conditions also temporarily shutdown the site last winter, just months after its completion.”

Unreliability - UK Wind Farms Fail in Cold Weather

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/8234616/Wind-farms-becalmed-just-when-needed-the-most.html]

From the article: “Despite high demand for electricity as people shivered at home over Christmas, most of the 3,000 wind turbines around Britain stood still due to a lack of wind. … The failure of wind farms to function at full tilt during December forced energy suppliers to rely on coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on … The wind turbines may even use up electricity during a calm period, as they were rotated in order to keep the mechanical parts working. There are more than 3,000 turbines in Britain and the Department of Energy and Climate Change planned to have up to 6,000 onshore and 4,000 at sea by 2020. … It was confirmed yesterday that December had been the coldest since national records were first kept in 1910”

Although UK’s wind generation capacity is 10% of the total, they have recently been receiving more electricity from France than from all of the renewables combined:

From: http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp.php

“Green” Jobs

The Investigative Reporting Workshop of the American University School of Communication has done reports on the “green” jobs: http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/wind-energy-funds-going-overseas/

From the above report:

“Money from the 2009 stimulus bill to help support the renewable energy industry continues to flow overseas … more than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind energy companies went to foreign firms. Since then, the administration has stopped making announcements of new grants to wind, solar and geothermal companies, but has handed out another $1 billion, bringing the total given out to $2.1 billion and the total that went to companies based overseas to more than 79 percent.”

“The administration and the wind energy lobby now say that the aim of the program was not to create jobs immediately, despite its being included in the stimulus package, but rather to help support long-term investments in renewable manufacturing in the United States. The program, which cost $1.05 billion in the year ended last Sept. 30, would get another $3.08 billion this fiscal year, and will peak in 2011 with an outlay of $4.46 billion, according to the president's proposed budget released in early February.”

“In fact, in recent months, both U.S. and foreign renewable energy manufacturing companies with production in the United States have either closed or slowed down production. The Danish company, Vestas, said it was halting production at a wind turbine blade plant in Windsor, Colo. The company said it would probably have to slow development of two other facilities planned for the same area. Gamesa, a Spanish wind turbine company, said it was laying off about half of the remaining workers at a Pennsylvania production facility. Two major solar production efforts in the U.S. shuttered – GE Solar in Newark, Del., and Evergreen Solar in Marlborough, Mass. Evergreen , the recipient of state and federal incentives, announced it would restart production in China.”

See also: http://howardrich.org/2010/02/green-jobs-scam-unmasked/ for more details on foreign companies receiving “stimulus” funds for “green jobs”.

Unreliability – Wind is For Green P.R. in Minnesota

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1390565.shtml 2010/01/28

Re: The above Minnesota wind turbines:

“They’re basically for public relations, educational purposes. They’re just not feasible for any significant amount of electrical generation,” said Dan Voss, Municipal Utilities Director for the City of Anoka. [http://biggovernment.com/tsteward/2010/03/04/symbolic-wind-turbines-generating-more-p-r-than-power/]

Site selection criteria: “Prominent visibility from major roads” [http://www.ci.north-saint-paul.mn.us/vertical/Sites/%7B806247FC-8CDA-4FF4-A9CD-4492647B36B7%7D/uploads/%7B2FD2B344-0F88-4DA8-93B8-8672C9762561%7D.PDF]

“the total cost is $5 million, or about $417,000 per machine” [http://www.startribune.com/local/north/83506647.htm]

Unreliability – More Windmills Does Not Necessarily Mean More Power

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) provides power in Oregon and Washington and has been increasing the wind power generation capacity over the last few years. They provide some interesting analyses of various aspects of the wind power experience [http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/default.aspx]

The following figure shows the total wind power generation by month for the 2008/09 and 2009/10 winters. Between the two winters, many windmills were added to the system, increasing the capacity from 1695 MW to 2692 MW (a 58 % increase). Yet the amount of power produced decreased by 29 %.

If the wind doesn’t blow enough, more windmills means higher cost, but still insufficient energy.

Bad Economics

A Suffolk University study “An Economic Analysis of a Wind Farm in Nantucket Sound” examined the economics of the US’s first offshore wind farm [http://www.beaconhill.org/BHIStudies/Windmills2004/WindFarmArmyCorps.pdf]. The report states: “The economic costs of the project exceed the benefits by $209 million.Based on these numbers,

it does not make sense, from a societal point of view, to build the project. .. From the developer’s perspective, the project is much more appealing. Despite being economically undesirable from a societal point of view, the project would be privately profitable because of the very large subsidies that it would receive. The most important of these would stem from the "green credits" that result from recent changes to the law in Massachusetts: Electricity consumers in the Commonwealth must buy a growing proportion of their electricity from "new renewable" sources, requiring them, in practice, to pay a premium for their power. This premium will raise the price received by Cape Wind and amounts to a total subsidy, in present value terms, of $267 million from Massachusetts ratepayers.”

Britain’s Experience

“Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing. … When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative 'green' subsidies for that electricity. … Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.” [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/7840035/Firms-paid-to-shut-down-wind-farms-when-the-wind-is-blowing.html]

“electricity customers are paying more than £1 billion a year to subsidise windfarms and other forms of renewable energy. The hidden levy is part of a Government scheme to force energy companies to fund green energy. The companies bear the cost but pass it on to consumers in the form of higher bills.”

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/7061552/Wind-farm-subsidies-top-1-billion-a-year.html]

“A primary school has been forced to switch off a £20,000 wind turbine because it keeps killing passing seabirds. The turbine, at Southwell Community Primary School, Portland, was installed 18 months ago thanks to a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. It provided six kilowatts of power an hour, but its performance was overshadowed by the number of birds killed - far higher than the one fatality per year predicted by the manufacturer. … “We've tried so hard to be eco-friendly””

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929/Primary-school-forced-to-turn-off-wind-turbine-after-bird-deaths.html]

For anyone who thinks wind energy will provide “energy security”, read: