Danish Goal: 50% of Electricity from Wind

tres3 writes "The Danes have an ambitious plan of producing 50% of their national electrical needs from wind by 2030. The website has tutorials on everything related to wind energy you can imagine. The index gives you an idea of the detail of the site. It includes land and sea wind turbines as well as details about the machinery needed and where to locate it. There are over 100 pages so I didn't link to them all. [ed. note: thanks] A picture says it all."

Comments

Re:optimistic?

[Soko]

Actually, the interaction of the ocean and land generates wind quite frequently.

The land tends to be warmer than the ocean during the day, so an on-shore breeze is generated (air warmed by the land rises, air from the ocean rushes in to replace it). The opposite effect is seen when the land cools off in the evening - an off shore breeze is generated.

Since Denmark is surrounded by ocean on 3 sides, one could assume that they have an abundance of breeze to make this work. I wish them success.

Soko

Really? Show me the numbers.

[dachshund]

as well as shred birds and insects by the hundredweight.

Sure. Tell me more. You have some information or statistics that involve modern windmill technology?

You're familiar with modern wind technology, correct? Large blades, turning slowly. Certainly some birds might smack into them (the same way they do to buildings and cars), but we're not talking about the little, fast-moving windmills of the 1970s and 80s.

I'm tired of hearing this one trotted out every time somebody talks about wind. Show me the numbers, dammit!

They're certainly going to pollute the visual enviroment

Maybe we can disguise them as trees. Or put Budwiser advertising on them. Then they'll fit right in with the rest of the country :)

The point for Denmark is to make money

[joneshenry]

From the Danish perspective I would think whether or not wind power's merits will cause an energy revolution are irrelevant. The important thing is that the Danes aren't just using wind power, they are manufacturing the turbines and selling the technology abroad. This brings in cold cash and gives the country a niche in the global economy. That is the point.

By having a focus, Danish industry can seek to acquire the IP such as patents to build up a top industry. As in other industries the idea is to go so far down the learning curve that it becomes more economical for other countries to buy the technology from you rather than develop it themselves.

That is why conservatives who bash alternative energy are stupid. Any reading of US history shows massive government involvement to nurture any industry whether through protective tariffs, cash for infrastructure, land grants, whatever. To make money you have to spend money. A so-called conservative who espouses capitalism should understand that.

Santa Clara, CA

[guttentag]

Silicon Valley's city of Santa Clara is very environmentally conscious. There are "Tree City USA" signs up all over the place, and the city-owned utility proudly trumpets the breakdown of its energy sources:

It gets 43% of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, 22% from geothermal, and another 4% from other renewable sources.

The city really focuses on finding plausible, cost-effective power sources, but for some reason it doesn't get any of its power from the wind. Perhaps the Santa Clarans know something the Danish don't?

My goal: use 50% less electricity

[sting3r]

I went on a tour of my condo with my trusty Fluke ampmeter today, wondering why my power bills are so high and why my air conditioner runs constantly despite the fact that it's only set for 80 degrees. I was shocked and appalled at all of the energy that my electronic toys waste while they are in their idle states. Let's take a look at the numbers and see:

• TV setup. My television, amplifier, and Tivo alone took up 1.6 Amps = 185 watts, while they were completely idle. The Tivo was not recording anything, and I verified that it was not doing anything by telnetting in and observing that the load average was 0.00. Does it really require 1.6 amps just to spin a hard drive and wait for a 10mW infrared signal??
• Computer monitors. I run XFree86 4 in dual-head mode. My two monitors take up 2.6 Amps = 300 watts while they are on, and a whopping 70 watts when they are turned off at the switch. It's worth noting that they produce about a third of the light, and twice the heat, of two 150W light bulbs.
• Computer hardware. The power strip supporting my 1.6Ghz Athlon and 1Ghz Duron draws a whopping 4.4 Amps, or 500 watts, while both systems sit at zero load! Apparently, AMD expended significantly more effort making sure their processors were well-equipped to start house fires when the heatsink falls off, rather than making those Linux kernel "CPU idle" calls actually do anything.
• Uninterruptable power supplies. These were the sleeper hit of my power measurement experiment: with full batteries and no devices on the load side, my UPSes drew 50-80 watts of power each. I understand that filtering power comes at a cost, but these things really should be designed to be at least a little bit more efficient than the average space heater.

So, this brings me to my main point: why is it that my cell phone can run for two weeks without a recharge, my digital scale can run for 10 years (guaranteed) on a single battery, my thermostat, analog clocks, and smoke detectors can run for 2-3 years between battery changes, but my computers and consumer electronics have to suck up as much power as my toaster while they are completely idle?

As long as our toys are designed to waste as much energy as legally possible, even the most well-intentioned power conservation efforts are doomed to utter failure.

-sting3r

Re:Rotational Pollution

[nathanh]

They're certainly going to pollute the visual enviroment

I suppose you prefer the visual beauty of a strip mine?

Energy Independence

[Camel Pilot]

I applaud the Danes for their bold, foward thinking Energy 21 energy policy. Bush's policy on the other hand, involves meddling in the middle east or drilling in our national parks and preserves.

Being the man of vision that he is, Bush, should reconsider our depenence on oil from the middle east and its impact of our foriegn policy. Like a drug addicted individual the US governments choices sometimes are far from rational.

For example, we call the Saudi's "our fiends". Bullshit! They would slice our thoat in a heart beat if we were not their biggest customer. They are a twisted theocracy that rejects womens rights, democracy, personal liberty, religious freedom, etc. We have nothing in common.

If the man would come out with a Kennedy like vision and plan of developing renewable technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal, wave, conservation, etc. and even clean and safe nuclear we would be much further down road to world stability, peace and prosperity. Instead he wants to start another war and one which has the potential of being a messy urban war where civilian casualities are unavoidable if you want to win.

Nowhere near 50% wind power in .dk

[phkamp]

I don't know where the 50% figure comes from, but it is certainly not official Danish policy.

We're currently producing 10-15% of all electricity in Denmark with wind-energy and nobody wants that number to increase currently due to the problems we are facing.

The main problem is that we actually get so much wind-generated electricity during a storm that we cannot get rid of it, this unbalances the power-grid and results in voltage and frequency instabilities.

The secondary problem is that you also need electricity when the wind does not blow. This could mean keeping large centralized power-plants around, paying a lot of maintenance costs, waiting for the wind to die.

Various suggestions abound, and the Engineers weekly newspaper here in Denmark has been the home of a fierce debate for the last couple of months about the merits of these and wind-generation in general.

The fact that all sorts of micro-plants and co-generation is popping up like mushrooms is in fact a very interesting problem for the electrical grids: How do you balance supply and demand, when you have almost as many suppliers as consumers ?