Gas Wants To Kill the Wind

RABarnes writes "Scientific American has posted an article about the political efforts of natural gas and electric utilities to limit the growth of wind-generated electricity. Although several of the points raised by the utilities and carbon-based generators are valid, the basic driver behind their efforts is that wind-generation has now successfully penetrated the wholesale electricity market. Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities. Among the valid points raised by the carbon-based generators are concerns about how the cost of electricity transmission are allocated and how power quality can be improved (wind generation — from individual sites — is hopelessly variable). But there are fixes for all of the concerns raised by the carbon-based entities and in almost all cases they have been on the other side of the question in the past."

Comments

Wind farm and climate change

[oldhack]

If enough wind farms are set up to actually contribute significant energy volume, I wonder what would be its impact on the climate.

I mean, it is sucking the kinetic energy directly out of the movement of air.

Re:Wind farm and climate change

[oldhack]

Ooooh, the climate mafia still afraid of some righteous sunlight, eh. Scared of a simple question? Pathetic.

Another reason to say no to corporate lobbying.

[slashhax0r]

Yet another reason that corporate lobbying (legalised bribery) should not be allowed in a supposed democratic government. *sigh*

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[grub]

Apple and oranges. They don't use rinky-dink off-the-shelf turbines so it wouldn't cost $7B to replace a nuclear plant.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[lennier]

Wind is free. If what you want is to have your hair ruffled, you pay nothing.

If, on the other hand, you want to build an energy grid based on wind power, it costs far more than you might imagine.

[han-solo] I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit [/han-solo]

Obviously switching to a wind-based infrastructure from the current dead-end fossil-based infraastructure is expensive, yes. But that's a one-time expense, like a fiber buildout, and yields functioning hardware (capital) at the end of it; so it's an investment.

Once the wind system is built, then you're talking marginal gains, rising as the price of oil and gas rises due to their increasing rarity. So there's an initial steep cost for wind, followed by a gradually increasing upside with no upper limit (or rather, a flat operating expense curve while oil/gas soars sky-high.

This is why we have national-level and global-level coordinating groups, whether you call them 'standards bodies', 'industry consortia', central banks', 'governments', or the likes. So that someone has the ability and foresight to say 'look, we need to do this very expensive thing now which will save our butts hugely later'.

You simply can't do everything on the margin with only the next quarter's profits in sight. Sooner or later, someone with some long-term vision needs to front up with a plan. Ideally, this would be a democratic government which, after reasoned debate and input from all the people, achieves consensus and does the rational thing and everyone's happy.

I don't understand what part of of 'one day oil/gas will run out and we'll all die horribly, while wind'll still be there and we get to live' is so terribly difficult for world-class business executives to grasp. Aren't they paid millions of dollars a year and go to forums like Davos to think strategically just like this? If an ordinary guy like me can see this, why can't our unelected lords and masters?