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

Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginning

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

When the general attitude of the phone companies was "It's scary, make it go away"

Successful????

[ArsonSmith]

I'd only call it mildly successful when it can run at least 50% without government subsidies. and fully successful when it is >99%

I don't belive we'll ever be able to get back a US where there isn't government subsidies in everything.

Re:Successful????

[ldconfig]

So its bad for the government to help support clean energy. I notice you don't bring up all the tax breaks and corporate welfare the oil gas and coal co's get and how huge it is compared to what green energy gets.

Re:Successful????

[TheSync]

Any economist will tell you there needs to be ways of moderating the natural boom-bust cycle of capitalism.

No, some economists would say that government attempts to moderate the boom-bust cycle of capitalism (such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's through deflation) have often proven to be worse than letting the economy alone. Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well, because even if it works in one's theory, in practice governments never save during good times, and when spending happens it is inefficient, slow, and corrupt.

This rap video provides one viewpoint along these lines.

Now keeping the banking system intact is a separate issue - although I think it will be many years before we know if saving "too big to fail" banks was better or worse than letting them fail.

Costs

[Spazmania]

region's wind power too cheap for its members to compete with, unless developers there are made to pay the costs of moving wind power eastward.

To whatever extent the generation companies pay to move the power, I fail to see why wind shouldn't pay its fair share.

demanding that the state's wind developers share the costs of backup natural gas generators

That's stupid. The correct solution is: raise the price of natural gas generation to compensate for the efficiency of scale difference.

proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.

Hey, if you want money from Uncle Sam, you gotta play the game the way it's played. You're always welcome to secure private financing and build it any way you please.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[ottothecow]

And you would think it would be a good opportunity for them to leverage their existing contracts, resources, and brand name to push into wind power.

Buying out a small startup player and giving them your established name and relationships with other power companies seems like a big win

RTFA: Politics, not gas.

[odin84gk]

Summary:

Wind was okay until it became a meaningful competitor to the carbon dioxide-producing entities

Article:

And last week, four senators representing New York, Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania proposed to deny federal clean energy grants to wind developers that buy blades, turbines and other components from abroad.

"It is a no-brainer that stimulus funds should only go to projects that create jobs in the United States rather than overseas," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, pointing at a proposed Texas wind farm whose backers include a Chinese power company.

They had one paragraph about the natural gas generators complaining about being used as a backup for the unreliable wind farms and wanting to charge more money to act as a backup service.
The majority of the article is focused on international and stimulus politics: Should stimulus funds be spent on foreign technologies, or should they only be used on local (US) companies. How much of the company must be in the US before it is considered a local technology?

Another misleading summary intended to promote controversy.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[LWATCDR]

Actually I know someone that works in the Wind Power part of a major utility company.
He spelled out the problem with wind for me very clearly.
"Companies don't care about carbon offsets because they don't believe that there will be a carbon tax".
"Followed by "Natural gas is dirt cheap right now."
Natural Gas is cheaper and more reliable than wind right now.
Trust me this utility has spent a bundle on wind and my friend is on the road many days a month trying to set up wind power and make deals for people to buy the power. In this case I wouldn't blame the utilities.
What it comes down to is dollars and cents. Gas is cheaper and works better than wind.
Of course I love this comment.
" 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.""
Notice how in the summary the poster says that they have some valid concerns and then says that there are fixes for them.
Yea sure... But at what price? Read some of the "fixes" and then ask who is going to pay for them? Should the government keep subsidizing wind and the infrastructure.
Don't bother saying that they can just take the money from the Military since we know that will not happen. Are you willing to pay more in taxes and pay more for goods produced in the US by US companies? China and India will not pass a dime of the costs on manufacturing so if you increase the cost to make goods in the US you will be pushing more manufacturing to China and India so in effect you will be shifting the carbon production from US plants burning natural gas to Chinese power plants burning Coal.
Oh and Window power in China? Unless forced to that is just for export. They will produce a few token sites and then sell Windmills to western countries until it becomes economical to replace coal with wind.
So the west will subsidize even more manufacturing jobs going overseas.
I fear this isn't as simple as the summary or what most people on slashdot think it is.

What it all comes down to is that Natural gas is cheap, efficient, and thankfully pretty clean.
While not carbon free it has the lowest carbon foot print of all the fossil fuels. It is MUCH lower in carbon output than coal so it isn't terrible that it is displacing wind. It could be worse, they could be building coal plants instead of wind.

Indeed... let's move forward with the current plan

[copponex]

1) Cover our eyes and let companies do whatever they want.
2) Suffer from energy spikes, speculative bubbles, piss poor infrastructure and a ruined environment.
3) Shovel billions into corporate coffers so they can sock the money away in offshore accounts while simultaneously failing to develop energy alternatives
4) Failure!

You have to subsidize new technologies because corporations cannot justify R&D to their shareholders. BP and Exxon cannot manufacture solar panels unless they can demonstrate higher profits, which one can't do until the technology is sufficiently developed, which one can't do without huge investments.

Technology has thrown the entire paradigm of free market economics for a loop. The amount of technology and science that go into an average product make information asymmetry astronomical. This requires more government regulation, not less.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[ajs]

This just sounds hokey. The wind is free. How much cheaper is gas, according to your friend?

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. The post you're responding to has some salient points in this respect.

The problem of replacing or upgrading the single most important piece of our national infrastructure has always loomed as the greatest problem with converting to energy alternatives. Wind and solar power have radically different properties with respect to the national grid, and you can't just plunk them in and go on. Doing that leads to unpleasant things like brown-outs that kill the elderly during the height of summer or depths of winter.

These aren't unsolvable problems, but they cost a LOT of money to solve, and no one is yet willing to step up and pay for it, as the advantages are not easily recognized.

Bullshit

[copponex]

such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's

It couldn't be that everyone had over leveraged themselves... if that were the case, something like the Glass-Steagall Act would have keep the markets free from similar crashes. Oh, that's right... it did for nearly 70 years until it was repealed in 1999.

Keynesian stimulus spending rarely works well, because even if it works in one's theory, in practice governments never save during good times, and when spending happens it is inefficient, slow, and corrupt.

Then why are all states at the top of GDP per capita Keynesian or sitting on top of valuable natural resources?

Now keeping the banking system intact is a separate issue - although I think it will be many years before we know if saving "too big to fail" banks was better or worse than letting them fail.

The sound Canadian banking system holds the real answer: do not led greedy investors lurk in the shadows. Never take cops off the beat. Government oversight and transparency are the only realistic methods to preventing speculative bubbles, among other things.

Robert Heinlein said it best...

[Nexzus]

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

  - Robert A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[camperdave]

you can supply a power grid with _only_ renewable energy

You can also supply the power grid by rigging hamster wheels. The question isn't what we CAN do, but what is the most economically viable.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[Hatta]

Gee, if only there were a bunch of people who needed jobs who could do this for us.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[johnlcallaway]

Infrastructure is one of America's top 5 problems for the 21st Century.

Why should the public pay for moving electricity from the Midwest to the East coast? Let the East coast electricity get more expensive, and the Midwest electricity get cheaper. People and business will naturally migrate from expensive areas to less expensive areas, not requiring any expenditure at all. Remove the subsidies and tax credits on building anything but pilot projects and research. Provide loans for valid business plans that show a reasonable chance of success to help give a leg up to an industry.

Letting economics drive power sources is a lot more natural than having the government do it and creating tons of regulatory systems that only provide jobs in the legal and political arenas.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[OutSourcingIsTreason]

Your math is misleading. You give the cost of a wind turbine in quantities of one and then multiply it without taking into consideration volume discount and economy of scale, so your bottom line is probably twice what it would cost. Even so, it's still competitive with building a new nuclear power plant.

Cost of a new nuclear power plant

But then when the wind farm is built, the fuel costs nothing, there is no cost associated with storing and disposing of spent fuel rods, and there's no possibility of a nuclear meltdown and the inadvertent release of radioactive material into the environment.

Re:Reminds me of broadband internet in the beginni

[lennier]

Yes $7 billion dollars.

So... only the cost of about 3 stealth bombers, then?

And you guys bought how many of those? How are they doing in Afghanistan, by the way?