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US Dept. of Energy Wants Bigger Wind Energy Ideas
coondoggie writes "The Department of Energy wants to kick up the research and development of offshore wind projects as it looks to achieve its goal of producing 20% of the country's electricity from wind farms by 2030. The DOE Wind Program is looking to focus on what it calls specific advanced technology, gigawatt-scale demonstration projects that can be carried out by partnerships with a wide range of eligible organizations and stimulate cost-effective offshore wind energy deployment in coastal and Great Lakes regions of the country. The agency is also looking for more research that can help address market barriers in order to facilitate deployment and reduce technical challenges facing the entire industry, as well as technology that will reduce cost of offshore wind energy through innovation and testing."
Geez, first we offshore our jobs, now our energy production. When will it end?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Xcel has contracted an additional three hundred megawatts of wind energy by 2010 and must obtain ten percent of its own electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Xcel is expected to increase its wind power contracts from 302 megawatts to one 1125 megawatts by 2010.
If you're worried about avian species, Wikipedia quotes two studies that found in seven months a death of 1.1 to 1.4 birds killed per windmill. Bats are higher but it's lower than bat deaths related to lighthouses, communication towers, tall buildings, power lines, and fences. So while unfortunate, it could probably be viewed as acceptable.
The advancements in turbine technology and infrastructure will always be needed but to answer the DOE's "Annual installations need to increase more than threefold." Why don't they just buy up a bunch of (relatively) cheap farmland in Minnesota? I think you can get away with negotiating the small plot of land they use and service roads through fields while still letting the bulk of the land be used for farming. Farmers already maneuver around sloughs that rise and fall with the water table. I don't know how the rights to offshore wind farms work or what the costs to permits are but it seems like you'd just have a strip of them so why not just do a huge block out in the middle of nowhere instead?
You can see which states really took off with wind power, I don't know why you're highlighting coastal areas and the Great Lakes when Colorado and Texas have demonstrated an equally large potential.
My work here is dung.
And who can blame them, right? I wondered when I'd start to see fresh pleas for alternative energy sources. If you've got that card, now is the damned best time to play it with the BP disaster fresh in everyone's minds.
I'm just waiting for some Calamity to hit. I mean, Offshore drilling is an entirely different ballpark, but we've put a lot of research into that and we still mess it up.
I mean, how do these platforms cope with hurricanes? I've always wondered. I have a feeling that since a windmill will have most of its machinery above water level, it'll be more susceptible to high winds (which is the idea I know, but I mean twisting metal high winds)
Might seem counter intuitive but a 2007 article in Wired said:
Hurricanes could be a problem, so they decided to outfit their windmills with hydraulic lifts scavenged from oil-industry machinery; the system would lower the turbines in the event of a squall.
I think under the water is the safest place during a hurricane. Oh, and the timing is too perfect so I cannot omit this paragraph:
But first they needed to secure government approval. Their first stop was the state of Louisiana, but the bayou bureaucrats rejected the proposal. “They saw us as competing with oil and natural gas,” Schoeffler recalls.
Perhaps Schoeffler should ask Louisiana now if it's alright for them to compete with offshore oil?
My work here is dung.
We have been known about them for years, and they produce an absolute shit ton of energy. Plus you can put them anywhere.
They are crazy because they use free neutrons to break apart atoms and release their energy, and whats more these wind farms can be tuned to produce their own wind, cycling the same wind on itself over and over.
They really are amazing wind systems.
CAN WE GET OVER THE DAMN 'N' WORD ALREADY AND BUILD A FEW?
In hot climates, people should put windmills outside their houses to cool themselves off. I hear that's how windmills work in Holland.
Spend money on designing a Very simple.. I.E. single moving part. and efficient design that can be replicated in a garage with trash for nearly nothing.
Some of the vertical turbine types that do not follow the wind are interesting but need work.
make wind power super cheap to build out of trash or common materials, easy to build yourself....
That will be the BIGGEST wind idea to ever exist. make it so anyone can build a couple of 500watt generators in a weekend and you suddenly will have every farm and suburbia home with them.
Lots of smaller ones providing power for local sources are far more efficient than a single HUGE one trying to produce enough for a community.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Vertical-axis wind turbine.
I wonder if a large enough wind turbine could be installed in conjunction with cell towers for the turbine to power the cell and charge up batteries for low wind periods. Then cell towers could communicate with each other wirelessly and they could be 'daisy chained' into remote areas.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Well, now you can just "farm" the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Stick to oil, nothing could possibly go wrong if we just drill for more oil!
Or at least do it in developing countries where nobody cares if it goes wrong.
I hope the offshore aspect solves the NIMBY mentality I often encounter whenever wind energy comes up.
Here's an example. One of my colleagues bought a lakefront property in rural Ontario. A couple of years later, a farmer on the *other side* of the lake leased land to a wind energy provider. They pay $10k per turbine per year, so ten of them went up. My colleague sold his property shortly thereafter, saying that he couldn't stand the turbines.
Can anyone explain this? I'm genuinely curious to know why some people dislike turbines.
Light the blue touch-paper and retire immediately.
Place the wind farms around the Beltway. There is plenty of hot wind coming from Washington.
Well as soon as DOE can convince FAA and the Air Force to stop blocking projects perhaps we can make some progress.
Its a little frightening that a non-emitting source could so easily fool radar and the best solution either agency has is to block wind farms.
Then there is the BLM and their restrictive access polices, not to mention the Kennedy clan.
There are some obvious problems with wind (hot calm days), but tied to an efficient national grid much of these should be manageable.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Your mom doesn't need beans, she just blows~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why do that?
USA is too small?
USA is too full?
Just buy a load of Enercon E-126 mills at 7.5 MW peak each.
If the Belgians can have 11 (yes, Estinnes...) why can't the USA place a few more?
Why not 'allow' private participation?
Why not stimulate people taking care of their own energy?
(yes, that is not their agenda...)
Burninated!
Living With a Nerd
Congress-Powered Smoke-Blown-Up-America's-Ass Hot-Air Turbine
and obligatory "wind turbines at BP headquarters" comment here
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Go nuclear.
-Modern reactor designs won't meltdown.
-There are no transportation risks
-There really are no long-term storage problems with storing it in the earth.
-There really are no long-term storage problems once we get reliable and inexpensive orbital insertions. (Hurl it at the Sun, or other body)
-There is little risk from radiation problems if material burns up on accidental re-entry. This can also be addressed in packaging.
Really the whole wind farm thing is a ploy by special interests to get government subsidies for building these things, which they can then bill you at a higher electric rate.
Lastly, they aren't as green as you think. Just ask this vulture.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Wind turbines constantly adjust their blade angles to match the wind. The idea is to keep them turning at a constant rate no matter what the wind speed is (i.e. they *don't* spin faster in high winds then in low winds). In a hurricane they just turn the blades to minimum angle and keep right on generating.
No sig today...
Because it is almost impossible in the current legal climate to build the power lines from rural areas into the cities where the power is needed and can be sold at a price high enough to finance the project.
Okay so apart from that Buffalo Wind farm project, there's another one by Geronimo whereby they built nine Suzlon turbine windmills next to my hometown (PDF) to produce enough electricity for 6,500 homes and that electricity goes to my hometown where there are ~9,500 residents.
That's nine windmills. Nine.
Let's say Minnesota is an ideal place and that you could maybe get that same energy from almost anywhere else in the country for 3 or 4 times the number of windmills. My question for you is simply whether or not you think small towns across the US would want nine to forty windmills next to their town so they could have cheap renewable power nearby? I know there are infrastructure concerns, I'm not suggesting you cut them off entirely from "the grid". I know there are startup costs. But if you're in the industry, you're telling me that's not a good business plan? I would imagine people would fall all over themselves to have something like that. And if it starts rolling on a large scale, you might have the larger cities considering setting aside nearby sections of land so that you don't have to have massive infrastructure put in for enough power to get through a forest, everglade or habitat.
It is terribly frustrating for those of us in this industry. We know what needs to be done and many ways that it can be done, but our hands are tied.
Oh, you don't have to tell me. In Minnesota, you have to go to a local specialist and get them to survey the area to verify there are no Native American burial mounds or potential artifact sites near where you are digging before you can even break the soil.
My work here is dung.
So can we just everyone to eat more curry?
Summation 2
* - with foreign turbines.
You'd lose that bet. Hard. EROI is less than 4 years. Lifetime 30+ years.
Once you figure in the cost of killing everything in half the Gulf of Mexico for 50 years, wind power is going to look like a bargain.
It seems to me that we could have a lot more windmills if we doubled up on the use of the area at the base of the turbines. For example, at sea, the base of the windmill might be the center post of a floating fish farm. On land solar collectors or fish ponds could be built. The generation of food underneath the towers could pay for the construction and maintenance of the windmills.
Sprawl and use of materials can be better managed if we make certain that every parcel of land has multiple uses.
>> technology that will reduce cost of offshore wind energy through innovation and testing."
Here's the most interesting idea I've found, mainly because it's a seemingly elegant solution to the energy storage problem.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/uk-startup-targets-reducing-wind-energy.html
It seems to be part of the bugaboo with wind -- when the wind blows and nobody needs your power, you're just, well, tilting at the wind.
Producing hydrogen seems appealing because it can be burned cleanly, either at a facility at the wind farm or at some other aggregating site at some other time or for some other purpose (heat, motor vehicle fuel, methane production, etc).
And if hydrogen were the standard, it would lower the overhead costs of equipment, enable regional aggregation (ie, no production quantity would be "too small") and probably lead to better technologies for using hydrogen as a fuel.
Expected value of wildlife killed by windmills if the most expansive plans are realized: what, a few thousand per year?
Wildlife killed from oil spills (Exxon Valdez, the Santa Barbara spill, the Mexican spill of a few years back, Deepwater Horizon, etc): uncountably large, even on an annualized basis. So, anti-wind people: spare me the "won't someone think of the birds" line of reasoning.
On offshore wind farms: both the Great Plains and offshore areas have the advantage of strong, sustained winds. But offshore wind farms have the advantage of being closer to population centers, so you have less transmission loss to worry about - I think that's the real attraction. Then again, it's likely cheaper to site the turbines on land (less complicated than attaching them to the ocean floor, etc). There's also a fair sized installed base on land, so we likely have more expertise there. I think the most likely end result is that we end up using both types of site.
Wind is sort of a nice idea for future, but there are things, which can be done right now. I mean producing by reducing consumption.
For example, limiting the weight of a personal car by a universal international law.
Now there are cars, which weigh 3000 kilograms and more. It can be limited, say, by 1500 kg. Still it can be quite a comfortable car.
Limiting area of a air-conditioned (heated) house or apartment by 100 square meters per one person. There are houses of hundreds of rooms, tens of thousand of square meters, where only a couple of persons live. 100 square meters per person is enough for a comfortable apartment or house.
Overweight people could be mildly, but unequivocally, taxed via increased medical insurance payments, because large amounts of food mean large amount of energy. Besides additional medical care for overweight people also takes a lot of energy. And also via 2-tickets rule for any mode of public transportation.
There should be a enforceable legal ban on any form of forbidding of drying clothing and linen on the sun at the fresh air. Drying wet clothing in the sun is the most efficient solar energy and wind device ever.
Enormous, geological amounts of energy are being spent on drying clothing and linen in the electrical dryers. And in some districts and even entire cities it is forbidden to dry clothing outdoors.
The sidewalks and walking should be promoted as a state policy, not laughed out, as it is the case now, especially in the USA, where it is close to incident to walk.
There should be process in media and in societal conversations to stop billions of women to shave legs (and other parts) nearly daily. A huge quantities of energy is being spent on this pointless exercise. Now it is also close to incident to look like a human female should look.
These are the real things, which can be and should be done. Otherwise energy consumption will be only increasing and no windmills will help us.
By the way, I know why all this talk about windmills. I've heard from a source in BP, that there is no way to stop the spill, the pressure in this well is absolutely too high. It may reach New York and further. So that is why this talk about windmills' New Course.
How about we install turbines in all of the deep sea oil holes. That way when they leak we can at least get SOME energy out of them.
We both need more to do at work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Look at nuclear power in the 50s. Heck, without government massive subsidies, the power stations today won't get built.
... if it weren't for those pesky laws of physics. Wind turbine efficiency goes up with the square of the radius of the turbine. So small turbines are way, way less efficient than big ones - which really means that household sized wind turbines are unlikely to ever win out over industrial sized ones. Solar PE and solar thermal you can do on a single home basis, but wind... not so much.
They're actually kind of beautiful - giant, graceful kinetic sculptures. I really don't understand the problem.
... nuclear power is definitely a part of the solution to our power issues. But you kind of blow your credibility on the subject out of the water when you say stuff like this:
The point here is that your "solution" is essentially magic - you've just made the problem of getting inexpensive orbital insertions disappear by waving your hands. Not to mention the fact that the space launch industry has a safety record that makes oil drilling look good in comparison. And having a rocket with a full load of nuclear waste blow up on the launch pad, or fail to achieve orbit and burn up on re-entry... that would be, you know, bad.
It's also kind of hilarious that a nuclear apologist is accusing other power industries of being in it for the subsidies. Did you not notice that the gov't just announced gigantic loan guarantees for nuclear plants?
I wonder if it would be possible to retrofit old ships to be windcharger production centers, perhaps the old single hull oil tankers they are phasing out for the double hull jobbies? Then they could be moved where they are needed the most, plus maneuver to avoid storms, etc. And if they ran on electric motors, they could be mostly or totally self propelled as well. Have some big batteries for ballast and stability. Then all that is needed for a permanent structure to be built is the offshore connection points.
How about the fact that current nuclear power plants are consuming about ~1% of available U235 each year, and nuclear power usage will likely expand by a factor or so in the next few decades. If more effort had been put into breeders, I might not be so worried, but the up coming generation of reactors will not be breeders.
Why are we attempting to create more stress on our electric grid with more sources of unreliable power? Shouldn't we be focusing on making the power grid better with reliable power sources? Why not build more nuke plants that will create more jobs and reliable power?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Have you tried a mechanism to lean your vertical axis design in high winds, so it slips better? Of course you would lose your stability fast then....hmmm
I remember in the olden days the guys fooling around with savonius rotors made from cut in half oil drums. I think most of them worked OK for a while but never took off from those limitations.
You are right seems dumb compared to the normal horizontal ones. I have a small aero marine windcharger (300 watts), but haven't bothered setting it up here, just not good enough average winds. My PV panels rock though.
No one single magic silver energy bullet, I think it will take all of the above.
With that said, the best "ROI" with energy is to put the skull sweat into dropping demand instead of trying to always just increase production. I am a huge fan of superinsulation to drop heating and cooling costs for instance. I've worked on a few new construction and retrofit examples, it is so amazing..it's..you can't believe it until you have seen the dramatic drops in energy use to maintain previous or even better comfort levels. My fav anecdotal from back then was some lady we had done a mild retrofit for called up to complain we had "broken her air conditioner". OK, I am stumped for a second, we never touched her aircondo or wiring.. She goes "It's not coming on!!". I go "is your house still cool ma'am"? She goes "well, yes..." "You got what you paid for ma'am, big energy savings". She was just so used to her rig kicking on every hour in the summer heat, that when it went more than a day without needing to kick on she thought it was broken!
And I know why superinsulation isn't pushed at the highest levels as much as it should be. No more nuthin needs to be invented or patented. No huge research needed or government boondoggles. It really can't be centrally controlled by any company or small cartel, it really is a small crew/small local business oriented approach. No VC vultures would make any money from it much, nor wall street. All the big energy/utility boys would hate for you to not keep cutting them those huge monthly checks. And stuff like that. It just works too good. Plus it isn't sexy, people just think the opposite, that they "need" more power all the time, they really don't stop and think how to achieve the same result with much less power. Here is another example, most of my rural bubba friends here drive v-8 trucks. I drive a four cylinder diesel truck that gets 2-3 times the mileage of their trucks and does all the work a regular pickup needs to do. The only thing I can't do with that truck is pull the heaviest trailers..meh..that's why we have mid size flatbeds and dumps.
I was going to limit it to the Republican Caucus.
The reason why America is in the situation that we are, is because we depended so much on just fossil fuel. WHen you include Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, it probably accounts for about 85% or more of our total energy usage. Now, you want to depend on JUST Uranium. It shows that you are not learning from the lessons.
For those of your who want to learn from our current situation, then QUIT PUSHING ONE ITEM. We need a MATRIX of energy, with none above 1/3 of our total energy input (and that may be too much). That means that we need to INCREASE our nukes, but only to say, 1/3 of total, and then slowly drop it. Likewise, we NEED to increase our Wind. But we also need to increase Geo-thermal, as well as Solar Thermal. Once Solar PV comes down in price, THEN include it as well. Sadly, we NEED to drop our usage of fossil fuel, but the smart thing is remove the imports first.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I want PROOF of nuclear plants that are cost effective (not excluding tons of government welfare.) We hear about next gen nuclear power and fuel recycling etc but its all just talk nobody ever cites an example. I've never seen it done yet so hypothetically, if examples are given, would they be verified credible examples?
The established power corps which are largely centralized entities may be handled as corruptly/incompetently as the OIL rig industry... Can't trust them or the current regulators.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why isn't the DOE campaigning for 80% nuclear by 2030?
That's the grid we actually need, one that will provide SUSTAINED power for sixty to eighty years.
Let's see: cost of a generator, turbine blades, erecting tower, control systems.
Now add to this: make the generator water-proofed to a depth below the waves created by the strongest hurricanes, make the tower telescopic, hydraulic lifts to raise and lower the whole structure.
I easily see at least an order of magnitude increase in cost.
I recall reading several years ago that one of the problems with wind turbines is the stress that they suffer during high winds. Also the potential that the turbine will get overloaded. You can make the blades strong enough so that they don't bend and get pushed in to the tower, but this makes them heavier. You can disengage the turbine in high winds, but this adds a layer of complexity.
One proposed solution was to reverse the system, so that the wind blows past the tower in to the blades, and then make the blades more flexible. As they bend in very high winds, they move away from the tower instead of toward it. Also, they get less efficient and don't over-spin the turbine. Plus, they're lighter and therefore more power goes to the turbine instead of giving them angular momentum.
I've never once seen this design implemented. Anyone out there in the know as to why?
You know what makes a lot of wind? Atomic bombs.
3 Semi's long. I drove past one in transit at a weigh station. They don't look nearly as ridiculous when they're a mile in the distance. Right up next to it I completely understood-- "oh, THIS is why we don't implement these."
Move to Thorium nuclear reactors and be done with it. Bonus: we can give the thorium tech to Iran. Drawback-- the nuclear waste reprocessing lobbyists.
Don't people realise that windnills suck power out of the air? That's the whole idea. The energy has to come from somewhere and it comes from the wind pushing on the blades.
Which will slow down the wind a teeny. OK now one turbine or a hundred won't make much of a difference, but to draw 20% of the country's usage that will have a significant effect on local wind speed, which will have a significant effect on weather.
If they're after "innovation" and progress in the area of wind energy maybe they should give these guys some money:
http://www.skywindpower.com/ww/index.htm
Harnessing the energy of the jet streams eliminates a lot of the problems/limitations of conventional wind turbine power (consistency of the wind, visual pollution, killing birds etc).
Sure it's unproven yet at either the altitude or scale that would be required, but I think it's just a matter of time before this concept takes off (pun intended!).
Capture the hot air blowing out of Congress in Washington D.C. -- both mouth and ass hot air.
+++OK ATH
Large stationary wind turbines are all the rage currently but how about a very large railroad loop/oval 10 or 20 miles set across the prevailing winds and use big computer control kites to tow the train creating power? You see kite sailing catching on and power kites to reduce fuel consumption on sea going vessels. Why not Kites?
They can feed into the grid with the high power transmission lines used to export power from the Garrison Dam hydroelectric turbines. Those turbines normally only output 1/2 of the rated capacity of the system, so there would be enough capacity to handle initial installations of wind farms. Any further upgrades could be paid by the wind power companies and/or depending where they are located, could feed into the grids supplied by the 5 other dams on the northern Missouri in South Dakota and Montana. Much of this power is already exported to MN, NE, & IA.
I've already mentioned the idea of combining a wind turbine with solar panels.
C'mon, DoE, talk to me, I've got some ideas you really want to consider.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.