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How Viable Is Large Scale Wind Energy?
New submitter notscientific writes "Renewable sources of energy are obviously a hit but they have as yet failed to live up to the hype. A new study in Nature Climate Change shows however that there is more than enough power to be harnessed from the wind to sustain Earth's entire population... x200! To generate energy from the wind, we may however need to set up wind farms at altitudes of 200-20,000 metres. To be fair, the study is purely theoretical and does not look at the feasibility of such potential wind farms. Regardless, the paper does provide a major boost to backers of wind-generated energy. Science has confirmed that the sky's the limit."
Yea, I'll wait for more wind farms to actually be build.
I know folks that build those giant wind turbines. They think they build a good product (and they do), but not a single one thinks it'll be more than a supplemental. If for nothing else... Not In My Back Yard.
....No one has actually _built_ a wind power turbine setup that operates at well above the ground. I mean, consider the issues involved:
1. How are we going to keep those turbines up at altitude?
2. What are the costs of tethering these high-flying wind turbine installations?
3. Will these installations become hazards to migratory birds flying at high altitude, let alone passing airplanes of all sizes?
I'd rather build hundreds of nuclear reactors based on the safe liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) technology instead in the short to medium term, and in the longer term build space-based solar power arrays parked in geosynchronous or near-geosynchronous orvbit.
The overriding problem with wind power is that, for large parts of the world, it is not constant or predictable. So while your wind farm may meet your energy demands for one day, it might not the next... and there is no way to predict or plan for these boom/bust periods. The only way to address this is:
1. Build backup power sources which can meet all your energy demands (for when there is no wind)
2. Overbuild the wind farms and build massive battery backups to store and distribute excess power (expensive and still no reliable)
3. Rebuild the electric distribution infrastructure to share power across much larger regions (to do effectively require tech we haven't perfected).
No matter how you cut it, building an adequate wind power infrastructure is prohibitively expensive because you have to plan for periods of your total output being zero. No matter how much technology improves, this will always be the case (well, until we can control weather).
Theoretically there's plenty of wind power.
Theoretically there's plenty of solar power.
Theoretically there's plenty of geothermal power.
Theoretically there's plenty of power in the vacuum of space.
It's that niggling practicality of GETTING and USING that energy that confounds us.
Arguably, I'd say the only one that's really proven itself over the long term is solar; as the Earth is essentially a closed system with only solar energy as an input, it's proven that there is amply "enough" input solar energy falling on half of the globe at any given time to drive that system.
-Styopa
He knew that: ''The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind''
just because oranges are healthy, you shouldn't have a diet based SOLELY on oranges. What you want is a good mix of different clean energy sources because:
+ they will compete and advance technologically
+ they won't all fail at once
+ they will all pollute in a different way, diluting the total footprint
No energy form is safe, no energy form is (totally) clean.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
We need to really diversify our energy.
That included using Wind, Solar, Tidal, Hydro, Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear...
We need to stop focusing on Green Energy but focus on diverse energy, so we can hedge the trade-offs each offer.
Even coal. While coal has the biggest environmental impact. It is currently the most plentiful in the United States, and shouldn't be discounted.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Every time a discussion about wind power comes up, some troll (usually with a very high UID, sometimes with an account created solely for the purpose) asks how putting up windmills will affect weather.
The answer should be fairly obvious. We have cut down a shitload of trees, which normally slow down wind. Putting up windmills? Slows down wind slightly, increases turbulence significantly, causing minimal localized temperature effects. Kind of like putting up trees. If there is any significant effect, it will be moderating, which is a good thing.
In addition, wind turbines don't actually cause any heating worth mentioning, unless perhaps they catch on fire. This is covered in the linked article, which had the GP actually cared about this issue, they would have found with google and read already. They cause thermal mixing, which can raise temperatures at a specific point, but which don't raise temperatures in a region. It only results in higher measured temperatures in a relatively small area downwind. This is expected due to (fractionally) lower wind speeds and greater thermal mixing.
In summary, anyone who expresses concerns about wind farms affecting weather is a shill, a troll, or an idiot, because these are not real concerns, and this is a well-known fact.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ugh, sure its a great idea, but I'd be more interested in something that actually did address the logistics. In North Iowa near my hometown, there is a field that they keep the parts for some of the wind turbines, those tings are massive, the field is right next to the railroad tracks because these things are so massive. There's a whole slew of parts just waiting to be assembled into a productive turbine (or 20). But what about the power lines being run to these things? The cost to put one up? legislation that has to be navigated to accomplish all that, the unsung heroes of these kinds of big ideas are the ones who actually (figure it out) and get it done (Logistically).
People don't need to know wonderful and useful $Green_energy_of_the_week is, they need to know how realistic it is (or isn't). Ignoring the fact that you have an implementation problem doesn't make it look any more attractive when it comes time to write the check. Unfortunately that doesn't get much attention because it's the un-interesting part of the problem.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
...pretty little things, the turbines at Windside. Do you notice how they provide all sorts of figures, except the generating capacity? There's a reason for having long honking blades - you gather power from a larger area. These generators aren't much wider than the post they sit on, and they aren't going to generate much power at all. The best you can get are these quotes:
"The core of our business is based on small turbines charging battery banks that power small DC systems"
And this incredibly misleading quote: "The biggest Windside wind turbine is currently WS-12. It is 6 meter high and its diameter is 2 meters. WS-12 produces annually approx. 8600 kWh at the average wind speed of 5 m/s". Note: kilowatt-hours, with no time period stated. They probably mean per year. So we may well be talking about a 1kw generator. Again, they most carefully do not say.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Compare the amount of energy available to the amount we are using. Then reply to yourself telling the idiots that modded you up to stop doing that.
You can get nuclear powerplant, a solar array, a coal burner, a gas burner, a wind farm. But something is going to have to generate that electricity you keep on consuming.
Make a choice. Oh wait, I forgot. Democracy, power without accountability. You can vote to have your cake and eat it to.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My basement is almost a museum of water heater technology - when we moved in, there was a huge multi-fuel (coal or oil) Victorian segmented iron boiler sitting right next to a 1970s style uninsulated storage water heater.
I ripped out both (I broke a 1-ton come-along pulling the boiler up and out) and installed a state-of-the-art Aquastar on-demand gas water heater and lived with it for four years. Then I ripped that out and replaced it with a heavily insulated storage water heater.
Want to guess which one was cheapest and most efficient in real world use? Hints: I have two teenagers in the house these days, and I have my own well.
Don't make on-demand water heating a golden hammer.
If you're going to invent 20,000ft windmills, then you might as well invent a magical creature who defecates some super-fuel, like Lord Nibbler.
Really you only get a fraction out of the theoretical power stated in the paper. You're looking at about 1/3 to 1/5 of what they state for output, realistically. And how would you have a wind farm near an airport? To me, I read this as the absurd stunts that wind would have to pull off to be viable. The fact that it ignores the practical application means this is nothing than fiction, and should be treated as such, because no one except Charlie Sheen gets to live in a fictitious world. So there you have it wind adherents: you're all Charlie Sheens!
Meanwhile, Sharp has a solar panel that is 43% efficient. Lets contrast that with the theoretical maximum of 59% for wind mills. there's a 16 percent advantage... but unlike solar cells, windmills can never be more efficient than 59%. Also, windmills need regular service being a mechanical apparatus. Solar cells, even the ones that move, don't have the same ear and tear as a a windmill.
In the end, wind doesn't work, even when you have subsidies.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
People have studied it, and nothing significant happens because you don't stop the wind, just slow it down very slightly like all the trees you chopped down and terrain you flattened used to.
I really can't believe this got modded up even by one point. It is on about the same level as people who worry that Britain will be blown away by all the windmills, sailing off into the Atlantic.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Once you factor in night, that 43% efficiency drops to 21.5%. The wind turbine still works at night. The solar panel doesn't.
You need to take into account capacity factor. Overall average capacity factor for solar in the U.S. is 0.14. That is, if your solar panels have a nominal generating capacity of 100 Watts, their output averaged over a year after you factor in night, bad weather, angle of the sun, and maintenance is about 14 Watts. 14 Watts in real-world use per 100 Watts of rated capacity. The desert Southwest can get up to 0.18-0.19, but for the country overall it's 0.14.
Wind's capacity factor on land is about 0.20-0.25. Ideal locations (certain areas of Scotland, Spain, Portugul, and offshore) can hit 0.40-0.50. So multiply your max conversion efficiencies with capacity factor and you get solar = 6% best case, wind = 12% worst case.
I'm a strong nuclear proponent, but even I've been saying that wind has been on the cusp of becoming cost-competitive with nuclear and coal. Solar OTOH is still over 5x more expensive.