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Researchers Claim Wind Turbine Energy Payback In Less Than a Year
mdsolar (1045926) writes "Researchers have carried out an environmental lifecycle assessment of 2-megawatt wind turbines mooted for a large wind farm in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. They conclude that in terms of cumulative energy payback, or the time to produce the amount of energy required of production and installation, a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit
within five to eight months of being brought online."
Watts Up With That? has a more skeptical take on the calculations.
We attended an investors meeting in Portland relating to solar power 2 yrs. ago....the panel of solar experts all kept talking about playing catch up with wind and how solar was getting it's ass kicked. Finally someone in the group asked "Can you tell us what room the wind energy investment group is meeting in...?"
The rebuttal is from a climate-change denial site?
What the fuck is this, Fox News? What's next, Free Republic?
Fuck you, Timothy. Seriously, just fuck off.
--
BMO
A 4 unit coal fired power station will be lucky to have 80% availability.
Maintenance is continuous on those things, so they don't have 100% availability either.
Admitted, the downtime is handled on site (3 of 4 units still run while one is down), but that's WHY there's a power grid. So the counter argument has flaws as well.
That's what they're for here, right? The "more skeptical take" is a joke. It's a fundamental nature of intermittent power sources and a well known fact that you need an improved grid over a large geographic area to filter out the outliers. Picking out one installation is dishonest, and so is to claim that the energy being intermittent falsifies the original cumulative EROEI claim, which had nothing to do with whether one installation is continuously sufficient. It's a blatant straw man on WUWT's part.
Ezekiel 23:20
What the hell was that inserted for? It was an idiotic point made on a site which clearly has a political axe to grind. It wasn't made well. Anyone claiming to engage in a scientific debate with the phrase "by my own observation" deserves to be laughed out of the room.
This is supposed to be Slashdot, not Fox. Why the hell was this included?
And of course the skeptical take comment section is filled with non-researched and non-constructive comments about wind energy.
Almost as if being for or against green energy were an overt political statement than a well thought out business plan and energy policy.
(I'm from Kansas, we have nowhere near enough utilization of wind energy, despite several large wind farms in the western part of the state).
If this wind farm expects payback in five to eight months, we should be able to find some other wind farm (anywhere) that had payback in less than a year, right? Does anybody have a pointer to that kind of success story?
The advocates of wind energy make no claim that the wind generators will run 24/7. Nevertheless, calculating payback as if they do provides a convenient comparison to other power sources. In practice, a combination of wind, solar and natural gas can economically provide power and greatly reduce the generation of greenhouse gasses and should cost less as usage of the technology grows. In fact, similar technology works for hybrid cars and for Florida Power & Light's hybrid gas / solar electric plant (http://www.fpl.com/environment/solar/projects.shtml). Obviously this is still an experimental arrangement, but it works for cars, so why not commercial electric power?
But the citation doesn't appear to include the costs of those "large scale energy storage" facilities. Nothing about batteries, hydralic lift storage, chemical stste change, etc. So it would appear to just as "biased". Or cheerleading, if you prefer.
So once a person factors in the battery and/or other large scale energy storage, does that change the calculus about the return?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Oddly enough both of the calculations in the OP were correct, yes, the wind turbine generates energy equivalent to its energy of manufacture quite quickly, and yes it is still a bad idea to rely on wind energy for use in a national grid except for a tiny percentage, each MW of wind turbine relies on an additional MW of conventional generators if you want 24/7 availability, or I suppose you could try energy storage, which ought to be added to the turbine operating cost and energy payback.
Interesting to see such knee jerk support for an inappropriate technology. I wonder if the posters above have ever thought through why Germany is /reducing/ its reliance on wind turbines?
The percentage of energy storage required should decrease as the number of PV and wind installations and grid quality increases (the large area averaging/smoothing factor), and I guess the plan is to cover whatever remains with fast-acting energy sources like gas turbines, which can be powered with biogas to a considerable extent. (I also hope that cheap supercaps for stationary, low-density domestic energy storage will make a few breakthroughs in the decades to come, as these should be virtually maintenance-free.)
Ezekiel 23:20
Or you did not read/cannot comprehend the study, which has nothing to do with repayment of monetary investment in the turbine... It is repayment of environmental resources used.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It's hilarious watching people argue over a topic that has already been shown to be a non-issue. The EIA (US) and German statistics show that, in aggregate, wind-energy sources produce a relatively steady amount of power. Individual turbines and even whole wind farms might not be deterministic, but all the wind farms taken together... are.
-Matt
CdTe panels have been in this range for a while. It is expected that crystaline silicon will get there by 2020 for a central European site.
"The photovoltaic (PV) market is experiencing vigorous growth, whereas prices are dropping rapidly. This growth has in large part been possible through public support, deserved for its promise to produce electricity at a low cost to the environment. It is therefore important to monitor and minimize environmental impacts associated with PV technologies. In this work, we forecast the environmental performance of crystalline silicon technologies in 2020, the year in which electricity from PV is anticipated to be competitive with wholesale electricity costs all across Europe. Our forecasts are based on technological scenario development and a prospective life cycle assessment with a thorough uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. We estimate that the energy payback time at an in-plane irradiation of 1700kWh/(m2year) of crystalline silicon modules can be reduced to below 0.5years by 2020, which is less than half of the current energy payback time. "
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pip.2363/abstract
The energy storage thing is red herring. You balance with other sources.
Please read the "skeptical" article with a skeptical eye. The poor guy goes through all the work to get the specs and highlights the minimum wind speed rate of 4m/s for the turbines to work. He also links to an excellent page showing wind patters and letting you see wind speed across the country.
But then, he goes off the rails. He can "tell from his own experience" that the wind doesn't always blow that fast and "look at all the blue, which means low wind speed". The big problem is that he didn't go one extra step and actually click on the map to check wind speeds. Almost all of the blue is above the required 4m/s for the turbines. The green is actually too fast. The maximum wind speeds for the turbines are 25m/s and the green areas are over 30.
Poor guy, how embarassing for him. That could have been avoided with a few clicks.
According to the chart in this article,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/13/3436923/germany-energy-records/
Germany has not significantly reduced megawatts from wind turbines. Adding other renewable sources is simply a wise move.
"the time to produce the amount of energy required of production and installation" ...but not the time to produce enough energy to pay back the actual cost of the machine, including labor and materials.
The actual study is very, very careful to NOT claim that it will pay back the total system cost. It's just the amount of energy used in production and installation, not the cost of raw materials and labor.
The price of electricity is falling in Germany owing to renewable energy. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... They like wind power.
Germany supplies about 10% of its electricity from wind. That is not a tiny percentage. In Brandenburg, 78 percent of all electricity now comes from wind turbines, photovoltaic panels or from burning biomass. Best to use multiple renewable energy sources. But it's not suprising to see knee jerk opposition to renewables. Those who make shitloads of money from selling high pollution carbon fuels also spend shitloads of money spreading FUD and dissinformation intended to undermine support for the alternatives.
OK, so then did it include the costs of the other sources? Typically wind turbines average around 24% of rated capacity, so that means around four windmills needed to balance at a minimum. That should change the calculations a bit.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Watts Up With That? has a more skeptical take on the calculations."
And if you look at the site it's pretty much a site full of straw men and attacks on climate change friendly politicians and scientists, with little actual scientific facts (besides the grandiose endorsement of it's own content.)
Why is this link even here? Did someone just randomly Google it and stick it on there because, hey, it's on the internet? Or did someone want the site to get more page views?
C'mon editors. This is news for nerds. Not news my uncle sent me in his email about how Obama is part of the illuminati.
to be fair, i havent read their current analysis of this particular project. but watts up with that is well known to be well wrong about well lots :)
If the analysis was in terms of "environmental resources used", how many months does it take before the wind turbine produces enough steel, rare earths, and other raw materials to let us produce an identical turbine?
Yes, but they already took a capacity factor into account.
Consumption varies as well. Wind is a nice way to deal with that since you can bring more power on line as needed in little 2MW chunks instead of having to fire up a boiler ahead of time to get 350MW.
What's the average cost per kWh for electricity in the US vs Germany? It's 12c in the US and 36c in Germany. Don't try and tell us how wonderful the green energy is when it's 3x the cost.
With respect, if you are going to go that far you need at least a crude model of a real power grid to plug it into and the answer is going to vary very wildly depending on which one you use, the local climate etc.
It's also worth noting that the only people who advocate single sources of energy for a grid are salesfolk, fanboys, or people getting some sort of financial benefit from the salesfolk (eg. "lobbied" people in politics). Real grids tend to have things like pump storage or gas turbines to plug the gaps already in addition to a mix of energy sources - monocultures lead to single points of failure. So with some models you'd have another source paid for a decade ago with only running costs to worry about and others you'd need to buy something new.
Non-renewable energy conversion..... You guys are really bad at this arnt you.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
If you do it in dollar terms the payback will be much faster in some markets due to insanely high spot prices for peak power. In others it won't. Even in the same place six months later it may have much slower financial payback. Energy payback is far easier to determine.
Note to self: Assuming that thaylin means what s/he types is a bad idea.
Note to thaylin: Don't blame others when they make that assumption.
About 30 years ago, "wind farms" were built in several places in California where the wind seems constant, not intermittent. One is in the San Gorgonio Pass along I10 between Beaumont and Palm Springs. Another one is in the Altamont Pass in the hills near Oakland. In both places, with what was then primitive technology, the constancy of the wind still justified the construction of these "wind farms". I have seen both installations, and I have never seen them idled by a lack of wind.
Similarly, there are places where sunshine is so prevalent that solar power would have few interruptions during the day. Unlike wind power, however, storage of electricity during the day is needed for use at night.
In the meantime, Southern California Edison has outages at all times of the year. These are not the result of unreliable generation sources. Instead, these are the result of not performing any kind of scheduled preventive maintenance on local portions of the distribution system.
They're note disputing the energy payback period
It doesn't hurt to read both sides of the story. In this case it's pretty obvious that both sides are fudging the numbers; "energy payback" can be whatever you want it to be by including or ignoring various factors.
Seriously? At a national or regional level, that cost is a minimal increment.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Putting a windmill where you have land, just because you have land is stupid.
Putting a windmill where there's reliable wind is smart.
Learn to love Alaska
What are those other sources?
or geographic distribution
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
So once a person factors in the battery and/or other large scale energy storage, does that change the calculus about the return?
Nope, it was already accounted for in the calculation. The grid (which is already built and paid for) smooths out the variable supply. Before you ask about the cost of upgrading the grid, the whole question of variable output is irrelevant to the energy return on investment.
It's also not necessary to have energy storage, or at least not very much. Certain industrial processes can absorb huge amounts of energy and run only when needed, eg electrolysis and certain types of heaters. Adding other variable power sources, even other wind turbines in a distant place, will on average balance the load. And power plants can be built specifically for variable output (eg hydroelectric with a few extra turbines, gas power plants). All of which we already have, and none of which is the problem of someone building wind turbines. The only problem would be if the grid needed upgrading and the turbine owners could sell the power at above market rates -- but even that would be fine with me, I'd rather subsidize renewables than coal and especially oil (see pricetag of our involvement in the Middle East).
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Very interesting. Except for the misspelled words, very well written. I'm interested in any links you have concerning those subjects.
This is useless and irrelevant calculation.
What counts is what is the total cost and return on investment.
I concur. However, I believe it is requisite (though not sufficient) for a viable alternative to meet energy return on investment.
If it can't even do that, then it certainly can't be economical.
Cf. fusion energy: it certainly doesn't meet that threshold.
You average with wind power somewhere else and with solar and also balance with sources which can react quickly to changing demand, i.e. biomass, hydro, natural gas, ... For example, there is the concept of a virtual power plant which logically combines smaller plants to meet certain garantuees.
For example, it could still be economical for investors if it gets enough direct subsidies. For related reasons, this information is also useful for policy makers. It would not usually make sense to have subsidies for something like this.
Example: The earth crust contains 5% iron. So, when you're talking about producing steel, the issue is not the availability of the raw materials. The problem of producing steel is purely the amount of energy you have to put in, to convert the raw materials into a finished end product.Therefore it is a completely honest representation to look at the amount of energy required to produce the steel for the wind turbine, and see how long the wind turbine needs to be operated before it has produced that much.
Watts up with that looks like a Republican astroturf site dedicated to debunking climate science.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
That's why it says *ENERGY* investment, not "investment". Moron.
You don't get grid-wide failures of wind do you?
It's not "random". It's when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining and you can plan around what is know about those events.
I even put the words "ahead of time" in an attempt to head off comments such as the above.
a wind turbine with a working life of 20 years will offer a net benefit within five to eight months of being brought online."
Huh? What do the 20 years have to do with that?
If it offers a net benefit after 5-8 months, then it doesn't matter if the turbine has a working life of 1 year or 20 years, it offers a net benefit anyway.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
So one turbines produces intermittent. Big f-ing deal. The correlation between windspeeds between to sides 100 km apart is below 0.5 (based on 10 min averages over a year). So lot's of turbines solve most of the problem. Then there are still moments that there is no wind anywhere. Yes we need to change the system to allow for that, but that is just evolution from a retarded polluting system to a more modern non-polluting system. So stupid how you find even engineers claiming how intermittancy is such a big problem. Engineers are there to solve those problems and we are going to. No reason what so ever to stick to the old polluting system.
You failed Econ 101, didn't you? There is an awful lot of hydrocarbon fuel in the ground, but it still costs more than $100/barrel to buy it. Abundant does not mean cheap, and that $100/barrel doesn't cover negative externalities (which are addressed by, say, European-style gasoline/petrol taxes that account for the difference in end-user cost relative to the US).
If every home started to pump energy into the system would the energy prices decrease by so much that it would not be worth new homes bothering to hook up?
so how may valleys are you going to dam to build pumped storage hydro? those are not cheap and it not like china where you can just shoot the nimby protestors
Dinorwig cost half a billion pounds in the 1970's and thats just for 1,728 MW you would need several of these for the USA
I like them because they kill the hell out of raptors, and this should bring back the Sage Grouse in Wyoming. Thanks eagle choppers!
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Especially in the southwestern USA, where solar power is very viable because there are enough sunny days to make them practical. At where I live currently, I have enough sunlight during the summer for the unit to generate full power from just after 6:00 am all the way to past 7:00 pm.
Story about wind energy's return on investment, along with skeptic review of the numbers.
Slashdot comments?
16 comments rated 5
of which:
- 5 comments are regarding the calculations, or relevant thereto (3 are on one thread)
- the rest are ENTIRELY ad-hominem attacks against wattsup as climate-deniers, idiots, etc.
I agree fundamentally: Wattsup *does* indulge in ...creative... (likely deliberate) misunderstanding. Asserting that "in effect a wind turbine over it's life span can power 500 homes for free" is patently NOT the same as "you can power 500 homes with a wind turbine".
The attacks here, however, are mainly without substance, just "he's a CLIMATE DENIER!!" - smacking more of an accusation of apostasy than logical flaws.
I would only point out one further thing: if one posts an asserted fact, and then posts the opposing viewpoint as someone entirely biased and easily dismissed...I'd call THAT a strawman as well.
-Styopa
The Administration is going to say it's OK for wind farms to kill eagles despite what the Endangered Species Act says, perhaps because the owners donate to Democrats. Interesting to see the tree-huggers and green-energy people in-fighting...
ABC News.com
A California wind farm will become the first in the nation to avoid prosecution if eagles are injured or die when they run into the giant turning blades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday.
The Shiloh IV Wind Project LLC, 60 miles east of San Francisco, will receive a special permit allowing up to five golden eagles to be accidentally killed over five years. Previously, such a violation could potentially draw criminal charges and discourage private investment in wind farms known for catching birds in their rotors.
Same story in Michigan where Gov. Granholm's giant leap forward in renewables would create 86,000 jobs (actual job count 120 jobs)...
Murphy was an optimist
Therein, as the "Watts Up With That?" commenters point out, lies the problem. You can *only* achieve that kind of ROI if you're connected to a power grid that will pay you fixed rates for your excess power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, and guarantee availability of power in other circumstances (against base rates).
Power plants have a nasty habit of costing money every second while they're being kept in readiness, let alone when they're on standby or acting as spinning reserves. Money their operators can't recoup by selling power when there is a glut due to solar and wind generators.
As soon as you factor that cost in, the picture for alternative energy sources becomes a lot less rosy.
Not that we shouldn't try to maximise the fraction of wind and solar power, but let's be realistic and factor in the cost of keeping (conventional) power plants on standby instead of treating the power grid as a giant zero-cost battery!
Since when is celebrity climate denialist blogger and outed Heartland Institute shill Anthony Watts an authority on anything but taking a big steaming dump on science?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel