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US Wind Power Is Expected To Double In the Next 5 Years
merbs writes: The U.S. Department of Energy anticipates that the amount of electricity generated by wind power to more than double over the next five years. Right now, wind provides the nation with about 4.5 percent of its power. But an in-depth DOE report (PDF) released yesterday forecasts that number will rise to 10 percent by 2020—then 20 percent by 2030, and 35 percent by 2050.
Wind is kicking solar's ass. And there is good reason.
Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind? What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far? How does that affect terraforming? What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?
These questions will never be answered, I don't think, because the politics that drive wind power are the same as those that drive anthro climate change - "We're right, shut up if you disagree?"
The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis. The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.
We're 7 times as numerous as the Earth can sustain. Unless and until we fix that problem, our habitable climate WILL be destroyed.
There will certainly be a lot of hot air and bluster to be harnessed leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
So you think we need to get rid of 6 out of every 7 people. Will you be first in line?
My bean consumption is up 32% over last year.
Just in time for the world to be destroyed by climate change.
4.5 percent already? I found this number astonishing, I would have guessed less than one percent. Shows what I know. It seems wind power has a bit of a wind problem, or I have a head in the sand problem. 50/50
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
From what I have read, some new wind farm projects have gone belly up. The ideal that this is somehow a practical and sound investment is a bit skewed. In fact in the midwest two factors are killing wind farms. One is local opinion that votes down any wind farm projects, and two those that have been built find their cost of operation a bit higher then expected. Talking with one maintenance worker who maintains them. He says, that many of generators fail to perform optimally and shut down far too frequently then was anticipated. Leaving generators idle for much longer waiting for parts and people to repair them. He says many companies who invest in them were assuming they were a turn key operation and that you install them and forget them. Unfortunately that has not happened.
Has anyone studied the effect on the environment of taking all of that energy out of the wind?
Yes. It's basically a nonissue.
What if seeds and dust aren't carried as far?
Then they settle someplace else. No actual evidence exists however to indicate wind turbines are actually causing such an effect however on any sort of substantial scale.
How does that affect terraforming?
We're on Terra so terraforming on terra is meaningless.
What about migratory birds? Has anyone bothered to solve the problem of mass kills during migration season?
The number of birds killed by wind turbines is a rounding error compared to the number killed by domestic cats.
The Earth is going to be destroyed by people (on both sides of the political aisle) who refuse to take a reasoned approach to our energy crisis.
What energy crisis? We have no lack of energy. We have a pollution crisis due to a lack of clean energy sources. Wind is demonstrably cleaner than some of the alternatives. There is no ideal energy source with no problems so it's a minimization problem. What is the least worst way to supply energy without resulting in catastrophic climate effects.
The root causes of our energy shortage, climate change, starvation, hunger, crime, and disease, are all one in the same: OVERPOPULATION.
There is no energy shortage. Climate change is due to pollution, not overpopulation. Starvation and hunger are distribution problems, not production problems. Crime has existed since the dawn of mankind and has nothing inherently to do with overpopulation. Same for disease. At most some of these problems can be exacerbated by population but population is not the root cause of any of them.
With climate change, there is more energy in the atmosphere - higher wind speeds.
We won't be able to harness all of this increase of course, generally wind turbines can't handle tornadoes for example.
I personally think that vertical wind turbines (that look like an egg beater sticking up, rather than a large propeller ) are the way to go.
Oh, you too? In Quebec we're swimming in surplus hydroelectricity, yet they're building turbines everywhere and increasing our rates as much as they can.
Mostly random stuff.
After all, the US has elections coming up. All that hot air can be harnessed for energy even if it will heat the planet by a few more fractions of a degree.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
2016 elections. Need I say more?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Natural gas is so cheap and so abundant in the US that wind power makes zero financial sense as a competitor. If wind actually does double, it will be a huge misallocation of resources.
And it won't really help the environment. The natural gas will just be burnt off or vented to the atmosphere instead of being captured to produce electricity.
That much hot air being generated would cause immediate global warming.
Not ONE post from someone complaining that wind can't possibly work, and the only possible solution is to build [insert nuclear power unicorn faerie dust machine here].
Wow, the worm has indeed turned.
You just wait until my big brother Fusion shows up. He'll kick all of ya'lls asses!
He said he'd be here any decade now.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Surely this is due to congresses new open door policy!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
I recently noticed an interesting convergence. The long term growth of both solar and wind capacity is exponential. The growth rate for solar is higher than for wind power but wind power is currently ahead in capacity. If we take a capacity factor of 20% for solar and 30% for wind, how long does it take to cover the roughly 20 TW of world energy demand?
For solar, taking 200 MW of capacity in 1995 and 100,000 MW in 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... we get to 100,000,000 MW in 39 years from 1995 since (log(100 TW)-log(200 MW))/(log(100,000 MW)-log(200 MW))/17 years)=39 years. So 2034 is when we may expect solar PV to cover all energy demand.
For wind, taking 7,600 MW of capacity in 1995 and 369,553 MW in 2014 http://www.gwec.net/wp-content... we get to 60,000,000 MW in 39 years from 1997 since (log(60 TW)-log(7,600 MW))/(log(369,533 MW)-log(7.500 MW))/17 years = 39 years. So, 2036 is where we may expect wind power to cover all energy demand.
So, within just a couple years of each other, either technology can be projected to grow to cover all current demand.
A driver for ongoing exponential growth for PV is the still falling cost of manufacture. It is expected that panels will cost $0.36/W to produce in 2017. http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
This seems to be a faster rate than pledges coming in for Paris are anticipating so we might have some confidence that those pledges are going to be met.
Has there been a wind sustainability study for future use with the climate changing? I mean it's been stated that there will be rain in places where there is no rain now. And rainy places will have drought in the future. So where are the wind models at for the future? I'm sure there are graphs and pretty pictures for us simpletons. And with these studies, by harvesting the wind (slowing it down, redirecting, etc) how does will that affect the ecosystem at large?
Now I'm being a bit facetious, but it should be a study for science. For example, there is x wind on the Earth, you slow down x to y, what are the results? If we are talking about invisible gasses in to the air, that could appear simplistic, but science has proven otherwise. So slowing down the Earth's wind patterns could have long term damaging effects on the Earth. Just as scooping up photons and keeping them from reaching the Earth's surface.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
It mixed up the percentage of coal and wind.
This a study that makes certain assumptions about usage and capacity and draws conclusions of the realities of what that market will look like into the future. This one is labeled the "Study Scenario' and is paired with the Central Study Scenario' and the 'Baseline Scenario', all of which make differing assumptions about what direction the Wind generation market will become over the next 40 years.
This study assumes significant investment and growth specifically in GW expansion, breaking down costs, difficulties, consequences and lots of other details. The crux of the study comes at ES.2-3 where it shows, in years where there is no Wind power subsidy from the federal government, there is no expansion of generation.
From the Article: ES.5.1 The Opportunity: The Wind Vision analysis modeled a future Study Scenario (with various sensitivities) in which 10% of the nation’s electricity demand is met by wind power in 2020, 20% by 2030, and 35% by 2050.
ES.4.2 Risk of Inaction: Without actions to improve wind’s competitive position in the market, such as those described in the roadmap, the nation risks losing its existing wind manufacturing infrastructure and a range of public benefits.
This is an Energy Dept rationalization for increased funding most especially of the Wind Power Production Tax Credit. The most entertaining part is the repeated mentions of the limitations of wind power (low wind regions, distance from power grid, unpredictable output). They have to increase power usage significantly to predict lower prices (because of the largely insurmountable technical issues with Wind) even though electricity usage has declined for 6 years. In short, this is a brochure for the best case scenario for Wind Power if everything goes right. The original studies (this is an executive summary) dont seem to be available.
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And they're installing "smart" meters that will allow them to charge more during peak hours.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Really, so you're dumping water out rather than letting it run through the turbines?
No, you're selling it to outside Quebec and making vast amounts of money off of it. And you'll be exporting even more power once you get the turbines.
Power transmission doesn't stop at regional borders.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
Well, that's not quite true. Somebody is making vast amounts of money, but it isn't Quebec.
You know 200 years ago London looked like Beijing does today because of all the coal smoke, right?
That "someone" is Hydro-Québec, which is owned by the government of Quebec. They bring the government over 2 billion dollars per year and pump about 10 billion a year into the local economy.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
> Fail. Completely. Yet again.
Yes, you did.
> There simply isn't enough wind in many areas to even consider it.
There is 10 times as much wind power in the US as needed to power everything in it.
http://www.windenergyfoundation.org/interesting-wind-energy-facts
> We don't have enough sunshine in may parts of the country either
There is 100 times as much sunshine in the US as needed to power everything in it.
http://ecowatch.com/2014/11/20/solar-energy-power-u-s/
And before you start typing your ill-informed response, it doesn't make a difference what you think, because solar and wind are outpacing all other forms of power generation both in the US and the world. So you're wrong. Period.
200? Try 60:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
~4000 dead.
Thank you for the awesome post.
So many times people simply say "no it isn't" in response to some article or position, it's refreshing to see someone who can put forth some qualifiers and make a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Bravo!
(And I'll award triple-word score for making a linear prediction within a logarithmic scale. That's not something most people can do.)
Apart from the highly dubious extrapolation of exponential growth when there are hard physical limits e.g. solar cell efficiency cannot exceed 100% and there is limited land available. There is another problem: what happens on a calm night? There was a study done several years ago in the UK (I apologize but I cannot find the link) which showed that because when you get calm conditions you can get huge areas of Europe becalmed at the same time you would need to convert almost every body of water in the UK into a pumped storage scheme in order to be able to provide power during calm weather...and that's assuming you can get everyone to agree that covering the landscape with wind farms is acceptable.
Wind and solar certainly have their place and are definitely worth developing but they are not the entire solution to our energy problems.
The solar version of Moore's Law is called Swanson's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... Note that the figure has a mistake where 2014 should be 2017.
Why do you use watt per square meter of home? If you closed off half your home, would you use half the power? Hell no. So it's not a useful stat, is it?
Oh, it'll drop, but not a massive ammount.
One reason why you use a huge amount of electric is that in Europe drying clothes on a clothesline (or clothes horse indoors in winter) is normal, whereas when I've discussed it on slashdot et al, Americans seem to think this is some pre-historic cro-magnon regression, barely above living in caves and huddling around a single fire for warmth.
Air-con isn't popular either, we'll put up with temperature changes in the home, though with common central heating now, it's more likely our homes will be set to warm up more than it used to.
The USA has high AC use because we have cities in very warm climates. Cities where the temperature can stay above 90F (32C) for weeks at a time- day AND night. Plus keeping a livable temperature in an office building improves productivity. I have worked in Tokyo in August and Baden, Switzerland in June. The high office temperature meant I could not maintain concentration nearly as well as in a US office building. If the $$ spent on air conditioning didn't deliver better productivity, we wouldn't spend the money. As for clothes driers, my wife is from Japan where line drying is normal and she quickly converted to drier-only. It is a huge labor and time saver, and clothes are a lot softer. If you put them on the hanger while still hot, ironing is only rarely required.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Mod this up. This doesn't have to do (necessarily) with Americans being wasteful but has a lot to do culture. Germans (and much of mainland Europe) have a phobia of refrigeration. No ice in drinks, no air conditioning, no blowing air via a fan or open window! This isn't universally true but refrigeration is a primary energy consumer after heating a home. You don't need a big fridge if you aren't chilling half the stuff we do like drinks and eggs. This is also apples and oranges because unless you are both heating your homes the same way the numbers are irrelevant. I don't use much electricity at all but that is because my stove, furnace and water heater are gas.
The biggest factor of course is the price of electricity. There are market forces at work here. In the Pacific Northwest I pay about $.08/kw. I have barely any (financial) incentive to conserve. Add to that 90% of our power comes from hydro and I have very little guilt as well. Compare that with Germany where it is nearly $.40/kw. I'd probably be a lot more conservative if my electricity was 5x more expensive.
Why do you use watt per square meter of home? If you closed off half your home, would you use half the power? Hell no. So it's not a useful stat, is it?
Yes, I would expect that outcome, or very close to it anyway.
In 2014, my maximum monthly kWh and lowest monthly:
July: 1599 kWh (almost continual AC usage. max electrical)
April: 489 kWh (min, zero AC usage)
I have smart thermostats and a python script running on cron that logs their status every 3 minutes. I have exact HVAC usage records going back three years, so I can say this with some confidence :)
So, establish a baseline of ~500 kWh if you take away my HVAC usage. Almost 50% of all of my electrical usage is HVAC. If you reduced my house space in half, I would expect the HVAC portion to decrease by more than half. For one thing, I could probably ditch one of the HVAC units, for another thing the external wall portion of the house would be proportionally smaller (fewer leaks, etc). Lighting and wiring losses would add some additional reductions in electrical usage.
So, I think watt per square meter of home is a very informative measure.
If you would rather argue kWh / person, I'm guessing--giving the GP's data--that I would still compare favorably to many European households! It's possible I'm missing something, but that GP's data is the first real numbers I have seen of individual, not aggregate, European (German) household usage.
One reason why you use a huge amount of electric is that in Europe drying clothes on a clothesline (or clothes horse indoors in winter) is normal, whereas when I've discussed it on slashdot et al, Americans seem to think this is some pre-historic cro-magnon regression, barely above living in caves and huddling around a single fire for warmth.
I've run the numbers, clothes drying is not that significant for our household numbers. It is dwarfed by HVAC. For a time we were using cloth diapers and I was counting the number of loads (which, as you might expect, was very high!).
I would like to use a clothesline, but living where I do, we have extreme humidity in the summer that adds some difficulty. A major annoyance of mine is the fascist nature of American home owner's associations, many of which BAN clotheslines. Ridiculous.
Air-con isn't popular either, we'll put up with temperature changes in the home, though with common central heating now, it's more likely our homes will be set to warm up more than it used to.
I also log local weather station data. For July 2014, the average temperature near my house at 1PM was 33 C and the average humidity was around 80% (with 97% not at all uncommon). You would appreciate the air conditioning too if you lived here (and indeed, a German couple who live in my neighborhood are NOT fans of the humidity during July and August at all!).
Responsible cat owners -- that is to say, people who want their cats to live more than just a few years on average -- don't let their cats outside.
You have to subtract those numbers from your 76 to 96 million cats or you're just hand waving. We have six cats here; they don't go out at all, and I mean *never*. Most cat owners I know are smart enough to understand that cats have not evolved to deal with traffic; young humans with firecrackers/guns/poisons, curiosity, and little socialization; poisonous pools of vehicle fluids; and so on.
The other owners... well, you can't fix stupid, unfortunately.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I support a bounty on sycodon. See how that works?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is also apples and oranges because unless you are both heating your homes the same way the numbers are irrelevant.
This is the only thing you said that I disagree with. If the comparison is being made that "A typical german household is not using half of an american but less then a fifth," then you are having to compare apples and oranges. The net energy usage (or, if you get right down to it, the carbon usage) is the point, rather than an irrelevancy.
The biggest factor of course is the price of electricity. There are market forces at work here. In the Pacific Northwest I pay about $.08/kw. I have barely any (financial) incentive to conserve. Add to that 90% of our power comes from hydro and I have very little guilt as well. Compare that with Germany where it is nearly $.40/kw. I'd probably be a lot more conservative if my electricity was 5x more expensive.
HVAC--for most areas--remains the largest consumer of residential electricity.
Like you, my electrical rate is $.105/kw. I live in a sunny area (far more so than Germany) but the mathematics for solar don't really make sense for me. Even with tax breaks my payback would be a decade out. Plus, most of my electricity is from the local nuclear plant and I likewise don't feel guilty at all (I've never been into self flagellation). I do more to conserve water as that can be (during droughts) more scarce.
The stupider people are, the less control they will exert over reproductive issues in their lives.
Pretty sure that's both a major, perhaps *the* major, factor in population growth, and it is definitely a genetically coupled factor.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
First, I should point out that land area is not an issue for solar. http://www.csmonitor.com/Envir... But when we speak of wind or solar doing the whole job, (about our only choice when the oil, gas, coal and uranium run out) certainly we can see how some energy needs will require fuels. Aviation would be difficult without jet fuel. But synthetic hydrocarbon fuels are already a part of Sachs' Deep Decarbonization Pathways. http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/d... Calm nights can be handled that way as well.
The only rights worth more than the hot air it takes to describe them are the rights where the power exists that can and will enforce said right for you. And -- unfortunately -- rights being delineated in the US constitution ceased to matter when our congress and judiciary decided it was acceptable and practical to ignore their oaths in favor of expediency and funding.
However, in the case of scarce food, you will find that the typical individual will, when food is scarce enough, make very serious attempts to enforce their right to it at the expense of yours.
See, rights aren't what most people think they are. Not at all.
Here's the place where they typically demonstrate they are deluded: When they emit most sentences that contain "you can't", based on an idea. Because, oh yes, they can. The only question is "will they?" and in that case, if they are starving... sure they will.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It says If we want the benefits of wind doubling, we should subsidize wind farms. It blatantly says toward the end that this is not the Business as Usual model.
It's supposed to be. Out in the ND Bakken undertakings, the law requires that the gas output from the wells be taken off, rather than burned off, within one year of when the well begins to produce gas. Only a small fraction of the wells have done this -- one look at a night time satellite photo of the area shows you the result. Most of them look just like this. No one is rushing to prosecute the well owners, either.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Based on your post, I suspect almost anyone could meet that metric. Unless you're just ignorant. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
That may be a comprehension error on my part, I thought the conversation started with the amount of electricity consumed per household. I agree the ultimate definition is your carbon footprint but if the first gentleman's house is heated with electricity and the German's primarily use gas then of course I would expect there to be a large delta between the two. I don't know what Germans typically use for home heating.
In the Pacific Northwest our climate is generally mild and my heating expenses are VERY low. Many of us just use windows to regulate indoor temperature except in the coldest months of the year so heating and cooling for me is a small percentage of my household consumption. I think my major appliances like the dryer, dishwaher, refrigerator and freezer are what drives my electricity bill.
Hydro-Quebec pays the province of Quebec dividends every year. From there, that money is equitably distributed, along with the rest of the province's income, to various special individuals and organizations, often through infrastructure projects with special budgeting for wealth redistribution.
False. Bird deaths due to wind turbines are a rounding error.
http://www.stateofthebirds.org...
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Interesting link but wow - good thing I was not on her thesis committee because with a claim like that she would fail (either than or they are reporting it wrongly).
The total solar radiation at the Earth, outside the atmosphere, is 1.36 kW/m^2. Multiply that by the area given and the number of hours in a year and you get 762,470 TWh. However this would be the power for a solar satellite always pointing at the sun - so not even in orbit around the earth but say at one of the Lagrange points.
However things are not so simple because the panels on the ground rotate with the Earth. This means that for half the time they get no power and for the daylight period their angle is only optimal at midday. Note that even tracking panels will not help here because they would have to be spaced out so that their shadows did not meet another panel and so you would have less power collected at midday. The day-night cycle reduces the total power to 381,235 TWh and the angle of the sun throughout the day - I'll assume an RMS average here - drops it further to 269,573 TWh.
Now this assumes that the station in on the equator. If it actually was in West Virginia the power would drop further to 209,498 TWh due to the latitude (39 degrees) of the land. Now we need to look at the solar cell efficiency. The best that has ever been achieved in a lab is 46% so this leaves a total energy generating capacity of 96,369 TWh.
Unfortunately in 2008 world energy consumption was 143,851 TWh. Hence there is absolutely no way whatsoever that a solar plant of 25,000 square miles can supply the energy needs of the world. Even if it was located on the equator, there were never any cloudy days, we could mass produce solar cells which have only ever been available in a lab AND world energy needs have not increased since 2008 we still could not power the world from such an area! If the thesis in question makes those claims as reported it is just plain wrong.