Chinese Company Offers Free Training For US Coal Miners To Become Wind Farmers (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you want to truly understand what's happening in the energy industry, the best thing to do is to travel deep into the heart of American coal country, to Carbon County, Wyoming (yes, that's a real place). The state produces most coal in the US, and Carbon County has long been known (and was named) for its extensive coal deposits. But the state's mines have been shuttering over the past few years, causing hundreds of people to lose their jobs in 2016 alone. Now, these coal miners are finding hope, offered from an unlikely place: a Chinese wind-turbine maker wants to retrain these American workers to become wind-farm technicians. It's the perfect metaphor for the massive shift happening in the global energy markets. The news comes from an energy conference in Wyoming, where the American arm of Goldwind, a Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer, announced the free training program. More than a century ago, Carbon County was home to the first coal mine in Wyoming. Soon, it will be the site of a new wind farm with hundreds of Goldwind-supplied turbines.

Comments

Re:When I was a kid it wasn't free training

[lucm]

It's not just for their employees, they're offering this program to unemployed coal miners as well.

Re:The fix is in

[whoever57]

The maintenance cost for a turbine is about 30% of its energy production.

Bullshit. This study, which is already old and out of date, puts O&M costs at 20-25%. With the newer, larger offshore turbines, that figure will be lower.

Did you collect your check from the Koch Brothers for posting that falsehood?

Re:And that is the problem with Wind turbines

[Rei]

Beyond what everyone else is pointing out: no, wind is not baseload; it's intermittent. But:

1) Intermittent + Peaking = Baseload
2) Intermittent + Storage = Baseload
3) Intermittent + Hydro uprating = Baseload
4) Intermittent + Different kind of intermittent = Less intermittency
5) Intermittent + Geographic diversity = Less intermittency
6) Current grid = Demand intermittency (aka, we're already used to dealing with the situation, just in reverse).

Yes, high wind penetration means better grid interconnects and/or more peakers. But wind is so damned cheap now (contracts on new wind farms in the US averaging around 2,5 cents per kWh) that you can afford to invest in better interconnects and peakers. Which does everyone a service, because it makes your grid more reliable with conventional baseload plants or existing links go down. Solar, by contrast, is more expensive than wind (the cheapest new contract in the US being 4 cents per kWh - although places outside the US are under 3 cents). But solar, in addition to pairing nicely with wind (the latter peaks when the sun is down, the former when it's up), actually reduces peaking demand at low penetrations (offsetting the daytime peak, and corresponding roughly with cooling needs), and doesn't require as extensive peaking at higher penetrations.