Mid-Atlantic Coast Could Supply 330 gigawatts of Electricity

Researchers Find Substantial Wind Resource Off Mid-Atlantic Coast

Tracey Bryant, U Daily, University of Deleware, Feb 1, 2007

The wind resource off the Mid-Atlantic coast could supply the energy needs of nine states from Massachusetts to North Carolina, plus the District of Columbia--with enough left over to support a 50 percent increase in future energy demand--according to a study by researchers at the University of Delaware and Stanford University.

Researches found that the wind over the Middle Atlantic Bight, the aquatic region from Cape Cod, Mass., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., shown left, could produce 330 gigawatts (GW) of average electrical power if thousands of wind turbines were installed off the coast.

Supplying the region's energy needs with offshore wind power would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 68 percent and reduce greenhouse gases by 57 percent, according to the study

The scientists examined current wind-turbine technologies to determine the depth of the water and the distance from shore the wind turbines could be located.

They also defined “exclusion zones” where wind turbines could not be installed, such as major bird flyways, shipping lanes, chemical disposal sites, military restricted areas, borrow sites where sediments are removed for beach renourishment projects, and “visual space” from major tourist beaches.

The scientists' estimate of the full-resource, average wind power output of 330 gigawatts over the Middle Atlantic Bight is based on the installation of 166,720 wind turbines, each generating up to 5 megawatts of power. The wind turbines would be located at varying distances from shore, out to 100 meters of water depth, over an ocean area spanning more than 50,000 square miles, from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras.

On the practicality of producing 166,720 wind turbines, co-author Richard Garvine noted, “the United States began producing 2,000 warplanes per year in 1939 for World War II, increased production each year, and, by 1946, had sent 257,000 aircraft into service.

“We did that in seven years, using 1940s technology,” he said.

Comments

[Jimmi]

I like this news, kinda... I live in Virginia. But I'm afraid it might just be a dream. Hmmmm... a Phoenix Motorcar truck charged by off-shore wind. Anyone have a guess as to how much this would cost??? I wonder how this would affect shipping lanes since we have major shipping lanes all along the east coast ... not to forget we have the world's largest naval station. I'm sure the gov't would spend all but 10 seconds to deny this proposal. And I wonder how much it will cost to make hurricane resistant wind generators??? Not just high wing resistance, but also waves towering 20-50 ft. One good storm that follows the North Atlantic Drift and lights out, well if we were powering our cities from just wind generators. But I guess I can dream.

[Jim from The Energy Blog]

Jimmi, I guess you missed this point:

They also defined “exclusion zones” where wind turbines could not be installed, such as major bird flyways, shipping lanes, chemical disposal sites, military restricted areas, borrow sites where sediments are removed for beach renourishment projects, and “visual space” from major tourist beaches.

[amazingdrx]

I like the WW2 analogy, I have used it for years to characterize this energy revolution.

Floating wind/wave platforms are better though. Especially since they address Jimmi's point about hurricane danger.

Further offshore the waves and currents asociated with hurricanes will be less severe. Not to mention the nimbys will not see them.

They can also be designed to submerge in case of emergency conditions, to re-emerge once storms pass.

I think the great lakes would provide a lot of wind/wave power for the midwest, given floating platforms out of sight from shore.

[Nucbuddy]

Delight as windfarm is ruled out

Campaigners celebrate after councillors reject turbines plan, saving views of town and Minster
[...]
Penny Higbee, of Routh, added: "It's absolutely fantastic.

"Eight-five per cent of us were against it. Our main problem was the visual impact; it was too near the properties – the nearest was 600m, the majority between 800m and 1km."

Moving refusal, Conservative councillor Phyllis Pollard told the meeting location was all important: "The fact is this scheme will be very visible from the Westwood and that's the key problem as far as I'm concerned.

"It's a view captured by artists over a long period of time. We are very fortunate that it is a view that's changed relatively little over the years."

And Liberal Democrat councillor Tony McCobb said: "There'd be flicker and it would be detrimental to a classic view of the Westwood – probably the best known view in the whole of the East Riding."

[Kiga]

To Jimmi.

The technology already exists. These wind turbines can cope with the wind and waves in the North Sea.

http://www.hornsrev.dk/Engelsk/default_ie.htm

[Paul Dietz]

As I understand it, offshore wind is even more expensive than onshore, since it's more difficult to install and maintain and operates in a more diffcult environment.

[Wind Lover]

To the person who suggested the Great Lakes---

I'm not sure about the other lakes but I know with Lake Erie you can see Canada from Ohio on a clear day. I'd guess that if you put a turbine in the middle of the lake it would probably be visible.

NIMBY would be intense....lots of rich people have vacation homes on the lakes and a ton of people make money from Great Lakes tourism.

I think that Cedar Point has some good land for turbines tho. They could put in an exhibit about green power and educate some people.

[amazingdrx]

Ships go out to sea to weather storms. Shallow water builds up waves and storm surge current.

The larger size and economy of scale allowed by floating machines further offshore will more than make up for longer power cables.

And there's the submersible storm avoidance design. Machines on towers driven into the seabed are vulnerable to weather.

Near shore wind projects like cape wind face years of lawsuits and political infighting.

Of course wind machines on the great plains help the failing farm economy and there is more than enough space to replace all fossil and nuclear baseload power with wind. Nimby legal battles would be fewer on the great plains, they want wind power there.

500 kv dc power lines that transport AND store electricity complete the solution. Go with great plains wind then offshore on floating wave power platforms. That's an energy plan.

[Alex]

Nucbuddy, how many properties are within 1km of an OFFSHORE wind farm?

[amazingdrx]

Lake Superior and Lake Michigan are big enough to hide the floating machines over the horizon. Of course the international shipping industry would oppose it.

But that would highlight the invasive species and other pollution that ocean going vessels are dumping in ballast water. This is destroying the ecosystem. This shipping should be curtailed or regulated.

Ships are also stealing great lakes water, they have been caught and ocasionaly stopped, but as usual it's a case of industry self (no) regulation.

Floating offshore wind/wave platforms would make the huge nets that are destroying all life in the ocean unable to be used in coastal water, thus protecting important national fisheries from international illegal fishing fleets.

[Rick]

Wind turbines can be ugly sometimes (when their in bunches) - I would think that for a massive development of green power, wave energy would be better in an area like this. Easier to hide - better for baseload needs. I guess wave energy is just behind wind in development.

[Alex Nichols]

London Array offshore wind farm receives government backing

The consortium planning to build the world’s largest wind farm off the Kent coast, today welcomed the Government’s decision to grant consent for its offshore planning applications.

The consent gives the go ahead for the offshore sections of the 1,000MW wind farm which, if built, will displace nearly 2 million tonnes of CO2 a year. The wind farm would also generate enough electricity to power 750,000 homes, equivalent to a quarter of Greater London’s households or every home in Kent and East Sussex.

www.londonarray.com

[Jimmi]

Jim... oh my!

Looks like I need to slow down a bit when I read. You're absolutely right... I went from the main page to comments. I missed the whole bottom section. That's what I get for staying up late at nights trying to catch up on reading and research. And I get sarcastic when I lack sleep. Sorry guys... like I said before... I'm a newbie when it comes to alternative energy solutions... I'm not a scientists or engineer... I'm just a small time investor playing catch up to you guys. Thank you all for enlightening me... and I hate you guys cause you always give me too much to read =b

When I first read the article (well atleast the first half), I was inclined to believe that this was more of a pipe dream than a proposal. The additional comments and links you guys provided most definately made me think twice. I had no idea that offshore/inshore wind generator technology has advanced as much as it has. There are proposals all along the east coast to open up drilling rights for oil and natural gas exploration. To me... this is a big NO NO (not because it's an eye sore, but I don't promote fossil fuel expansion). I would definately write my congressman... or congresswoman (Thelma Drake) to futher look into this. But I'm afraid her position is for expanding drilling rights... I could only hope that this information makes it to her eyes to read.

Rick.... in regards to wave technology, I think you're heading in the right direction. Specifically... currents!!! The Chesapeake Bay (CB) has a unique feature in which I haven't heard anyone try to utilize... tidal changes. The CB has some strong currents and in my area many deaths are caused by these currents. These currents will not have unscheduled "down times". The total volume of water that enters/exits during these tidal changes are huge (did a report on this back in high school.. I'll see if I can get some numbers for you guys). We already have a structure that spams from one end to the other of the entire CB. It's called the Chesepeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and it runs from Virginia Beach, VA to the Eastern Shore. How hard would it be to slap some generators on an existing structure and start producing electricity. I would guess that the net effect would atleast be comparable to the Hoover Dam, maybe even more so cause the tidal changes have no seasonal down time. It could generate power all year long. There would be no eye sores, no environmental impact, it won't interfer with shipping lanes or military exercises, and cost could be kept low compared to the wind proposal because of it's locality and most of the structure is already built. How do you guys feel about this??? Should I start a study of my own (please say no, my free time is so limited at this point in my life)???

Cheers!!!

[david foster]

"We did that in seven years, using 1940s technology"...in the 1940s, we did not have a vast grievance & litigation industry, ready to organize opposition and file lawsuits at the first hint that someone, somewhere, might actually build something.

[John Finlayson-Fife]

This study looked at energy potential. For an engineering model of the floating wind turbine platforms that addresses wind and wave stresses, see Jonkman and Buhl's award-winning report on the subject:

http://www.nrel.gov/wind/news/2007/494.html

I scanned it for for references to wind speed and wave height. Moderately high wind and wave conditions were addressed, but I didn't see discussion of anything that would approach hurricane conditions, much less the even more severe storms that wind farms are typically engineered for:

"A wind farm designer wants turbines to withstand a 50-year quantile speed, the wind speed that is exceeded on the average once every 50 years, for the chosen site." (http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v20n3/p11.html)

As for the oil rig comparison, the North Sea is stormy, but I wonder how their storms compare to hurricanes on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, where winds often top 140mph.

And no one has mentioned the "inconvenient truth" that storms are expected to be getting stronger with global warming.

The report doesn't discuss submersion during storms. That's beyond its scope. It sounds like a sensible option. Has anyone actually implemented that?

[DG]

Out of curiosity, when they say powering all of these states, do they mean that places like Buffalo and Pittsburgh would/could be getting their power from Atlantic wind farms, or just the cities on or right near the coast (Boston, NY, Philly, DC, Newport News, not to mention RI, CT, NJ, and the rest of the smaller cities and towns on or near the coast)?

I think as energy prices rise and people become more serious about fighting global warming, some of the litigation stuff will go away. Especially if the choice is between a wind farm off the coast or an LNG terminal next door.

[JohnBo]

Gee this makes the Westinghouse AP-1000 look great. If I were an east coast power company trying to provide reliable power I would pick a few nuclear units as opposed to thousands of wind machines scattered over the ocean. Sorry guys.. I'm all for wind power but can you imagine the problems? JohnBo

[wf]

Another option is to make hydrogen from floating wind machines in particularly windy ocean regimes (i.e., the north seas). Tankers would have to service the storage tanks regularly and bring the fuel to a port for dispersal.

[karl (uses for motive power besides eletricity)]

WF makes the exact point needed. Putting fusion on the moon means it's cheap enough to make enough extra hydrogen to deliver as much hydrogen as might be needed to make that profitable. It would of course have to compete with other uses for the real estate as on land on earth or sea already.

WHen planning the future, some awareness of the fact that the energy comes from somewhere regardless o f where seems missing too often. It is a reasonable assumption that it would be impossible to over harvest the wind, that you might plug up the circulatory system, that the top might slow, wobble and fall.

Before then of course the amount per mill goes down.

When investing capital instead of spending in smaller time periods it is much harder to know what better alternatives might exist. The longer the payback, the more irreversible not just spending contempllated, the more dangerous otherwise reasonable assumptions become.

Giving Americans more time by not having them waste so much 'earnning' the money to waste energy could be a very bad thing.

What are the real reasons for the waste if not that? The concentration of wealth in the East benefits whom? The lack of insight, wisdom, medititation, whom?

Chaos almost always the main reason. But there are entities that benefit from Chaos indirectly as well.

We buy energy in units that cost pennies. IF you really want to save money then buy it in larger quantities. That requires a legal framework. Want super clean coal power? Try buying fifty years worth as a entity that can't get out of the promise.

It's not just alternative sources of energy that can be bought in such large long term ways. TO be fair, more conventional sources need to be looked at.

I saw the battery guy psuedo blogging about he alleged a scam to "stick it to the man" by violating the if only implied terms of use on phone power. He calculated that the maximum energy was small change, compared to the cost of the appliances that operated for free on a phone line.

He ignored of course the context. A solar clothes dryer can be a string. The water to rinse though can waste more then a different location, outfit, or other solution to sweat.

What PV has historically done is make people address waste. Wind power could facilitate waste. THe pricing of access to the wind has not yet even begun to be an issue. It's just like water though. Take some from the stream, and it effects those further down.

Unlike hydroeletric though wind has different speeds, where water at it's surface is always atmospheric pressure, and never is there an issue of inertial aspects being measurable however much erosion engineers might regard them as all important.

WHo owns the energy in the wind? Owning it does not mean you have something to lose from someone else using it other then perhaps your competing provision of energy.

It's not just water that makes wind. Global warming makes wind. Wind patterns could change with such a farm as like oil down a slope it will seek the path of least resistance.

We are just beginning to figure out how to model global windflow and the best models of course don't allow for such a change to be incorporated but rather are learning in nature and would require planets with such farms already on to predict the impact.

It is like the car in other words. One thing to crush the grain you can grown in the land surrounding, another to split water molecules to your SUV's content on another continent.

Waste is usually heat. Avoiding it usually means less heat. So getting more cheap energy means more heat, as waste reduction is avoided.

So when alternatives promise cheaper, instead of more expensive energy, they can be understood to threaten harm, not help.

A tax on heat from car accomdiating asphault, and the energy wasted pumping that heat out of the igloos we try to live in in ther eimmediate midst, is needed. Even though that too means less wind.

Finally, about walmart's compact florescent initiative versus windpower.

I bought for a quarter a one watt flourescent solar yard light bulb recently at Lowes. LED's have been around a long time so most people are not aware there has bevery been such a buld at any price. Walmart is seeking to take a huge profit from this type of ignorance. The good thing about incandescent bulbs is that they waste a limited amount of energy.

DO the math.

Walmarts price of CF is so obsenely high, many times what home depot etc. sells them for, and the life of these bulbs is so long, the potential waste versus LED's exceeds the potential gain.

Unbelievable? OF course. BUt true. Stranger then fiction.

I bought the bulbs when they cost 20 bucks. WHen LED"s used miliwatts and had a fraction of othere current efficiency.

But it doesn't end there. It's not just the amount of lumens/colliding air molecues but how they are used.

CF of course is unfocused. LED's are directional by nature and the difference between the amount of heat is measured in multiples. dozens of units of heat for every one of light for hot wires. With LED's the amount of heat is still so significant that it does limit the available lumens in design, so those lumens are used more efficiently, less wings in the wind down wire needed.

So to think about oceanside islands ask- ok, would someone prefer to live on that pole and pay you more then you can get in profit from slowing down the air around it?

Making energy cheaper hurts what weather stripping factory worker? What farmers market unable to compete with large refrigerators stocked with corn syruped caffiene hauled with corn powered trucks by still largely expiring moments after retiring populations?

You want the government to give you the islands. I say bid for them. You want to wind, I say your not the only one, and lots of cheeks can enjoy it for what you would require to boil up a cup of java.

People are not battery operated. WE don't even need to be plugged in. Our neighbors are decent enough actors, and the dramas they perform far more artistic, valuable, enjoyable, then anything on hidef.

The point is that we can stop hurricanes. That is the threat- not them themselves.

[BILL HANNAHAN]

The report assumes a capacity factor of 40%, about twice the average wind farm, based on extrapolations from low level buoy data. This is very optimistic given the periods of bad weather in the Atlantic.

It is remarkable how many solutions to our energy problems are presented without a cost estimate to prevent the construction of one new 1000 mW coal plant.

Start by installing 455 windmills, cost $14.2 billion.

http://www.q7wind.nl/en/news.htm

The actual cost will probably be higher due to deep water and longer distance offshore. The cost will be much higher for special features like floating or submersible windmills.

Add backup gas turbines at $0.7 billion, total $14.9 billion, and it lasts half as long as the coal plant if you’re lucky.

If you’re not lucky a hurricane wipes it out a year or two after completion.

Or, build a next generation nuclear plant for $3 billion, skip the fossil burning backup, and it lasts at least twice as long as the windmills.

My recommendation is to increase R&D for non fossil energy sources from less than $1 billion to $60 billion per year, which could easily help pay for a demonstration facility to prove me right or wrong, while pushing all possible solutions as hard as possible.

[Bill Hannahan]

Sorry, I mixed up British pounds with euros in working the exchange rates.

The offshore plant costs $4.16 per peak watt installed, so the cost of the windmills is $9.5 billion, and the total cost to replace a 1000 mW coal or nuclear plant is $10.2 billion.

[Ender]

Bill - "The report assumes a capacity factor of 40%, about twice the average wind farm, based on extrapolations from low level buoy data."

Sorry not even close. Off-shore wind farms can easily make 40% as the wind is much more reliable over the sea. Also the figure you are trying to use includes a lot of very marginal on-shore wind in Germany where large subsidies have lead to a lot of wind being installed in very marginal areas.

http://www.bwea.com/ref/stop.html
"Wind farms tend to be operating at high output when demand is most needed. Over the whole of 1995 (which was not a very windy year) the average capacity factor of UK wind farms was 0.313 (i.e. they produced 31.3% of their theoretical maximum). Over the summer the capacity factor was 0.167 but during the winter quarter, when electricity demand is higher, it was 0.445."

"It is remarkable how many solutions to our energy problems are presented without a cost estimate to prevent the construction of one new 1000 mW coal plant."

You are absolutely right. Nuclear is proposed as the solution without any consideration of the true waste disposal costs or the true unsubsidised costs of the plants and their insurance.

"Add backup gas turbines at $0.7 billion, total $14.9 billion, and it lasts half as long as the coal plant if you’re lucky."

Sorry you would not have to skip it even if it was necessary. Nuclear and thermal coal are baseload. They both need gas turbines and/or pumped hydro to cope with peaking demand and frequency stabilisation and the like, as I am sure you know.

http://www.bwea.com/pdf/briefings/intermittency-2005.pdf
"The short term variations of wind generation (second-to-second or minute-to-minute)
are small compared to the corresponding variations in demand. In addition, it is very
unlikely that a national portfolio of wind generation would give rise to instantaneous power changes as large as those currently managed. When large power stations ‘trip’, up to 1320 MW of generation is lost - instantaneously. Wind generation is not like that; as more wind plant is built it will be widely spread over the country and so the power swings will be generally quite gentle."

It is quite wrong and against the operational data to suppose that the whole amount of installed wind will suddenly drop off and need the whole amount 'backed up'. Operational reserves may have to be increased however this proposal is thousands of wind turbines dispersed over a large area so they are VERY unlikely all to drop out at once.

Now these operational reserves do not have to be fossil fuel or nuclear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
"One solution currently being piloted on wind farms is the use of rechargeable flow batteries as a rapid-response storage medium [1]. Vanadium redox flow batteries are currently installed at Huxley Hill wind farm (Australia), Tomari Wind Hills at Hokkaido (Japan), as well as in other non-wind farm applications. A further 12 MWh flow battery is to be installed at the Sorne Hill wind farm (Ireland) [2]. The supplier concerned is commissioning a production line to meet other anticipated orders."

Already storage is being added to wind farms to add this reserve and vastly increase despatchablity and overall capacity factor. Storage can also be applied to CSP solar power plants in the form of molten salts. So the argument about wind farms needing backup is getting pretty tired.

"Or, build a next generation nuclear plant for $3 billion, skip the fossil burning backup, and it lasts at least twice as long as the windmills."

Sure as long as you add the couple of billion dollars for the geological storage facilities to properly store the waste and you cannot skip the fossil fuel backup as nuclear needs it as much as wind. A lot of modern WIND TURBINES only consist of a magnet or iron spinning in a coil of wire and are completely sealed. No gearboxes are required anymore as all the electricity conversion and frequency control is done in solid state electronics with no moving parts. These variable speed wind turbines can potentially last just as long as any nuclear power plant with vastly less maintenance. Tell you what imagine evacuating a running nuclear power plant and a running wind farm and see which one stops first from lack of maintenance or control. My money would be on the nuke.

[karl (more on price)]

When calculating the merit of investments on this scale, it is NOT reasonable to stick at ones thumb and assail the current price, which will after all be quite stale, by the time one begins to earn from the churn of the gale.

To dismiss and insist that yield so far must be qualified by the wasteful build up so far, b ut then seek to stand on that shoulder, one could not be that much colder.

Instead of saying those plants don't matter, here's a better proposal, ask, well besides there limited production, just who paid for our prior seduction? Cuz you seem to say, not I, no way, we now are somehow above this frey.

Nay.

Price is not all important. It is a construct of public policy. Just one media company could persuade the USA to so drop demand --imagine Paris Hilton joining the band, taking a stand, modeling like Carter, ways to live warm much smarter-- at the pump, round the rump, everywhere, that da OPEC could only stare, glare, forget there current fare. It's a snare from which we must dare to do far more then pretend to care.

Windmills only convert low grade mechanical energy into axil spinning, giving a false impression against reckless consumption somehow winning.

Ask how much more it costs to build such a dam, against the cost of pumping, steaming, or fusing up less spinning of so Unsporting Useless Vessicle.

One of the opening posts on here gives a huge percentage for oil used to commute. It's far cheaper I toot to show such abuse the boot.

Urban use of tons to scoot is vice. For it we should charge at least twice. Not doing so is the essence of other then nice.

Lighthouses and windmills are for still lives. In this battle to which the shredding of plans it makes sense to apply our knives, better then our lives or wives or further jives.

To pass a test, to be green of much higher standard must we esteem. Too few are us, to dally over rust, one/when we know it's going to make so little difference, truly insignigance, even if it pays 'our' bills, such shills steal the future, about which we must far better suture.

What is the relative payback on grade seperated interchanegs being manadatory? Criminalise red lights with that pocket change for real change instead.

Those who don't give a dam, they'll build such dams, if they are really cheaper. For true waste, true believers must however boringly focus upon being up the sweeper.

I never met a kilowat I regretted not wasting. Accepting some of the misery in which we are currently basting is something for which we need far more practice in tasting. The cars are useless. Furrther investment in them will continue to prove relatively fruitless. Right now, huge clamor of fat cow to buy such farms, is doing, dare you calculate, what harms? Seriously.

[BILL HANNAHAN]

OFF-SHORE WIND FARMS CAN EASILY MAKE 40%

Ender
I used their number for my cost estimate. The main point of the post was that offshore wind is horribly expensive, do you have any comment on that, where is your cost estimate?

NUCLEAR AND THERMAL COAL ARE BASELOAD. THEY BOTH NEED GAS TURBINES AND/OR PUMPED HYDRO TO COPE WITH PEAKING DEMAND AND FREQUENCY STABILISATION AND THE LIKE, AS I AM SURE YOU KNOW.

You better inform the French as they are getting 80% from nuclear without all those backup plants, and pay $141/mWh, while Denmark gets most of its electricity by burning fossil fuel and pays $297/mWh due to their enormous wind subsidies, as I am sure you know.

Everybody knows that conventional power plants have had voltage and frequency controls built in from the beginning, wind farms rely on them to provide stabilization.

Conventional power plant outages are scheduled for spring or fall when demand is low, and unplanned outages are very rare, and limited to one unit which can usually be covered by spinning reserve.

Here is a pro wind report written by one of the largest wind companies in the world. What makes this report extraordinary is that it includes a frank discussion on the limitations of wind power.

http://www.eon-netz.com/Ressources/downloads/EON_Netz_Windreport2005_eng.pdf

Here are a few quotes;

“traditional power stations with capacities equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online in order to guarantee power supply at all times.”
“The average feed-in over the year was 1,295MW, around one fifth of the average installed wind power capacity over the year.”
Note, this is less than the output of one EPR reactor.
“Over half of the year, the wind power feed-in was less than 14% of the average installed wind power capacity over the year.”

“Large thermal power stations do not disconnect from the grid even following serious grid failures, instead they generally trip into auxiliary services
supply and until then, “support” the grid.

Wind farms, however, have so far disconnected themselves from the grid even in the event of minor, brief voltage dips. Experience shows that this can lead to serious power failures:”

The nuclear power industry pays $1 / mWh, $1,000 per lifetime supply of electricity into a fund to dispose of the less than one ounce of fission products that are still radioactive at end of life, and will be less toxic than uranium ore in 300 years. How much is set aside to remove those windmills when they wear out in 20 years or are crushed by a hurricane this year?

IT IS QUITE WRONG AND AGAINST THE OPERATIONAL DATA TO SUPPOSE THAT THE WHOLE AMOUNT OF INSTALLED WIND WILL SUDDENLY DROP OFF AND NEED THE WHOLE AMOUNT 'BACKED UP'.

Backup is required whether drop is abrupt or gradual. Here is an interesting report on using compressed air to smooth windmill output. If you read the entire report you will know the problem is not simple or inexpensive.

http://www.wbill.com/docs/Jan2007/re_wind_projects-compressed2005.pdf

ONE SOLUTION CURRENTLY BEING PILOTED ON WIND FARMS IS THE USE OF RECHARGEABLE FLOW BATTERIES AS A RAPID-RESPONSE STORAGE MEDIUM….. SO THE ARGUMENT ABOUT WIND FARMS NEEDING BACKUP IS GETTING PRETTY TIRED.

One sentence says wind farms don’t need backup and another sentence describes such a system, which is it?

Here is my main point. Let’s say we build the 330 GW offshore array described in the above report. In the summer of 2040 a giant high pressure dome develops over the northeast US shutting down the windmills while producing record high temps well over 100 deg F and record high electrical loads. Provide a cost estimate for a 1 week battery backup to replace the gas turbines. My guess is about $35 billion per GW. If the heat wave lasts more than 1 week tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people die.

There is no argument about wind farms needing backup, they do.

If there is a heat wave there is lots of sunshine, so lets backup the windmills with photovoltaic arrays. That costs $29 billion per GW, and solar cell performance degrades at high temperature. Page 7 of,

http://www.jimholm.com/nuclear_energy_facts.htm#THINGS%20EVERYBODY%20SHOULD%20KNOW%20ABOUT%20ENERGY%20

.

[amazingdrx]

From 2005 huh Bill?

You may want to read the latest on wind.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/212637/60

Backup for wind on the great plains, a big enough resource to provide the US baseload, can come from processing prairie grasses from restored prairie. Biogas digestors turning grass into methane to run in fuel cell/turbines (75% efficiency) and also producing organic fertilizer to inject into the mown strips on the prairie.

By only harvesting 1/3 per year sequestration by the prairie will still occur. 1.8 tons per acre per year of cO2 is sequestered according to a Minnesota university study of natural prairie grass.

The mowing will prevent fires and do the maintenance job that fire normally does. This is a stable resource with it's own renewable backup, without NIMBYs or soaring fuel costs or pollution and rad waste.

With mass production and installation it will beat initial costs for other generation schemes too. Beat initial cost with no fuel or waste costs, plus remediate GHG levels by removing CO2 from the atmosphere. You can't beat that.

And there's the added benefit of turning the chemical cropland almost at dustbowl stage into natural prairie that will feed the nation with free range bison. Much better than marginal grazing land for chemicalized feedlot beef.

[BILL HANNAHAN]

amazingdrx
It is remarkable how many solutions to our energy problems are presented without a cost estimate to prevent the construction of one new 1000 mW coal plant.

Please provide a cost estimate for a 1000 mW Atlantic ocean windfarm and a cost estimate for a 1000 mW prairie grass backup plant, how many acres per 1000 mW, include references.

[amazingdrx]

You first Bill.

Google found that the latest nukes built in the USA cost 6 billion per 1000mw. Without any waste disposal or cleanup costs figured in.

To compare coal (and nuclear)you need to account for all the costs. Including the numerous illnesses and deaths that nuclear advocates claim for coal.

A standard coal plant includes mining related illness and disease as well, contamination of groundwater from mining. All those certainties related to coal power ought to be included in a comparison of initial cost.

They are not accounted for by fuel cost.

And they are not a factor with wind power.

Of course the only fair cost comparison would come out with all negative consequences like subsidies, pollution, waste disposal, death and illness, soaring fuel costs, mining death and illness, and more all calculated into the actual cost per kwh.

[Ender]

Bill - "Please provide a cost estimate for a 1000 mW Atlantic ocean windfarm"

Sure as long as you cost out a 1000MW nuclear plant including full liability insurance, full geological waste storage and/or guards for the waste for minimum 500 years.

[Nucbuddy]

Ender wrote: cost out a 1000MW nuclear plant including full liability insurance, full geological waste storage and/or guards for the waste for minimum 500 years.

At what risk quality and level? Do you mean that at an unqualified risk level of zero? Some enlightening discussion of risk can be found here:
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter8.html

Regarding nuclear waste, the same book reveals that:
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html

For nuclear waste, a simple, quick, and easy disposal method would be to convert the waste into a glass — a technology that is well in hand — and simply drop it into the ocean at random locations. No one can claim that we don't know how to do that! With this disposal, the waste produced by one power plant in one year would eventually cause an average total of 0.6 fatalities, spread out over many millions of years, by contaminating seafood. Incidentally, this disposal technique would do no harm to ocean ecology. In fact, if all the world's electricity were produced by nuclear power and all the waste generated for the next hundred years were dumped in the ocean, the radiation dose to sea animals would never be increased by as much as 1% above its present level from natural radioactivity.

We thus see that if we compare the nuclear and coal wastes on the basis of cheap, simple, and easy disposal techniques, the coal wastes are (7.5 / 0.06 =) 120 times more harmful to human health than nuclear waste.

The reason the harm/benefit ratio of nuclear waste tends to be so low in comparison to the waste products of windpower, solar PV, and solar thermal, is that tyhe category of fissile heavy-nuclides constitutes such a dense source of energy.

[amazingdrx]

Wind has no contamination or pollution risk, that's the standard to compare nukes to.

If you want to concede that's fine too. But redefining "risk' is just like redefining "insurance", it's wordplay. It won't make nukes safe.

[amazingdrx]

"For nuclear waste, a simple, quick, and easy disposal method would be to .... simply drop it into the ocean at random locations."

France tried that I believe? Is Russia still dumping their used nuclear subs this way too?

Keep talking this kind of stuff up buddy! Thanks for the help.

[Nucbuddy]

amazingdrx wrote: redefining "risk' is [...] wordplay.

What are you referring to?

[amazingdrx]

"unqualified risk level of zero"

You sound like Bill "depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is".

Some poor homeowner after a nuclear accident would hear stuff like that when the insurance agent was telling them why they couldn't collect.

Populists are likely to jump on every straight line like that from now on. And keep the public laughing at the prospect of ever voting for nuclear or military industrial contractor friendly politicians again.

[don bartell]

check this site also, they have mini course on DIY wind turbines..great deal..

http://www.windpowercost.org/

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