Wind briefly provides 25 pct of Spain's energy

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssIndustryMaterialsUtilitiesNews/idUSL16696520080116

Wind briefly provides 25 pct of Spain's energy

Wed Jan 16, 2008 1:44pm EST

MADRID, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Wind power at one moment on Wednesday provided Spain with a record 25 percent of its energy needs as output touched 9,563 megawatts, beating the previous record of 8,375 MW set in March last year.

Red Electrica, which operates the electricity network, said that at 1427 GMT demand nationally was 36,638 MW, of which 29 percent was satisfied by combined cycle power stations, 16 percent from nuclear power plants and 15 percent from coal-fired stations.

Among other sources, hydroelectric power provided just 3 percent of power needs, Red Electrica said.

Many parts of northern and eastern Spain have been under alert for high winds this week with the northwest coast of Galicia battered by storms.

:applause:

[kestrel91316]

1. I'm waiting for the pro-nuke crowd to show up here all wailing and

screeching defamatory screeds and frothing at the mouth about this.

[diane in sf]

3. They've been pleasantly quiet lately...

[Ghost Dog]

6. Baseload, baseload, baseload

:evilgrin:

This is very nice news. But now I reckon a lot of ocean wave power systems need to be put in place as well as a lot more (cheaper) solar - especially really big solar furnaces - in Spain.

[GliderGuider]

2. That's pretty cool news.

When I was in Spain last year I took the train up from Granada to Madrid. It went up the main valley, through "Don Quixote" country. There they were: ancient, squat, round stone windmills, just waiting to be tilted at, set against a backdrop of ridgelines full of tall, graceful, gleaming wind turbines. It was quite an inspiring sight. I'm glad it's working out.

[NNadir]

4. On the other hand, zero "renewables will save us" will report when wind produces zero percent.

That in fact, happens all the time, unremarked by the anti-nuke cult.

[jpak]

5. In the real world, wind turbines produce electricity 65-90% of the time

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_basics.html#If%20a%20wind%20turbines%20capacity%20factor%20is%2033%25,%20doesnt%20that%20mean%20it%20is%20only%20running%20one-third%20of%20the%20time

...sort of like fluctuations in US nuclear plant capacity factors between 1973 and 2003.

But, unlike nuclear plants, wind turbines do not produce deadly radioactive waste...

Fun facts autodidactical nuclear diddlers never seem to grasp...

[NNadir]

7. Really? I hate to do this in the presence of a fundie, but let's do the (gasp) numbers.

The wind blows 65% of the time everywhere?

Um, why not ask the wind industry if wind is great?

While we're at it, why don't we ask GM if Hummers are great, especially the hydrogen Hummers that everyone who's name is "Governor Steroid" is driving while accompanied by a GM engineer.

Since were talking about numerical illiteracy - and do we ever chat pleasantly about anything else? - we could appeal to something called numbers, but why get technical?

Oh maybe we should get technical.

I recently followed the link of an anti-nuke fundie - a fundie is a person whose dogma cannot be changed by any amount of scientific investigation or even by simple calculation - and I got to this wind energy industry page:

http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_statistics.html#How%20much%20wind%20generating%20capacity%20currently%20exists%20in%20the%20U.S.%20How%20much%20will%20be%20added%20over%20the%20next%20several%20years

According to the wind industry, as of 2004 - presumably the best sites being exploited first -the installed wind capacity was 6,740 Mega"watts" where "watts" refers to the wishful thinking crapola that substitutes "peak" capacity for actual capacity.

Meanwhile on planet earth, the actual energy production associated with wind is recorded:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table11.html

Um...um...I hate to do this in the presence of startling innumeracy, but each MW at 100% capacity utilization, a single megawatt is 86400 seconds/day * 365.25 days/year * 1 million joules/second = 31.6 X 10¹³ joules/year. Thus the amount of energy for 100% capacity utilization for 6740 X 31.6 10¹³ = 0.2 exajoules, where the prefix for something called scientific units (gasp) is used.

According to the EIA, in 2004 the big giant exponentially growing bestestic everistic mommylicious wind industry produced 14,143,741 thousand kilowatt-hours, or 0.051 exajoules.

It follows that the capacity utilization for wind power is 23% - and this with the best sites exploited.

In general, the anti-nuke fundie cult - like all fundie cults - relies wholly on misrepresentation and in many cases outright fraud to support its dogma. There is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who can stand up to inspection by calculation.

Now.

You can't get into Greenpeace if you can understand inequalities but 23% < 65%, even in fundie "percent talk."

Nuclear energy, by contrast, is not only the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy - opposed by fossil fuel fundies everywhere - it also is the world's most reliable.

The capacity utilization for nuclear plants in 2005 was very close to 90%. It can be shown by direct calculation - and you can be an anti-nuke fundie if you can do calculations - that the capacity utiliztion of nuclear plants was 89.2% in 2005.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/usreactors2005.xls

The next closest capacity utilization of any form of energy used in the United States is coal, which uses about 70% of its nameplate capacity.

All these figures are more remarkable when you consider that about half the time wind energy needs spinning reserve backup - meaning that the dangerous fossil fuel plants have to run to back it up - and there's no telling whether the power will be available when needed.

This is seldom mentioned in fundie land, but the peak demand for electricity is generally not on breezy days, but is rather on hot stagnant days.

If you have no fucking idea what you're talking about, make stuff up.