Wind Power 43% increase in 2005 - yes, despite the rumors to the contrary

[JohnWxy]

windpower is not dead, that is, it IS practical - and growing like gang-busters.

http://www.gwec.net/index.php?id=30&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=21&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=4&cHash=d0118b8972

The global wind energy sector experienced another record year in 2005. According to the figures released today by the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), the year saw the installation of 11,769 megawatts (MW), which represents a 43.4% increase in annual additions to the global market, up from 8,207 MW in the previous year.

~~

“The European market has already reached the 2010 target set by the European Commission of 40,000 MW five years ahead of time,” said Christian Kjaer, the European Wind Energy Association’s (EWEA) Policy Director. Moreover, growth is now happening in a greater number of countries, including new markets such as Portugal and France. By 2010, wind energy alone will save enough greenhouse gas emissions to meet one third of the European Union's Kyoto obligation.”

~~

Nearly a quarter of new capacity was installed in North America, where the total capacity increased by 37% in 2005, gaining momentum in both the US and Canada. The US wind energy industry broke earlier annual records of installed capacity with installing nearly 2,500 MW, which makes it the country with the most new wind power.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), this is largely due to the current three year window of stability in the federal incentive for wind energy, the production tax credit (PCT). “Thanks to the Congress’s extending the wind energy production credit before it expired - for the first time in the credit’s history, the wind industry is looking forward to several recordbreaking years in a row,” said AWEA’s Executive Director Randall Swisher. Previous years had seen a constant up and down of the market, depending on whether the PTC had been renewed in time to create investor confidence.

The Canadian wind capacity increased by a staggering 53%. “Canada’s wind energy industry is growing by leaps and bounds – and that’s great news for Canadians who research shows are strongly in favour of wind energy,” said Robert Hornung, President of the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA). “2005 will be remembered as the year Canada first started to seriously exploit its massive wind energy potential.”

Asia has also experienced strong growth of over 49% of installed capacity, bringing the continent up to a total of over 7,135 MW. In 2005, the continent accounted for 20% of new installations. The strongest market here remains India with over 1,430 MW of new installed capacity, which takes its total figure up to 4,430 MW.

~~

Wind energy offers more that just power: it has the potential to support economic development, improve the security of energy supply, mitigate hydrocarbon price volatility, create jobs and contribute to substantial CO2 reductions. Without political support, however, wind energy remains at a competitive disadvantage due to distortions in the world’s electricity markets created by decades of massive financial, political and structural support to conventional technologies,” said Arthouros Zervos.

NOw if legislator's were contacted to take action to allow wind farms to be financed the same as utilities finance coal and gas fired plants - THE COST OF WIND POWER WOULD COME DOWN 40%!

The Government has estimated that wind power could meet 1.5 times the Total Electricity demand of the U.S. (20% of the demand could be met without using pumped storage which enables constant flow of power using pumped hydro-power facilities).

[glitch]

1. Elegant site, good info. Thanks for posting. nt

[bluerum]

2. Good! Wind is the most underutilized renewable resource that we

have.

More environmentally friendly than solar.

On edit: BTW do you know what the fate of the wind farm on the Big Island of Hawaii is? It seems to me that would be a major source of power for the island but it has been left in dis-repair.

[JohnWxy]

3. I'm afraid I don't. The www.awea.org site is really good for Wind Power

info.

YEs, the underutilized, it is what I often post about. Technologies that are often simpler, requiring little to no R&D effort as they are already proven to work but they are ignored for more "sexy" technologies. Also, as it works out often these underutilized available technologies actually require less total investment (when ALL the costs are considered) than the higher tech options.

THis of course, is not to say we should not investigate all interesting, possible sources of energy. But lets not treat R&D candidates as if they are ready to go mainstream and start investing billions in them before we really know what the payback is going to be (as well as realistically recognizing the environmental impacts).

I guess windmills aren't "sexy". I guess because they are 'relatively' low tech (although the design of the blades is NOT low tech and they are currently conducting research to improve the performance of wind turbines. Some of this will result in wind turbines that will extract more power out of slower winds. This is important in that it will increase that potential power output from wind - perhaps significantly).

[4dsc]

4. Still less than 1% of total

So wind energy has increased 43%. Big whoop when you consider that's still less than 1% of our total energy output if I am not mistaken..

[ladjf]

8. The first model T Ford represented less than 1% of all the

automobiles in the world. That turned out to be a "big deal". We will never get there without taking the first steps.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Given what cars have done to the enviroment...

...that may not be the best analogy... :evilgrin:

[ladjf]

17. True. But, soon cars will be powered in more environmentally

friendly sources. My guess is that they will be pluggable electric vehicles, charged by massive numbers of solar panels, i.e. roofs, yards, parking lots, open fields and on the auto itself. Park you car in the company lot while at work as it is charged up there in the parking space. Arrays of batteries at home, charged during the day, charge car batteries at night. Smaller cars, possibly equipped with small diesel powered generators for emergency power.

The human race hasn't begun to take a serious look at alternative energy sources. (1) oil, gas and coal of relatively inexpensive , (2) current renewable energies producers are generally more expensive than conventional methods and (3) the oil, gas,nuclear and coal companies have done everything in their power to discourage the use of renewable energy sources. Yet, all over the industrialized world, except for the U.S. and Great Britain, great progress is being made, particularly in Germany, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal and Japan.

Is there something in Americans' environment that is making the dumb? fluoride, mercury, lead?

[kestrel91316]

19. Pluggable biodiesel hybrids are where my money is...........

[ladjf]

26. Very likely to happen.

[JohnWxy]

27. Fuel Cell technology using hydrocarbons to supply the hydrogen in 10 yrs?

At least one company (who is talking) says applications for cars is 10 yrs away.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x46606


http://www.acta-nanotech.com/market/applications.aspx

Practical fuel options for new fuel cell applications

HYPERMEC™ catalysts perform well with both hydrogen and methanol fuels. HYPERMEC™ also uniquely works with more complex hydrocarbons including ethanol and ethylene glycol. Ethanol is perfect for consumer and transport applications because it is cheap, safe, practical and already widely used in consumer supply chains. Ethylene glycol is ideal for demanding applications. With its low freezing point and high boiling point, fuel evaporation is minimized and it is practical for use in a wider range of temperature environments.

[JohnWxy]

29. A 43% growth rate compounds rather nicely over 10 to 15 yrs.

[madrchsod]

5. we have generators corning like corn here in northern illinois

the big problem now is building the generators. the Chinese are setting up their own generator production in the next few years. at the present time they by from the germans. their plan is to put generators on the edge of the gobi to electrify northern china.
to bad bush has drained all the money from the bank..we certainly could use the trillion on insulating our home,replacing heating and cooling systems, and new thermal windows. but no we have terrorist to stop while we are freezing in our homes or cutting back on food to heat and cool our homes.

[JohnWxy]

6. I think investing in better insulation is a wonderful investment!

That should be emphasized every bit as much as building wind farms etc.! Good post!

IF you feel like it, you could go to www.congress.org and post your thoughts on the web. Make an appeal to people to email their Congressmen - it's very easy on Congress.org. You can also email your congressmen too, from that site (without posting your thoughts).

We can gain a helluva lot from better insulation and improved efficiency in appliances, - A/C, washers, dryers etc.

[jpak]

7. We could have that money, if

we got out of I-raq

we repealed the billionaire tax cuts

and the tax breaks to Big Oil and Gas and Coal and Nucular.

and made them pay the royalties they owe the 'Merican people for extracting oil, gas and coal from public lands.

or enacted a $0.003 per kWh federal tax on electricity produced from fossil fuels (cogeneration plants exempt).

or a $0.25 per barrel tax on foreign oil

or a $0.025 per MMBTU tax on imported natural gas....

[JohnWxy]

28. very nicely said!

I especially liked: "made them pay the royalties they owe the 'Merican people for extracting oil, gas and coal from public lands."


God knows what THIS figure would come to. I don't know how many years that's been going on.

anybody ever figured out the cost of that?

[Dead_Parrot]

10. In related news...

Grid storage grew by ~0%. Erm...

[NNadir]

12. Wind power doesn't need back up so long as natural gas plants operate.

If batteries were necessary, the cost of wind power would be rising, not falling.

But wind, where it exists, competes with natural gas, and I think wind capacity will continue to increase rapidly, as it should by the way. It's a form of energy that works rather well. This type of capacity is simply too attractive to pass up.

Here are my usual caveats: When people stop saying percent all the time, wind will be significant. In 2004, wind power produced 0.05 exajoules of energy in the United States. A 100% increase in such power will have an almost meaningless effect on global climate change.

http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/RenewableAlternativeEnergy/RenewableAlternativeEnergyStatistics/tabid/192/Default.aspx

Therefore, a serious impact for wind will require yearly increases of thousands of percent. The nation that most relies on wind, Denmark, recently cancelled several major wind farms. There have, apparently been some issues with the stability of the grid and Denmark's right wing government has withdrawn some key subsidies.

However wind's competitiveness, as natural gas prices rise, should go right around the lack of subsidies. Maybe the Danes will renew their building program.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. True, but NG still still produces

a big greenhouse o' fun at the end of it - and that's ignoring the current supply woes. The enviroment is my main concern, so I'd rather see us get off the damn fossils altogether: Fixing half the problem is going to be too little, too late.

Denmark have hit a wall where, although they get a load of juice from wind, there's little point in building more since the still need the fossil plants to keep them going on calm days. Since NG is very "turn on and offable", it can be a fix, but only a temporary one. Something a little more permanant will be needed.

AFAIK, Hydro is the only other rapid reacting GW-scale power source. (unless there's something I don't know about nukes - my impression is they are either on or off, but feel free to correct me). And then you hit the problems with terrain. IIRC, Denmark is a little on the flat side...

Edit - They can, of course, tap into Norway's hydro. Bonus question: How many European countries can Norway support on windless days? :shrug:

[NNadir]

14. Please don't interpret me as saying I like natural gas. I am against it.

I oppose all fossil fuels.

I am noting that wherever wind plants are installed, they will necessarily displace gas capacity. When a power company has enough power, it is the gas plants they shut. This saves carbon dioxide being released and provides an immediate and direct greenhouse gas benefit.

Wind of course, is arbitrary and unpredictable beyond a few days out. There is no requirement that its availability occur at the same time demand is highest. In fact, wind power is generally not available when the demand is highest, hot days with stagnant air. In this sense, solar power is better than wind power, even though the solar technology that exists today is basically for hobbyists and public relations purposes - it is not a major form of energy anywhere. However, it is true that solar hobbyists, to the extent that they provide small amounts of peak power, are helping albeit in a small way.

An exception of course would be cold windy nights, where demand is high due to electrical heating demand. With respect to heating, I note that a switch from fossil fuel heating - generally oil and coal - to electric heat offers many potential environmental benefits.

I do hope that the gas plants will not be dismantled after the gas is gone. It does seem to me that some gases can be made synthetically to operate these plants, my favorite, as always, being DME. Under these circumstances the gas plants can serve as batteries. Nuclear plants operating at night could have some of their energy diverted to make DME starting materials, especially in schemes using carbon dioxide obtained from air. We should at least keep the combined cycle plants available, should we survive global climate change.

[Dead_Parrot]

15. It wasn't my intention...

...I just wanted to emphasise for any casual readers that all renewables - with the possible exceptions of geothermal and OTEC - suffer from periods of non-productivity. Even Hydro, although since most schemes involve a dam to store the water, this can be mitigated if done right. The lack of any non-fossil on-demand power, or large-scale storage (except hydro again, for both) doesn't fill me with confidence.

Whilst ideas like hydrogen and DME based storage are certainly interesting, I think we've left it a bit late to start developing them: what we desperately need is solutions we can start running out now. Hydrogen has got as far as a couple of villages on very windy islands: By the time we've worked out how to power Miami through a windless night it will probably be underwater. It's as hopeful as expecting fission to save us.

AFAIK, DME is still in the lab.

What we do have now is hydro, nuclear, wind and probably solar & wave. Solar is still too damn expensive for anyone not earning $150k, but I remain hopeful this can fixed: at the moment, it's a turkey. We've seen a couple of wave installs recently, and like wind it's relatively low-tech to implement, so fingers crossed we'll see more.

Of these, only hydro and nuclear are guaranteed to work when you need them. Any energy plan not based on one of these two is doomed to failure - taking the environment, and possibly us, with it.

[NNadir]

16. Some buses run on DME in Philadelphia.

Japan and China both have major DME programs. I don't know about whether any ordinary commercial equipment runs on it.

In any case, major DME plants are planned in Asia. They may be used to displace natural gas during shortages. Sadly the starting material for this DME will be coal.

[Dead_Parrot]

18. Thanks for the correction

:dunce: That's (some, slightly, apart from the coal bit) good news.

Incidentally, I meant to agree with you about the heating-by-electricity part: If we end up using coal and sequestration (enviromentally retarded, and therefore a good bet) it's a lot easier to sequest at a 3GW plant than it would be to do so at 300,000 10W furnaces. Especially if you're using Home Depot off-cuts...

[NNadir]

30. I very much doubt that sequestration will actually work.

I think the best case would be to capture carbon dioxide for hydrogenation to fluid fuels, DME included. However this is hardly going to be enough, I think.

The whole game is about denial. I don't have all that much time left on the planet, but I feel very bad for my children.

[rfkrfk]

21. DME is excellent for transportation

diesel trucks, trains, cars, just about anything.
a substitute for cooking-heating with propane

DNE could be China's, Japan's, almost anywhere's,
ticket to oil independence. as it displaces
the need for imported oil.

I've been predicting for a long time that poor countries
would go into the methanol business, in part because
they don't have Kyoto treaty limitations.
Perhaps I should change my prediction to DME.

edit, typo

[JohnWxy]

31. This bus is being driven by a chimp.

[northzax]

11. hmm, no mention of the repeated violations

of the Migratory Bird Treaty by windfarms. Yes, there is a downside to windmills as well.

[skids]

20. That's just a stale talking point.

The turbines now being installed are large, lumbering beasts. Birds fly around them.

[northzax]

23. large lumbering beasts?

you know the tips of the turbines hit 100 miles an hour, right? and that the largest turbines, the one's your talking about, can only be installed off shore, where it's a practical impossibility to measure mortality?

[skids]

24. The wind energy industry has been responsive.

Do coal tycoons bother? Do oil refineries care? Go complain about some industry that isn't proactive about their problems, however miniscule they may be in comparison to their competitors.

http://www.awea.org/faq/sagrillo/swbirds.html
http://www.7gen.com/wind-turbine-based-bird-deaths-found-to-be-less-than-thought-likely
http://www.thewind.info/downloads/birds.pdf (PDF)

[JohnWxy]

32. Not to worry. Highly exaggerated

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets.html

buildings/windows 5,500, high tension lines 800, house cats 1000, other 1000, vehicles 700, pesticides 700, other 1000, communicatiions towers 250 wind turbines <1.

For every 10,000 birds killed by human activities, less than one death is caused by a wind
turbine.

[rfkrfk]

22. wind puwer is a scam

you have to pay for, the windmill, and its generator, wires, etc
and the only benefit is avoided fuel use

and usually the wind blows hardest, in the spring and fall,
which is not the seasons of highest demand

unless you can turn some otherwise-needed natural gas burners off,
the electric utility is not going to like you, as they want to
keep the nukes and coal fired plants on-line

pumped storage is nice, but it is just as nice without wind

edit, adding
IMO, there will never be too-much pumped-storage,
and also, the wind people don't have some special claim on the
effort {pumped storage} of others to help with the shorcomings of wind

[skids]

25. Tell that to the Xcel wind power customers...

...who had lower electricity prices last year than their neighbors who weren't in the program.

[Kolesar]

33. Is not "avoided fuel use" the whole idea?

If the generators could turn off the coal or gas fired plants for half the duty cycle it would be a good thing.

[JohnWxy]

34. Wind Power is the cheapest source of power today.

www.awea.org

http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/Cost2001.PDF



Fuel Levelized costs ...............(cents/kWh) (1996)
Coal..................................... 4.8-5.5 (more like 7 cents now)
Gas ..................................... 3.9-4.4(2.5 to 3 times this now)
Hydro ...................................5.1-11.3
Biomass ................................5.8-11.6
Nuclear ...............................11.1-14.5
Wind (without PTC) .................4.0-6.0 (as 2004)
Wind (with PTC)......................3.3-5.3
One study found that if wind plants were financed on the same terms as natural gas
plants, their cost would drop by nearly 40% (resulting cost: 2.4 to 3.6 cents per kiloWhr - without PTC).

The cost of natural gas has increased since 1996, so that the levelized cost of gas–
fired power plants would now be considerably higher. In January 2001, the cost of
natural gas generated power was running as high as 15 cents to 20 cents per kWh in
certain markets <3>. The cost of wind power, meanwhile, has declined slightly.
Four additional points about the economics of wind energy should be considered when
estimating its relative cost.

First, the cost of wind energy is strongly affected by average wind speed and the size
of a wind farm. Since the energy that the wind contains is a function of the cube of its
speed, small differences in average winds from site to site mean large differences in
production and, therefore, in cost. The same wind plant will, all other factors being
equal, generate electricity at a cost of 4.8 cents/kWh in 7.16 m/s (16 mph) winds, 3.6
cents/kWh at 8.08 m/s (18 mph) winds, and 2.6 cents/kWh in 9.32 m/s (20.8 mph)
winds. Larger wind farms provide economies of scale. A 3-MW wind plant generating
electricity at 5.9 cents per kWh would, all other factors being equal, generate electricity
at 3.6 cents/kWh if it were 51 MW in size.

Second, wind energy is a highly capital-intensive technology; its cost reflects the
capital required for equipment manufacturing and plant construction. This in turn means
that wind's economics are highly sensitive to the interest rate charged on that capital.
One study found that if wind plants were financed on the same terms as natural gas
plants, their cost would drop by nearly 40%. <4>

Third, the cost of wind energy is dropping faster than the cost of conventional
generation. While the cost of a new gas plant has fallen by about one-third over the
past decade, the cost of wind has dropped by 15% with each doubling of installed
capacity worldwide, and capacity has doubled three times during the 1990s. Wind
power today costs only about one-fifth as much as in the mid-1980s, and its cost is
expected to decline by another 35-40% by 2006. <5>

Fourth, if environmental costs were included in the calculation of the costs of electricity
generation, wind energy's competitiveness would increase further because of its low
environmental impacts. Wind energy produces no emissions, so there is no damage to
the environment or public health from emissions and wastes such as are associated
with the production of electricity from conventional power plants. Wind energy is also
free of the environmental costs resulting from mining or drilling, processing, and
shipping a fuel. <6>

NOTES
1. Levelized costing calculates in current dollars all capital, fuel, and operating and maintenance costs
associated with the plant over its lifetime and divides that total cost by the estimated output in kWh over
the lifetime of the plant.
2. California Energy Commission (CEC) Energy Technology Status Report 1996. Sacramento. All CEC
estimates are in constant dollars as of 1993, with costs "levelized over a typical lifetime (usually 30
years) beginning in 2000" (p. 57). All cost estimates are for investor-owned utility (IOU) ownership.
3. Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2001, p B1.
4. Wiser, Ryan, and Edward Kahn. 1996. "Alternative Windpower Ownership Structures." LBNL-
38921. Berkeley, Calif.: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. May.
5. Chapman, Jamie, Steven Wiese, Edgar DeMeo, and Adam Serchuk. 1998. "Expanding Wind
Power: Can Americans Afford It?" Research Report No. 6. Washington, D.C.: Renewable Energy Policy
Project.
6. State attempts to set up a process by which some of the environmental costs of electricity production,
or externalities, could be taken into account in economic calculations have focused on air emissions
alone and set externalities estimates in the range of 3-6 cents per kWh for coal and 0.5 to 2 cents for
natural gas. For a comprehensive study of environmental costs, see Richard Ottinger et al.

[JohnWxy]

35. Vanadium redox flow storage systems enhance wind power - link

Storage of excess generated power for later use (dispatch to utility) will enable taking Wind Power percentage of total power above 20% to 100% if desired. (Without storage of power experts feel wind power is limited to 20% of the total power on a system).


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x47193