China's Wind Infrastructure to Nowhere

China is trying to increase its use of alternative sources of energy. To that end, the country has installed billions of dollars worth of wind turbines. In fact, in 2010, China surpassed the United States as the country with the most wind turbines installed.

But despite China's recent upsurge in wind farms, Ma says, there's an infrastructure problem that hasn't been widely reported. Many of China's wind turbines can't connect to the country's larger electric grid. There aren't enough cables, wires, and related technology to bring wind-generated electricity from rural Mongolia. That's where most of China's wind turbines are located--far from the densely populated hubs of China's northeast and south, where electricity is most needed _FastCompany

In the midst of China's mad rush to build infrastructure, the weakness of its command economy is exposed. Despite its impressive GDP numbers, China is a poor nation filling itself with ghost cities, ghost highways and railways, ghost infrastructure of every kind -- much of which is destined to crumble and fall prematurely due to rushed, shoddy construction.

Even worse than low quality overbuild, is China's bloated financial and economic infrastructure, corrupt to the core.

The ghost numbers of China's ghost economy impress only those who are incapable of looking to the heart of China's economic problem -- the lack of meaningful market level decision making and housecleaning. China's human masses are its greatest value, yet due to China's corrupt government the incredible creative power of China's people is being constrained and oppressed, wasted, like the massive ghost infrastructure to nowhere that begins crumbling even before it is completed.

Why Big Wind Power Won't Work

WUWT
Obama's regime and faux environmentalists around the globe have been gung ho over big wind power farms for years now. And every time anyone takes a close look at the economics and the details of wind energy, they come back to the same fact -- wind doesn't work.

The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.

Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network. Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.

The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.

...Electric generators achieve maximum efficiency at their design capacity. This is planned to suit the "average" wind speed, and the generator produces maximum safe output at this speed. If the wind drops, so does the power generated. If the wind rises, the energy generated is limited to the design capacity of the generator (by varying the pitch of the blades) and at some point the generator is shut down to prevent burnout. So the generator cuts off all the high-energy infrequent wind, in order to capture the maximum energy from the winds expected by the turbine designers at that location. These unavoidable operating characteristics of the turbine also reduce the power generated.

...Wind energy promoters usually quote the maximum attainable output as the capacity of the wind farm. This is the maximum power that could be produced if ideal winds blew all the time at all turbines (the 100% level in the figure above). However, this needs to be multiplied by the "capacity factor" to get the actual power likely to be generated. Because of the variable winds and the energy unable to be captured by the generator, the capacity factor lies in the range 25% - 35%. However it can be much lower. UK offshore wind rarely exceeds 20%.

In summary, wind power is very dilute and it takes a huge area of land to collect significant quantities of energy. Then vagaries of the wind mean that only a small proportion of the wind energy can be captured by the blades. Then only a proportion of this energy is converted by the electrical generator into electrical energy.

...In the recent frigid snap in Britain end 2011, when power demand was at a record high, the average power generation from Britain’s wind developments – the majority of which are in Scotland – was just about 11% of the total possible of 2,430 MW. On 30 Dec 2010 UK's 3,000 operational wind turbines produced only 0.04% of the country’s power. There were days when the contribution from Scotland's forests of wind turbines was precisely nothing. At times it was even worse than that. As the temperature fell to record lows, the wind turbines had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. So, at a time when all Britain needed every bit of power, the wind industry was using more electricity than it generated.

...Depending on the vagaries of the weather, wind power produces anything from zero to 100% of design capacity. This change can come in a short time and affect large areas of land. Therefore, to maintain grid stability and the ability to supply customer demand for continuous electricity, every wind farm has to have a backup generating facility for 100% of the wind capacity, and this backup must be able to swing into production immediately.

It is even worse than that. Suppose a wind farm is producing an average of 50 MW, but varying from zero to 100 MW. The backup has to be able to handle both changes, namely a drop of 50 MW and an increase of 50 MW. So basically, you have to have 100 MW capacity on spinning reserve, but running at 50% so that you can increase or decrease power by 50 MW. So the backup facility has to have TWICE the real rated capacity of the wind farm. Imagine what this does to the capital, operating and maintenance costs if the power company is forced to include wind power in its inventory.

Only hydro power and gas have the ability to sit idle until needed and then swing into production swiftly. Coal and nuclear could do it but at great cost – all fired up, idling, using fuel, but not producing saleable electricity. Even for gas or hydro, a backup facility incurs the full additional capital cost which has to be recovered from a lower output of electricity. Any sensible person would say "If we have to spend all that capital to build a gas/hydro power plant, why not use the reliable plant full time and forget about the costly, intermittent and un-predictable power from wind towers?"

The unreliable Danish wind farms only survive because they call on hydro power from Norway and Sweden to step in at short notice when wind fails. Then they sell excess wind power produced at times of low demand back into the Scandinavian grid.

...A wind tower is a massive industrial plant. Each turbine requires a foundation of almost 1,500 tonnes of concrete and a base of about 5 acres. Each structure stands nearly 200 metres tall and they could be as close as 140 metres apart. UK has a plan to generate 30% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. For wind power to do this would require about 15,700 wind towers. At 140 metres apart, they would stretch from the north of Scotland to the south of Spain.

...And it is unsafe anywhere near them. Lumps of ice, burning embers, and broken blades get slung off and towers collapse. In one case, a broken blade was flung through the window of a house over 5 km away.

...Danish electricity consumers pay higher prices than any other Europeans. And well before they could repay the initial capital, the wind towers are reaching the end of their life and will need to be replaced. Not one coal power plant has been replaced by wind power. It is doubtful if all this community pain and suffering has reduced carbon dioxide emissions. It has certainly caused no measurable improvement to global climate and has brought great environmental damage and human worry. The sorry story of wind power in Denmark is mirrored in Spain, Hawaii and California.

... _Why Wind Won't Work PDF_ via_ WattsupWithThat?!?!

If you want to understand the modern clusterfuck of big wind power, read the PDF document linked above, together with John Droz' presentation on wind power, Ted Rockwell's Energy Facts PDF, and David MacKay's Without Hot Air.

Such documents changed the minds of Al Fin energy analysts about big wind, as you will see if you go back far enough in the archives. Al Fin engineers particularly hate the idea of placing fine machines out in the elements to be tortured and destroyed long before their time. This has been particularly true of offshore wind installations, where fine turbines and gearboxes are exposed to salty spray, wind, and the constant inertial stresses of wind, wave, and storm.

Clearly President Obama and former Vice President Albert Gore are both world class dunces, besides both having won the Nobel Peace Prize. They are also corrupt, team-playing dunces who will end up personally benefiting in the hundreds of millions of US$, at the least, for their destructive influence on economies, energy supplies, and R&D budgets.

Nuclear Energy Needed to Prevent Blackouts in Age of Global Cooling

If Texas had made the same dollar investment in new coal and/or nuclear power plants they would probably be snug and warm tonight. Do we we really want to sacrifice our families’ safety and security along with business productivity during extreme cold for the sake of political correctness? _WUWT

The rolling blackouts experienced in Texas recently were caused by problems with wind, gas, and coal systems to adjust to freezing conditions and increased power demands. Nuclear power is different from the other power sources mentioned above, and is clearly the power source of choice for an ice age or an age of global cooling (possibly along with enhanced geothermal).

US President Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been excessively slow to license and approve safer, more reliable new reactor designs, which makes it almost impossible for the US to provide more secure and reliable power to the people. Amazingly, the Obama NRC has still not given approval for construction of new plants using the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor.

If the NRC approves the AP1000 design, the agency could decide by the end of 2011 on whether to issue construction licenses to Southern and SCANA to build their nuclear reactors, according to Jaczko.

"We will continue to work on a schedule that puts us in a position to make some final decisions possibly by the end of this year," he [NRC's Jazco] said. _Reuters

Take your time, Jazco. It's only the future of the American society and global security that is at stake. Bureaucrats rule in the modern US, so pay no attention to the little people and their needs.

It should be obvious that the US can no longer allow its bureaucracy and Luddite political class to drag its feet on the future.

It is clear that, were our reactors allowed to retire as originally planned, the nuclear industry’s contribution to clean energy production would all but disappear by 2035. Fortunately, some license renewals, which extend a reactor’s lifetime by 20 years, have been approved and others are in line.... even in the best case, in which all licenses are renewed, about 25% of our fleet will be retiring in 2035, making it very unlikely that the US’s clean energy portfolio can grow in that time frame.

This alarming scenario should hurry the construction of new reactors. Though building 784 new plants is an impossible target, the AEF Committee judged that 5 to 9 additional nuclear plants could be brought online by 2020. As espoused in my first article, there is no need to wait around for research breakthroughs; proven reactor technologies are ready to be built now, as China continues to demonstrate. _leadenergy

The Obama administration and its Luddite counterparts at state and local levels, continue to drag their feet on providing reliable power sources -- while they continue to spout nonsensical gibberish about the "promise of wind and solar power."

But what good are wind and solar power when solar panels are covered with snow and ice, and ice-covered propellers on wind turbines prevent power generation -- even in perfect winds?

Wind generators also appeared to be having problems, said Fraser; he had received reports of some turbines shutting down because of issues with ice on the blades. "The wind was blowing yesterday, but I'm not sure wind generation was available because they had problems with ice," he said. _MetMusings

In the recent Texas power blackouts, wind was not the only power source to fall down on the job. Water pipes at coal plants froze and broke, gas pipelines failed to provide adequate pressures to gas plants, and huge piles of coal froze to unusable condition in the ice and snow storms.

The problem had several causes, but we have learned one thing -- in conditions of extreme cold, wind power and solar power are not sources that can be reliably depended upon.

The system needed all of the power it could get. Had more thermal plants been built, at least some of them would have been in service and helpful. Outages would have been moderated a little. Wind generated power was used and useful, but couldn’t be dialed up to produce more during a time of need. Wind power was neither the cause of the problem, nor of any special value in reaching a solution. _MasterResource

It is time for voters and ordinary people to jettison the lefty-Luddite politicians and bureaucrats who are exposing them to potentially fatal risks, all in the name of a failed ideology of faux environmentalism and pseudo-scientific carbon hysteria.

Nuclear power is the best power source for extreme cold -- for most advanced nations -- since all components of the generation system are contained indoors, well protected from the elements -- and do not rely upon the supply of fuel from the outside, which can be disrupted in many ways during extreme weather.

Sure, we need to replace above-ground transmission and distribution lines with secure, buried, and preferably super-conducting lines. But that will take time, and will require severe budget cuts in entitlement spending and public sector union benefits to provide the necessary resources. Before that can happen, heads will need to roll -- in a figurative sense, naturally. (human heads are not perfectly round, so they do not roll as smoothly as one might wish) ;-)

Al Fin was once an enthusiastic supporter of all types of wind energy -- and still supports small wind turbines for niche and off-grid uses. But human minds which are functional will continually monitor the world around them, and take in new information and data. In the course of time, working minds will change and grow with experience. Those minds which are incapable of learning, growing, and changing, may as well not even exist, for all the harm they are likely to do. Particularly when they are in positions of power and responsibility.

Other perspectives on this issue from nuclear bloggers Charles Barton, and Rod Adams.

Power blackouts play hell with electric vehicles. Best to keep your own reliable backup power source at home or place of business -- along with necessary fuels. Relying on the dumbed-down commons for life and death needs can be a fool's play, but in a society of perpetual incompetents -- the Idiocracy -- it is what it is.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Always keep an ample supply of food, water, fuels, necessary medicines, cash, power source, communications gear, etc., and the means to prevent riff-raff from taking it from you. The police are never more than 10 minutes away, whenever a situation calls for an instantaneous response. Perhaps a bit longer if they belong to public sector unions.

Wind Turbines Blow

Most people wonder how much power a wind turbine can produce, and never stop to wonder how much power a wind turbine requires to operate. Mechanical engineer Jerry Graf believes that it is long past time for people to ask that question:

Big turbines often incorporate rechargeable batteries or ultracapacitors to power their own electrical systems. When those get depleted, the power must come from the grid. This power goes into running equipment such as yaw mechanisms that keep the blades turned into the wind; blade-pitch controls that meter the spinning rotor; aircraft lights and data-collection electronics; oil heaters, pumps, and coolers for the multi-ton gearbox; and hydraulic brakes for locking blades down in high winds.

Turbines in northern climes also need blade heaters to prevent icing. Reports I’ve seen say these heaters can consume up to 20% of a turbine’s rated power output. Many big turbines also need dehumidifiers and heaters in their nacelles. And until recently, large turbines employed doubly-fed induction generators that bleed power from the grid to create their magnetic fields. (It should be said, though, that designs now on the drawing boards use permanent magnets instead.)

Instances of low or no wind pose another problem. Large turbines may need to use their generators as motors to help get the blades turning. And some wind skeptics have posed a question about the direct-drive turbines now emerging from the labs: Large ships frequently must expend energy to slowly turn their heavy driveshafts when at port to prevent them from sagging. Could the same be said of these superlarge wind turbines?

Wind-farm operators don’t say much about turbine-power demands. Typically, turbine-power consumption is one of the factors that gets lumped into a wind-farm’s operation and maintenance costs. I’ve never found either a wind-farm operator or a wind-turbine maker willing to discuss these costs. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say the wind industry treats such information as a state secret. _MachineDesign

There are too many aspects to the operation of big wind farms which are treated as state secrets. No wonder the O-P reich promotes wind power so heavily. Politicians are no doubt attracted to the "all image and no substance" aspects of big wind power.

More bad news about big wind

...Jeffry Michel, an MIT engineering graduate living in Germany, once informed me that the average capacity factor in Germany is about 21%. In other words, if 1000 kilowatt hours of (electric) electricity from a windmill are theoretically available during a year, the average (or better the expected) amount accessed during the same time period would only be 210 kilowatt hours. A year or so ago one of the leading energy/environmental bureaucrats in Sweden calculated that with a capacity factor of 25%, four (4) windmills with a capacity of e.g. 1000 kilowatts could replace a nuclear installation of 1000 kilowatts with a capacity factor of 100%, and as a result, with existing (construction and variable) costs, the windmills were a better economic prospect. Bizarre calculations of this nature were probably responsible for making (and keeping) Sweden one of the poorest countries in Europe until the Second World War....

Adapted from an earlier Al Fin Energy posting