Wind power hopelessly uneconomic?

[fiannafailure]

Quote:
Originally Posted by fiannafailure View Post
energy

Excuse me I do not whinge, I ask questions and suggest changes. You have not seen one complaint from me about the way government have treated or mistreated S of I.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fiannafailure View Post
Sparkey

Eamon Ryan does not support S of I as industrial wind farming is not something the green party support, their approach is rather simpler, along the lines of the parish wind turbine, which of course will have to be supported by the parish gas plant...

energy

I have given myself a good kick in the ar$e for playing the man not the ball but that again was not a whinge about poor S of I, that quote was from July 09 and proves that my opinion on OCGT is consistent.

I applaud your dedication to research but even my wife couldn't help you in the search for whinge, unless its about housework.

[charley]

this link is probably BS but if it was true it would negate the need for wind power to pump SoI 's seawater as they could use the seawater as fuel
Running an Automobile on Hydrogen Using Water, by Drunvalo

[Jethro]

What's obvious is that the liars have been clearly caught out. Here is the source for the high taxation of Danish electricity (done to deter overuse) plus how they actually produce it for cheaper than we do with our nonrenewables.

The Danish Wind Experience: Truth and Fiction | Samir Succar's Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC



I have already posted this on another thread.

I deliberately omitted to post the link on this thread (it was always on the other one, for everyone to see) because I wanted to pull the liars into a trap. It worked.

I knew that, being liars, they wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to pretend that they thought my facts weren't solid.

I knew that, being stupid, they wouldn't have the bare minimum of sense to do a quick google search before spewing their lies.

I knew that, once they had spewed, I could toy with them for a while before hitting them with the sources (which, remember, was always available to them via google the whole time).

So now you have the sources and the liars are thoroughly exposed.

The CEPOS report according to the IER has this to say about wind in Denmark.

1. It is heavily subsidised (€270m/year). Plus half of what is produced is exported resulting in an exportation of subsidy. Without significant transmission upgrades (something I'm sure fiannafailure knows more about) any additional -subsidized- wind energy will be exported.
2. It is a costly way of reducing CO2 - €124 for each ton saved versus a global price of approx €15.
3. Each job created in the wind industry costs €90 - 140k per year when subsidies are accounted for. That's twice average wage.

IER's Danish Wind Study: Response to Critics — MasterResource

Here is a quote directly from the original CEPOS report:

A significant fraction of the charges and taxes paid for electricity by Denmark’s domestic
consumers is recycled to support new energy research and the feed-in tariffs that make it attractive
for Danish individuals and companies to invest in wind power. The feed-in support-for-windturbines
tariff has been the key feature of the Danish wind power expansion from the beginning.

This shows that the taxes and charges reffered to by Mr Succar, include subsidies. The very next paragraph in the report says that subsidies are kept to a minimum to avoid excess profits on the back of the taxpayer. It would therefore seem that Denmark does not really have a choice with respect to electricity taxes as Mr Succar suggests. They have to be as high or close to as high as they are to be viable.

Unless Irish people want to pay more for their electricity and far more to abate global warming, we should avoid the Denmark model.

[fiannafailure]

The CEPOS report according to the IER has this to say about wind in Denmark.

1. It is heavily subsidised (€270m/year). Plus half of what is produced is exported resulting in an exportation of subsidy. Without significant transmission upgrades (something I'm sure fiannafailure knows more about) any additional -subsidized- wind energy will be exported.
2. It is a costly way of reducing CO2 - €124 for each ton saved versus a global price of approx €15.
3. Each job created in the wind industry costs €90 - 140k per year when subsidies are accounted for. That's twice average wage.

IER's Danish Wind Study: Response to Critics — MasterResource

Here is a quote directly from the original CEPOS report:

A significant fraction of the charges and taxes paid for electricity by Denmark’s domestic
consumers is recycled to support new energy research and the feed-in tariffs that make it attractive
for Danish individuals and companies to invest in wind power. The feed-in support-for-windturbines
tariff has been the key feature of the Danish wind power expansion from the beginning.

This shows that the taxes and charges reffered to by Mr Succar, include subsidies. The very next paragraph in the report says that subsidies are kept to a minimum to avoid excess profits on the back of the taxpayer. It would therefore seem that Denmark does not really have a choice with respect to electricity taxes as Mr Succar suggests. They have to be as high or close to as high as they are to be viable.

Unless Irish people want to pay more for their electricity and far more to abate global warming, we should avoid the Denmark model.

Jethro,

I have already framed the history of Denmarks electricity taxes and their inspiration, in effect they were the original carbon tax being nearly 30 years old.
http://www.politics.ie/economy/12842...ml#post2733757

Re the grid upgrades, in many cases even if the wind turbine had never been invented, the upgrades would still be necessary.

And I am sure that everyone can agree, in order to export a commodity, the infrastructure which allows its transport must be in place, whether its an inter county export or an international export.

The average dependability of electricity supply in the EU is 99.7%, there are parts of Ireland that might struggle to reach that figure simply because the available infrastructure is poor and before energy takes offence, I am not criticising anyone.

Again I am perhaps showing my middle age, but anyone over 45 old will have some memory of the oil shocks of the 70's and will certainly remember the rolling power cuts of the 80's and the very real impacts these had on daily life, simple things such as the time you had your meals were planned around whether you had electricity or not and your employment status was affected big time.

Some of us, like the Danes would rather not go back to those days.

But Denmark approached the problem one way, I would suggest that we might in Ireland be able to learn from the pioneers mistakes as well as from their success.

The electricity generated by a wind turbine is as effective as that from any other source at doing work, however the payback for its zero fuel cost is intermittancy and that can only be countered in two ways, storage and building equal capacity gas turbines.

Hydro storage is far cheaper over the medium and long term and in its seawater variant is cheaper over the short term as well.

And you do not have to pay carbon levies if you do not emit carbon.

I referred to electricity earlier as a commodity and it is, can anyone refer me to another commodity that was not increased in value by the addition of suitable storage and transport.

And yes Jethro, as regards interconnection I might know more than my prayers, in a few languages and faiths

[fiannafailure]

On the now notorious Frontline programme, Eddie Hobbs repeated the mantra "we must build a strong grid" over and over again. Eddie previously pushed smart investments such as property in Cape Verde islands. Now he's pushing a "strong grid".

The mantra "we must build a strong grid" is being repeated ad nauseam on this thread by the usual wind industry vested interests.

What's going on? We are already committed to spending billions under Grid 25. What additional spending over and above Grid 25 are people like SoI, Eddie Hobbs etc campaigning for?

I want my tax euro spent on education for my kids and healthcare for my parents. Not helping Eddie Hobbs wind power developer friends get rich at the expense of the economy as a whole.

What was notorious about that Frontline programme ?

Eddie is bold enough to defend himself, by the way did you read Energise, but S of I would be taking away the necessity of some of the Grid 25 spend rather than adding to it.

You have stated in the past your preference for nuclear energy, where in Ireland would you believe is the best site for a nuclear station ?

[fiannafailure]

i do live on the coast .there are 8 windmills on the hill behind me and there is a small hydro electric project on the clady river, there used to be a turf-burning station down here but that was dismantled about 15years ago.
my proposal is that communities should take control of their own energy requirements .
if we want our areas to prosper there is no point waiting on incompetant government and their bureaucrats to provide it.
this would also break the states monopoly of the grid and electricity prices

charly

There is a group of people, including myself, at present working on setting up the renewable energy council of Ireland.

Its remit will be to encourage and support local communities to set up local energy Co Ops. The Co Ops will invest in and support local energy production and energy effiecency projects and we believe that this will provide local employment and assist communities to become somewhat self reliant in energy, but those communities will still need good grid connections.

There are literally thousands of locations in Ireland with small scale hydro potential, many with historical water power credentials. The common perception is that for example tidal energy is a new phenomenon, our ancestors were using tidal energy to power industrial applications a thousand years ago and more.

You posted a picture of a field full of pylons, the truth is that there will only ever be a small handful of locations in Ireland with a concentration similar to that, and they will be close to urban centres.

Regarding the water as a fuel link, there is actually a company in Dublin working on a similar proposal. The main problem with this tech, besides cost, is that hydrogen is not actually very energy dense, in other words you need a lot more hydrogen to travel a certain distance than petrol or diesel, however if you also distil nitrogen from the air and combine it with hydrogen in the proper proportions you produce ammonia, which approaches the energy density of diesel and again burns in a diesel engine with very little modification.

But here is where the concept of enbodied energy, as mentioned by windmeup, comes into the picture, you need to spend energy in order to release the hydrogen from the water and if the energy density of the resulting fuel is not high enough then it is not worth the effort either from a monetory or energy production viewpoint.

You wouldn't invest €10 euro in order to return €5 euro and that is the problem that hydrogen as a fuel has.

However a local energy Co Op using small renewable energy resources sourced locally and using equipment with a suitably long design life might be able to beat the embodied energy trap and manufacture energy dense fuels such as ammonia at an economic and energy profit.

Peak Oil News: Ammonia Fuel?The Other Hydrogen Future

Or from a farming standpoint produce their own fertiliser supply, and fertiliser shortage is one of the new challenges just around the corner.

[energy]

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought you were against pumped storage as a concept, rather than SoI as a particular proposal.

What exactly is the SoI "proposal" ? I've lost track of what it's supposed to do.

[fiannafailure]

What exactly is the SoI "proposal" ? I've lost track of what it's supposed to do.

Nothing much has changed from the very first Spirit of Ireland meeting.

To build hydro storage reservoirs in U shaped glacial valleys in the west of Ireland and use them to turn stochastic renewable energy into deterministic hydro energy.

To encourage and support community based renewable energy Co Op's.

To enable every citizen of Ireland, should they wish, to take an ownership stake in our energy reserves.

To invest in and support renewable energy research and development.

To enable a complete and robust renewable energy industry, including device manufacture and technology development.

To generate a return on such investment.

To guarantee the economic success of the entire enterprise at the beginning, with the income stream available from national and international energy arbitrage.

[myksav]

this link is probably BS

Running an Automobile on Hydrogen Using Water, by Drunvalo

No probably about it.
Funny as heck but in a sad way.

[charley]

Highland Radio Number of windfarms in Donegal set to increase dramatically
Gweebarra group to host public meeting - Donegal Today
Donegal County.com & Dn na nGall.com - Gweebarra Conservation Group
Wind Watch: Gweebarra group to host public meeting
lady from the conservation group also mentioned windfarm syndrome which can cause depression.looks like the resistance is forming.