My house is 365 feet above sea level, and the cabin is 6400. So don't get your hopes up.
And the West Side Highway is still high and dry. And kids still know what snow is like in England.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
And while you are at it:
How much fuel to make the resins in the blades ? How much for the fibreglass ? How much for the big concrete plinth the tower sits on ?
etc, etc
Hi,
For a 2MW output from a coal power plant it requires something like 28 tonnes of coal per day, or 1.16 tonnes per hour of coal for a 2MW output.
With a capacity factor of 25% (15-30% of capacity are typical apparently) a 2MW wind turbine will produce:
That is 4380 MWh yearly which is equivalent to burning 2540 tonnes of coal (different types of coal produce different energy)
So each year a wind turbine operates it may effectively create the same energy as burning 2540 tonnes of coal, and if the image you posted is correct saying it takes 170 tonnes of coal to build a 2 MW turbine, then it will take around 24 days of operation for the wind turbine to create the same energy as burning 170 tonnes of coal.
There are a lot of energy costs for a wind turbine,but just let the wind spin it is a renewable, local source of electricity, just like solar.. locally generated power.
cheers, Jamie
The original gearboxes had to be rebuilt after about 3-5 years. They had something like a 90:1 planetary gearbox between a many ton wind rotor and a many ton alternator rotor. A lot of torque bouncing between the two was really hard on the gearbox and bearings. They eventually put a fluid coupling between the gearbox and the alternator. The latest generation machines are direct-drive, with insane permanent magnet alternators and essentially giant VFDs between the alternator and the net. This allows them to run the turbine at the optimum speed for the wind conditions, and dump the turning gear. The VFD can handle that function, too.
Jon
I feel the same way Tim. There use to be a rational voice in the middle but that's been lost in our country. My understanding (based on going to a windmill talk by the company that put 'em up in our area... but I've also read similar stuff online.) Is that modern windmills pay back the "energy cost", in less than a year. (the energy cost is not the whole cost..)
On the other hand my more liberal friends want to put windmills in the middle of the great lakes. When I say that windmills on water cost twice those on land. They say, "No, that can't be right." Everyone believes what they want to believe.
Sigh, George H.
Six months is the number I was "told". I could imagine it's been inflated a bit. The mis-information doesn't help.
George H.
I don't see how that can be right. I drive a lot a miles, Say 20k per year at 30 mpg is ~660 gal per year.. for ten years
6 k gal. at $2-4 that $12k to $24k... If the energy cost made up most of the car price then someone would be cutting their new car prices with oil so low.George H.
You make absolutely no sense. Who cares how much fossil fuel goes into making an automobile, or for that matter, how much is used in its lifetime? All he cares about is how much does it cost. ...and that's the only thing that matters.
Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson hasn't noticed that main idiot invol ved is the guy who posted a bunch of completely bogus numbers.
The idiots in the audience - like Jim - who didn't know enough to recognise them as bogus, are merely bit players. It's worth noting that even Jamie - who isn't all that clever - has managed to work out for himself that the f igures posted are utterly bogus.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
In the Peoples Republic of Santa Cruz, the situation changes every time there's a change of regime. Wind and solar are handled differently. At this time, both will provide incentives in the form of net metering and tax reductions. For the Feds, this handy calculator can be used to calculate the savings and break even point. I plugged in the numbers in for my house (zip=95005, PG&E, Electric bill=$50/month). Assuming all the defaults, it proclaimed break even at 15 years. There's a similar calculator somewhere for the State of California incentives.
However, we're not talking about home systems here. The photo in the JPG shows a rather large monopole and turbine, which are normally operated by either a utility or a private company that sells to the utilities. The rebate structure is different for these. For example: There are multiple programs, but most seem to be based on a rebate for electricity produced, or a rebate for construction: "There are no minimum or maximum system size criteria, however incentives (which range from $0.44/watt to $1.46/Watt, depending on technology) are capped at 3 MW." There's also huge amounts available for "research" projects.
I couldn't find good numbers for how much money the state has allocated for incentives. From the above URL, the total for solar and wind seems to be about $1.7 billion/year, the bulk of which is going to solar driven systems. My guess is that 20% or $340 million goes to wind incentives, that would only pay 100% of maybe 6 large wind turbines at $2 million/each. Considering that Altamont Pass has 4,930 turbines, and Palm Springs has 3,218 turbines, those incentives are not going to go very far in offsetting any expenses.
Drivel #1: My father once owned two wind turbines in Altamont Pass. Methinks it was about 1981. At the time, it was worth buying one for the tax deduction. The value of the electricity generated was nil so nobody seemed to care if they were producing electricity, or not. Maintenance was non-existent. I visited the site once to see my fathers wind turbine and found both of them inoperative. Eventually, the state got the clue and required that wind turbine be operational before it will allow anyone to deduct expenses and depreciation.
Drivel #2: In the distant past, I was marginally involved in a scheme to supply power to a coastal city using wind power. We built a small (15kw) wind turbine and installed it on a ridge overlooking the town. The technical problems encountered centered around the swishing noise of the turbine blades, the TV reception ruined by ghosts, a dirty waveform, major power glitches, and dealing with high winds without feathering the turbine. I won't comment on the finances and politics. After about 18 months of hell, we gave up.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Industrial electric motors can consume many times their original cost in electricity, which is why it's worth making them efficient.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
Cheap natural gas has probably whacked the economics of wind power. Wind turbines are erratic power sources, and tend to strip gears and catch fire and fall over.
And people are starting to revolt over beautiful countrysides plastered with gigantic ugly noisy bird-killing wind turbines.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc lunatic fringe electronics
How long is it for a nuclear plant?
If the mafia is on one side and the FBI on the other, then is the voice in the middle rational?
They'll get even more upset when enormous areas of beautiful wetland get swamped by 10 metres of anthropogenic global warming driven sea level rise
It's not going to happen all that soon, but when the ice sheets start sliding off into the ocean the sea level will rise quite rapidly and it will be much too late to do anything about it.
It seems that the West Antarctic ice sheet has already lifted off its supporting rocky islands. The Greenland ice sheet is less unstable, but it is losing ice faster than new snow is falling on the top, and the example of the Laurentian ice sheet at the end of the last ice age suggests that when the Greenland ice sheet does start moving faster, it will slide off over a few decades at most.
So John Larkin's bleeding heart nature lovers are going to have two images of desolation to upset them. Submerging most of Florida's coastal fringe won't be much compensation.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson firmly places himself among the ignorati who have been gulled by the climate-change denial propaganda machine.
The only fiasco involved is the fact that we aren't doing enough now to limit the eventual costs of having a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere than our agriculture was optimised for.
There's also the incidental cost of having to remodel and relocate large chunks of our port cities to accommodate the 10 metres of sea-level rise which does already seem to be unavoidable
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Well, I'm glad you thought about it.
If you could tot up the energy cost input to an article, including raw materials and labour, it becomes a sizable component. Think how much of your own income ends up paying for an energy factor directly and indirectly, even though it tallys as a labour input. Even other service costs and taxes dissipate in the same manner.....
About the only non-energy cost component invloves property rights and borrowed money.
The fact that the envelope calculation straddles your own use, not an average one, should make you think twice. How does it compare to a public transport model?
I ignore the fact that such a shift might put a lot of people out of work, unless the energy was redirected to some other economic activity.
RL
FWIW, a 100 ton heat of steel consumes around 10 megawatts in the course of some hours. I don't know how long, but it's not all day at least. (And no, I CBA to run the numbers. It's an easy calculation.) Ten 1MW windmills could supply that handily; let's say 20 in case the wind isn't steady on that day.
The 2 kilotons of steel required could be recycled within one month.
To say nothing of the handling, rolling, forging, moving, etc. power needed to deal with it, but those will all be secondary.
Someone else mentioned resin. That's a bigger concern, globally. Think about it. How many things do you touch, each and every day, that contain petroleum carbon, hydrocarbons, or anything related? Not even touch, it might be as mindless as things you wear, or things implanted inside you! All these fantastic wonder materials have been made possible by the very stuff we so unflinchingly burn as waste heat... and there will come a time when throwing away Zip-Lok bags will be considered absurd.
Tim
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website:
Idiot Power...
...Jim Thompson
-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
I doubt that 550 tonnes of coal will produce 3,200 tonnes of CO2. My quick estimate is that it's less than 1,600 tonnes of CO2.
joe
[...]
That's easy enough: Burning 550 tons of coal yields 2000 tons of CO2.
Jeroen Belleman
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