Dave Pyles of NECP wrote:
I would suggests that Mr. De Castro check the US DOE web site. They did a study in the early 1990s that said that there was enough harnessible wind power in just three states to supply all of the electrical needs of the US. See Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States at
http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/atlas_index.html.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Question:
What happens when there's NO wind ? .....a great many people live in "three states" -- when its 100+ F on a July day with no wind, people start dropping dead unless they can get to an airconditioned area. Ditto for heating when its -40 F on a February day up here in the north.
Will you take responsibility for the thousands of deaths resulting from an ill-conceived energy strategy ?
Then there was also the famous "ice storm" of '98 which destroyed a large part of our electric transmission capacity with a 3" to 4" thick covering of ice -- the same would happen to the windmills.... Following the ice storm, a lot of the journalists were bitching about why Hydro Quebec hasn't buried more of its transmission lines (to make them immune to the vagaries of the weather). Perhaps they might cleverly suggest that all those windmills should also be put underground -- and we have a perfect place for them -- inside Montreal's metro stations -- where people get blasted with a rush of air whenever the train comes in to the station. The flow of air can be so strong, that sometimes its impossible to open the doorway at the entrance to the station.... we could have a sort of perpetual motion machine, with James Bay hydro running the metro trains, and the windmills recouping the power dissipated by the trains, etc., etc.
In any event, our provincial giant utility, Hydro Quebec, some time ago, posted an 18-page document on wind power at URL
http://www.hydroquebec.com/publications/eolien/index.html
which constitutes a kind of "Quebec Wind Energy FAQ" ("Frequently Asked Questions").
Included in it is a statement (its in French) about the great advantage that a big utility like Hydro Quebec has in being able to make use of such relatively undependable energy sources as wind, without having to provide a diesel backup for each and every installation; there is however, a ceiling on the amount of wind power ( about 10%), beyond which any potential for beneficial coupling disappears.
As regards INDEPENDENT wind generator installations, Hydro Quebec says that at this time the cost of windmills is higher than the savings gained in unburnt fuel of diesels on stand-by (never mind the cost of the diesel equipment, to begin with !).
Then there is of course the issue of safety in operating & maintaining large numbers of windmills -- such as the famous LOBA accidents mentioned previously on this list by Stewart Farber :
"when a windmill throws a blade it can fly astounding distances due to a feathering effect. An early small electricity generating windmill built on Grandpa's Knoll in Vermont during the 1940s threw a blade after ice build-up and flew about 500 yards as I recall. Today's large windmills have blades several hundred feet across and the tip speed, despite their low rpms is quite high. If a tip element breaks off on the upswing its going to feather even further and these blades weight many tons."
.... are deaths & injuries due to wind power somehow less worrysome than those in other industries ? ...if the answer is "no," then it seems to me that we need to make absolutely sure that any new windmills are designed with backup safety systems similar to those used in nuclear & other industries -- for example, we should demand that large windmills have each of their blades equipped with an electronic automatic pilot and an adequately powerful set of flight control thrusters - perhaps fuelled with hydrogen peroxide monopropellant - so that they can stabilise its initially chaotic flight and make a safe landing in a designated area, in case of a LOBA.
Has DoE or anyone else (NECP ?? Dave ??) estimated the costs of the necessary safety features ? .....what does that (and the back-up diesels) do to the overall economics of wind power ?
Do you care, are are you simply antinuke, end-of-story ??
Jaro