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November 15, 2010 12:43 AM   Subscribe

Is wind power bad? Many people think so. Americans are by far the largest energy user in the world, so why all the backlash ?
posted by woodjockey (129 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Most of the upset in these articles is about the aesthetics. Is there a good accounting anywhere on the full costs of wind? How long does it take a turbine to earn back the investment? Merely saying "they're ugly" is not a sufficient stopper, given the circs. (Plus there was a time when lots of folks had their own windmill, even in urban zones.)
posted by chavenet at 1:03 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


Americans are by far the largest energy user in the world

Ignoring the grammar mistake, this isn't a totally fair statement. On a per-capita basis, the US ranks 7th in energy consumption. In terms of total use, the US is first, but not by far. It uses about 30% more energy than China, and that gap is closing every day.
posted by ChasFile at 1:26 AM on November 15, 2010 [8 favorites]


Holy crap. Earth First is now wearing orange ponchos with their name on the front? How is that even Earth First, and why are the protesting wind power? This makes my brain hurt.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 1:55 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Most of the upset in these articles is about the aesthetics.

Something that I can never, ever believe is legitimate. Landscapes the world over are strung with power lines, some massive high-voltage lines cutting swathes over hills and valleys, others just the simple ugly ones that line every street. These powerlines can be constructed with impunity, they just appear, there never seems to be any protests, no lengthy public consultation, no legal fights. But put a (in my opinion) peaceful, white wind turbine on a distant hill and HOLY SHIT you should see the anger the NIMBYs get themselves into. And that's just powerlines. Millions of people live under flightpaths, or next to freeways, or train lines, and put up with the noise, but, again, the distant whirr of a wind turbine and people claim the greatest offense. I guess the concerns are somewhat justified if you're talking about building them in a pristine, untouched environment, but that part of Maine the prostestors in the second link are complaining about hardly appears to be that kind of place.
posted by Jimbob at 2:09 AM on November 15, 2010 [60 favorites]


I'm guessing they're not championing the nuclear option as the sounder alternative.
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 2:14 AM on November 15, 2010 [5 favorites]


Lots of the backlash, like so much anti-progress these days, is the stupid being manipulated by the cynical. Here in Massachusetts, the opposition to our Cape Wind project looks like this:
  1. Proposed wind warm off the coast will be visible to incredibly wealthy landowners in the most exclusive parts of the Cape and Islands.
  2. A few wealthy people form 501 groups with public interest sounding names (e.g. "The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound") to make it sound like there is broad existing public opposition to the project.
  3. 501 Astroturf groups make a list of negative conjecture about the cost to the public and cite ridiculously low estimates of the benefits. They never state "this will affect the views of rich people, which is the whole reason this organization exists."
  4. The 501 groups do further cynical things to sway public sentiment like pay members of Native American tribes to speak out against the project in order to appeal to the public's emotions, despute these tribe members having no credentials to assess the project better than any other layman
  5. Easily-manipulated members of the public begin to oppose it.
It's pretty much the standard astroturf blueprint. Fortunately for my state, this particular big lie is too transparent to have enough of the desired effect. But it fries me to hear discussions of the issue in the media that include representatives of TATPNS and treats it as a group of concerned citizens, glossing over where its funding comes from.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:23 AM on November 15, 2010 [59 favorites]


Idiots.
posted by delmoi at 3:00 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


But put a (in my opinion) peaceful, white wind turbine on a distant hill and HOLY SHIT you should see the anger the NIMBYs get themselves into.

If it actually was a single, peaceful, distant wind turbine, the NIMBY's wouldn't be angry.
posted by fairmettle at 3:01 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


The opposition to the Cape Wind project may well be mostly rich people worried about their sight-lines--but didn't I hear something about commercial fishermen worried about what the installations would mean for their trade?--but that isn't necessarily what's going on everywhere.

>Most of the upset in these articles is about the aesthetics.

Something that I can never, ever believe is legitimate.


But, see, the powerlines were probably already there when the current owners bought the house, so any hit on the aesthetic value was factored in to the price people paid for the property. Adding an additional eyesore, particularly one that makes noise, and people are going to be worried that they're going to take a hit they didn't plan on. The objection is not so much to the concept of eyesores but the addition of a new one.

I'm not saying that this is good for society, but it is a rational response to the prospect of being forced to bear the cost of a negative externality.
posted by valkyryn at 3:03 AM on November 15, 2010


Am I the only one who thinks that wind turbines are absolutely gorgeous? I mean, I know I'm not, but sometimes it seems like I am. I think they're wonderful, and there have been some truly breathtaking artistic innovations on the form. Whenever I see turbines I always have to stop and appreciate them if I can. Then again, I'm also the person who takes tourist photos of cranes and scaffolding in harbors of new cities, so maybe I'm just nuts.
posted by Mizu at 3:31 AM on November 15, 2010 [96 favorites]


Chasfile : On a per-capita basis, the US ranks 7th in energy consumption. In terms of total use, the US is first, but not by far. It uses about 30% more energy than China, and that gap is closing every day.

This statement ignores that fact that a very large proportion of the energy used by China is in fact used to manufacture goods for other countries (especially the USA). In reality the per-capita energy consumption in the USA is much higher, it's just that a lot of it is proxied overseas since that's where all the products they consume are manufactured.
posted by silence at 3:32 AM on November 15, 2010 [16 favorites]


incredibly wealthy landowners in the most exclusive parts of the Cape and Islands.

Yes, but in this story the "incredibly wealthy landowners" are the ones protecting the immediate natural environment from commercial development and it is the protestors - who have no personal stake in this region - who are calling for the destructive industrial exploitation of this area.
posted by three blind mice at 3:46 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


I heard that once, a windmill KILLED A BIRD. Therefore, they are evil and should be banned.
posted by ymgve at 3:49 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


If you're interested in what large scale investment in wind power looks like - from the perspective of generating a high proportion of energy consumed - Denmark is the place to go look.

- Interesting wiki article
- Time article

The main lynchpin of Denmark's investment is that government support has also created a huge export market for Danish expertise and technology - a point that often gets overlooked in the debate.
posted by MuffinMan at 3:53 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


I'm guessing they're not championing the nuclear option as the sounder alternative.

Well, nukes are quiet, safe, and CO2 neutral. They can provide power 24/7 for less than natural gas or oil or coal.

And let's not forget that in a shift to electric vehicles we're going to badly need more reliable capacity. Hydro's maxed out, wind is iffy, geothermal causes problems with microquakes, fossil fuels emit CO2 (dammit, won't someone think of the TREES?) and tidal minces fish. (Even if it doesn't, there'll be some jackass eco-organization screaming about shoving Flipper into a blender set to frappe'.)

Civilization - the technological civilization we've all come to know, love and loathe, requires electricity. Conservation's all well and good - but conservation doesn't PRODUCE electricity.

For that you'll need something else.
posted by JB71 at 4:07 AM on November 15, 2010 [8 favorites]


Am I the only one who thinks that wind turbines are absolutely gorgeous?

No. We have fields of them not far from where we live here in NW Missouri. Having grown up near a steel mill and lived near pulp mills and coal-fired power plants at various times, the turbines present a relatively clean and pleasant sight, but . . .

I heard that once, a windmill KILLED A BIRD. Therefore, they are evil and should be banned.

All the homes and other buildings that birds sometimes brain themselves against as well.

Demolition will create jobs!
posted by metagnathous at 4:17 AM on November 15, 2010


I'm pretty certain that the fossil fuel industry is responsible for agitating and then funding about 90% of the backlash against wind power. The rest can be blamed on people's unwillingness to accept any change about anything at all ever.
posted by Jon_Evil at 4:25 AM on November 15, 2010 [7 favorites]


Renewable energy is a funny thing. It's a byzantine problem for the experts, much less for the average of us.

One of the best marketing techniques ends up being illustrating the new solution in terms of the existing solution. For electric cars, if one is to really take into account the safety issues of batteries and charging ("oh my gosh that's a lot of current! is it safe?"), the reflexive argument is that right now, you drive around sitting on 30 gallons of explosive fuel. Is that safe?

For energy, the current solution is a coal plant, somewhere else. Toxic emissions from generation and the related supply chain. Somewhere else.

If we were to give people the option between a micro coal plant next door or a turbine, what is their choice then? Given that 30% of electricity is lost in transmission inefficiencies, if we reduce price by 30% right off the bat and then give them the choice between a small coal plant and a wind turbine. I'll give you a hint, most people would probably take the slight psychological annoyance of wind turbines over the toxicity (asthma) of a coal plant.

Further, onshore wind is a bit difficult, but the real benefit is in off-shore wind. This creation has the potential to evolve wind energy production in a major way. It's bird-friendly and requires nothing more than a HVDC cable run to shore. Sure it requires more maintenance but again, it is much more preferable to have many KV of DC current running through a wire than crude oil being shipped around all over the place.

Of course, there are other options if we ignore renewables, but I don't think people would like them much either.
posted by nickrussell at 4:39 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Does this controversy exist outside of New England? I only ask because I live in a Midwestern state which has totally embraced wind power, and I don't think I've heard anything similar here. People here seem to think that wind energy is good for the environment and the economy. Maybe it's because there aren't a lot of lovely vistas to disrupt?

(I think they're kind of beautiful, too. But I also enjoy taking pictures of cranes.)
posted by craichead at 4:40 AM on November 15, 2010


Amen to that, Jon_Evil. We always wondered where the money came from for these well funded, if light on facts, campaigns. People are resistant to wanting to care where their power comes from. Power is still seen as our servant/slave — not to be seen, not to be heard, not to be paid for — and yet we're more defined by our power usage than we'd acknowledge.
posted by scruss at 4:40 AM on November 15, 2010



Yeah. What Jon Evil just said. As soon as the fossil fuel industry devises a way to create a larger profit from wind (solar or other) power generation you can bet the direction of the 501's will change to how beneficial wind power is for us.
posted by notreally at 4:41 AM on November 15, 2010


nickrussell, that thing you link to is vapourware. Plus no structure is bird-friendly. I don't know where VAWT types get that nonsense; perhaps from the fact that, since none of them have been built, none of them have killed birds?
posted by scruss at 4:43 AM on November 15, 2010


Most of the upset in these articles is about the aesthetics

There are other objections, beside aesthetics. The prairie chicken numbers are already in decline, mostly due to the building of fences in the tall grass prairies. Wind farms in their breeding ground are only the latest man made contribution to their extinction.

As for nonexistent wind kill, a good pair of binoculars in the proximity of a wind turbine will let you make up your own mind, unhampered by the opinion of expert consultants hired by electric companies.
posted by francesca too at 4:46 AM on November 15, 2010


These things are DANGEROUS.

Did you know that every five minutes, a windmill explodes?

This is not to mention the detriment to nice breezes, which the windmills use up for themselves.
posted by orme at 4:50 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Most of the upset in these articles is about the aesthetics.

Something that I can never, ever believe is legitimate.


I think you're being hyperbolic here. I mean who would ever want to be stuck looking at a windmill? I have to imagine the suicide rate among the Dutch is huge.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:51 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


I don't understand people who don't like windmills. I love the drive through the wind farm between Indianapolis and Chicago. It feels like progress.
posted by Kwine at 4:54 AM on November 15, 2010 [9 favorites]


Well, the obvious knee-jerk reaction is that Americans are idiots. Ted Poe (R-Texas) backs this up. "Congress passed an energy bill which should have been called the 'Anti-America NON-Energy' Bill because it punishes Americans for using energy, rather than finding new sources of affordable energy."

In any case, here in Columbus Ohio, a car dealership (!!!) put up a windmill near I270 & Sawmill road. I've yet to hear or see any backlash or bitching about it, and it's rather pretty.

As for the birds hitting it: unlikely, since the blades are big, slow, easy to see and dodge. Birds hit buildings (and cars!) all the time, and nobody is saying we need to get rid of big glass windows on skyscrapers.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 5:03 AM on November 15, 2010


The people quoted in that "all" link sound like they have some reasonable concerns.

We should not act as if this is an all-or-nothing debate. I don't think many non-straw people are entirely against all wind turbines, especially as an alternative to certain other ways of generating electricity, but a number of people are against them being built just anywhere by investors looking to make a buck off people always willing to buy more and more electricity.

And everyone is NIMBY about something. We all admit the necessity of certain things in general that we quite rightly don't want built next to our homes. We support transportation by car or train or plane, but we don't want ten-lane highways or railroad tracks or runways put in next to our homes or right through wilderness areas. We agree that sewage treatment plants are necessary but we don't want to find ourselves living downwind from one. We agree that oil has to be pumped out of the ground if we want to have certain oil-based products, but we don't want someone installing oil derricks over our back fences tomorrow. NIMBY can be a quite rational attitude: you think a society needs X but you also think a society needs to be careful where and how it builds X, and that it is stupid to let just anything to built anywhere by anyone looking to make a buck. You try to protect your neighborhood and you expect other people to protect their own neighborhoods.
posted by pracowity at 5:04 AM on November 15, 2010


The prairie chicken numbers are already in decline

Yes, and the offshore population numbers for prairie chicken just makes your heart sink.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:05 AM on November 15, 2010 [12 favorites]


but didn't I hear something about commercial fishermen worried about what the installations would mean for their trade?

Yes, but the trade of a commercial fisherman is his own worst enemy. The total area of the windfarm is still dwarfed by the total fishable area in Nantucket Sound. Making the windfarm into a Marine Sanctuary area would be a two-for-one solution. We would get a small refuge area where groundfish can feed and grow which would be beneficial to the fisheries. and a large increase in the amount of renewable energy in the Northeast.

Commercial fishermen are griping about the proposed windfarm because that is what this generation of fishermen do. They've seen the government fuck-ups and quota changes and have been so hard hit by changes in policies that they are now resistant to any change at all. You can hardly blame them for bitching, but should probably read what they say with a little more scrutiny.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 5:10 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


There are legitimate concerns about bats v. wind turbines:

I'm not all that read up on it, bit the USGS sees to be looking into it and people seem to be finding easy solutions.

Bats are already having a hell of a time with white nose syndrome, and I certainly don't want to come of ass a NIMBY single-interest oppositionist, but we've got to watch out for the little guys.

I hope people can find a way to make turbines and bats co-exist, because wind power is one of the greener, better ideas we've had in a while. I s'pose the sea-bound turbines like the ones off the coast of Mass. wouldn't be any danger to bats at all.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:13 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


Did you know that every five minutes, a windmill explodes?

Just doing some back of the envelope work, that's about 100,000 turbine explosions a year.

A modern turbine generates about 1 MW.

The US has 21,000 MW of wind generating capacity. German is just behind that. Spain and India are both at about 12,000 MW. China is in eights place with just over 2000 MW. (This based on the Wikipedia Wind Farm article which appears to mostly look at 2008 statistics.)

For the number you cite to be correct, every wind turbine in the world has to explode about every ten months, or you're extrapolating from old experimental technology or someone is feeding you a made up number.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:18 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


nthing the windmill love here. If you ever get the chance to go and stand under one, the sound of those huge blades whizzing past overhead is amazing. Plus they're way bigger than you'd expect.

JB71: Conservation's all well and good - but conservation doesn't PRODUCE electricity.

Conservation doesn't need to produce electricity. When energy use is reduced, less capacity is required, and the electricity can be used for something else.

For example, in the early 80's, Amory Lovins was arguing that if the US spent the cost of ONE nuclear power plant to insulate residential housing to a modest standard [1], they could save the equivalent of SIX nuclear plant's construction and operation costs over the potential life of those plants.

In that process, an order of magnitude more jobs would be created as people made and installed insulation and other basic energy-saving equipment.

I don't know if those numbers are still relevant, but I can't imagine that the basic argument is far off. More information here.

I mention this 40 year-old example because I don't think conservation is a problem because of technical or economic issues, it's a matter of public education and political will.


1. I don't know what that would be, as I live in Canada where more insulation is universally a Good Thing.
posted by sneebler at 5:29 AM on November 15, 2010 [6 favorites]


Am I the only one who thinks that wind turbines are absolutely gorgeous?

Absolutely not. I personally think it's just shallow people who complain about the aesthetics. People who can't see past the surface to realise that this is progress, however imperfect. As a migraine sufferer I can absolutely understand uproar regarding their potential affect on the quality of life of those living near them. I just find it so depressing that the vast majority of complaints, at least in Kingston, ON where I was exposed to them, were about how they were "Ruining the skyline". Really? I would walk home from work every morning at dawn and gaze across the water in awe of the dichotomy between nature and modern mechanics at work before me. I tried to enjoy it extra for those NIMBYs who felt it their personal mission to destroy anything new and scary.
posted by sunshinesky at 5:29 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


Does this controversy exist outside of New England?

Nope, we've got our own collection of frothy-mouthed anti-wind reactionaries up here in Toronto too. I love that they call themselves "Toronto Wind Action", which sounds to me like they want more wind power, not less. The Ontario liberal government is actually taking a fair amount of heat right now because they are "rushing into green power", and people are paying more for power then they used to overall. The whole situation infuriates me to no end. I mean, shouldn't we be paying more for power if it costs more to produce? Am I the only person who cares about he environmental cost of power? And what do these anti-wind nitwits suggest we do instead? Notice you never hear any concrete suggestions from them--just vague talk of "geothermal" with no mention of how that would work on a large scale.
posted by Go Banana at 5:36 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


If you're protesting against wind, you're protesting for coal. The anti-nuclear people in the 80s made the same mistake.

And with over 300 million people in the country, just about anywhere is someone's back yard, and just about everywhere is inhabited by one threatened species or another. No compromise activists infuriate me. There's ALWAYS going to be a compromise, and if you refuse to acknowledge that, you remove yourself from the dialogue that establishes the compromise.
posted by keratacon at 5:48 AM on November 15, 2010 [5 favorites]


A lot of this is stoked on the sly by clever astroturfing and lobbying from the coal, oil, gas and electricity-generating industries. Wind power is a disruptive technology in parts of the US - off the East Coast and in the plains states in particular, where there's a regular supply of near-constant wind. It would completely up-end energy supply for some of the most industrialized parts of the US - and put a hurting on fossil-fuel interests and those who have turbines fueled by them. So, "Save the Bats!" and "protect lobster migration!" and "Save the unspoiled scenery!" are what they're saying, but "Save mountain-top removal mining!" is what they mean.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:50 AM on November 15, 2010 [11 favorites]


Does this controversy exist outside of New England? I only ask because I live in a Midwestern state which has totally embraced wind power, and I don't think I've heard anything similar here. People here seem to think that wind energy is good for the environment and the economy.

I know in my Midwestern state, that's probably because there are a hell of a lot of places where you can stick a major windfarm and not put it in anyone's backyard. Population density of Indiana? 169.5/sq. mi. Population density of Texas, the state with the highest wind power production? 79.6/sq. mi., which drops to 60.6 if you factor out DFW and Houston. Population density of Iowa, the state with the second-highest wind power production? 53.5/sq. mi.

By way of contrast, population density of Massachusetts? 809.8/sq. mi., and still 568.4 if you factor out Boston. Almost ten times the equivalent density of Texas and more than that of Iowa. So NIMBYism is just going to be a bigger deal where any given plot of ground is more likely to actually be in someone's backyard. Forcing externalities on a couple of dozen people is easier than forcing them on a couple of thousand.
posted by valkyryn at 5:50 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


I think wind turbines look awesome. As others have said above, not only do they have a fairly clean-lined aesthetic, they also truly look like progress. We live in the future—it's time we started acting like it.
posted by limeonaire at 5:53 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


This is not to mention the detriment to nice breezes, which the windmills use up for themselves.

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!
posted by Jugwine at 5:57 AM on November 15, 2010 [12 favorites]


Sneebler - I'm not against conservation at all. Insulation, as you point out, is a GOOD thing. I've often wondered about insulating our house to R-50 or so, but I think we'd need to rip out all the drywall on exterior walls... not in the budget, either in spousal tolerance or fiscally...

I like LED lighting, don't like CFLs, and so on...

BUT -

We're using more electricity now than in the 1980s. Households, businesses, industry - they all consume more. Heating, cooling, lighting and IT - the baseline's a lot higher and it won't be going down. If we switch over to a predominantly electric infrastructure for transportation, THAT is going to really require a lot more capacity - much more than can be 'produced' through conservation.

We're going to need massive amounts of 24/7 capacity, and it's got to be rock-steady reliable. (Or at least more reliable than solar or wind.) Trying to get people to go with wind power because 'it's good for the planet' if they're subject to brownouts/blackouts because of the wind not blowing just won't cut it.

Way I look at it, there's two practical choices - fossil fuels or nukes. Solar's not an option right now - the cost is too high for too little wattage and then you've got to look at storage costs. (Get the cost installed down to under a dollar a watt, or the cost/kw to under 6 cents, then it's got real potential... but you've still got the storage problem. I'd redo the roof with solar shingles and stuff batteries in the attic at 50 cents a watt or 5 cents a KW.)

In the end, it's not about what's most attractive from an ideological standpoint - it's what most practical from a utilization standpoint. I think a lot of advocates get that confused.
posted by JB71 at 6:05 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Nope, we've got our own collection of frothy-mouthed anti-wind reactionaries up here in Toronto too.

You're welcome to dismiss these people out of hand, but what they're fighting against is essentially an enormous taxpayer subsidy of a foreign company for feelgood reasons. The turbines they're proposing won't pay for themselves, in terms of electricity generation, within their expected lifecycles, and building them won't stimulate the local economies in any particular way.

Ignoring esthetics, ignoring the constant low-grade hum they emit that amounts to "give tinnitus to everyone with a few kilometers" (which is curiously relevant to the people who live right there!) they are nevertheless flat out bad investment compared to any number of things people could be spending that money on, like public transit or nuclear power.
posted by mhoye at 6:06 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


New rule: If you're out protesting wind energy, your back yard is now a prime candidate for a mountaintop removal mine.
posted by fungible at 6:06 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


...since the blades are big, slow, easy to see and dodge.

When driving to Minot from Bismarck for work, me and the sales guy did some back-of-the-napkin calculations, based on an estimated 100' blades and about 4 or 5 seconds per rotation, that the tips of those blades are moving 70-80 miles an hour, and one blade goes by every second-and-a-half. They look slow, but that's an enormous object to move in a complete revolution every five seconds.

These powerlines can be constructed with impunity, they just appear, there never seems to be any protests, no lengthy public consultation, no legal fights

Masked men, state troopers hung in effigy, and angry farmers shooting at powerline construction would like to have a talk with you.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:23 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


While the truck was stopped, Willow Amanda Cordez-Eklund, 26, of Minneapolis put a U-shaped bicycle lock around her neck and locked it to the underside frame of the transport vehicle in an effort to keep the wind power equipment from being delivered to the nearby Kibby project. This action convinced the trucker to turn off his engine.

I don't know why, but I like this.
posted by Xurando at 6:27 AM on November 15, 2010


Trying to get people to go with wind power because 'it's good for the planet' if they're subject to brownouts/blackouts because of the wind not blowing just won't cut it.

To be fair, this is on its way to being a solved problem. There are plenty of ways to even out the supply of power. At its simplest, you can just pump water uphill whenever supply exceeds demand, then let it flow back down through a turbine. Currently molten salt looks to be quite promising as an energy store.

Which is not to say that I disagree with you about nuclear power; it's the most rational choice in the short term. There are some nifty and very cost-effective reactor designs around now that bear little relation to the scary, leaky reactors currently falling to bits around the world.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 6:31 AM on November 15, 2010


Landscapes the world over are strung with power lines

Untrue. As far as I know there are no overhead power lines in Western Europe.
posted by creasy boy at 6:34 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


So, can I build my own turbine and put it on my roof?
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:37 AM on November 15, 2010


Any counter-protesters must carry copies of Don Quixote.
posted by Mister_A at 6:37 AM on November 15, 2010 [9 favorites]


There are some nifty and very cost-effective reactor designs around now that bear little relation to the scary, leaky reactors currently falling to bits around the world.

Very true - and I might point out that the French have been doing quite well with their reactors at about 80% of baseline.

And fusion's only about 50 years off... still. (sigh.)
posted by JB71 at 6:38 AM on November 15, 2010


Kid Charlemagne - I think the exploding windmill thing might have been a hyperbolic joke.
posted by idiomatika at 6:38 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


At its simplest, you can just pump water uphill whenever supply exceeds demand,

assuming you have the topography for pumped storage, the water, and you can get it past the same crowd that is agains wind. Not to mention that unlike wind there actually are environmental impacts from new pumped storage. Like it or not falling in love with wind means for at least the next 20 years you'll have to be installing additional natural gas generation. Not a reason not to embrace wind, but something that needs to be included in the calculus not just in terms of environmental impact but also in terms in of costs and subsidy regime.

For anyone siting Denmark as some ideal - remember they import almost as much energy from Norway and Sweden (mostly hydro and nuclear) as they produce wind energy - now granted they also export wind energy, but if they didn't have those big reservoirs of baseload generation their own fleet would need to be different. You really need to look at Nordpool as one single entity (Nordpool is Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway). Not some argument against wind by any means, just a point that looking at what % of generation comes from wind and thinking that is a reasonable benchmark is probably bad thinking.
posted by JPD at 6:39 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


*rigs up three copies of the OVERPOPULATION GONG along a shaft and builds a stator using nifty neodymium magnets, then waits for the hot air, all to power a speaker that just blares the sound of a gong being hit, over and over*
posted by adipocere at 6:41 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


New rule: If you're out protesting wind energy, your back yard is now a prime candidate for a mountaintop removal mine.

Newer rule: If you're here making statements like that, your back yard is now a prime candidate for a 100-ton wind turbine base, tower, and generator.
posted by pracowity at 6:48 AM on November 15, 2010



Am I the only one who thinks that wind turbines are absolutely gorgeous?


I'm with you. I drive past some large wind turbine projects every week, and I love seeing them up on the hilltops. They have really clean, angular, modern lines. Whether or not they make sense economically or environmentally, I don't know -- the alternatives aren't great, either, for that matter. Dams have huge environmental costs; coal tends to not be particularly clean to mine or burn; and nuclear has some obvious downsides but in the end will probably be the chosen option.
posted by Forktine at 6:49 AM on November 15, 2010


craichead: "Does this controversy exist outside of New England? I only ask because I live in a Midwestern state which has totally embraced wind power, and I don't think I've heard anything similar here. "

I (now) live in Manhattan, KS. When I was studying for my undergraduate degree here, there was a kurfuffle over wind farms. A site had been proposed in a fairly consistently windy area, near the Konza Prairie Biological Station.

Two main objections were raised in protest: it would destroy the region's aesthetics, and would disturb prairie chickens' main habitat. It's my belief that these arguments substituted for the genuine concerns, that it would be harm Koch Industries, and raise property values in the region without raising income or reducing present costs. As has been pointed out, the region is marred by power lines, highways, air traffic and old farmer stone fences. The prairie chicken thing is possibly true, but it seems odd that so many took up the cause at precisely the time of the proposed wind farm site.
posted by pwnguin at 6:50 AM on November 15, 2010


JB71 - There are still innumerable ways that current energy consumption, and patterns of consumption, can be reduced. Like turning off lights in office buildings after hours. Like time-of-day billing to shift consumption. Like reducing parasitic consumption of household appliances, computers and chargers.

I agree that we need a certain level of clean fossil-fueled or nuclear generation as a dependable backbone, but fluctuating sources like wind and solar can still make useful contributions. Batteries are one way of storage, but there are other options as well, such as using wind power to pump water into a reservoir that feeds a hydro-electric generation plant.

mhoye - wind generation is in it's infancy, there's quite a ways to go yet. (nonetheless, they're being widely deployed in Europe and elsewhere, so maybe they've already licked the noise problem). Without investment and field experience, how will these improvements come about? I've heard the right-wing arguments that wind generators "are nevertheless flat out bad investment compared to any number of things people could be spending that money on, like public transit or nuclear power", but those bastards have no intention of investing in those things either (looking at you Ford, Hudak, Harper) so it's a false point.

(on preview, n'thing le morte de bea arthur above)

Re stimulation - Ontario is currently a North American hotspot for alternative energy investment. Manufacturers are setting up shop here, small Ontario alternative energy companies and related spinoffs are being courted and bought up, solar adoption has shot up... hell yeah there are local effects to Ontario's investments.

I expect that the issues of noise, birdkill, energy storage will all get worked out, and with any luck it will be done by Ontario companies.

One very nice thing about wind generators - they're easy to set up, easy to change/improve, easy to dismantle or move. They aren't forever, people. You can't say the same about nuclear or fossil-fuel generation.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:52 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


I think it's great how some of you are taken in by the aesthetics and alt-energy production potential of windmills, but hasn't it been discussed previously on the blue that windmills don't offset their production costs well?

And, if after living in a noisy city of your own choice you cannot bring yourself to consider the wonderfully quiet havens from urban life that remote places in Maine (and others) represent, you might want to think it over, so that once your romance with noisy places has definitively ended, you have someplace to go.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 6:53 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Is wind power bad?

No.

Let's start with the first link. The phrase "wind turbine syndrome" and its dissemination is almost exclusively the work of Nina Pierpont, a pediatrician from upstate New York with no expertise in scientific research on acoustics or any other relevant field who eschews peer-reviewed journals in favour of ill-informed journalists and alarmist conferences that she herself often helps organize.

The peer-reviewed research, by contrast, shows no cause for concern. And it's worth noting that two of the giants in wind turbine production and installation - Germany and Denmark - are home to some of the most stringent environmental and public health regulations in the world, and yet this "issue" has no adherents whatsoever in either country.

I'm sure it'd take a good five minutes more googling to deal with the rest of the misinformation and pseudo-science in the other links.
posted by gompa at 7:00 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


I think it's great how some of you are taken in by the aesthetics and alt-energy production potential of windmills, but hasn't it been discussed previously on the blue that windmills don't offset their production costs well?



How are you defining production costs? From a pure return on investment perspective the profitability of wind is purely a function of natural gas prices relative to construction costs. Currently even w/o taking into account the incremental cost of back up generation and/or the need for new transmission lines wind power doesn't work w/o some sort of subsidy regime. This doesn't make it a bad thing as long as you think the cost of the subsidy is less than the value placed on the enviromental benefit. I forget the exact math on implied carbon costs though. I think it was high, but not unreasonable. Since wind is most a sub for nat gas generation the math isn't as good as you would expect wrt to carbon costs.
posted by JPD at 7:01 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


My family has land in one of those wonderfully quiet places in Maine, actually, and we're trying to figure out how to work with our neighbors (or maybe their children, considering their average age) and get some wind power installed amongst our mountains. Is it worse than the buzz of a motorboat on the lake? Worse than the incessant chirping of frogs and mosquitos and river sounds? It's not really so quiet after a week or so of adjusting your ears to the different type of white noise. And if it means we could keep the forests cleaner and the mountain air smelling just as good, it's a proper tradeoff.
posted by Mizu at 7:02 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


As far as I know there are no overhead power lines in Western Europe.

I live a kilometer from overhead power lines, they are everywhere in the Netherlands.
posted by Pendragon at 7:05 AM on November 15, 2010


Does this controversy exist outside of New England? I only ask because I live in a Midwestern state which has totally embraced wind power, and I don't think I've heard anything similar here.

In my Midwestern state of Wisconsin, the controversy certainly exists. Lynda Barry, one of the great cartoonists of our time, has a vigorous sideline here in anti-turbine activism.

In this part of the country, the knock on wind turbines isn't that they're ugly, it's that the noise keeps people up at night, or maybe gives them Wind Turbine Syndrome-- though the existence of such a syndrome remains in question.

Here in Madison, our municipal utility gives us the option of drawing all or part of our electricity from wind, for a small additional charge.

I was gonna make an FPP about this, does it show?
posted by escabeche at 7:05 AM on November 15, 2010


If you have to introduce yourself as an environmentalist who protests wind power, you have failed at life.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:06 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


gorgor_balabala:

A couple points:
- saying again - it's early days! these things will be getting better, quieter, more efficient.
- re "spoiling the quiet" - I'll support banning windmills from God's Country right after we've successfully banned leaf-blowers, unmufflered dick-compensator speedboats, ATVs and dirtbikes, chainsaws, and teenagers.

(on preview - Mizu beat me to it)
posted by Artful Codger at 7:10 AM on November 15, 2010


ignoring the constant low-grade hum they emit that amounts to "give tinnitus to everyone with a few kilometers" (which is curiously relevant to the people who live right there!

Tinnitus is caused by exposure to high intensity sound.

If you've ever worked near them (I did for 6 weeks a few years ago), you'd know they are not particularly loud. There's a reason for that - noise production takes energy, and these things are designed to be as efficient as possible.

But even assuming that you are correct and that mills are loud enough to cause hearing damage, the inverse square law dictates that you don't have to go far for the sound to diminish to "safe" levels.

It's basic math. Don't be stupid.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:16 AM on November 15, 2010 [7 favorites]


If you have to introduce yourself as an environmentalist who protests wind power, you have failed at life.

How about an environmentalist who supports looking for ways to reduce energy consumption rather than (or at least before) building more ways to generate more electricity?

Conservation is the part of the solution that a lot of people don't like to talk about -- they're afraid someone will try to make them wear cardigans and lower thermostats -- but reducing energy use is the most ecological and elegant solution and is a much cooler engineering challenge than putting up concrete and steel towers everywhere.
posted by pracowity at 7:20 AM on November 15, 2010 [4 favorites]


Untrue. As far as I know there are no overhead power lines in Western Europe.

See the Gorge website for pictures of pylons in 36 countries, including France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the UK.
posted by biffa at 7:23 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


So, can I build my own turbine and put it on my roof?

As a technical exercise, yes, though I recall a study in the UK about 2 years ago that this is a bad idea due to the forces that could apply to the structure of your house as a result of the forces on the turbine.

In many places you would be subject to planning restrictions.
posted by biffa at 7:26 AM on November 15, 2010


I expect that the issues of noise, birdkill, energy storage will all get worked out, and with any luck it will be done by Ontario companies.

The technical issue of noise has already been sorted out, now its just some touchstone for opposition to sling without anything to back it up. In the UK and elsewhere in Europe the standard practice is to shuttle groups of people from places where projects are proposed to visit existing turbines so they can hear for themselves. Overall, engagement with people local to a new development should be a key element of any new project management.

The birdkill thing is also ridiculous, it won't be solved especially in that birds will continue to die in turbines, but given that the average tally is 2 birds per turbine per year then its trivial, beaten out by orders of magnitude by deaths relating to buildings, power lines and cats.

Energy storage is both an economic and technical issue. Someone mentioned pumped hydro but that is expensive to build and not always available as an option. Adding storage means more capital costs and typically means sacrificing about 20% of the generated electrical energy. One solution might be better grid management, another might be moving towards an energy service model where.
posted by biffa at 7:43 AM on November 15, 2010


The birdkill thing is also ridiculous

It is, but I'm not sure if you know this as a brit - but the earliest wind turbines put up in the US (in the 70's i believe) were mis-sited directly on a flyway for lots of birds so there was a much higher than reasonable rate of bird kills. They now realize what went wrong and it has not been an issue going forward - but if you are agitating for no turbines you can always take that piece of info out of context and use it to scare people.
posted by JPD at 8:05 AM on November 15, 2010


Newer rule: If you're here making statements like that, your back yard is now a prime candidate for a 100-ton wind turbine base, tower, and generator.

Do I get free, eco-friendly power for the rest of my life? Do it.
posted by fungible at 8:15 AM on November 15, 2010 [5 favorites]


I like windmills. The old school ones look awesome, and the hi tech ones so sleek and sexy!
posted by TrinsicWS at 8:16 AM on November 15, 2010


The birdkill thing is also ridiculous

By and large, yes, but I don't know that dismissing this concern is the right response. There is evidence (and of course antithetical evidence) about the impact to certain species, especially the larger and ungainly varieties such as sandhill and whooping cranes. I think the impact is negligible, but is worthy of attention.

One tenable benefit of wind power is that it is acting to revitalize the income of many rural farmers, land owners, and Native American tribes. If a co-op determines that a privately-owned location is a suitable place for generation and subsequently a turbine is (or turbines are) erected, the landowner can expect to generate at least $2-5K annually while continuing to use the land for their own purposes. This signals a lot of promise to farmers, as well as to Native Americans, who we typically relegated to the windiest and most god-forsaken acreage in the country.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 8:19 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


I went to look up what a prairie chicken looked like and I think they are big enough to knock over any windmills that bother them so they don't need protection.
posted by mikepop at 8:20 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


Hi JPD, I was aware of the problems in California and also in Tarifa, with the early Spanish efforts. I meant to codicil my post with something along the lines of 'so long as you son't stick it in the middle of a raptor sanctuary or migration route' but my attention wandered.

Newer rule: If you're here making statements like that, your back yard is now a prime candidate for a 100-ton wind turbine base, tower, and generator.

Interestingly, one of the initial rules with building turbines in Denmark was that the people building the turbine had to live in the same district as the turbine. Individuals could only own a limited amount of capacity and they were also allowed to take a certain fraction of the output for their own use or to claim the subsidy the Danish government was offering. This was gradually relaxed over the years as its not a model that's useful for the development of bigger wind farms. The idea underlying this was that you had to have any disbenefits of location as well as the benefit of the electricity. The additional benefit was that this gave you a ready group of supporters and that people were less likely to object to development. My old boss used to cite what he claimed was a Danish saying, 'Your own pigs don't smell'.

There's a lot of evidence from the European experience that communities are much more accepting of turbines when they can perceive there are local benefits, in the form of cheap electricity, local jobs or where local companies rather than distant ones make a profit.
posted by biffa at 8:24 AM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


How about an environmentalist who supports looking for ways to reduce energy consumption rather than (or at least before) building more ways to generate more electricity?

Great, do that. Don't protest new clean sources of energy. It's mind-bogglingly counter-productive to the supposed goals of environmentalism. The perfect should not be the enemy of the massively improved.

Assuming these people are not on the Koch payroll, opposition to wind power smacks of an opposition to any human presence in the environment at all. Humans are going to stick around and they are going to require an energy source.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:25 AM on November 15, 2010


Holy crap. Earth First is now wearing orange ponchos with their name on the front? How is that even Earth First, and why are the protesting wind power? This makes my brain hurt.

Why? Do you not know much about the group? Based on Earth First folks I knew 25 years ago, my guess would be they're opposed to ANY kind of human intrusion on the wild, even if it's a supposedly "better alternative" than nuclear plants or fossil fuels. They're by no means "lesser of two evils" folks.
posted by aught at 8:29 AM on November 15, 2010


opposition to wind power smacks of an opposition to any human presence in the environment at all.

i think all dude was saying is that it would be preferable to conserve BEFORE looking to invest a lot of energy into producing energy. i mean, i agree with you--we need this. but it doesn't hurt to concurrently try to save as well. i love turbines--think they're fantastic--like giant Calder sculptures in motion. Having said that, I would prefer an unblemished vista over one that had turbines, yeah. But if an anemometer tells someone that a certain place would generate usable electricity and help some destitute farmer out--put it up.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 8:30 AM on November 15, 2010


People are worried about wind farms because they kill bats? Shouldn't we be building them everywhere because they kill bats? I mean look at this thing. It wants to suck as much of your blood as it possibly can, and then leave you with rabies. Far from halting turbine progress, we should be finding ways to make our turbines shoot jets of fire so they can scorch this evil screeching menace from the night skies.



I keed. As a Minnesota native, I greatly appreciate their effect on mosquitoes.
posted by Demogorgon at 8:36 AM on November 15, 2010


Having said that, I would prefer an unblemished vista over one that had turbines, yeah. But if an anemometer tells someone that a certain place would generate usable electricity and help some destitute farmer out--put it up.

I have been actively supporting renewable energy for a long time but putting wind turbines anywhere with a bit of wind is entirely counter productive. There are other environmental goods besides cleaner energy production and protecting some ecologies and some views needs to take priority. We need planning policies that do not allow environmental protection to become a ball and chain preventing all development but we do not want to be in situation where anyone can dig anything up on the basis of their being wind available. That would be taking us into similar territory to allowing oil companies to dig anywhere there is oil.

I would suggest the Danish model as a useful example of effective planning. Each Danish kommune (kind of like counties, fairly small units of local government) was mandated by government to select sites for a minimum level of wind power development, these sites could effectively then be developed with planning permission very easy to access. Kommunes could decide which areas were not suited for development and locals could take part in the process too, allowing for democratic oversight.
posted by biffa at 8:42 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Energy storage is both an economic and technical issue

This is true, but at the leading edge of this stuff it's emerging as not only solvable with current or just-about-to-be-current technology but also an economic opportunity possibly greater than wind power itself.

See in particular Denmark's EDISON Project. Denmark has the largest percentage of wind on its grid of any jurisdiction on earth - around 20 percent - with a stated goal of expanding to 50 percent by 2025 or thereabouts.

When the Danish government charged energy companies and academic institutions to investigate how to redesign the grid to accommodate this, the team that eventually became the EDISON project looked at all manner of storage techs and load-shuffling mechanisms, but the most feasible solution was to assume that another national goal of the Danish government - thousands of electric vehicles on the road by 2020 or something (can't remember the exact target). Treat this as a vast distributed battery network, and the problem of wind intermittency mostly vanishes. Not only that, the opportunity's so massive that a company like Siemens comes swooshing in to help you make it happen ASAP. (Siemens is now the lead partner on EDISON).

Even better, if you pair this with household energy generation (rooftop solar, for example) and smart appliances, and your workplace parking lot has grid-connected outlets, and you put real-time pricing of electricity in place - do all this, and you create a consumer situation in which you could charge up your EV in your garage at night, when the wind blows strong and comes cheap, then drive to work and sell the excess back to the grid at premium rates during the day. (Or leave the vehicle at home, for that matter, since you're Danish and surrounded by awesome transit.)

This is the essence of the widely hyped smart grid, and its incomparable value proposition - how'd you like your car to make you money when you're not driving it? - is so enticing it's become dotcom-like in its attraction for venture capital, entrepreneurship, etc. I met with a Siemens engineer last fall who told me that technically speaking there were no remaining hurdles to this scenario. Basically it came down to making the electric cars and working out the logistical kinks - both of which, he noted, are things that German engineers are very, very good at.

So there's a big difference between renewables and conventional energy right there. Look closely at the biggest and most intractable problems, and odds are you'll find a huge opportunity waiting for you. I've yet to hear of such potential lurking in mountaintop-removal coal mining - or, for that matter, in perpetually cost-overrunning nuclear.
posted by gompa at 8:59 AM on November 15, 2010 [8 favorites]


gompa - here's the problem with Denmark - they rely on the structural long position in hydro by the other members of nordpool to allow them to have so much wind in their generation fleet. In the grand scheme of Nordpool wind just isn't very meaningful - here is the the total generation data for Nordpool

http://www.nordpoolspot.com/reports/Production_split/

While wind is a shade more than 20% of Danish production it is only 2.6% of total nordpool
posted by JPD at 9:25 AM on November 15, 2010


We should just tap the geothermal energy under Yellowstone. It is potentially the cheapest geothermal energy in the world, but we have touched it because tourists like to look at geysers.
posted by humanfont at 9:36 AM on November 15, 2010


We should just tap the geothermal energy under Yellowstone. It is potentially the cheapest geothermal energy in the world, but we have touched it because tourists like to look at geysers.


won't work economically due to the cost of building new transmission. If you are going to do non-economic transmission projects might as well focus on wind first.
posted by JPD at 9:41 AM on November 15, 2010


JPD, while I don't share your view that lots of Norwegian and Swedish hydro plus lots of Danish wind on an integrated grid equates to a problem (indeed the late, great Hermann Scheer of Germany once told a Canadian wind energy conference that the country's mix of tons of existing hydro plus an ample wind resource was the magic formula for a fossil-free grid), the whole point of EDISON is to get to a point of significantly reduced reliance on that integrated grid.
posted by gompa at 9:48 AM on November 15, 2010


I have been actively supporting renewable energy for a long time but putting wind turbines anywhere with a bit of wind is entirely counter productive.

absolutely agree. i think my glib response elided the due diligence necessary for such decisions to be made.
posted by Grizzlepaws at 9:50 AM on November 15, 2010


so why all the backlash ?

Must be bad bearings.
posted by Herodios at 9:55 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


I don't get why we have to have this discussion over and over. It is possible to build giant wind farms far off shore where they won't bother anybody including prairie chickens and nimby-ists.

This is being done in Europe and elsewhere as we speak.

http://www.earthtechling.com/2010/09/massive-u-k-offshore-wind-farm-fires-up/
http://blog.cleantechies.com/2010/11/05/south-korea-offshore-wind-farm/
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:55 AM on November 15, 2010


We should just tap the geothermal energy under Yellowstone. It is potentially the cheapest geothermal energy in the world, but we have touched it because tourists like to look at geysers.

Hasn't there been a fear-mongering horror movie made about tapping geothermal and subsequently causing the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt, killing hundreds of millions and kicking off a new ice age, sponsored by the coal industry?
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:56 AM on November 15, 2010


no - I don't think its a problem either - indeed I actually think its ideal. The problem I have with it is people continually parading denmark around like they've figured it out. They haven't figured it out, they are just blessed with some small population countries with great weather and topography for lots of hydro right next door. Its not scalable for almost any place in the world. Maybe as you say Canada, although I admittedly know nothing about where the wind resources are in canada relative to existing transmission and stuff like that.

It is impossible btw to have a sustainable fossil-fuel free grid with just hydro and wind w/o massive massive government intervention in the form of price controls and subsidies. You would need to have enough hydro including pumped storage to cover absolute peak demand, but that then means you would have so much excess zero-marginal cost hydro at all other times that electricity would functionally be free and the system would not be self-supporting.
posted by JPD at 9:57 AM on November 15, 2010


"HOLY SHIT you should see the anger the NIMBYs get themselves into."

What, what, in the rut?
posted by Twang at 10:06 AM on November 15, 2010


I don't get why we have to have this discussion over and over. It is possible to build giant wind farms far off shore where they won't bother anybody including prairie chickens and nimby-ists.

Agreed, offshore is the future. Alas, it requires significant government-led investment in new transmission lines, which neither the American nor Canadian governments have shown any interest in providing to date. Once you've sunk billions into clean coal, there just isn't much left for such frivolities.

The problem I have with it is people continually parading denmark around like they've figured it out. They haven't figured it out, they are just blessed with some small population countries with great weather and topography for lots of hydro right next door. Its not scalable for almost any place in the world.

You mean except Germany, immediately to the south? Or Italy? Or Portugal?

It is impossible btw to have a sustainable fossil-fuel free grid with just hydro and wind w/o massive massive government intervention in the form of price controls and subsidies.

That may be true. But it's also impossible to have a fossil-fuel powered grid without massive government intervention in the form of price controls and subsidies. We subsidize fossil fuels over renewables worldwide at a scale of 10:1. Level the playing field - as Germany did to favour renewables by overhauling its electricity pricing scheme using a feed-in tariff, mainly because it was a nimbler and more easily sold political instrument than a tax on conventional fuel - and the whole game changes overnight.
posted by gompa at 10:13 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


It's a pity we'll probably never have more locally produced clean energy like solar panels on all homes and/or personal windmills. It's hard for people to make money if you're getting your wind or solar energy for free on equipment you own instead of buying it from megalithic facilities.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:23 AM on November 15, 2010


I have to say I was all pro-wind-power until I saw a big turbine in action on the lonely hills of Caithness, Scotland, where I spent many a childhood summer. The things are terrifying. They draw your eye with their motion and they are so HUGE, and alien, and juddery like a strobe light. They remind me vividly of the Tripods from the White Mountains books; not the TV show, the BOOKS, when I was 13 and my imagination could conjure up a hill-spanning terror much better than anything special effects could do. I hated the windmill on sight and have not wanted to go back, have written off Caithness entirely as a place I used to love, which has been ruined.

I understand the use and function and benefit of the things. I accept that. And that I don't want to look at them = I will not go where they are, rather than call for them to be taken down. But I'd rather live in house without any electricity at all, in a place like Caithness, than have one of those things looming over me just so I can power an espresso machine.
posted by The otter lady at 10:30 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


How have Germany Italy and Portugal figure out how to use wind?

Seriously - Germany produces 6.5% of its electricity from wind. Italy produced 6 Twh of wind vs ~300 Twh of total electricity demand. Portugal is up at around 15% which is great and probably at the top end of what you can reasonably expect to run a grid on. But also don't forget they get balancing power from Spain - which also has a decent size Hydro fleet.

All those article you posted are about targets - don't make go through a list of "targets" the germans have put out there over the years. Weren't the first nuke plants supposed to close in 2002?

On the subsidy point - I don't think I was making some argument about the inherent superiority of fossil fuels - I was just saying hydro + wind isn't sutainable.

That said I think you understate some of the issues with the subsidy regimes being used. For example in Spain the tariff was so poorly constructed that new wind plants were earning returns of 20% - which sounds fine to you, until you realize those excess returns represent a transfer from the poor to the rich. I guess my point is preferential tariffs for wind are an excellent idea, but they need to be constructed better then they have been. The German tax & tariff regime is notorious as being a big tax dodge for wealthy doctors and lawyers.
posted by JPD at 10:33 AM on November 15, 2010


I correct myself - the germans closed a few nuke plants but transferred some of their remaining life to existing plants, and now Merkel et al are talking about backing away completely from the nuclear phase outs.
posted by JPD at 10:36 AM on November 15, 2010


The things are terrifying. They draw your eye with their motion and they are so HUGE, and alien, and juddery like a strobe light.

Lacking in the folksy pastoral charm of traditional Scottish electricity sources, were they?
posted by gompa at 10:40 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


Lacking in the folksy pastoral charm of traditional Scottish electricity sources, were they?

Believe it or not, from the hill in front of our house we had an excellent view of the Dounrey Fast Breeder Reactor. And yes, it WAS pretty. It was a collection of white buildings with a round dome like a castle from Oz, and it was frequently spanned by a rainbow.
posted by The otter lady at 10:53 AM on November 15, 2010


Dounreay, I mean.
posted by The otter lady at 10:53 AM on November 15, 2010


STORING energy is a way to take the iffishness out of wind. Besides the batteries of electric cars (when/if that ever materializes) one (technically) easy way to store energy is to pump water uphill until you need the energy.

The UK's Dinorwig Power Station (more)(photos) does just that. Nukes are run at full capacity all night long, and their excess capacity is pushed 2000 feet uphill to a lake.

Dinorwig's located in the (Welsh) mountains. By no coincidence, much/most of the US's best untapped wind capacity is located in the mountains.( Dinorwig was finished 25 years ago.) The facility's capacity (1.8Gw for 6 hours) is the equivalent of two very large nukes.

So much for the supposed wind-power storage problem in the US (except for the Plains). Better still this works with all established hydro plants. Next excuse why we just can't do it?

We need to stop squabbling about this stuff and just turn our professionals and people loose on getting it done. The world lost $1T last year stalling the inevitable.

Here's a free book (PDF) on sustainable energy, very well-written and illustrated by a Cambridge physics professor.
posted by Twang at 10:56 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


In fact, if you really increase you renewable capacity, you may need to build more gas plants to ensure the reliability of the grid.

The UCTE put a paper out that argued the amount of back up generation you need for a given unit of wind power grows exponentially once you get above about 10% of total generation from wind.
posted by JPD at 11:12 AM on November 15, 2010


Damn, busted link up there. Here's that pictoral tour of Scottish coal plants I was aiming for.

How have Germany Italy and Portugal figure out how to use wind?

Sorry, I thought for sure we'd begun to talk about the whole fossil fuel phaseout, and the intermittency factor is common to solar as well as wind. That said, I've been hearing about "limits" to this stuff for a decade, and yet every time the threshold is reached it proves to be far from insurmountable. Denmark hit 20 percent, realized its grid couldn't handle much more as is, and decided to change the grid, not the fuel source.

There is a consistent pattern here - one of underestimation, faulty forecasting, and presumed limits that wind up being nothing of the sort. The IEA's 2002 World Energy Outlook predicted that the total installed wind generating capacity for all of Europe would be 57,000 MW by 2020; that target was exceeded in 2008, and by the end of 2009 the EU had reached 75,000 MW, an event the IEA predited would happen in 2030. Will there be grid issues as that number keeps growing? Of course. But as Denmark is demonstrating, they are solvable problems that expand the range of opportunity, not reasons to back off the whole project.

In any case, Germany - the case I know best - gets 6.5 percent or whatever (7.5 percent is the most recent figure I've seen) from wind now, yes. That's double what it was in 2002. It is also rapidly expanding its offshore wind capacity. Last I checked, the goal was 10,000 MW by 2020 or so. (Roughly equivalent to a dozen nuclear plants, which no one's ever built a dozen of all at once in less than a decade.)

And whatever Merkel's saying right now, her government went from virulently opposing feed-in tariffs in 2000 to adopting them as policy in 2007. Merkel went from insisting that 26 coal plants were needed ASAP when she was in opposition to mostly abandoning the expansion of the coal generating regime in Germany. I have seen nothing to suggest that renewables (wind, solar and biomass combined) can't continue to meet and exceed their targets and eventually obviate the need for nukes, while every prediction of failure or "maxing out" renewable capacity has proven baseless.

And since Dasein's weighed in with another one of those current situations masquerading as an absolute limit, I'll respond with the Kombikraftwerk project, a real-world, actual-electricity-flows model that demonstrated you could run the German grid 24/7/365 on wind, solar, biomass and small-scale hydro. The limits, such as they currently are on a grid designed exclusively for large, centralized conventional power plants, are neither technical nor intrinsic to the renewable energy technologies.

In fact, if you really increase you renewable capacity, you may need to build more gas plants to ensure the reliability of the grid.

Been hearing that since the late '90s. It's why Merkel wanted to build all those coal plants in Germany. Hasn't proven necessary even as renewables have vaulted far beyond the natural limits presumed by conventional energy economists and planners in one jurisdiction after another. Were there any evidence of accuracy or even good-faith discussion on the part of the conventional energy industries and their adjuncts in energy depts the world over, it'd maybe be a more compelling point.
posted by gompa at 11:14 AM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


Also, note - the cable company I used to work for has beer-keg sized gizmos at relay stations that keeps their VOIP and commercial-class services running in the event of a blackout, and can keep 'em running for days at a time. Flywheel storage is established tech, actually in production for at least ten years at this point.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:38 AM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Hasn't Denmark sort of plateaued in the last five years? WRT to Germany moving from 3.5% to 6.5% is a lot easier in every way (in terms of grid balancing, back up generation, etc) then 6.5 % to 15% is. You'd probably be better off getting RWE et al to phase out the Lignite plants in NRW in terms of net carbon emissions. The other point to be made concerns the role industry plays. Back in '04 when Carbon prices started to bite there was quite a bit of agitating from the BASF and Bayer's or the world about high electricity prices. Presto changeo - the CO2 issue goes away for a bit.

Pre-FIT Germany still had a very advantageous incentive regime - but it was based on tax credits so it became a popular investment/tax dodge for doctors and lawyers.

Onshore in Europe is slowing down. The Spanish have already used up their best sites and the government has realized that the old tariff regime was crazy.

Also not to derail - and I don't think Nuclear is the answer - but the French built 30+ reactors from 74-mid 80's
posted by JPD at 11:39 AM on November 15, 2010


I've only ever seen clusters of huge ones, kind of like these. Which, honestly, I find depressing as hell to look at. When I see them all I can think about is consumption. They're these huge man-made things literally towering over nature. They just feel so menacing. I'm NOT saying "Fuck wind energy, it's UGLY," nor am I really up to debate the merits of wind power relative to other alternative energy sources. I am simply wondering if maybe the ones I've seen are not the norm? To the (apparently) many people who find them pretty, are you talking about the same kind I am? Or are you seeing a better design/placement than I am?
posted by troublewithwolves at 11:45 AM on November 15, 2010


Hasn't there been a fear-mongering horror movie made about tapping geothermal and subsequently causing the Yellowstone Caldera to erupt, killing hundreds of millions and kicking off a new ice age, sponsored by the coal industry?

This was covered back in the 1960s with Crack In The World.
posted by Herodios at 11:48 AM on November 15, 2010


...a new ice age, sponsored by the coal industry

Now that's synergy!
posted by fairmettle at 12:23 PM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


'Many' in the original post is a substantial exaggeration.
posted by yellowcandy at 12:31 PM on November 15, 2010


I was responding to this . . .

you need to have a coal or gas plant waiting in reserve to power it up to meet demand

. . . by pointing out that while at present, you need a backup, it need not be coal or natural gas. In Germany, for example, the preferred source of fuel for biomass plants is biogas (aka garbage). And of course the larger point I've been trying to make is that the Danes intend to crack this problem with distributed storage, an approach that promises to greatly reduce their need for on-demand backups. (And in the meantime, when they do build conventional plants, they build the most efficient ones in the world.)
posted by gompa at 12:38 PM on November 15, 2010


If this could be done, using, say, people's plug-in hybrids charging at night and then feeding back power they don't need for their commute to the grid during the day, it could be a game-changer.

Hate to be pedantic, but, well - look up, look waaaayyyy up(thread).

I've met some of the engineers on the Danish R&D team. They're going to 50 percent wind with distributed storage. Not maybe, possibly, we'll see. They're doing it. It can be done. It will be. Siemens is giddy over it, and German engineers are not naturally like that.
posted by gompa at 1:08 PM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


Wait what - German engineers don't get giddy about cool things? we live in alternate universes. They are notorious for delivering incredibly overengineered cool things that are totally untenable in the long-term. Have you ever looked at the results of Siemens long cycle businesses? They've had to pay people to take them off their hands.

Also I still take issue with your characterization of the "50% wind" given the interconnectedness of their grid with the rest of nordpool.
posted by JPD at 1:20 PM on November 15, 2010


This seems to rely on mass adoption of electric cars. How are they going to ensure this will happen?

By offering huge rebates in the form of waiving the very, very steep taxes on (gas-powered) cars in Denmark, plus similar incentives for business fleets etc. Won't happen in a huge way until car cos. ramp up EV production, but that along with the new wind installations (increasingly offshore) and the refining of the grid technology that Siemens et al. are working on all looks on track to converge around the same time around 2015 or so.

Degree of difficulty on this is several rungs below carbon capture at coal plants, which the US and Canadian governments have each dumped multiple billions of dollars into.
posted by gompa at 1:40 PM on November 15, 2010 [1 favorite]


And then there's the simple question of where to get the wind. Denmark is probably the best-positioned country for this - small, dense, surrounded by the North Sea. The UK could probably also do well with offshore wind. That doesn't make it a global solution.

Yes, if only the wind were more widely and evenly distributed. Like coal or natural gas or uranium-235. Or if there were some way to harness something truly ubiquitous like daylight and turn that into electricity. Or if only the population in a country like the US were largely concentrated along coastlines. Or there were enormous lakes in the middle of the continent. Or a wide flat plain running nearly the length of the continent and mostly empty with really strong winds blowing across it. Or if only China had a coast and a desert to exploit, and India was surrounded by water on three sides, and Africa too.

I mean, honestly, what the hell's a "global" about, just for example, hyper-pressurizing fresh water and mixing it with toxic chemicals and injecting this into ancient shale to reduce it to rubble and extract the hydrocarbons released in the process? And yet how is it that we're keeping heating costs down across most of North America?
posted by gompa at 1:58 PM on November 15, 2010 [3 favorites]


you do realize that not thinking wind is a panacea, but merely one small piece of the puzzle isn't the same thing as personally fracking shale in your backyard?
posted by JPD at 2:00 PM on November 15, 2010


So in order to make very expensive, subsidized wind power feasible, Denmark is

. . . internalizing the heretofore externalized costs of fossil fuels that are fundamentally altering the planet's climate to the permanent detriment of billions of people and shifting energy subsidies from dirty fuels to clean ones to the point where wind power, efficiency and other non-polluting technologies win the competition on their own merits.

I'm not sure what model's more attractive than the one where the primary fuel is free and ubiquitous in one form or another and it creates essentially no pollution, but if there is one I'd love to hear about it.
posted by gompa at 2:19 PM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


live in a really windy place, and the hills just west of town have sprouted a line of windmills in the last three years. I can see them from my driveway. I could see them from the chair I'm at right now but there is a house in the way.

There has been some local backlash against them. Lots of crowded angry zoning meetings. Much of the opposition has been led by a local multi-level marketing millionaire who is pretty much wrong about everything and not shy about throwing his weight around. I swear, if they were setting up fracking operations or giant feed lots or subdivisions full of McMansions no one would bat an eye, because "Fuck you, it's my property" is practically the state motto. But windmills are right out because Al Gore likes them and they are subsidised by The Gummint and all the energy goes to California, don't you know.

When my misanthropic rage subsides I can understand why people here are a bit shocked that ranchland that looks so, well, pastoral, can actually sprout huge buildings almost overnight if it makes the ranchers some extra money. I was a bit shocked myself when I went out for my evening walk and the whole western skyline was blinking with aircraft warning lights.
posted by gamera at 2:42 PM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


Ergh. chopped off a pronoun there.
posted by gamera at 2:52 PM on November 15, 2010


woodjockey (everyone), just for the future, the post could have readily been framed as not a US only concern.

Please remember your audience everyone, we are not all denizens of the United States! There are relevant issues to do with wind farms around the world, this is a global matter.

Anyway, on to the issue. The undeniable fact is, we have to get off fossil fuels sooner rather than later. I also think it's unarguable that total energy consumption will continue to increase, despite energy efficiency measures.

Without cheap storage, which basically doesn't exist, wind can never account for more than 10 - 15% of the total mix. It's too unreliable, you can't run an economy on it. It's cheap and effective when it is generating, but there are extended periods when there's no wind running across very large areas.

you can analyse the flaws of all sorts of renewable technologies. Eventually, if you follow David Mackay's analysis, Sustainable Energy: without the hot air, (which I thoroughly recommend) it boils down to two main technologies doing all of the heavy lifting. They are solar thermal storage, and nuclear. Wind, photovoltaic, tidal, etc, all have a part to play, but their contribution will be relatively minor.
posted by wilful at 2:55 PM on November 15, 2010


Gompa, thanks for the education and great links in your comments. I appreciate them greatly.
posted by smoke at 3:13 PM on November 15, 2010


Here's a set of flickr photos of wind turbines from our neck of the woods.

Looks like an improvement over this to me. Or this.
posted by metagnathous at 5:10 PM on November 15, 2010


metagnathous, those facilities could well be generating a Gigawatt or more. Do you know how many wind turbines you'd need to generate 1 GW? About 2500 2 MW ones. I can count 9 in your picture set.
posted by wilful at 5:23 PM on November 15, 2010


A interesting article about wind power.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 5:46 PM on November 15, 2010


And yet...how many Danes are driving electric cars? How many are going to start in the next 10 years?

Well, I'd say that good electric cars have only been out for like a year or two. I mean, until this year the only electric car I know of on the US market was the Tesla Roadster, which is awesome and all but a little pricey. The Nissan Leaf will be about $25k which is more reasonable, and the next couple years will see quite a few more.

[Are there other options in Europe?]

(I guess there were also those golf cart things you see sometimes but those are only practical for a very specific type of person)
posted by wildcrdj at 6:12 PM on November 15, 2010


won't work economically due to the cost of building new transmission. If you are going to do non-economic transmission projects might as well focus on wind first.

I don't know who started this myth, but its bullshit. There are major transmission lines over the border in Idaho. Given the billions of dollars is costing to bring deep water drilling online, it can't be any where near that expensive to build transmission lines. Heck we are building a bunch of new ones as part of the national smart grid initiative anyway.

The cost The Geysers powerplant near San Francisco is $0.03-0.05 per Khw and the US DOE thinks we could get the costs at a power source like yellowstone to less than $0.01 / Kwh with construction costs of $2500/KW of capacity. This means we could bring a 1 GW powerplant online for 2.5 billion dollars. Compare this to the Koodankulam Nuclear Plant in India which will theoretically cost 3.5 billion dollars.. Even at a million dollars a mile you can still go a thousand miles from yellowstone and come out even. You also don't have to worry about nuclear waste, storage and insurance. There are no fuel costs, only maintenance of your pipes and steam works.

Nuclear plants also cost 5-6 cents per Kwh and offshore wind power is costing about the same if not a little higher. Consider 2 powerplants producing 1GW of electricity. The wind plant costs $50,000 / hour to run (@$0.05/Kwh). The geothermal costs $30,000 / hour. Over 1 year (365x24) the costs are $438,000,000 (wind /nuke) vs. 262,800,000 ($0.03/KwH). So after 1 year you've saved in excess of 150 million dollars.

Not to mention that with your fancy windmills everywhere approach to provide base load capacity you'd need to build a lot more grid infrastructure because you have to be able to have a network of distributed plants so you'd always have it windy somewhere.
posted by humanfont at 7:43 PM on November 15, 2010


sometimes i think that for every energy source there is an equal and opposite energy special interest group.
posted by 3mendo at 8:32 PM on November 15, 2010 [2 favorites]


you need unusual concentrations to make wind power economical, and even then it's not economical - it needs to be subsidized.

Hmmm. What else do you need unusual concentrations of to make economical, and needs -heavy- subsidization? Why, I think it's nuclear power ... which I -heard- is getting two new plants in Atlanta at a cost of $10B each. Dick Cheney loves that shit.

Wind power isn't expensive any more - as anyone who's been paying attention, and isn't just regurgitating the same old FUD knows, it's under US$0.10/kWh now. The US has excellent wind sites up and down the length of both coasts , and in the Midwest, where a 2000MW installation is happening in Wyoming while T.Boone waits for the markets to quit dissembling.

Hydro storage is "too expensive"? You mean, just like all the dams that were built long ago and have paid for themselves over and over and over again? The best low-carbon investment the US government ever made? Long before the PR-meisters arrived to tout their sickening alternative?

Tired, tired, tired. Wind is -soooooooo- much cheaper and safer than coal, gas, nuclear that its proliferation is inevitable. Without the ENORMOUS suppression by the fossil-fuel industry for 50 years (and I suspect some of them are lurking about many web forums just like this one ... and am -certain- they're all over Wikipedia) the US would already be SWIMMING in wind power.

Demonstrated successes all over the developing world (not banana republics like ours) must be driving our dinosaur fossil power-brokers insane with PR worries.
posted by Twang at 12:27 PM on November 17, 2010


Hydro storage is "too expensive"? You mean, just like all the dams that were built long ago and have paid for themselves over and over and over again?

Hydro storage (I assume you mean pumped) is not the same as just building dams for geenration. It is effectively a high capital cost application which is about 80% efficient, so you have to be in a situation where being able to store and deliver electricity to order is worth substantial additional expenditure and the loss of 20% of your product, and probably also the additional risk that something else will come along that changes the economics such that your investment is stranded. This is not favoured in many locations. It might be sometime, in some places, if the geography is right and the cost of fossil fuels goes through the roof and there are no feasible storage alternatives, and the applicable regulatory regime allows enough money to be made from demand/price spikes.
posted by biffa at 4:08 AM on November 18, 2010


You mean, just like all the dams that were built long ago and have paid for themselves over and over and over again?

Only if you don't give environmental costs any weight, or look at the hidden economic costs. Here in the Northwest we have benefited enormously from the dam projects, large and small, that were built (mostly) in the first half of the twentieth century. We are also just beginning to grapple with the hidden costs of those dams. The depleted salmon runs are the most obvious, but there are others, too.

And it turns out that removing them isn't exactly a cheap or easy task, either, especially if there was mining upstream that contaminated the silts behind the dam.

Add all that in, and the cheap hydropower starts looking a lot more like borrowing against the future than it does paying for itself "over and over and over again."
posted by Forktine at 5:58 AM on November 18, 2010


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