The Winds of Change

“Hey, bro, do all those tall propellers in that field do any good?”  Much like the chicken and the egg, how many colors in the rainbow, and why does my wife win all the arguments, it’s a question often asked and seldom answered to anyone’s satisfaction.

For the wind turbine part, I’ve got a three-part answer:  current operations,  problems with expansion, and bottom line costs.

Since the early 1990s, the German government has pushed to construct, expand, and modernize its renewable energy program.  Wind power and solar panels jumped to the forefront, and are certainly the most visible.  Right now there are a little under 30,000 of the giant windmills operating, with more on the way.  33,000 more are being installed offshore in the Baltic region.  Overall, wind power fills a bit less than 10% of Germany’s electrical energy needs, but the percentage varies greatly from state to state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany), from a little under 50% in northern Germany to almost nil in Berlin.  The Rhineland-Palatinate hits the average squarely on the head at 10%.

Unfortunately, the offshore turbine plan has run into a few snags.  The biggest is the lack of a transport system to successfully integrate all the power produced into the existing grid.  But, you can’t just let the turbines stand in the water and do nothing; you’ve got to keep the blades and hubs moving.  So, right now, it’s taking huge amounts of fossil fuel to keep them turning, leading to the conundrum that in the near future, the offshore fields are using big chunks of energy, not supplying it.  Why construct them offshore at all?  The wind speed at sea is 70 to 100% greater and blows more constantly.

A problem common to both land and sea turbines is the effect of the windmills on birds.  Birds fly into the blades and the towers, or are sucked into the vortex created by the turning of the massive propellers.  The jury is still out on exactly how big a problem it is and a new study (No kidding, a new study? I’m shocked!) is underway.

Wind power is a popular alternative energy source across Europe.  Not just Germany, but practically every country on the continent (and the UK) takes part, however Germany stands in the forefront and is leading the charge into refinement, improvement, and replacement of older, less efficient models.  To give you some idea of the improvements, the older windmills generate about 1.8 megawatts of electricity, or 4,700,000 kilowatt hours.  That’s enough to supply a thousand households.  The newest models generate almost five times that much.

How tall are those darn things, anyway?  Those big beauties, which spike across many German hillsides, range in height from roughly 100 to 300 meters, or 300 to 500 feet.  The blades are a little less than 120 feet long.

A big drawback to wind turbines (and solar panels) is the cost.  The answer is not final, but most reports concede that without government subsidies, wind turbine power is more expensive than other methods of generating electric power.  In other words, without taking money out of the public pocket, turbine power is not cost effective.  But, the figures tend to be jockeyed by the folks reporting the data.   Here’s what the NY Times reported in a 29 March 2009 article:

“A modern coal plant of conventional design, without technology to capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the air, produces at about 7.8 cents a kilowatt-hour; a high-efficiency natural gas plant, 10.6 cents; and a new nuclear reactor, 10.8 cents. A wind plant in a favorable location would cost 9.9 cents per kilowatt hour. But if a utility relied on a great many wind machines, it would need to back them up with conventional generators in places where demand tends to peak on hot summer days with no breeze. That pushes the price up to just over 12 cents, making it more than 50 percent more expensive than a kilowatt-hour for coal.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/business/energy-environment/29renew.html)

Back to the other two questions:  The chicken or the egg.  I don’t know and neither does anyone else, although scientists claim to have a clue.  Colors in the rainbow?  All of them.  Wife winning the argument?  Men are not smart enough to avoid battles they cannot possibly win.