Twenty-One Bad Things About Wind Energy — and Three Reasons Why

Ok I didn't read all the OP because it was way too long. I have looked closely at this issue for a number of years after it became an issue where my parents owned land with a project that was eventually axed.

Wind turbines are not "green". There is a crap ton of energy/CO2 put into their construction, as well as rare earth minerals, etc that have to be mined. Besides being a danger to wildlife, they are also noisy and expensive.

I personally don't mind that they exist but they are not a magic bullet. We still have a standby power issue. We have storage issues. All that free energy Germany gets has the consumers paying some of the highest electric rates in the world with no end in site and them having to pay people to take electric off the grid to keep it from bursting into flames on windy, sunny days because there is no way for them to dump loads.
 
Kacper said:
Ok I didn't read all the OP because it was way too long. I have looked closely at this issue for a number of years after it became an issue where my parents owned land with a project that was eventually axed.

Wind turbines are not "green". There is a crap ton of energy/CO2 put into their construction, as well as rare earth minerals, etc that have to be mined. Besides being a danger to wildlife, they are also noisy and expensive.

I personally don't mind that they exist but they are not a magic bullet. We still have a standby power issue. We have storage issues. All that free energy Germany gets has the consumers paying some of the highest electric rates in the world with no end in site and them having to pay people to take electric off the grid to keep it from bursting into flames on windy, sunny days because there is no way for them to dump loads.
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My God, somebody that speaks sense on this issue.

http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/28/...emissions-bitter-result/#sthash.VTT1AnGP.dpbs

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Thing1 said:
He talks about the disadvantages like they will always exist, and as though there is no chance that the technology can advance to become more affordable, viable and widespread.
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I think he does that cause some green advocates talk as if we are there and those advances are right around the corner when they are not or as if they are the sole solution.
 
katzgar said:
I don't think anybody expects wind energy to provide a hundred percent of our electricity. I think anybody that's tries to say what the future of wind energy will be is foolish.
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In the UK his arguments are pretty much valid. Keep in mind in the UK wind power is more subsidized than here and you have a very different set of geographical conditions that make his arguments very sound arguments against subsidization. In the UK that is. As I’ve pointed out the conditions in the US are very much different. When you factor that the costs for energy is far higher in Europe than in the US and green energy initiatives are highly subsidized by tax payers money and the benefits distributed in an inequitable manner. He pays three to four times what we pay for a gallon of gase. Ask him what it cost to heat a 120m2 flat per month in the winter. Ask how much more he has to pay for a car with a 2.5L in-line engine vs a 1.6L engine due to green taxes and you might understand his POV a little better. I’ve talked to guys from England who’s idea of a Dream vacation is to fly to the US and rent a Mustang 5.0 BOSS for a week and drive across the country because it’s prohibitively expensive to do something comparable in Europe.

Having said that those are not the geographical conditions here and those do make a big difference in the discussion.
 
Havana Moon said:
Until storage is available on a grid scale, wind power is just not really viable. It doesn't replace fossil fuels only displaces them. Hydro power is a dispatchable energy source but only 6.5 % of total US electricity is produced from it and then only in mountainous areas. What is the point of using wind to displace gas, when you can just use gas instead? It is classic crony capitalism, enriching a few people. If wind is used to generate hydrogen for transport then I see some future for that.

It is not as if what I am saying isn't based on real world scenarios. Look at the Energiewende in Germany, that is a textbook example of how to turn a world-class electricity network into an unreliable and hugely expensive one instead. Need another example, then look at the problems in South Australia! In both cases, the catalyst was zealous Greens promoting unreliable technologies based on dogma not common sense.

https://stopthesethings.com/2017/12...els-plans-for-wind-powered-future-in-tatters/

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/south-australia-falls-victim-green-hubris/



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Its not viable as a major or sole energy source until it’s intermittent nature problem can be resolved. You may be right that combined with hydrolysis you could solve the intermittent problem better than with battery technology. Hydrogen would be easier to store and use on demand. Now that’s the way I like to see you think.

However it has proven useful at times. In 2008 (I believe) Germany produced nearly 20% of its energy from Wind and it helped tremendously in stabilizing energy cost when Russia reduced gas exports.

Germany though is a FF poor country. The US is not.
 
Havana Moon said:
My God, somebody that speaks sense on this issue.

http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/28/...emissions-bitter-result/#sthash.VTT1AnGP.dpbs

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Oh I could bore you to death with other details. Alternative is fine for places like China and India where demand will far exceed availability so they can avoid a lot of the problems. The only people with a practical solution thus far is Norway but not everyone can do what they have done---they use the extra energy on high production days to pump water up hills into vast storage lakes and then release it to create hydroelectric on days when the alternatives are not meeting demand. I am not sure what the environmental impacts may be to those watersheds though.

Even ignoring the storage issue, the real practical problem is standby power. The cheaper that free energy is, the more expensive the standby power becomes. You still have to have workers come into work just in case it decides to get cloudy later. and you have to spread all your costs over fewer megawatts of product and draw your profits off fewer megawatts to stay in business. Most electricity generation regardless of fuel source is steam powered. You cannot turn those systems on and off like you can the lights in your house, especially nuclear. When a reactor scrams it takes weeks, sometimes months to bring them back on line. The pipes that carry the steam and water through steam generated plants have to be soaked. That means you have to keep those really thick, long pipes hot all the way through or they crack and eventually fail and you have to keep air pockets out of them. So even when all that free sun and wind are creating power, that reactor, gas furnace, etc, is going to have to keep running to keep those pipes hot.

I love the idea of renewables. Large scale commercial production is way too problematic. Instead of spending billions on a giant solar array in the desert, I think they would be better off spending billions just paying for solar small solar assist systems for individual consumers. Put solar assist hot water tanks on government housing. Give people some kind of help putting a few panels on their rooftops. At the very least, any damage will be highly localized and not system-wide.
 
Havana Moon said:
I know you like to think you're JPP's answer to Groucho Marx, however I would suggest that ought to use Harpo as a role model.

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not to mention he's heavily invested in
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Over the past 35 years, wind energy – which supplied just 6.3% of US electricity in 2017– received US$30 billion in federal subsidies and grants. These subsidies shield the US public from the true costs of wind and transfer money from average taxpayers to wealthy wind farm owners, many of which are units of foreign companies.




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Mott the Hoople said:
In the UK his arguments are pretty much valid. Keep in mind in the UK wind power is more subsidized than here and you have a very different set of geographical conditions that make his arguments very sound arguments against subsidization. In the UK that is. As I’ve pointed out the conditions in the US are very much different. When you factor that the costs for energy is far higher in Europe than in the US and green energy initiatives are highly subsidized by tax payers money and the benefits distributed in an inequitable manner. He pays three to four times what we pay for a gallon of gase. Ask him what it cost to heat a 120m2 flat per month in the winter. Ask how much more he has to pay for a car with a 2.5L in-line engine vs a 1.6L engine due to green taxes and you might understand his POV a little better. I’ve talked to guys from England who’s idea of a Dream vacation is to fly to the US and rent a Mustang 5.0 BOSS for a week and drive across the country because it’s prohibitively expensive to do something comparable in Europe.

Having said that those are not the geographical conditions here and those do make a big difference in the discussion.
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When you look at the progress of Renewables over the last several decades trying to make a conclusion on the value of Renewables based on what they are right now is it valid. Technology is changing growing and figuring stuff out what the future will be is unknown. Neither solar nor wind can provide all of our energy needs just because of places where solar or wind isn't much available. This entire conversation is no more than Barstool talk.

Mustang sales in Europe are what is keeping the Mustang brand alive right now. Sales of the car in the United States our way down. I do have to wonder if coming over here for vacation is as desired since Ford started marketing the Mustang in Europe.
 
katzgar said:
When you look at the progress of Renewables over the last several decades trying to make a conclusion on the value of Renewables based on what they are right now is it valid. Technology is changing growing and figuring stuff out what the future will be is unknown. Neither solar nor wind can provide all of our energy needs just because of places where solar or wind isn't much available. This entire conversation is no more than Barstool talk.

Mustang sales in Europe are what is keeping the Mustang brand alive right now. Sales of the car in the United States our way down. I do have to wonder if coming over here for vacation is as desired since Ford started marketing the Mustang in Europe.
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I don’t believe they’re selling the 5.0 BOSS in Europe. I’m pretty sure it’s the 4 cylinder ecotech engine and it’s significantly more expensive in Europe than that model is here in the US. You’re right about it’s popularity in Europe. They had the BOSS featured on Top Gear. Not surprisingly they were scathingly critical of the car. However wherever they stopped they got swamped by admirers of the car.

Your point about renewables is correct about any developing technology or products. The complexity and cost are factors to be considered though. I’ve had projects in recycling in the past which on the surface appeared easy but ended up getting sunk by factors I couldn’t control. I worked on a project recycling movie film. The polymer chemistry was pretty straight forward and not to difficult and the engineering solution already existed. What killed the project was meeting market criteria for performance standards which determine product pricing and the cost of chemicals killed us as we had to meet better than 90% recovery of acetic acid to begin to be profitable due to high acetic acid cost at the time. So between that and middlin to low product value due to using movie film as a feed stock the whole project collapsed as the economics simply weren’t there.

Now I’ve also had other experiences where innovation solved long standing problems because the problem was looked at in a different way. Sometimes it’s iust a long tedious slog but it’s rarely ever simple and you can’t ever wed yourself to any single idea, solution or technology.
 
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Mott the Hoople said:
I don’t believe they’re selling the 5.0 BOSS in Europe. I’m pretty sure it’s the 4 cylinder ecotech engine and it’s significantly more expensive in Europe than that model is here in the US.

Your point about renewables is correct about any developing technology or products. The complexity and cost are factors to be considered though. I’ve had projects in recycling in the past which on the surface appeared easy but ended up getting sunk by factors I couldn’t control. I worked on a project recycling movie film. The polymer chemistry was pretty straight forward and not to difficult and the engineering solution already existed. What killed the project was meeting market criteria for performance standards which determine product pricing and the cost of chemicals killed us as we had to meet better than 90% recovery of acetic acid to begin to be profitable due to high acetic acid cost at the time. So between that and middlin to low product value due to using movie film as a feed stock the whole project collapsed as the economics simply weren’t there.

Now I’ve also had other experiences where innovation solved long standing problems because the problem was looked at in a different way. Sometimes it’s iust a long tedious slog but it’s rarely ever simple and you can’t ever wed yourself to any single idea, solution or technology.
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So you couldn't get to the vinegar stroke, right??

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Mott the Hoople said:
I think he does that cause some green advocates talk as if we are there and those advances are right around the corner when they are not or as if they are the sole solution.
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Tom has always contended that it can never happen - ever. That the technology will not advance to that point.

And not as "sole source." As merely a viable, affordable source of energy.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I don’t believe they’re selling the 5.0 BOSS in Europe. I’m pretty sure it’s the 4 cylinder ecotech engine and it’s significantly more expensive in Europe than that model is here in the US. You’re right about it’s popularity in Europe. They had the BOSS featured on Top Gear. Not surprisingly they were scathingly critical of the car. However wherever they stopped they got swamped by admirers of the car.

Your point about renewables is correct about any developing technology or products. The complexity and cost are factors to be considered though. I’ve had projects in recycling in the past which on the surface appeared easy but ended up getting sunk by factors I couldn’t control. I worked on a project recycling movie film. The polymer chemistry was pretty straight forward and not to difficult and the engineering solution already existed. What killed the project was meeting market criteria for performance standards which determine product pricing and the cost of chemicals killed us as we had to meet better than 90% recovery of acetic acid to begin to be profitable due to high acetic acid cost at the time. So between that and middlin to low product value due to using movie film as a feed stock the whole project collapsed as the economics simply weren’t there.

Now I’ve also had other experiences where innovation solved long standing problems because the problem was looked at in a different way. Sometimes it’s iust a long tedious slog but it’s rarely ever simple and you can’t ever wed yourself to any single idea, solution or technology.
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I quit watching Top Gear when I realize it was just typical Brit anti-americanism. I have no idea if the boss is being sold in Europe or not but a V8 certainly is.

The problem with discussing Renewables in a forum like this is everybody has a bit of information and their own bias and very little of its related to actual reality at any given time
 
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