Danish Goal: 50% of Electricity from Wind

tres3 writes "The Danes have an ambitious plan of producing 50% of their national electrical needs from wind by 2030. The website has tutorials on everything related to wind energy you can imagine. The index gives you an idea of the detail of the site. It includes land and sea wind turbines as well as details about the machinery needed and where to locate it. There are over 100 pages so I didn't link to them all. [ed. note: thanks] A picture says it all."

AERO - Jean Micehl Jarre

[mutende]

The AERO [tv2.dk] concert with Jean Michel Jarre two days ago was staged in a windmill park in the north-western part of Denmark.

Re:optimistic?

[Soko]

Actually, the interaction of the ocean and land generates wind quite frequently.

The land tends to be warmer than the ocean during the day, so an on-shore breeze is generated (air warmed by the land rises, air from the ocean rushes in to replace it). The opposite effect is seen when the land cools off in the evening - an off shore breeze is generated.

Since Denmark is surrounded by ocean on 3 sides, one could assume that they have an abundance of breeze to make this work. I wish them success.

Soko

Environmentalists Against Wind Power......

[Brian_Ellenberger]

Now if we can only convince Environmentalists that wind power is a good idea.

Think I'm smoking crack? Well check out this story from the NY Times about the enviro fight against windmills in Cherry Valley, NY:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/nyregion/28WIND. html?ex=1031568343&ei=1&en=0920b9cbdc48601 9 [nytimes.com]

And there is this story about enviros against wind power in Moosic Mountain Ridge, Philadelphia
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/3693755.htm [philly.com]

If you want a good site to view on how the Enviromentalists have shifted from Science to Socialistic Demigogery check out this site from GreenPeace co-founder Patrick Moore:
http://www.fcpp.org/publications/conversations/pat rickmoore.html [fcpp.org]

I love this quote from Dr. Moore:
"Many factors including a lack of science education, a need to perpetuate themselves and "means justifies the end" thinking. The worst aspect is what I describe as the environmental movement has been hijacked by political activists who are using green rhetoric to cloak agendas that have more to do with anti-corporatism and class warfare than with ecology or the environment."

Remember this is the co-founder of Greenpeace. Not exactly your average "evil right-wing" nutcase.

Brian Ellenberger

Has anyone thought to calculate...

[Trogre]

... the amount of energy required to manufacture and erect such an array of wind turbines?

With the turbines running at full-pelt, how long will it take them to break even?

Nowhere near 50% wind power in .dk

[phkamp]

I don't know where the 50% figure comes from, but it is certainly not official Danish policy.

We're currently producing 10-15% of all electricity in Denmark with wind-energy and nobody wants that number to increase currently due to the problems we are facing.

The main problem is that we actually get so much wind-generated electricity during a storm that we cannot get rid of it, this unbalances the power-grid and results in voltage and frequency instabilities.

The secondary problem is that you also need electricity when the wind does not blow. This could mean keeping large centralized power-plants around, paying a lot of maintenance costs, waiting for the wind to die.

Various suggestions abound, and the Engineers weekly newspaper [www.ing.dk] here in Denmark has been the home of a fierce debate for the last couple of months about the merits of these and wind-generation in general.

The fact that all sorts of micro-plants and co-generation is popping up like mushrooms is in fact a very interesting problem for the electrical grids: How do you balance supply and demand, when you have almost as many suppliers as consumers ?

Re:Environmentalists Against Wind Power......

[Swaffs]

I found this quote to be fascinating:

"The more wood we use the more incentive to plant trees and produce more wood. It is no different than tomatoes, if no one buys tomatoes no one will grow them, if the tomatoes sell out there will be more grown the next year. If no one buys wood the land will be cleared of forest to grow something else. Even in mountainous regions like BC we could clear vast areas of forest for sheep and other livestock, as they did in New Zealand and Scotland. So long as demand for wood remains strong we will continue to reforest land after it is logged."

A backwards way of looking at it, but completely true. How enlightening.

Re:Santa Clara, CA

[mesocyclone]

Tree City USA
The little town of Paradise Valley, AZ - near where I live - is also a "Tree City, USA" - in the middle of the upper sonoran desert.

What they did is plant ugly desert foliage in the street medians (natural desert foliage, like I have in my yard) is much nicer.

Every time I see the "tree city" sign I snicker.

As far as Santa Clara gettings X% of its power from this and that source... nonsense! It gets its power off the grid like everybody else does.

Windmills != Dams?

[jcsehak]

I'd be less worried about birds smacking into them than their presence screwing up jetstream patterns or something. I don't know much about wind streams, but way back when we started putting dams in rivers we thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and now we have to deal with things like metallic sediments and screwed-up salmon runs. I can't imagine even a huge number of windmills affecting wind patterns to any noticable degree, but it still might not be a bad idea to keep an eye out for weird things like screwy migration patterns, or something.

Re:Nowhere near 50% wind power in .dk

[Anonymous Coward]

You need electrolysis plants to generate H2 when supply exceeds demand, and fuel cells to put energy back onto the grid. Or pumped storage: use the excess power to pump river or lake water uphill to storage ponds so it can later be used to power turbines when demand requires.

Wind power on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) / Cape Wind

[klubar]

I'm working with a company that is planning to build the first offshore wind park in the US. This project, about 5 miles off the coast of Cape Cod will generate enough electricity to power a half million homes--all without any pollution. I strongly urge you to learn about the value of the project, and help stop the NIMBY that is trying to kill the project. A handful of wealthy Cape Cod land owners are putting their view of the ocean in before the entire interests of the Cape, Massachusetts and the US. Read more at www.capewind.org [capewind.org] -- and write to your congressmen/legislators in support of wind energy (you can click on the support clean energy link on the upper right).

Re:Windmills != Dams?

[kevin lyda]

windmills affecting jet streams? fascinating. the jet stream's like 30,000 feet up in the air sport.

god i never thought how many of you non-ap students were going to speak and reproduce and vote when i went to high school in america. and that was over a decade ago before ronald reagan's gutting of america's public education could really have an effect. it's freakin' scary. no wonder kyoto didn't make it in america.

windmills affecting jet streams. dear god.