US Wind Energy Just Hit a Major Milestone (cnn.com) 74
The United States set a major renewable energy milestone last Tuesday: wind power was the second-highest source of electricity for the first time since the Energy Information Administration began gathering the data. From a report: As E&E reporter Ben Storrow noted and the EIA confirmed, wind turbines last Tuesday generated over 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, edging out electricity generated by nuclear and coal (but still trailing behind natural gas). Last year, wind was the fourth-largest electricity source behind natural gas, coal, and nuclear, generating close to 380 terawatt-hours for the entire year, according to the EIA. For context, a terawatt is a thousand times bigger than a gigawatt.
Major milestone aside, wind energy in the US is still lagging behind one European country that recently broke a record of its own: Germany. Although the US has more wind capacity by sheer numbers -- it's a larger country with a larger population -- Germany is outpacing the US in terms of how much electricity it gets from wind. In February alone, windmills in Germany generated a record 20.6 terawatt-hours of wind energy, Rystad Energy reported Tuesday, which made up 45% of its total energy in February. In 2020 -- the most recent year the EIA has robust statistics for -- Germany got 24% of its electricity from wind, compared to 8% in the US.
Major milestone aside, wind energy in the US is still lagging behind one European country that recently broke a record of its own: Germany. Although the US has more wind capacity by sheer numbers -- it's a larger country with a larger population -- Germany is outpacing the US in terms of how much electricity it gets from wind. In February alone, windmills in Germany generated a record 20.6 terawatt-hours of wind energy, Rystad Energy reported Tuesday, which made up 45% of its total energy in February. In 2020 -- the most recent year the EIA has robust statistics for -- Germany got 24% of its electricity from wind, compared to 8% in the US.
Re:How is wind renewable? (Score:5, Informative)
You take energy out of the wind, how is it replaced or renewed?
It is replaced when the sun creates thermal differences in the atmosphere.
This is fraud to call wind power renewable.
You are an idiot.
Re:How is wind renewable? (Score:4, Funny)
You take energy out of the wind, how is it replaced or renewed?
It is replaced when the sun creates thermal differences in the atmosphere.
Sure, but how is the sun replaced or renewed? It isn't. Check. Mate.
(my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek, in case it wasn't already obvious)
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Sure, but how is the sun replaced or renewed? It isn't.
Yes, it is. Star formation [wikipedia.org].
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Still not indefinitely renewable [wikipedia.org].
Pedantry aside, we can all agree though that the originator of this thread is a moron, a troll or both.
It's turtles all the way down. (Score:2)
Re: It's turtles all the way down. (Score:2)
Actually, it is done by the ritual sacrifice of the Queen of the Moon people by the deadly blade of the Eternal Champion.
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"LET THERE BE LIGHT!" [princeton.edu]
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Wait until GP learns where the real source of geothermal is.
Or, tidal energy. My god! We are slowing down the moon.
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You take energy out of the wind, how is it replaced or renewed?
It is replaced when the sun creates thermal differences in the atmosphere.
This is fraud to call wind power renewable.
You are an idiot.
Or a blowhard who doesn't understand how the wind blows hard. :-)
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BTW, Agent Orange is still toxic and not meant to be taken seriously.
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Oh, and Agent Orange is made by mixing Putin Communist Red and bone-spur chicken Yellow. Just sayin'
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Yeah, but who's gonna clean up that mess down there?
Put it in the ground:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Intermittency matters. Its not clear that what is being reported is what matters. The question is not how much electricity the installed base can generate in a day. And this is not an accurate measure of how much oil, coal or gas it saves.
The problem with wind is that you cannot match generation to demand. And that you have to have standby to cover for it in calm periods.
So to get an accurate assessment, first compare the pattern of wind generation to demand, and strike out any generation that was in pe
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What ever happened to solar molten salt towers?
Solar-thermal was popular a decade ago, but the cost of PV panels continued to fall while the cost of the pipes, pumps, mirrors, and maintenance for solar-thermal did not.
The future of solar is PV.
Solar panels are complicated and awful to recycle and wear out.
A solar panel is a static layer of silicon. You are delusional if you think that is more complicated than a system of pumps and pipes moving molten salt at 1000C.
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you have to pre-fire the thing using conventional methods - to get it up to operating temperature quickly once the sun comes up.
That is nonsense. The molten salt stays molten for days.
Donald Trump (Score:2)
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They spoil the view from his golf courses, like the golf course he allegedly funded with Russian money and wrecked a designated 'site of special scientific interest' to create.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] or google it.
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Grid Scale Storage Is Still Required (Score:1)
Until there is proper fit for purpose grid scale storage for power, it doesn't matter. There is currently no buffer for when wind and power levels fluctuate in different parts of the grid. Nuclear is still the only viable green power generator that exists right now. If you keep pushing for something that doesn't exist, you will run out of time even if you find it. Something that scale takes a long, long time to roll out. So does nuclear, but at least it's real.
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No need. Distributed wind power provides reliable baseload. [ametsoc.org]
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https://journals.ametsoc.org/v... [ametsoc.org]
A Mark Z. Jacobson paper? Okay, now you're just trolling.
Re:Grid Scale Storage Is Still Required (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll bite.
You can actually download electricity generation data for the lower 48 states in the UK, split by energy source. Wind generated an average of 1,100GWh per day, with a minimum of 310 and a maximum of 2,000 (in the 365 day period ending 7 April 2022).
How the hell he reckons that you can create "baseload" out of that without storage is a mystery. Essentially, on a day to day basis, wind generation in the US can drop to 30% of its average generation. Without storage (or massive overbuild) that is not possible or realistic.
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That 310 is your baseload, your reliable, constant power.
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Unfortunately baseload is defined the other way around, it is the minimum amount you need to feed into the grid, and not the minimum you produce.
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I see, 310 GWh per day of reliable, constant power isn't enough to be called baseload. Thanks for clearing that up!
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Depends what the base load requirement of your grid is.
I guess you do not know what baseload is.
Take a cheat of paper. Make a horizontal line, from left to right. Mark the left side with 0:00 at night, mark the middle with 12:00 (12:00PM) and mark the right side with 24:00 (12:00AM).
Draw an imaginary load curve for such a day over the line. Does not mater if it makes sense for your location or not. Just put a valley somewhere and one or more peaks.
Look at the curve you just made, take a ruler, hold it horiz
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That 310 is your baseload, your reliable, constant power.
I am sure you could overbuild enough to always have a consistent supply, but it makes renewables more expensive, and not cheaper. Basically it means you need 3 times as much of wind than of alternative non-renewable / constant or dispatch-able power.
You would also need to either build a grid that can handle that much more capacity (i.e. up to 6 times the demand), or waster the excess energy generated.
Also, building a single continent scale grid that is flexible enough for such variable generation and can se
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And the data can be downloaded here (if one is interested)
https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]
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There is currently no buffer for when wind and power levels fluctuate
The solution is geographic distribution. When one area is calm, the wind is blowing even stronger somewhere else.
Nuclear is still the only viable green power generator that exists right now.
The most recent nuke projects (Vogtle, Hinkley) will produce power at four times the cost of wind. From planning to completion, they are taking decades.
Vogtle hits new delays. Costs surge to $30 billion [eenews.net]
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The variability for the current generation across the lower 48 US states seems to be around 4x ... lets be a bit conservative for once a century events and you'll need a good 10x overprovisioning.
Re: Grid Scale Storage Is Still Required (Score:3)
Even so, add solar and batteries into the mix, and chances are pretty good that variability is down low enough, and resilience high enough, a decade from now, that even a one in a century event is no longer an issue.
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Sure, with 10x overprovisioning.
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Nuclear is still the only viable co2 neutral power generator that exists right now.
There, fixed that for you. Nuclear isn't green by any stretch of the imagination (nor are solar panels and wind turbines but that's another debate)
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Nuclear is still the only viable green power generator that exists right now.
I ammend that for you "green-glowing in the dark"
Fun aside, you are wrong
Until there is proper fit for purpose grid scale storage for power, it doesn't matter.
Easy to show that you are wrong: currently renewables when available substitute CO2-rich electricity generation as well as helping to conserve your precious nuclear fuel when in abundance - because an atom not split is a resource saved - by again renewable energy.
Also making the big-storage-idea worse, storage comes with losses, where you use your precious and scare renewables to burn off 15-30% of them that could have helped reduce th
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3 decades is a paltry amount of time.
You have to start building TWh level storage projects now if you want PWh level storage in 3 decades.
Re: Grid Scale Storage Is Still Required (Score:2)
10 years from now the entire peak electricity needs of the Netherlands will be supplied by wind. Solar and storage will be extra to provide base loads. The current gas and nuclear power plants will be quite enough to provide whatever is left, although nuclear will be too expensive, mostly.
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But it doesn't solve dunkelflautes at zero emissions. The last 10% is the hardest ... and in 3 decades that 10% is supposed to be solved.
Fossil fuel and nuclear require relatively little overprovisioning and storage for once a century events. Renewables require massive overprovisioning and/or storage to deal with ... which are currently simply not made, relying on the aging fossil fuel infrastructure instead.
The last 10% will explode the cost by 1000%.
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Do you know the pareto principle?
It actually tells you to use common sense and don't do it 100% if you really mustn't - and in this case you mustn't.
Just fill in the last 10% with fossils - you will already need continued use fossil fuel for aviation, emergency responders and military.
Because:
The big problem isn't each and every CO2-Emissions it is acombination of having outpaced the CO2-binding capacity of earth so extremely. But there is also the big lever with reducing agricultural methane emissions or a
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That still has costs which aren't generally taking into account. Eventually instead of the renewable backup being long paid off aging fossil fuel infrastructure it will have to be shiny new expensive fossil fuel infrastructure which is almost never used.
Regardless, the plan is net zero and even 10% is far too much to solve with growing trees.
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I think you mean "needn't" rather than "mustn't".
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I'm fine with a limited amount of gas-powered plants, although fusion is starting to look promising too and with costs that are less than nuclear according to the latest figures.
However, the cost of natural gas just went up by a very high figure for Europe, if you factor in the cost of the war in the Ukraine and the fact that Europe is basically paying for the Russian part of that war through gas payments, having to prop up the Yuan to do so adding even more political and economic issues in the long term. S
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This is the typical argument of people that think in binary and not based on statistics and sensible compromise.
Why would you even want storage at that level? That is only needed if you don't plan but just build.
You don't need that amount of storage:
1.) Build it now and by the current development of battery storage innovation your storage is outdate, outsized, overprized at the time of first operation.
2.) when even in the CO2-"free" future you allow a sensible fossil use as a backup - because with that you
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And then you reduce the amount of power needed - how you ask?
-> Look at the pandemic situation, lock down, home office and so on reduced emissions and demand to quite an extent.
It sounds like you are suggesting the government order a lockdown if the wind stops blowing on cloudy days. Not sure I'm onboard with that.
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The current low cost of fossil fuel backup is deceiving. As age requires more replacement the replacements won't be paid off with the previous normal of high utilization. Also everything on the chain to supplying them is running at much lower volumes or in case of the actual storage, lower utilization. So the cost will increase quite a bit compared to the current cost per Watt of backup and Wh of storage for fossil fuel.
Massive curtailment of industry is possible, already happens to an extent but this would
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What bugs the hell out of me is that there is no imagination and very little investment in grid scale storage using simple physics.
Like, why not simply put some heavy-duty train tracks on a hill, attach a winch system to a generator, pull an extremely large weight up hill when there is excess energy and get energy when it is needed. Or replace the winch with an on-board generator and supply electricity via a third rail. The time of storage would be relative to the number of miles of track you can build goin
TWH (Score:1)
2000 gigawatt-hours is 2 terawatt-hours. Why didn't they just explain that in the first sentence?
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10^-9 Nano
10^-6 Micro
10^-3 Milli
0 - ZERO
10^3 Kilo
10^6 Mega
10^9 Giga
10^12 Tera
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Hand in your geek card please.
"Germany got 24% of its electricity from wind" (Score:3)
Just to supplement this number - that was the power from wind energy used in Germany not produced in Germany
for 2020
data-source: https://energy-charts.info/cha... [energy-charts.info]
Produced: 131,85 TWh / 27,4% of production
for 2021
data-source: https://energy-charts.info/cha... [energy-charts.info]
Produced: 113,51 TWh / 23,1% of production
(in 2021 graphics offshore/onshore wind were not summed up - I just added the numbers for convinience)
currently cw14/2022
https://energy-charts.info/cha... [energy-charts.info]
It's pretty windy here especially in the north, but in the stacked chart you can observe how the fossil generation units are used to counteract the varying availability of renewables - which would have worked out pretty well and smooth for the future to come, if Mr. Putin had not made the worst decision in his life - yet.
needed some compensation for his
Re:"Germany got 24% of its electricity from wind" (Score:4, Interesting)
you can observe how the fossil generation units are used to counteract the varying availability of renewables - which would have worked out pretty well and smooth for the future to come, if Mr. Putin had not made the worst decision in his life - yet.
It's amazing how people claim nuclear is too expensive, when the war was funded by fossil fuels. If fossil fuel plant operators were required to buy insurance to cover the true external costs of fossil fuels, it would be vastly more expensive than nuclear.
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If fossil fuel plant operators were required to buy insurance to cover the true external costs of fossil fuels, it would be vastly more expensive than nuclear.
Only if we had opposite day and would not equally try to insure nuclear reactors where insurance companies don't even lift a finger giving nuclear power actually an infinite pricetag. (I think that is expensive)
We should also talk about our car insurance because gas-guzzlers would carry that burden, too - except of course the Ford Nucleon.
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Russia also exports a lot of nuclear fuel and technology.
Milestone is killing Eagles (Score:2)
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Turbine blades owned by ESI Energy killed 150 Eagles, a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
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Here are some numbers on annual avian deaths in the United States: 38K to 138K from solar power generation, 500K to 600K from wind power generation, 14M to 15M from fossil fuel power generation, 6M to 7M from collisions with communications towers, ~25M from power lines, 350M to 900M from collisions with buildings and windows, and 1.3B to 4B from cats.
Also, deaths from solar and wind are mostly limited to animals capable of aerial locomotion. Fossil fuel pollution is an equal opportunity killer, killing ani
Wind! (Score:2)
Wind energy hits a new milestone of 99% of energy use in US, as millions huddle in the cold due to gas shortage.
'Rank Order' ( 1st, 2nd, 3rd, wtc. ) Fallacy (Score:2)
Rank order is the weakest possible comparison statistic. In this case looks like it was caused by a general seasonal downturn in NG demand. A the sampling period of a single day is meaningless, especially in terms of variability.