From: tgray@igc.apc.org (Tom Gray)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: --UCS Offers New Energy Policies
Date: 14 Oct 92 19:43:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1466601783:cdp:1466601811:000:9222
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!tgray    Oct 14 12:43:00 1992


<responding to Steinn Sigurdsson>

    SS1>Wind is never going to be more than 10% of capacity on US scale
    SS1>demands (ie some small countries may use it for greater fraction
    SS1>of capcity)

   TG1>But of course you cannot say this.  It's like saying nuclear
   TG1>reactors can never be made safe.

  SS2>No, it is a quite different argument. I know the power available
  SS2>in the airmass over the continental US and I know the current
  SS2>power consumption of the US, I then estimated what fraction of
  SS2>the land area could be dedicated to wind power and what the
  SS2>turbulent mixing scale (vertical) is in the atmosphere.

 TG2>Fine.  If you'll provide some numbers, I will run them by Pacific
 TG2>Northwest Laboratory's experts.  PNL is the national lab that
 TG2>released a study in 1991 stating that US wind potential totals
 TG2>approximately 10.7 trillion kWh, using 13.5% of available land       TG2>area.

SS3>I contend that using 13% of the available land area for wind
SS3>power production is completely insane. Realistically you're
SS3>not going to allocate more than 1% of the area.

Hmmm.  This seems more like theology than reason.  Why did you
remove the part of my answer that bears on this very issue?
It's hard to have a meaningful discussion if you censor the parts of
what I write that are inconvenient for your argument.

Here is what I actually wrote, with the part you omitted in caps:

PNL is the national lab that released a study in 1991 stating that US wind potential totals approximately 10.7 trillion kWh, using 13.5% of
available land area.  (NOTE: MOST OF THIS LAND WOULD CONTINUE TO BE
AVAILABLE FOR AGRICULTURE, GRAZING, OR OTHER USES.  THE TOTAL AMOUNT
ACTUALLY OCCUPIED BY WIND TURBINES WOULD BE MUCH SMALLER.)

I don't agree that the national lab study is insane, although the amount
of windpower it projects is certainly very ambitious and unlikely to be
realized any time soon.  Still, utility-scale wind turbines are already
being operated on grazing land in California and on agricultural land in
Denmark (I have a slide showing farmers plowing right up to the edge of
the turbine foundation).

In addition, using agricultural land for wind power production is
generally more profitable economically than other competing uses, so
farmers will have a strong incentive to consider wind as an option.

<material omitted here>

   TG1>A good, credible study of wind in the UK done a few years ago
   TG1>by Michael Grubb, who is now with the Royal Institute of
   TG1>International Affairs, found that approximately 1/3 of
   TG1>that country's electric power could be supplied by wind before
   TG1>penalties to the rest of the grid became unacceptably high.

  SS2>If I remember the UK figure on lots of off-shore wind plant,
  SS2>it is also relatively exposed and has reasonable wind potential.
  SS2>Try the same calculation for Germany or northeastern US.

 TG2>It's true that the UK's wind potential is greater per unit of land
 TG2>area than that of the US.  However, the US still has many areas
 TG2>with excellent wind potential.  I agree with you that wind's
 TG2>potential in Germany and the northeastern US is limited, given
 TG2>currently available storage and transmission technology.  I don't
 TG2>agree that its potential for the entire US is limited to 10% of
 TG2>electric power capacity, which is essentially your original   
 TG2> statement.

<material omitted here>

  SS2>Grid variability is not the only factor. Also note that the UK
  SS2>is pretty much a single grid, the US is much bigger and less well
  SS2>tied in.

 TG2>Certainly, but this is back to the "never say never" issue.  I
 TG2>don't think it's reasonable to say that these technical limitations
 TG2>will forever constrain wind energy's potential, any more than it is
 TG2>to say that nuclear reactors can never be made safe.

SS3>Sorry, I was under the impression we were considering realistic
SS3>scenarios for the next few decades, note that for example that in
SS3>principle far more hydro power could be tapped if you were willing
SS3>to damn every sizable stream - some several times - and manage
SS3>runoff, there is enough power there, however to do so is simply not
SS3>practical.

First, your original statement was "Wind is never going to be more
than 10% . . ."  No time scale was specified, which is one of the
reasons I said your original statement was insupportable.

Second, wind is far less site-specific than hydro.  As I mentioned in
a previous post, most of the state of North Dakota (and South Dakota
also) has annual average wind speeds high enough to produce
commercially exploitable windpower.  There is no site of comparable
magnitude or flexibility for hydro.

Third, it's clear that all-out development of hydropower will be
unacceptable to the environmental community.  There will be
environmental objections to large-scale wind development also, but I'm
betting they will be much less intense, because wind energy's
environmental impacts are much less severe.

<material omitted here>

 TG2>But at present, if you're willing to go along
 TG2>with 1 trillion for wind, I'd be inclined to accept.  Hardly a
 TG2>trivial power source.  At that level, it would be producing about
 TG2>four times what nuclear is producing today.

SS3>so would you use it to retire nuclear plants or fossil plants?

You bet.  Let us say that Grubb's study turns out in fact to be
roughly applicable to the U.S. also, and that, say, it turns out that
20% of our electric power can come from wind without running into
grid stability/economics problems.  At that point, we could conceivably
retire, what, 120,000 MW of conventional power?  It seems to me that
the net environmental benefit of such a change would be substantial.
I think there is probably enough wind close to enough population centers
to make this possible, although I haven't looked at the PNL study in
detail.

SS3>Wind power clearly has a contribution to make to grid supply,
SS3>I think however you vastly overstate your case for how much
SS3>us readily available or can be put online on reasonable time scales,
SS3>particularly if you want to penetrate the market far enough that
SS3>you need to reconfigure the grid to match demand and supply.

This is an interesting contention, since you haven't pinned me down to
any time scale yet -- you said "never" and I disagreed.

But I can live with the projections provided by five national labs --
Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and
the Solar Energy Research Institute (now National Renewable Energy
Laboratory) -- in the March, 1990, Interlaboratory White Paper prepared
for the National Energy Strategy deliberations.

The White Paper forecast that if a 2 cents/kWh incentive were provided
for wind energy, wind generation in the year 2030 would slightly
exceed . . . 1 trillion kWh (or more than 30% of current total U.S.
electricity consumption).

SS3>I'll happily grant wind 10% of the grid, although I'm not
SS3>convinced that it's cost-effective beyond 1-3% and it really
SS3>irritates me that environemntal concerns are dismissed with
SS3>a "the land will still be available for agriculture", never
SS3>mind bird kills and the fact that windmills are big&ugly.

Steinn, again you are not being fair.  You did not raise environmental
issues in your postings, so why would you expect me to address them in
responding?

Bird kills appear to be  a problem at one location in California.  There
is no indication they are a problem elsewhere, and until there is some
hard evidence to suggest they are, I don't regard them as a serious
constraint.

I agree that windmills are big, but I don't agree that they are
necessarily ugly, and the little evidence that is available from
public opinion surveys suggests that most people don't think so
either.  How wind turbines look is something that can be addressed
by styling and by spacing, but to me they mean clean power, and that's
an attractive idea.

<material omitted here>

SS3>Hmm, I actually posted the gist of the assumptions I used a couple
SS3>of months ago, I do admit that I underestimated grid supply by a
SS3>factor of three (sanity check that E = Pt didn't work, forgot that
SS3>grid supply doesn't have a 100% duty cycly :-(  ) but I strongly
SS3>contend that the total wind potential calculations do not
SS3>allow for real world limits on what can be acceptably extracted,
SS3>storage doesn't change my argument much, as inefficiency storage
SS3>loses you a factor of 2-3.

I've addressed your contention above.  Your point about storage is a
good one, and I'll bear it in mind.  However, my impression is that
compressed-air energy storage (CAES) offers considerably higher
efficiency than traditional methods, and according to the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI), "75% of the [United States's] geology
has the potential to provide reliable underground air storage."

*******************************************************************
Tom Gray                                 EcoNet/PeaceNet: tgray@igc
Internet/Bitnet: tgray@igc.apc.org    UUCP: uunet!pyramid!cdp!tgray
Newsgroups: sci.environment,talk.environment