
The down side to wind power - todd8
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/10/large-scale-wind-power-has-its-down-side/
======
bigpicture
I've driven through wind farms in middle America and for the most part, each
tower has a small gravel pad around it with a gravel access road to the
nearest public road. Everything in between is farmed as normal. While the
overall footprint is large, the majority of the land continues to be used in
the way it has always been used. If all the farmland in America became one
gigantic wind farm, I don't think you would see a noticeable difference in
agricultural production, especially as the farmers collecting lease payments
are going to be able to invest in newer equipment.

So when they say that a downside to wind power is the much larger amount of
space required compared to previous expectations, is it in the NIMBY "I don't
want to see a turbine when I look out the window", or something else? I'd like
to give the authors the benefit of the doubt; I wish they'd spent a little
more space explaining the downside of the land requirements.

~~~
plytheman
Given what you say about wind farms being placed on traditional farms, I
wonder if the localized warming the paper discusses would actually be a
benefit to the crops. It could extend growing season just a bit more and maybe
help buffer against frosts and cold-snaps.

~~~
dawnerd
A lot of farms already use wind turbines to keep freezes away as long as they
can. They’re all over California, mostly in orange fields. Some places used to
even burn oil at night.

[https://extension.psu.edu/orchard-frost-protection-with-
wind...](https://extension.psu.edu/orchard-frost-protection-with-wind-
machines)

------
strainer
The analysis in the papers as well as the article quite deceptively presents
possible surface temperature effects in a 100% onshore windfarm scenario, as a
factor of global warming.

I view this as a controversy motivated inversion of the fact that wind
turbines _extract_ energy/heat from the atmosphere in contrast with heat
plants (fossil and nuclear) which necessarily release around twice the amount
of useful energy they output, as heat to local air and water resources.

A global warming or cooling effect of atmospheric mixing is not established
here or obvious to predict, being complicated by cloud cover, precipitation,
natural vegetation and farming albedo changes... yet in the context of this
"downside discussion" it is associated to wind as a technical risk.

This kind of modelling is of crucial importance to environmental stewardship,
but this kind of analysis is at best a stimulating exercise and at worst an
obstruction to long over due investment in the clear technological solutions
that we are fortunate to have at our disposal. (Wind power wouldn't be much
use if fated with a Martian type atmosphere)

~~~
jessriedel
As I interpret your comment, you are dismissing this paper's conclusions about
warming effects using just the arguments that (1) intuitively wind power
absorbs energy, not releases it like combustion; and (2) the atmosphere is
complicated. Is that it?

(1) seems like an obvious red herring since the heating/cooling effects of
fossil fuels have nothing to do with the thermodynamic energy release of
combustion. And (2) isn't an argument for cooling, just uncertainty, and
you've given us no reason to trust you over a journal article.

~~~
strainer
Wind turbines do absorb energy from the atmosphere, that is clear
thermodynamic fact not my intuition. Having arranged an atmospheric modelling
capability, these researchers should have included the scenario for heat
plants concentrated emissions in their study, or at least in a full
discussion.

"heating/cooling effects of fossil fuels have nothing to do with the
thermodynamic energy release of combustion"

Re-examine that assumption - If windfarm's might cause problematic warming
through atmospheric mixing, how have you assumed ground level heat emission
from power plants can cause none? There is actually a growing body of research
into this which indicates significant geographical warming is possible. You
could look into "effects of anthropogenic heat flux on climate"

~~~
jessriedel
I did not include "intuitively" to suggest that it's wrong, only to make clear
you're not saying anything surprising here. I also did not assume ground level
heat emissions from power plants cause literally zero warming, only that it's
negligible.

The rest of your reasoning is similarly confused.

~~~
strainer
"model results show that AHR has a significant impact on surface temperature
and that it is able to affect global atmospheric circulation, leading to a 1-2
K increase in the high-latitude areas of Eurasia and North America. The
results show that AHR is able to affect global climate despite being limited
to a region."

Anthropogenic Heat Release: Estimation of Global Distribution and Possible
Climate Effect
[https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jmsj/92A/0/92A_2014-A10...](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jmsj/92A/0/92A_2014-A10/_article)

~~~
jessriedel
That paper _confirms_ that carbon dioxide and other gases are the dominant
cause of climate temperature changes, not anthopogenic heat release. It
furthermore includes _all_ anthropogenic heat (e.g., in cities), not just the
heat release from combustion during power production which is relevant to our
discussion.

Since you apparently aren't arguing in good faith, I won't continue the
discussion.

~~~
strainer
The paper indicates 1-2K of temperature increase from _current levels_ of AHR
which is 4 to 8 times as great as the hypothetical situation in the papers
that you have now elected to insult me for criticizing.

In the discussed papers ALL energy consumption is generated by renewables
(includes transport, air conditioning etc). You must understand that entails
ALL AHR (besides a tiny fraction of body heat)

Presently almost all AHR is created by burning fossil fuels - producing waste
heat (a portion of AHR) and useful energy which is used and then surely ?? you
know this >> ends up as heat again (the other portion of AHR)

So my faith is good here - you feel free not continue, especially in the
manner you started.

------
chki
>To estimate the impacts of wind power, Keith and Miller established a
baseline for the 2012‒2014 U.S. climate using a standard weather-forecasting
model. Then, they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind
turbines to meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found
this scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by
0.24 degrees Celsius, with the largest changes occurring at night when surface
temperatures increased by up to 1.5 degrees. This warming is the result of
wind turbines actively mixing the atmosphere near the ground and aloft while
simultaneously extracting from the atmosphere’s motion.

I am confused: How does the warming work exactly and is this actually a global
climate effect? Because this part of the article makes it sound to me as if
it's just a very localised change of temperature caused by the exchange of
different air layers, which can't be right? Because you couldn't really
compare that to climate change on a global scale.

~~~
ams6110
The example is clearly hypothetical only. We're never going to cover one third
of the continental US with wind turbines.

The more important information to me is that neither wind nor solar have the
power density that has been claimed.

 _For wind, we found that the average power density — meaning the rate of
energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant — was up
to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts_

...

 _For solar energy, the average power density (measured in watts per meter
squared) is 10 times higher than wind power, but also much lower than
estimates by leading energy experts._

Then you have the separate problem that the wind doesn't always blow and the
sun doesn't always shine, so you need a huge storage infrastructure
(batteries, presumably) alongside the wind and solar generating
infrastructure.

IMO nuclear is the only realistic alternative to coal to provide reliable,
zero-emission "base load" power generation. Wind and solar could make sense in
some use cases but not in general.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _IMO nuclear is the only realistic alternative to coal to provide reliable,
> zero-emission "base load" power generation..._

Yeah, but no one wants to pay for it. Which is why you'll see more wind and
solar with hydro-storage, and even more geo-thermal energy plants in the
future. Even with all the extra infrastructure, it still comes in at less than
2 or 3 cents a kwh long term. Whereas even if you take a very optimistic long
term view on nuclear, it's just _REALLY_ hard to get down below 3 cents. So
for nuclear sources to get higher in the dispatch stack, government _must_
take on more of the costs.

But then, of course, if government is taking on more of the costs, then you're
_still_ paying more than 3 cents. Probably a _lot_ more. You'd just pay it in
extra taxes instead of a utility bill. So, yeah, I guess that's why energy is
a hard problem. No easy solutions really. Just hard to balance pros and cons
to every known technology at this point.

(Maybe someday someone will figure out this whole fusion thing and we'll be
able to consign all these other, less refined, technologies to history's dust
bin?)

~~~
beat
Time to build also matters. How long does it take to build a storage mechanism
for a solar/wind farm, vs the time to build a nuclear plant? What are the
_reasonable_ regulatory requirements? (Lest anyone be complaining about the
ignorant treehuggers stopping nuclear plants, I think we can all agree that a
nuclear plant is potentially more hazardous than pile of batteries, and should
be regulated proportionally.) What are the up-front capital requirements of
nuclear vs solar/wind + storage?

Another thing people need to keep in mind is we don't need enough storage to
run the entire grid indefinitely. We just need enough to smooth the curve out
to four nines or whatever number is deemed necessary. And while "the sun isn't
always shining and the wind isn't always blowing", the wind is always blowing
somewhere.

~~~
bilbo0s
You wouldn't use batteries generally though.

For example, if you had hydro-storage, you'd use the power from the wind or
solar to pump water into giant reservoirs. When wind or solar is unavailable,
power is drawn from the hydro reservoirs by letting the stored water flow
through turbines. (So a dam, basically.)

So, yeah, building reservoirs is pretty well defined. And would _certainly_
take much less time than building a nuclear plant. (The cost would be orders
of magnitude lower as well.)

Still has regulatory issues, just not nearly as many as dead batteries or
nuclear power plants do.

~~~
pjc50
There's not many geologically good locations for pumped storage, they tend to
be a bit environmentally sensitive, and they're not _that_ quick to build -
the one nearest me, Cruachan, took 6 years to build in the 1950s at the
reduced safety standards of the time.

~~~
bilbo0s
That's only one way that you would do hydro-storage these days though.

Think, for example, if you drill a hole deep into the ground, lower a cylinder
into it, poke a hole in the bottom of the cylinder, then fill that cylinder
with water. If I put a platform with a giant weight on top of it, the platform
will press all of the water in the cylinder down through the hole in the
bottom. That water will travel through a tube to the top of the cylinder and
pour _back_ into the cylinder on top of the weighted platform. In that tube,
is where you capture the stored energy with turbines.

Then, when the wind picks back up, or the sun comes out, or power is just
cheap even from the coal plant, you use that power to lift the platform back
up and suck all the water back into the bottom of the cylinder.

Benefits of this are, as the HN User "beat" implied below, it's so cheap and
simple to build that even a single, say, shopping mall might invest in it to
lower their power draw from the grid. They would build one that only serves
their mall for instance. You start to build out a truly distributed power
storage infrastructure.

------
djrogers
Buried in the article:

> they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind turbines to
> meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found this
> scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by 0.24
> degrees Celsius

That’s a ridiculous basis upon which to form a conclusion. For reference, that
would require building 200,000 copies of the single largest wind farm in the
US - the 3,200 acre Alta farm.

~~~
pjc50
The intent there is presumably to construct a "worst case" \- US powered
entirely by wind - and see what the magnitude of the effect is. If it was 2.4
or 24.0 then it would be a more serious problem, knowing that it's 0.24 is a
good result.

------
goplusplus
This is practically a non issue. Not only would it be unrealistic to use wind
power for 100% of US power generation nor would it be a good decision since a
huge benefit of renewable energy is that we can diversify among so many
different source.

~~~
brixon
Wind is also hit or miss. I don't live in an area of the country with
consistent wind suitable for power generation. The entire SE part of the US is
not suitable for wind power.
[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg)

~~~
24gttghh
Your map ignores the coastal zone, as shown in a comparable map (for the 50m
height):

[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/US-50m-wind-power-
map.jpg](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/US-50m-wind-power-map.jpg)

Most of that offshore zone is on the continental shelf.

------
fiblye
So does this only affect ground temperatures in a localized area?

Because if Kansas gets 0.24 degrees warmer but the greenhouse gas reductions
result in Greenland not melting off into the ocean, it seems like a clearly
worthwhile tradeoff.

~~~
sevensor
Speaking of Kansas, one of the other things the article mentions is that
turbines slow down the wind. It might not be such a bad thing for Kansas if
the wind was slower. Less topsoil erosion, for one thing.

------
Theodores
There was a time in the UK when waterwheels were all the rage. It is hard to
imagine today but there was a time when rivers in wool making areas were
slowed down to no longer flow due to the amount of water wheels present. The
external effects of the water wheel was known but there was little that could
be done if you were downstream of other mills taking power from the river.

I look forward to the time when we have the 'too many wind turbines' problem
to solve.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Is that true, surely there's a terminal velocity that's reached by water
flowing down a riverbed after - I'd guess - a hundred metres or so (probably
much less)? Given the mill is not reducing the volume of water, surely it gets
back to speed in time to hit another mill a couple of miles downstream.

Silting, I'd think would be a problem.

~~~
Theodores
The mill buildings were really close, a couple of hundred on five small
tributaries, each tributary running no more than a few miles before converging
to one river that had even more mills on it, larger and not so dependent on
river speed. The river had been dredged and otherwise adjusted by people at
the time for it to have subsequently been used for the canal of the area. It
is therefore hard to imagine how it once was, particularly given that water
wheel technology evolved too.

------
piker
Isn't the math on solar really simple? (1) Annual amount of energy the sun
generates on the surface of the earth _minus_ (2) the annual amount used by
non-human forms of life and natural processes _equals_ (3) annual human energy
balance. Now, maximize capture of (1) while minimizing externalities of such
capture. How is anything other than direct solar-to-electricity conversion on
the table long-term? Presumably even wind energy production relies on surface
temperature differentials stored over periods longer than the consumption
period in question--meaning, there's a resource being depleted.

------
ncmncm
They say closer to the poles, wind power cools. So, put wind power systems at
higher latitudes, and solar at lower latitudes -- where it is more effective.
Sorted.

I look forward to the day when the rotors are taken down (and used for
roofing?), the pods mined for their rare earths. The towers will have loose
mesh stretched between them, and collect wind power by releasing ions against
an electric field maintained by the mesh. (This was patented in the '80s by
Alvin Marks. Expired, now, both.)

------
growlist
I think the planet would thank us for using far less power overall, rather
than continuing to be profligate with cleaner power. That said I'd need to
read the paper properly to understand it - I don't think this article explains
the key points very well.

Interested to know if this applies to offshore wind? Here in the UK we are a
great candidate for this and whilst the US isn't quite so fortunate, it still
has a fair amount of coastline!

------
666lumberjack
Unless we see major breakthroughs in the field of Fusion energy or long
distance power transmission (Fibre optics for beamed power? Very high
temperature superconductors?), I'm more and more convinced that immediate
reliance on solar+wind is an unrealistic goal and we desperately need to be
building nuclear plants as a stopgap.

------
cjbenedikt
Misleading headline. Real one: Observation-based solar and wind power capacity
factors and power densities

------
hwillis
Unlike solar power, land use is effectively a non-factor for the price of wind
power. The NREL estimates the financing of land area to be less than a third
of maintenance[1] and just 16% of operational expenses. That works out to land
use being .06 cents per kWh.

Also, NB for context that .24 C is fairly small compared to the temperature
anomaly as it is currently. The global anomaly is .6-.85 C higher over the
year[2], and over the US it's usually around 2 C[3]. Note also that 5-20x more
area, as they clarify in the journal, is not really representative; the number
of turbines is about the same (unless you are in a very population-dense area
like Germany), they just have to be spread much farther apart. For instance
you can plop them down on farmland just fine.

Computational methods may also help reduce the impact of wind shadows by
decreasing "dirty" air, but that's just a band-aid. From what the journal
indicates, the limiting factor is energy re-entering from the higher
atmosphere. I'm curious how this kind of thing is affected by water vapor.
Does it increase or decrease the problem? Are offshore turbines affected the
same way? How does farmland play into this, since plants release huge amounts
of water into the air via transpiration (a plant's "heart" is effectively
driven by evaporation)?

Also, I liked their little map[4] of wind(squares)/solar(stars) capacity
factors. It's refreshing! One of the most irritating things about power
discussions online is the ubiquitous repetition of blatantly wrong statements
about capacity factors (power delivered/nameplate capacity). Here's[5][6] the
data:

Coal: 53.5% capacity factor CC natural gas: 54.8% Nuclear: 92.2% Hydro: 45.2%
Wind: 36.7% PV Solar: 27% Solar thermal: 21.8%

People are all over the place saying solar has a 10% capacity factor, wind has
20%, nuclear has 98%, coal and hydro have 90%- it's nonsense! Coal is a
destabilizing influence on the grid, and wind is practically as good as hydro.
When you account for how well solar tracks with daily demand, it's _better_
than hydro.

[1]:
[https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70363.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70363.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-
climate/...](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-
climate/climate-change-global-temperature)

[3]: [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-
mn...](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended-
mntp/201806.gif)

[4]:
[https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/13/10/104008/Ful...](https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/13/10/104008/Full/erlaae102f6_lr.jpg)

[5]:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b)

[6]:
[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_a)

------
village-idiot
And this is why pursuing efficiencies in energy consumption is important too!

------
nayuki
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

------
Gravityloss
It's _local_ , not global warming.

------
compelledToken
This is FUD, to be sure. Don't think so? Hear me out.

If wind turbines are even 10 stories tall, then they introduce the same
atmospheric disruption as a residential or commercial building of the same
height. That we are not researching the impact of urban sprawl with the same
level of scrutiny is telling. What of smoke stacks, cooling towers and high
rises? Hmmm?

Meanwhile, the idea that removing kinetic energy from a 400 foot thick layer
of a wind's pattern's convection and coriolis path represents atmospheric drag
any worse than trees is an idea to be laughed at. What about thermals from
parking lots? What about desertification?

Indeed, watch all the hurricanes disappear, because we soaked up all that
motion with fan blades dotting the terrain. Does anyone believe that a wind
shadow carved into the Atlantic coastline with an array of modern windmills
could effectively disrupt hurricane alley? I sure don't.

And no, I don't think that's a grossly oversimplified comparison.

