Interesting how the total installed capacity is pretty respectable at 96GW, even though there are only 5 turbines above 5MW. In Europe the 7,5 MW Enercon onshore turbine is fairly common, and offshore the 8-10MW turbines are very much in fashion. For reference, the EU has 179GW installed as of 2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Uni...
I'm surprised the US is that close to the EU on installed capacity on a population adjusted basis (~148 GW if you adjust the US population up to the EU population). I'd like to see the US do a lot more with its wind power resources. We've done relatively little with offshore for example (that's only just beginning to see a serious push), while having rather epic offshore potential. The US Department of Energy lists the US with a technical offshore potential of 2,000+ GW.[1] Conveniently the US population is of course also concentrated along the coasts.
In the Midwest (Kansas, Oklahoma,... etc), the US has seen a massive amount of wind developed in the past few years.
To give you a feel for what I mean, in a few short years, the SPP region went from a small amount of wind to having greater than 60% renewable penetration. This means over 60% of generation serving load came from renewables at one point. ERCOT (grid operator for Texas) has also had really high numbers (upper 50).
I’ve spent some time in Western Oklahoma on and off the last 10 years. 10 years ago there was almost nothing. 5 years ago they started popping up, 2 years ago it started to just be everywhere. In other communities that are traditionally dependent on the oil industry the economies have been touch and go, but in places with wind (like western Oklahoma and Texas), it’s almost the ultimate hedge.
It's because our on-shore potential is equally as great and it's a lot cheaper. Additionally, farm states are disproportionately (with respect to population) important politically, so it's easier to get subsidies for on-shore wind. This is also why ethanol accounts for ~10% of the US motor gasoline mix. Wind and solar are way better per unit land than ethanol, so hopefully ethanol is replaced by solar.
I'm not sure that ethanol mandates are a good idea.
It's not clear that the entire life-cycle costs (in terms of CO2 emissions) of adding ethanol is better than the gasoline that it displaces, see [1]. This would mean that the mandates and incentives would be be better spent on other ways to reduce emissions.
Subsidies, yes, but there are large mandates as well. Also, ethanol is, I believe, cheaper than gasoline per unit volume (not necessarily per energy) so there’s incentive to blend it in.
The big upside of offshore wind is consistency, which leads to a higher capacity factors. This matters more in the EU, which has a wind capacity factor of around 22% compared to 35% in the US.
Yeah I agree, it's silly. I think they look cool. We have a lot in California here on the Antelope Valley freeway going towards the city of Mojave. Honestly, it's tough here in California to get mass alternative power installations going. People here are anti-nuclear and anti solar installations in the desert areas, in addition to being anti offshore wind installations.
The relatively recent political pushback against building turbines on farmland may encourage more of a push to develop offshore turbines. Development there was stopped early on by political resistance to having the gigantic, ugly, bird-killing machines spoiling the scenery.
People who complain about turbines killing birds are almost inevitably not interested in any of the other big killers of birds: habitat loss, invasive species, domestic cats, collisions with glass buildings, and so on.
Although blade strikes are easy to diagnose as a killer of birds, I'm sure the pollution released by coal/oil/gas power plants kills many birds too, not to mention all the other wildlife and humans.
You forgot nearly universal use of pesticides across the Midwest, creating a green desert with massive loss of insects, which also affects birds and other animals.
My opposition to wind turbines has more than one basis, and my concern for birds is separate but intersects with this concern. But it doesn't matter to those who don't live near any wind farms.
Most wind farms are located far from where the electricity generated is used. For example, Facebook is building a wind farm in Nebraska for facilities in California. The loss in transmitting power that far is ridiculous. Why aren't their wind farms built off the coast of northern California?
Wind turbines aren't carbon neutral. Better than coal, sure, but it's interesting that the discussion is always around building these things instead of reducing consumption. But no one gets rich off of reducing consumption.
I'm really surprised no one at Facebook thought about the transmission loss problem before building that way. It seems like a surprising oversight for the countless scientists and experienced engineers involved with the project.
Alternately, maybe there's something we don't see in the one-line project description from an internet comment.
edit: A quick googling answered that - they're buying the power for a data center in Nebraska, not in California.
Transmission losses are also far lower than people keep pretending on the web. This[0] says 3% per 1000km, meaning Nebraska to California could be done at about a 5% loss, which could easily be offset by any number of factors such as lower construction costs, more favourable wind conditions, or availability of land.
I don't think people are "pretending", just that losses are different based on what system you have (not just DC vs AC, but also the voltage, the type of insulator on your cables, the conductor [copper/aluminum, most new stuff is aluminum] and the substations.) Corona losses, specifically, are also strongly affected by the weather! Then you have people writing about it doing incorrect math on some percentage they don't understand from a technical paper.
That said, I agree that 5% sounds close for the transmission losses alone (excluding distribution), and 5% could be easily made up, like you said, by many things, like being next to a wind turbine factory/cheaper land/cheaper labor/tax breaks/many things.
Interesting note: I found here [0] that silver would be a feasible conductor for HVDC lines if prices were lower. On an example line, it would save $19M/yr but cost $18.5B to build, so 1000 year payback time, which is unrealistic. But! If the price of aluminum increased substantially (for example: say we discover smelting releases mega-carcinogens and it's banned) and the price of silver fell (silver is now 4x as expensive as it was in 2003, so I feel like it could fall fairly precipitously) then we could in theory have silver power lines. One thing to remember, though, is that it's only the "skin" of the conductor made of copper/aluminum/silver - the skin carries 90% of the power, but the bulk of the conductor's mass is the cheap steel core that doesn't need to be as conductive because it only carries 10% of the power.
Again, don't make assumptions that it's stupid, based on little data and no math.
First, hydro power is very stable, and Quebec has a surplus, so they could probably get a good price deal for an ongoing relationship. The construction cost is nothing, compared to the ongoing cost. What does that Canadian power cost, vs the cost of wind? They could be looking at tremendous savings over the next few decades.
Second, this appears to be a New York City decision, not a New York state decision. Does NYC have enough viable land to build a gigawatt (or more like 3-4gw, considering load variation) of wind? Probably not.
No, there is currently no electrical transmission between Nebraska and California, nor will there be in the foreseeable future. There are projects proposed to deliver electricity from Wyoming to California, e.g., Zephyr, Chokecherry, and TransWest, and even those are a ways off.
Large distances between source and consumption is common to most resources. It's hardly unique to renewable energy. We need long rail lines for coal generation, gas pipelines for gas generation, same for oil, hugely expensive water projects to get water to where it can be used, etc. In comparison, the combination of transmission line expansion and wind and solar (and soon, storage) is fast becoming the most cost effective way to supply a country with electricity.
Bird deaths from wind turbines are just a tiny fraction of those from things like cars, buildings and windows, guy wires, and house cats. I don't like the danger that turbines pose to raptors, but the "bird-killing machines" thing is pretty worn-out bullshit at this point.
The water gets really deep really fast off the coast of northern California, and floating wind is still in its infancy. For example, the water depth is already 200m deep less than 25 nautical miles offshore San Francisco. For comparison in NYC that's more than 100 nm from the coast.
Why does it need to be 25 nm away? Why not build them closer to shore? A half mile offset from dwellings is considered generous in the Midwest, and the wind is pretty steady along parts of that coast.
It doesn't necessarily. My point is that it's a more challenging environment than on the east coast, and I'm not aware of any offshore wind projects in planning stages on the west coast. Perhaps there are some (but I wouldn't be surprised if the intention is floating turbines).
The offshore turbines tend to dwarf anything installed in the midwest. It's not really a great comparison for proximity.
Logistically the west coast is challenging too because at this point the US offshore wind industry is pretty immature, and it's European companies winning the contracts to build and install the foundations. Jacket foundations could be constructed in the Gulf but the larger monopile foundations are probably going to come from Europe. The east coast seems easier to tackle first.
For the big users, industrial ones, reducing consumption means either increasing cost or imposing rationing, both of which are likely to be extremely unpopular. Nonetheless there has been some benefit from mandating things like low-energy lightbulbs.
There's a bureaucratic barrier in American turbines at 499 feet (152 meters) tall which requires FAA approval and a bunch of related paperwork. So that means turbines larger than 3MW are rare. The calculus may change when >10MW turbines become more widespread. GE is shopping around a 12-14MW design.
Yes and no. Anything over 200 feet requires FAA review and approval, including of lighting. Up to 499 feet the rules are simple and well understood. Between 500 and 699 feet the rules and review are more difficult, and there are a number of sites that are unable to go to those heights because of airport and other constraints, but there are a number of projects in active development targeting 600 to 650 feet right now, and I expect more in the future. 700 feet and above is still a relative unknown, but possible.
The effect is that for now most people have been targeting 500 feet, but a greater percentage of future development is likely to exceed 500 feet. Realistically this won't wait for 10 MW units, but will yield significant benefits (overall) at 4 to 5 MW.
It saddens me that Enercon does not get a grip internationally and just relies on EMEA. Their products are of extreme high quality and they are almost completely vertically integrated. It seems our german subsidiaries have poisoned their competitiveness...
If you look at the wind resource potential around 100m, there are places where it might be feasible to place turbines in areas you don't normally think of as windy, most likely a ridge on the predominately leeward end of a plain. I was a little surprised the first time I heard about the possibility of turbines in the southeast, but in retrospect it makes sense.
Wyoming has very low air density, which reduces the power generation potential. It also has a tiny population, limited transmission capacity, difficult terrain, and short building seasons.
That said, there are transmission system upgrades for Wyoming coming in 2020. Because of this PacifiCorp released an RFP for up to 1,270 MW of wind generation on this upgraded system and I believe it is already all spoken for.
I wonder if/when solar will catch up with or surpass wind? Part of the reason wind got so big in the past decade is cost - it's significantly cheaper now than fossil or nuclear. But solar costs are dropping even more rapidly than wind, and storage tech is improving (storage being more necessary for solar than wind).
This[0] says just about now, and you're right that solar has been improving faster than wind (which is probably a function of one being semiconductor technology and the other being generators, where the low-hanging fruits have been harvested a long time ago).
Of course there may well be local factors that may still make wind the better choice, and a mixture helps to even out production. So wind turbines aren't going to go out of fashion any time soon. Unlike coal.
Something I expect to see is a lot more highly localized solar installations - namely parking lots. While I don't think it's financially viable at the home level, I think it'd be great at the office or business level, where there's often large outdoor parking lots. A quick solar panel installation (maybe with some local storage) could power the building. It's the sort of thing where the long-term cost factors are so appealing it might become standard with new construction, and certainly appeals to manufacturers to make easy-install products specifically for this market.
Something I hope to see a lot less of is parking lots.
Eliminate street-level parking in cities, and density could double (in US cities smaller than, say, Chicago). Average distances could be cut in half, making public transport or even biking or walking possible for far more trips than today.
"We only need cars because others have cars" isn't entirely true, or there would have never been cars in the first place. But it's not entirely untrue, either.
> solar costs are dropping even more rapidly than wind
Source? Both depend heavily on location. Most "great" locations for solar are not where most people live (e.g. Sahara desert). I am not sure what you are claiming is correct.
Also, solar + wind are very complementary, and a mixed production helps reduce energy storage costs.
The cost for solar dropping rapidly is all over the internet. I'm not going to source it, look it up.
What matters here is it doesn't need to be a "great" location in terms of efficiency in order to be a great location in terms of cost. All that matters is that whomever builds it can save more than they spend. Hence the attractiveness of parking-lot solar. Location is probably not ideal. But if the cost/kwh is low enough, it can still save a building millions of dollars over its lifespan. There are already case studies of early parking-lot solar efforts generating cost savings.
Really interesting stuff here. The little cluster in North Carolina is "Amazon Wind Farm US East".
I wonder if Amazon announces an electricity play soon, or if it's just related to sustainability efforts? Their use of wind is actually described more here: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
It is in Amazon's DNA to try not to brag. The US-WEST datacenters are pretty much all hydroelectric, but that says more about the incredibly low costs of hydro power in the area than the environmental benefits of it.
The PR boost is nice, but I think for many organizations the switch to renewables is plain old everyday boring economics: Renewables have become cheap and easy to invest in.
Everyone talking about wind turbines and I'm just appreciating how fluid the cluster zooming is...I should add mapbox to my list of things to try. Their free tier looks like a good learning tool, or a good gis portal for small porfolio apps.
Yes they did. It was a huge deal in RI. This farm powers Block Island and the excess goes to mainland RI. Previously BI was on Diesel fuel for power so there was a big motivation to get it done.
The full environmental impacts are not clear yet though, as there are consequences for fishing (a large industry in this region), especially with lobster and squid who are affected by the emf of the high voltage cables.
