Alt.Energy - tilting at windmills

I don't consider windmills to be a viable option for electricity. There is a lot of power there but it is variable and is no substitute for fixed power plants when it comes to baseload generation. Plus, they are expensive when you amortize the cost versus the power generated over the lifetime of the machinery. Coyote over at Coyote Blog found what happens when you generate 19% of your electricity from windmills:

The Problem With Wind
I have an innate confidence in technology. For example, while I understand solar to be uneconomic for powering my house today, I fully expect that to change. I look forward to the day, not that far in the future, when I can take my Arizona house off the grid, at least during the day.

In contrast, though, it may be that wind power can�t be fixed, in large part due to its inherent unpredictability. Sure, solar has a problem as well, in that it doesn�t work at night. But at least the times when solar is off here in Arizona (ie when it is dark) are predictable and coincide with lower load periods. Wind is utterly unpredictable and variable, and its peaks and troughs are unrelated to peaks and troughs in electricity demand.

So, if the grid is to reliably supply sufficient power to meet demand, wind must have a backup. And there is the rub. Because just about every technology that might currently be used as a backup takes a really, really long time to start up. Small gas turbines can be producing electricity from a cold stop pretty quickly, but a large coal-fired power plant can take days to go from a cold stop to producing electricity. This is in part because there are a series of steps where A has to precede B which must come before C to start plants up, and partially just because immediately heating the whole system up would cause the plant to blow up just from the thermal stresses.

Coyote sets the stage for a bit and then moves on to a specific example -- Denmark:

A recent article in the National Post argues the Danes are seeing absolutely no substitution from their substantial investment in wind.

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world�s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power�s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark�s largest energy utilities) tells us that �wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.� The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that �Germany�s CO2 emissions haven�t been reduced by even a single gram,� and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character.

It probably comes as no surprise that the Danes have the highest electricity costs in Europe. The article goes on to call wind power in the US a �huge corporate welfare feeding frenzy.�

Once again, If I were King: #1) - massive rollout of Nuclear Power #2) - dump a couple hundred million on these people: EMC2 #3) - massive coal to fuel conversion This would eliminate our dependence of foreign oil, provide our electrical needs for well over 500 years, provide industrial feedstocks for plastics and other manufacturing (waste from the coal conversion) and if #2) pans out, we can roll-back #1) The environmentalists are not about being green, they are about control.