Monday, February 16, 2009

Some more on Wind Power

Looking at the website of Wind Concerns Ontario, there is large amounts of information arguing against the use of wind power. One post has a number of quotes from Danes about wind in Denmark.

Something has to happen to change how electrical power is generated, but every alternative is shot down by someone. The wind folk suggest conservation as the best source - that is utterly unrealistic to replace the power produced by coal fired power plants in North America. Their second suggestion is to go to hydro, but given the fight against hydro here in BC, I do not think there is agreement on that point.

The simple reality is that the longer people argue over this, the longer the coal fired power plants operate. Each KWh of new green power is one less that has to be produced by coal fired plants, this should be a simple concept to understand. Every roadblock and delay against green power is simply an extension on the life of coal based power.

If I believed in conspiracy theories, I would think the NDP and the anti run of the river power people were all in pay off the big coal companies. I know this is not true, but it makes a lot more rational sense to me than what the reality seems to be.

2 comments:

Bubble's Mama said...

You wrote: "Each KWh of new green power is one less that has to be produced by coal fired plants, this should be a simple concept to understand."

That is a common misconception but entirely untrue. In the case of wind, when a turbine is producing...so is the fossil fuel plant. It must stay on standby, usually at 60% capacity, in case the wind suddenly dies. It is not like parking your car and riding your bike. It is like riding your bike with the car slowly following behind you for when you peter out.

The majority of wind power is produced when we don't need it (non-peak times like the middle of the night) and the blades usually don't turn when we do need it (peak times like a hot, muggy summer day). Much of it is simply wasted and not used because it is "non-dispatchable". Research that term.

So in the end, is every KWh of green energy displacing fossil fuel power ----absolutely not. In the end, only a negligible amount of CO2 emissions are saved. That's what those Danes were talking about.

Anonymous said...

Good article here in Der Spiegel:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,606763,00.html