Excerpts from my book "Conned with the Wind"
WIND ENERGY
PRODUCTIVITY
Intermittency
Intermittent energy requires reserves for inactive periods.
One cannot expect households to stop their heating or
refrigerators, nor industry to stop its operations, just
because the wind stopped blowing.
Now, reserves must come from plants capable to start, stop,
change the rate in matter of minutes, which practically
restricts them to fossil plants (oil, gas, coal). Fossil
plants are the most polluting even in permanent regime.
In the irregular regime of reserves their pollution ratio
is still increased by a large factor.
An intermittent source provides only that part of its
installed capacity, which corresponds to the periods of
activity.
Now, wind turbines shut down for:
-wind too weak,
-wind too strong (for security reasons),
-wind-blasts (for security reasons),
-ideal conditions, when all wind turbines work at full
capacity, because it would heat white the high tension lines,
which were not build to accommodate wind energy picks.
Their productive capacity, corresponding to the periods of
activity has been evaluated in the 2005 report of E.On, the
leading German electricity provider controlling about
15 000 wind turbines.
A quote from E.On report_2005
"In 2004 two major German studies investigated the size of
contribution that wind farms make towards guaranteed capacity.
Both studies separately came to virtually identical conclusions,
that wind energy currently contributes to the secure production
capacity of the system, by providing 8% of its installed
capacity.
That is, wind power construction must be accompanied by almost
equal construction of new conventional power plants, which will
be used very nearly as much as if the wind turbines were not
there."
Translated to ordinary language, E.On considers wind power
as mere window dressing behind which the real work is done
by fossil reserves.
Wind Power Illusion
Re: Wind Power illusion
