US Dept. of Energy Wants Bigger Wind Energy Ideas 252
coondoggie writes "The Department of Energy wants to kick up the research and development of offshore wind projects as it looks to achieve its goal of producing 20% of the country's electricity from wind farms by 2030. The DOE Wind Program is looking to focus on what it calls specific advanced technology, gigawatt-scale demonstration projects that can be carried out by partnerships with a wide range of eligible organizations and stimulate cost-effective offshore wind energy deployment in coastal and Great Lakes regions of the country. The agency is also looking for more research that can help address market barriers in order to facilitate deployment and reduce technical challenges facing the entire industry, as well as technology that will reduce cost of offshore wind energy through innovation and testing."
Hydraulic Lifts Pull Them Down Into Water (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just waiting for some Calamity to hit. I mean, Offshore drilling is an entirely different ballpark, but we've put a lot of research into that and we still mess it up.
I mean, how do these platforms cope with hurricanes? I've always wondered. I have a feeling that since a windmill will have most of its machinery above water level, it'll be more susceptible to high winds (which is the idea I know, but I mean twisting metal high winds)
Might seem counter intuitive but a 2007 article in Wired [wired.com] said:
Hurricanes could be a problem, so they decided to outfit their windmills with hydraulic lifts scavenged from oil-industry machinery; the system would lower the turbines in the event of a squall.
I think under the water is the safest place during a hurricane. Oh, and the timing is too perfect so I cannot omit this paragraph:
But first they needed to secure government approval. Their first stop was the state of Louisiana, but the bayou bureaucrats rejected the proposal. “They saw us as competing with oil and natural gas,” Schoeffler recalls.
Perhaps Schoeffler should ask Louisiana now if it's alright for them to compete with offshore oil?
Re:Offshore wind farms (Score:3, Informative)
For oil rigs.. they cap the well and disconnect the umbilical and move away from the well to weather out the storm - most of them are quite large and handle well but they don't want to be static during a storm.
as for Wind farms - the high waves would be more worrying.. during high winds the blades turn into the wend and then adjust so that they don't catch the wind. as for taking the impact of the high waves that is an engineering question - as it has to take that impact no way of avoiding it.
Over all hurricanes would just disrupt power generation during the time the storm was passing though - same as it disrupts oil & gas production.
taking a strong storm out at sea is a lot easier than taking it near the coast.. you don't have the flying debris and you have plenty of room to move, It is normal practice when a storm is to make landfall for larger ships to go out to sea to weather the storm - it's been like that for just about for ever..
Hurricanes... (Score:4, Informative)
Wind turbines constantly adjust their blade angles to match the wind. The idea is to keep them turning at a constant rate no matter what the wind speed is (i.e. they *don't* spin faster in high winds then in low winds). In a hurricane they just turn the blades to minimum angle and keep right on generating.
You'd lose that bet. Hard. (Score:1, Informative)
You'd lose that bet. Hard. EROI is less than 4 years. Lifetime 30+ years.
Re:Offshore wind farms (Score:2, Informative)
Oil doesn't produce much electricity in North America. Gas, coal and nuclear does.
The United States would be better off pushing out 20% more electricity production with fission
Re:My Opinion, More BFE Buffalo Ridge Projects (Score:2, Informative)
Does the Bible say something about windmills being evil? Not much going on in the southeast according to that GIF.
Sweetwater, Texas has one of the largest windfarms in the country. It stretches 40 miles to Abilene, Texas, which houses 3 Christian universities. This is pretty much the "buckle of the Bible belt", and there's plenty of wind turbines.
Re:My Opinion, More BFE Buffalo Ridge Projects (Score:2, Informative)
Because you site a transmission line in low wind corridors.
It would be a great idea... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, There's One Way to Start (Score:4, Informative)
Geronimo whereby they built nine Suzlon turbine windmills next to my hometown (PDF) to produce enough electricity for 6,500
I have heard of this project in some industry publications. I think it's a good one, but I will add some comments. The stated output of the wind farm is 18MW nameplate. That means under ideal wind conditions, so on the average day it will probably produce something like 12MW and maybe single digits on a bad day. A small coal plant produces 600MW rain or shine and a large plant can do 1200W; a nuclear plant can do 2000W. It takes a lot, lot, lot of turbines to offset one traditional plant making wind more expensive per megawatt.
My question for you is simply whether or not you think small towns across the US would want nine to forty windmills next to their town so they could have cheap renewable power nearby?
I would. A lot of people do not for many reasons.
The first is that it's more expensive. Try raising electrical bills 1% to raise capital for a major wind project. Again hearings, lawsuits, studies, public meetings, congressional acts, it goes on and on. It would be an unnoticeable amount of money on the average bill and huge groups will fight tooth and nail to block it. Regardless of the long term advantage.
Second is the environment, scenic, conservationist, NIMBY groups who all have factions that hate wind turbines for a myriad of often conflicting reasons and ideology. When you pose the option, "would you prefer coal or NG?" They always reply with canned bullshit about everyone should conserve and use less therefore requiring no new power plants, which is a reasonable goal to reach for, but is not a realistic energy plan given population growth and basic freedoms.
Third are the entrenched power plant owners who do not want competition in markets where they have enjoyed near monopolies for decades. They are a major force of lobbying against wind development both in government and "grass roots" efforts to clandestinely support the first two groups. If you follow the money that the first two use to hire their lawyers a lot of it comes indirectly from power plant owners.
But if you're in the industry, you're telling me that's not a good business plan?
Compared to producing the equivalent power with coal or natural gas, the distributed wind option is more difficult and expensive. One major reason is that it's harder to operate because the output of wind generators is not constant, consistent or controllable. That means you also need "back-up" generation powered by traditional fuels on standby and expensive power electronic control devices to correct the power factor on line-commutated turbines. What this essentially means in less technical language is that the way wind turbines work is somewhat passive to the grid; they cannot operate without the larger generators online to regulate and control the voltage level. Given a stable voltage and frequency, wind generators can inject supplemental power into the grid but without large generators nearby to provide control and regulation the wind turbines are essentially useless. The equipment that allows wind generators to stand-alone and self-regulate is very, very expensive and not worth the relatively small amount of power wind turbines produce.
It's a complicated balancing act that is harder to set up and manage than a coal or NG plant which essentially has a knob the operator can set and that plant will kick out that much power, voltage and frequency 24/7. There is also the issue of having many more assets out in the field that require annual maintenance and skilled labor.
This is why I'm a huge advocate of nuclear power with wind and solar supplements. Nuclear power is fantastic at supplying base load generation and stability in the grid without the pollution of coal or NG. Wind and nuclear compliment each other very well and reduce the emissions to basically zero while providing ple