Wind Turbine ********. Just opened the mail and seen the plan for three massive units

[MossRoad]

We live about 35 miles from a nuker. It cost about $3.4B in today's dollars. It's capacity is 2110 megawatts. Its been running for 40 years. A 2 megawatt wind turbine costs about $3M. You'd need 1055 wind turbines to replace one nuke plant. 1055 wind turbines cost $3.1B and they produce power for only about 25% of the time over a year (and that's optimistic). One nuclear plant can be situated on a very small piece of land, compared to the 60 acres per megawatt needed for wind turbines. 2110 megawatts X 60 acres = 126,600 acres for an equivalent wind farm that only provides power 25% of the time. You'd need to quadruple the amount of wind turbines to around 5000 units, quadruple the amount of land usage to over a million acres, and spread them out over the entire hemisphere to HOPE to catch wind at at least one of the locations, to equal ONE nuclear plant. Then add up the cost of infrastructure to transmit that wind power back to the location of the nuclear plant.... and you see that wind power is a money losing operation, uses exponentially more resources than a nuclear plant, has a life expectancy of only 25 years. Wind power makes no financial sense.

 

[TomSeller]

The nuclear industry will forever be tainted by the mess out in Washington State that they never have cleaned up even after Billions of dollars of attempts. NO NUKES

The mess gets worse at Hanford

 

[KiwiBro]

Wind power makes no financial sense.

What was the cost of cleaning up after Chernobyl? What has Japan spent on recovering from Fukushima so far? Do we know the real costs of dealing with the waste or decommissioning such plants or have those been adequately insured against or guaranteed? What is the net present value of the beta of the single-target plant from a grid security perspective compared to the beta of more distributed generation? Etc, etc. The same sorts of vague and hard to pin down cost analysis can be applied to just about every form of generation.

Personally, I think nuclear in some situations might be about the best option. Just as wind in others is the best.

 

[Creamer]

Creamer:

All of the studies show about 4%/1000 Km. A far cry from 4-6%/100 miles

If you have any real facts to back up your assertions, please post

I did a quick look and did not find a source. Most studies that I found are on the existing grid which is made for transporting the fuel to a generator located near the consumer totally because of the transmission losses. If you could mine coal in the Dakotas and Wyoming and convert the energy to electricity there and transfer the electricity to the population centers for less cost than putting the coal on trains and hauling it to the population centers so that they could have a coal burner amongst them, don't you think they would be doing it that way? Most of the studies I glanced at showed Transmission losses in our current grid of 6-7% and when combined with distribution losses they could go as high as 15%. the article i was trying to find would have been in Power magazine but it was 7-8 years ago and I did not see it in my quick search.

I did find this in Wikipedia "Transmitting electricity at high voltage reduces the fraction of energy lost to resistance, which varies depending on the specific conductors, the current flowing, and the length of the transmission line. For example, a 100 mile 765 kV line carrying 1000 MW of power can have losses of 1.1% to 0.5%. A 345 kV line carrying the same load across the same distance has losses of 4.2%." This shows the effect of having higher voltage lines. Also the 4.2% number over 100 miles at 345 kV does translate to a fairly high number for 1000 miles - yes it is a multiplier, i.e. 42% losses. Most of our current grid is operating at 230kV which would have higher losses.

If we are going to have a distributed power generation system we are going to need a massive upgrade to our transmission system that will need to include either higher voltage AC transmission or DC transmission (totally new). We all know the issues with having high voltage powerlines next to our houses so I have difficulty imagining getting this built. Furthermore, I would have no problem with a wind farm near me but I would have a problem with high voltage line being run next to me. I know of many people who are the same way.

I will do some more digging to see if I can find something else to back-up the Wikipedia summary. I just wanted to give you a response.

 

[Creamer]

Could you please point us to something that substantiates that assertion? I was under the impression that it is actually a very cheap generation method, but it would be great to have it proven otherwise.

Thanks.

Here is an article that describes the economics, i.e. without the government subsidy the building of windmills stops. Keep in mind that the subsidy is $.023/kwhr and as somebody mentioned in this thread $.02/kwhr is the current approximate wholesale cost of electricity. This subsidy is larger than the cost - 115%. How many commodities are you willing to double the price on to get when you can buy it at the regular price?

The Crazy Economics of the Wind Industry in Two Charts - The Atlantic

Also, being in the machining business, I know that in 2007 & 2008 very large milling machines and lathes were selling for crazy prices - even 50 year old stuff. A few months ago a friend of mine was at an auction where a $3.5M machining center that was installed in 2009 sold for about $100,000. Nobody is increasing capacity anymore - there are a lot of these machines setting idle. Why make the investment if it requires such a huge government subsidy and they could stop that subsidy anytime? The floor for the market is the current price and the windmills cannot be installed to generate at that price profitably. From what I am hearing, if the subsidy went away there would be a lot of windmills turned off because they cannot operate profitably at $.02/kwhr even if you forget about the installation cost.

 

[MossRoad]

What was the cost of cleaning up after Chernobyl? What has Japan spent on recovering from Fukushima so far? Do we know the real costs of dealing with the waste or decommissioning such plants or have those been adequately insured against or guaranteed? What is the net present value of the beta of the single-target plant from a grid security perspective compared to the beta of more distributed generation? Etc, etc. The same sorts of vague and hard to pin down cost analysis can be applied to just about every form of generation.

Personally, I think nuclear in some situations might be about the best option. Just as wind in others is the best.

Until someone can come up with viable, affordable storage and release of electrical power generated by wind and solar, it will never replace electricity generating "plants", be it fossil fuel, hydro or nuclear, because the sun doesn't shine at night and some days the wind doesn't blow.

 

[MossRoad]

The nuclear industry will forever be tainted by the mess out in Washington State that they never have cleaned up even after Billions of dollars of attempts. NO NUKES

The mess gets worse at Hanford

There are about 320 million people in the U.S. That nuke plant near us provides enough power for a city of 1.25 million people. So, you'd need about 256 nuke plants to power the entire U.S., or, you could put in 4 reactors instead of 2 and you'd only need 128 nuke plants for the entire U.S. With today's technology, you could get by with even fewer.

You would need 270,080 two megawatt wind turbines to power the U.S. operating at 100% capacity. However, wind turbines (in the most generous studies) only run at peak peak 25% of the time (some studies say its as low as 16%). Figuring from that, you will need at least 4X that amount and hope 25% of them are catching wind at any given time. That's over 1,080,000 two megawatt wind turbines spread out over 129,628,400 acres (based on the 60 acres per megawatt standard). There are about 1.9 billion acres in the continental U.S. Only about 1/4 of those acres have enough average wind speed to run wind turbines. That takes you down to 475,000,000 acres available for wind turbines in the U.S.

475,000,000 acres with 129,628,400 acres of windfarms means you would have to fill an area 6-7 hundred miles wide from the middle of Texas to the Canadian border with wind turbines. And that is exactly where the best locations for wind farms are in the U.S. Why does that area sound familiar??? Tornado alley. Lets put up over a million 300' tall $3,000,000 wind turbines and all the associated transmission lines and infrastructure smack in the middle of tornado alley. Sounds good. But do it before the tax credits run out....

My country tis of thee, sweet land of subsidy, of thee I sing.

 

[KiwiBro]

Until someone can come up with viable, affordable storage and release of electrical power generated by wind and solar, it will never replace electricity generating "plants", be it fossil fuel, hydro or nuclear, because the sun doesn't shine at night and some days the wind doesn't blow.

Agreed. Despite the hype, the storage viability just ain't there yet in all but isolated or unique cases. But it is getting closer. I don't envy regulators and politicians trying to navigate a path through this market, trying to project for the next 50 years or so.

Personally though, I do feel we are beyond the day-dreaming stage and actually on the cusp of a number of different ideas that could be incredibly disruptive to the way we power our societies. The next two years will be, I feel a real reckoning in the energy markets. Japan has ali-air batteries with roughly 40x the theoretical storage density of lithium-ion, Germany is already producing solar storage batteries (from Sony's lithium ion batteries I think it was) with very impressive duty cycles and higher discharge rates compared to this Tesla Powerwall product, Israel has both zinc-air and ali-air batteries, a number of companies are through trials and setting up real-world grid-level storage pilot schemes with utilities, Tesla's gigafactory will alone will have more lithium ion battery producing capacity than the entire world produced in, I think it was 2013, Toyota and others will have to can or solidify their hydrogen fuel cell ambitions, etc.

Some interesting times ahead.

 

[TomSeller]

There are about 320 million people in the U.S. That nuke plant near us provides enough power for a city of 1.25 million people. So, you'd need about 256 nuke plants to power the entire U.S., or, you could put in 4 reactors instead of 2 and you'd only need 128 nuke plants for the entire U.S. With today's technology, you could get by with even fewer.

You would need 270,080 two megawatt wind turbines to power the U.S. operating at 100% capacity. However, wind turbines (in the most generous studies) only run at peak peak 25% of the time (some studies say its as low as 16%). Figuring from that, you will need at least 4X that amount and hope 25% of them are catching wind at any given time. That's over 1,080,000 two megawatt wind turbines spread out over 129,628,400 acres (based on the 60 acres per megawatt standard). There are about 1.9 billion acres in the continental U.S. Only about 1/4 of those acres have enough average wind speed to run wind turbines. That takes you down to 475,000,000 acres available for wind turbines in the U.S.

475,000,000 acres with 129,628,400 acres of windfarms means you would have to fill an area 6-7 hundred miles wide from the middle of Texas to the Canadian border with wind turbines. And that is exactly where the best locations for wind farms are in the U.S. Why does that area sound familiar??? Tornado alley. Lets put up over a million 300' tall $3,000,000 wind turbines and all the associated transmission lines and infrastructure smack in the middle of tornado alley. Sounds good. But do it before the tax credits run out....

My country tis of thee, sweet land of subsidy, of thee I sing.

And what do you propose be done with the of the nuclear industry wastelands? Just continue to expand then? You are excluding cleanup costs. NO NEW NUKES!

 

[Redneck in training]

If we are going to have a distributed power generation system we are going to need a massive upgrade to our transmission system that will need to include either higher voltage AC transmission or DC transmission (totally new). We all know the issues with having high voltage powerlines next to our houses so I have difficulty imagining getting this built. Furthermore, I would have no problem with a wind farm near me but I would have a problem with high voltage line being run next to me. I know of many people who are the same way.

DC transmission lines are nothing new. First large scale were built at least 65 years ago. The problem with DC lines is very expensive conversion from AC to DC and DC to AC. In the old days AC motor drove a dynamo and on the other end DC motor drove an alternator. Today solid state devices are used to do so and the lines can be also bi-directional. DC transmission is cheaper to build because it has only two wires (but substations are very expensive making the total cost advantageous only for long distances), can carry about twice the energy than comparable AC line because it doesn't suffer skin effect and loses due capacitance and inductance against ground and from wire to wire. Also power factor is always one for obvious reason. There is no need to synchronize different energy sources.

There are several DC lines in operation at distances greater than 1500 miles (In Russia, Brasil, China and others).

AC vs. DC Powerlines and the Electrical Grid | The Energy Collective