Wind Can Supply 20% of U.S. Electricity
This article at the Washington Post will, I am sure, encourage many of those in favor of a huge energy independence project: a report says that the United States ‘has the ability to meet 20 percent of its electricity-generation needs with wind by 2030, enough to displace 50 percent of natural gas consumption and 18 percent of coal consumption.’
But in a report drawn up by its national laboratories, the department said that meeting the target would require more improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines, an expansion of the wind industry and a fivefold increase in the pace of wind-turbine installation.
The report said a boost in wind capacity to 20 percent of electricity generation “could potentially defer the need to build some new coal capacity, avoiding or postponing the associated carbon emissions.” The department said that expanding the use of wind to generate power could avert a need for more than 80 gigawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity; its current projections say that new coal-fired plants capable of producing about 140 gigawatts of power could be built by 2030 to meet rising demand.
The report noted that a big expansion of wind-power generation would also cut the amount of water used by the electricity industry by 17 percent by 2030.
The project would cost $197 billion. Most of that would be offset by nearly $155 billion in lower fuel expenditures,’ the report says. It goes on to say that there would be other offsetting positive effects.
Another good side of wind energy is, obviously, that it’s clean energy. Such a project could count on the support from many conservatives (part of the energy independence plan), while liberals would probably consider it a way to fight global warming / preserve the environment, and so on.
And moderates would probably embrace both.
Greens would fight it tooth and nail–and already do. Not to mention the NIMBY factor. Other point: "requires tech advances not in hand."
Everyone wants macro solutions. Appealling, but micro is more likely. If you’re going to wish for tech advances not quite yet in hand, look for easily deployable solar that brings down the price of kW’s, can be installed on new construction and retrofitted to old construction at reasonable cost, and feeds power back to the grid at peak times. (That’s one of the nice things about solar–grid peak load is also peak generation time for solar.)
Yeah, generate it in a distributed fashion in small scale locally (close to where it will be consumed) and feed the excess to the grid. Solar, wind, bio-waste, … anything can be used. I watched a science channel program the other day where they looked at powering individual buildings in the Windy City using, of course, wind turbines that can be mounted on rooftops. The special difficulty faced is the chaotic nature of the wind in the city as opposed to the more predictible and slowly varying sustained behavior in the open field. But given enough time and necessary incentives, these things, i.e., a combination of all things possible, will be put in use.
Wait until the greens figure out that cheap and easily deployable small-scale solar makes wilderness homes MUCH more viable.
All the wind power in the world will not reduce our American need for imported oil by so much as 1% of the amount we now import. If your objective is reducing the amount of oil we import, wind power and solar count for nothing.
Considering that heating oil is 25% of the usage of oil imports and that new construction is running very heavily electric, I’d call that a slight exaggeration.
Of course the surest way to reduce imports is to increase domestic production.
One small detail: wind, and therefore wind energy, peaks at night. Maximum electricity demand peaks in the afternoon. Which means that you need some massive infrastructure to store power for 18 hours – and that the unavoidable losses from that reduce the effective amount of power produced. Granted, you could save on total oil imports. But the amount of (mostly oil and coal fueled) power plant capacity you need would be unchanged.
Point about that, wj: You’re 100% right about the peak storage problem of course, but also remember that peak wind is not necessarily peak wind generation. Too much wind is as useless as none at all–the turbines can not be run past a certain speed, so they shut them down. Real locale dependent, that.
I’m a wee bit familiar. On the up side, wind peak is complementary to solar peak. They go together nicely.
Sad, but true, Tully. Of course, the ability to feather the props makes the turbines overall at least a little flexible. But really high winds are not their friend.
Tully,
Are you saying that 25% of all imported oil is used as home heating oil? I don’t believe this to be correct. However, if you are right and I am wrong, I would appreciate a source for the 25% figure.