Is Wind The Next Nuclear?

[Brad Kenney]

The ever-insightful Jerome has a column in the Oil Drum (if you work in the energy industry, this site is a must-read) that is based on an upcoming industry conference presentation.

Jerome's overall point is that wind power is quickly developing into a major force in the energy industry. First, he tackles the "wind is too small to make a difference" argument, saying "well, so was nuclear, until it got big enough." The chart shows that wind is following the exact same growth trajectory as nuclear did:


Investment in the wind power industry is booming, with 40% of the installed capacity over the last eight years in Europe, China and even the US, where the oil/gas friendly Republican party had a virtual lock on power from 2000-2006.

Even despite the various compelling economic arguments (zero marginal cost, use of current industrial production capacity, domestic energy production mitigating trade deficits) the real clincher lies in this chart:


I doubt nuclear power ever saw those favorable/unfavorables.

[mjcutri]

Graphs can be very misleading...
That graph sure looks like wind is tracking with nuclear, except for that little problem of scales. I assume that the nuclear MW scale is on the left, and the wind is on the right, but it is hard to tell without labels on it. (The first sign of a bad graph.) The scale on the left goes to 100,000, the right to 50,000. So actually, wind is trailing nuclear by >50%. Also, the graph compares the FIRST 16 years of nuclear to an arbitrary 16 years of wind. Using wind for energy has been around for hundreds of years (long before electricity was discovered). It's easy to draw favorable graphs by cherry-picking dates to look at data. (Try doing it with stocks sometime, it can be a lot of fun.) Also the source of this graph is sketchy at best. You are citing someone, who is citing the European Wind Power Association (think that they are unbiased?) for the graph, but they don't cite a source or any data to corroborate their graph. So in reality, it could just be an artists interpretation of what they think is the truth for all we know.
Here is the US Electricity Generation by Type for 1995-2008 from the EIA (Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri.../table1_1.html)

Still think wind is the next nuclear?

[wesdavidson]

..... and then they quit building them.

Nuclear suffered from Giantism, and died from it. At least in the US. Large plants are low cost per KWH but high cost for construction, percieved risk, and decommissioning. Wind is headed that way, but thankfully calmer heads may prevail!

Reading the linked oil drum site was fun. Lots of opinions. lots of controversy.

The arguement for small scale off grid wind is a no-brainer. Small gasoline generators fuel and equipment cost for power late last summer topped $1.00 per KWH. Small solar pannels were $4,000 per kw minimum. Small wind turbines were about $1,500 per KW.

Environmental studies, and material costs etc make the cost for power lines to remote sites from the existing grid prohibitive in many cases.

Small navy size reactors for remote sites just never really happened. Solar, wind and fossil fuel are the only choices.

Large wind is really accelerating, I have seen towers and blades on I-15 many times this last year.

The GE wind turbine site lists 3 medium and large machines. 1.5, 2.5 and 3.6 mw. They claim more than 5,000 installed units for the 1.5 MW turbines. -That is mainstream. Locally there is an old diesel plant, the largest unit was 3.6 MW. They recently added a few 1.8 MW cat solar gas turbines. These are for peaking service, and standby. These GE wind turbines could do the same job, much of the summer, for a zero daily fuel cost. A few hundred could supply much or a large part of the power for even large users such as mini mills and manufacturing plants.

The first tipping point was the availability of large commercial machines, the next tipping point will be when the installed base begins to cover the energy costs of building the windmills. Then the energy balance will be positive.

The discussions about replacements did not take notice of the large amount of maintenance required by heavy steam plants, a large part of the power emergency in 2000-2001 was due to power plants being down for repairs. Wind machines should be every bit as reliable as large steam plants.

As for dependability of wind, dispersing these installations over a wide area will solve much of that. Just look at a weather map, it is usually blowing within 100 -200 miles of any given area.

Depending on cost, the GE towers would be usefull for many small communities and locations. It is not the total solution, but being able to run power two ways depending on load in effect halves the cost of power line upgrades.

No, wind is not the next Nuclear, IT IS BETTER. The availabilty of good commercial machines, and a growing base of engineering companies qualified to install them can only be positive.

The next step willl be to come up with an improved power grid so that we can move power more easily from where the wind is better to where the power is needed.