Why Wind is pitiful for most regions on earth

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

In a nutshell: Wind is HIGHLY seasonal in medium latitudes and in low latitudes does not exist at all other than in form of thunderstorms/cyclones, Hurricanes, and high lattitudes it also is for the most part: Pitiful. 

For mid latitudes: Spring: Good.  Fall: Good. 

Winter: Excellent or is pitiful for weeks at a time

Summer: Pitiful

Lets look at Germany over last 4 weeks.  Wind nameplate capacity: ~60GW

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2020&week=26

Look at weeks 24,25,26(current week is 27): Has averaged about 8GW.  That dear friends is a month long capacity factor of ~15% for Month of June for all of Germany, and July on average is near identical.

So, the next time some idiot starts spouting Green propaganda douchery, just point at Germany with link provided and tell them to select wind and look at the history by selecting month/week as their hearts desire.  This is Germany: who has decent wind.  Now the propagandists are easy to deal with: ask kindly if they wish to multiply their energy cost by 6X, because no folks, there is no magic energy storage medium good for 85% of your load for 2 months. 

~~~ There is a solution: Remove everyone from Switzerland/Austria and build dam after dam after dam for pumped hydro storage.  Until then...

Edited July 4, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[NickW + 2,714]

6 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

In a nutshell: Wind is HIGHLY seasonal in medium latitudes and in low latitudes does not exist at all other than in form of thunderstorms/cyclones, Hurricanes, and high lattitudes it also is for the most part: Pitiful. 

For mid latitudes: Spring: Good.  Fall: Good. 

Winter: Excellent or is pitiful for weeks at a time

Summer: Pitiful

Lets look at Germany over last 4 weeks.  Wind nameplate capacity: ~60GW

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2020&week=26

Look at weeks 24,25,26(current week is 27): Has averaged about 8GW.  That dear friends is a month long capacity factor of ~15% for Month of June for all of Germany, and July on average is near identical.

So, the next time some idiot starts spouting Green propaganda douchery, just point at Germany with link provided and tell them to select wind and look at the history by selecting month/week as their hearts desire.  This is Germany: who has decent wind.  Now the propagandists are easy to deal with: ask kindly if they wish to multiply their energy cost by 6X, because no folks, there is no magic energy storage medium good for 85% of your load for 2 months. 

~~~ There is a solution: Remove everyone from Switzerland/Austria and build dam after dam after dam for pumped hydro storage.  Until then...

With the exception of the North of the Country its wind resources are fairly mediocre.

https://globalwindatlas.info/

Secondly that website demonstrates how solar and wind resources tend to compliment each other. Look at week 1 - loads of wind (more than gas, coal and lignite put together)  and little solar. Week 26 loads of solar, moderate amounts of wind. 

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by NickW

[Meredith Poor + 883]

"So, the next time some idiot starts spouting Green propaganda douchery" - How to filter out phonies. Name calling is one good marker. Not the only one, but it can eliminate 90% of wasted bandwidth.

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

16 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

there is no magic energy storage medium good for 85% of your load for 2 months. 

Actually, there is.  The basic design has been around for centuries.  It is called a Flywheel. 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,537]

1 hour ago, Jan van Eck said:

Actually, there is.  The basic design has been around for centuries.  It is called a Flywheel. 

LMAO ok this should be interesting...FISH ON!....Hmm centrifugal force does not apply....i feel a arm twist coming...semantics...

Edited July 4, 2020 by Eyes Wide Open

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

On 7/4/2020 at 7:07 PM, Eyes Wide Open said:

LMAO

I remain nonplussed as to why you should think this was so funny.  This is perfectly straight-forward physics. A flywheel stores energy as a function of the square of its rotational speed and a linear function of its mass.  The energy losses are the result of friction in the bearings and air displacement as it turns.  Thus a flywheel made of some high-strength material such as carbon fibers, spinning in a vacuum and supported by magnetic bearings, will hold its charge energy for months.   Place copper wires inside the wheel core and a set of field wires in the circumference and you have an electric motor - generator combination.  Power the wheel up by applying an electric current, store it in the rotational energy, and remove the energy by tapping into the field coils.   The engineering is rather straight-forward. 

These solutions are entirely doable.  What holds them back is the politics, not the physics.  Flywheels were used in ancient Mesopotamia for storing water and wind energy for grinding grain.  They were used to store energy in windmill applications in Holland, for operating sawmills.  They were used in maranged-steel form for storing energy in flywheel-powered buses in Belgium and Switzerland a hundred years ago. The old designs did not have the advanced materials available today and thus did not have the energy time retention demanded today; but the principles remain the same. 

Laugh all you like; flywheels work fine, and they are the energy-storage workhorses.  They beat batteries hands down. 

Edited July 25, 2020 by Jan van Eck
typing error

[markslawson + 1,042]

11 hours ago, NickW said:

Secondly that website demonstrates how solar and wind resources tend to compliment each other. Look at week 1 - loads of wind (more than gas, coal and lignite put together)  and little solar. Week 26 loads of solar, moderate amounts of wind. 

Actually they don't complement each other. At least not from the graphs I could see. Solar has that pronounced peak during the day while wind comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes they synch, sometimes they don't. What is interesting is the power import figures - same graphs just tick different boxes - with the German grid operators having to balance variations by exporting and importing. As the German grid is surrounded by large grids that don't have the German-green obsessions (Poland in particular, which embraces coal power - France has lots of nuclear power), it is easier for them to make renewables work by pulling in or exporting power as needed. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

20 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

In a nutshell: Wind is HIGHLY seasonal in medium latitudes and in low latitudes does not exist at all other than in form of thunderstorms/cyclones, Hurricanes, and high lattitudes it also is for the most part: Pitiful. 

For mid latitudes: Spring: Good.  Fall: Good. 

Winter: Excellent or is pitiful for weeks at a time

Summer: Pitiful

Lets look at Germany over last 4 weeks.  Wind nameplate capacity: ~60GW

https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2020&week=26

Look at weeks 24,25,26(current week is 27): Has averaged about 8GW.  That dear friends is a month long capacity factor of ~15% for Month of June for all of Germany, and July on average is near identical.

So, the next time some idiot starts spouting Green propaganda douchery, just point at Germany with link provided and tell them to select wind and look at the history by selecting month/week as their hearts desire.  This is Germany: who has decent wind.  Now the propagandists are easy to deal with: ask kindly if they wish to multiply their energy cost by 6X, because no folks, there is no magic energy storage medium good for 85% of your load for 2 months. 

~~~ There is a solution: Remove everyone from Switzerland/Austria and build dam after dam after dam for pumped hydro storage.  Until then...

Like China did at the Three Gorges!

I spent 26 months in Germany, south of Frankfurt in Bad Kreuznach. It has been a long time, but I don't recall ever having a really windy day. Here in central Illinois we bought a 7 foot old fashioned windmill. I had to replace retaining bolts three times within about six weeks. Then the ball bearings busted open and I bought six sets and had to rethread the rod that holds the blades. 

I set up a heavy plastic sheet greenhouse as soon as I retired, but could not save it from 40 MPH winds and gusts. I soon took it down. The other problem was that it got too hot even with windows and doors open.

People are always wanting to set up more wind farms here. We have beautiful areas, but mostly cornfields and slight hills in some spots. No irrigation needed. 

Edited July 5, 2020 by ronwagn
addition

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

3 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I remain nonplussed as to why you should think this was so funny.

These solutions are entirely doable.  What holds them back is the politics, not the physics.  Flywheels were used in ancient Mesopotamia for storing water and wind energy for grinding grain.  They were sued to store energy in windmill applications in Holland, for operating sawmills.  They were used in maranged-steel form for storing energy in flywheel-powered buses in Belgium and Switzerland a hundred years ago. The old designs did not have the advanced materials available today and thus did not have the energy time retention demanded today; but the principles remain the same. 

Laugh all you like; flywheels work fine, and they are the energy-storage workhorses.  They beat batteries hands down. 

Your ignorant naivete regarding electrodynamics was what was funny.  And no, they do not work other than VERY short duration(for which they are used).  Little reality called FRICTION and dynamics.  

Many attempts at magnetic levitation in a vacuum have been tried.  None have succeeded.  IE friction less and use ~no power.  Standard bearings die in a vacuum quickly and cause huge frictional loses.  Personally, I think a flywheel COULD succeed, but ONLY if they severely limited their power charge/drawdown, limiting the dynamics instability problems.  Of course limiting charge/discharge makes their energy density EXTREMELY expensive as the power to levitate maintain system expensive.  The good part? If it ever worked, the system *** should*** last hundreds of years with little maintenance.

Here: https://www.ventureradar.com/keyword/flywheel energy storage is a massive list of flywheel companies. 

Personally, when l looked at the problem in my youth I came to the conclusion that permanent magnets combined with electromagnets should be used for optimum levitation. 

PS: Last guys I saw doing flywheel in vacuum(Netherlands  I believe) were using unidirectional carbon fiber in a carbon matrix, and they were proposing the ability to store energy at 95% level for up to a week... Not bad.  Ah, reality.... But, they could not get the levitation bearings to work as a car driving near the facility would send a deflection/acceleration into the structure requiring VERY big electromagnets sucking down tons of energy to keep its orientation.  Their REAL numbers were 70% in a vacuum using normal bearings over a weeks time... Seems they have improved this number... and an unknown bearing maintenance regime(AKA bad).   Here is their link https://www.quinteqenergy.com/technology/ I believe: Obviously PR without the details, but currently claiming 2.4% degradation of energy per day. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 minutes ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Your ignorant naivete regarding electrodynamics

Ah, bullshit.  More of your crap comments.  What a poisonous lout. Go away. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

40 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

Ah, bullshit.  More of your crap comments.  What a poisonous lout. Go away. 

Yes, you are brilliant, all the companies doing flywheels are stupid.

Your abject arrogance knows no bounds. 

Thank you for proving again why I banned your posts

Edited July 5, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

23 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

... because no folks, there is no magic energy storage medium good for 85% of your load for 2 months. 

 

Germany has such an energy storage medium already in place, and they already use it. It is natural gas stored underground in depleted fields. It's actually good for more than your specified amount.

Electricity generated from wind and solar can be used to generate CH4 from electricity and atmospheric CO2 to replace natural gas. This can be done anywhere in the world where conditions are suitable, and the CH4 can be delivered to germany by pipeline or LNG carrier, just as NG is delivered today.  A whole lot of that CH4 can be generated in the North Sea.

[Wombat + 1,028]

25 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Germany has such an energy storage medium already in place, and they already use it. It is natural gas stored underground in depleted fields. It's actually good for more than your specified amount.

Electricity generated from wind and solar can be used to generate CH4 from electricity and atmospheric CO2 to replace natural gas. This can be done anywhere in the world where conditions are suitable, and the CH4 can be delivered to germany by pipeline or LNG carrier, just as NG is delivered today.  A whole lot of that CH4 can be generated in the North Sea.

What is more, the electricity surplus can be used to make H2 without going the extra step to CH4, saving billions of dollars! That is also what the Germans are doing.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

5 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I remain nonplussed as to why you should think this was so funny.  This is perfectly straight-forward physics. A flywheel stores energy as a function of the square of its rotational speed and a linear function of its mass.  The energy losses are the result of friction in the bearings and air displacement as it turns.  Thus a flywheel made of some high-strength material such as carbon fibers, spinning in a vacuum and supported by magnetic bearings, will hold its charge energy for months.   Place copper wires inside the wheel core and a set of field wires in the circumference and you have an electric motor - generator combination.  Power the wheel up by applying an electric current, store it in the rotational energy, and remove the energy by tapping into the field coils.   The engineering is rather straight-forward.

Friction-free, perfect-vacuum systems only exist in physics textbooks.

If you move a conductor through a magnetic field you are wasting energy.  It will induce some current, desired or not, and the induced current will waste energy as heat from resistance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current

 

Don't get me wrong, I like flywheels, just they are most effective in the minutes to hours time frame, not days to months.

[NickW + 2,714]

9 hours ago, markslawson said:

Actually they don't complement each other. At least not from the graphs I could see. Solar has that pronounced peak during the day while wind comes and goes as it pleases. Sometimes they synch, sometimes they don't. What is interesting is the power import figures - same graphs just tick different boxes - with the German grid operators having to balance variations by exporting and importing. As the German grid is surrounded by large grids that don't have the German-green obsessions (Poland in particular, which embraces coal power - France has lots of nuclear power), it is easier for them to make renewables work by pulling in or exporting power as needed. 

I used the word tend

Summer - characterised by high solar / lower wind speeds

Winter - Characterised by low solar / higher wind speeds

I agree Germany has the benefit of interconnections with several large countries however Germany is a net exporter of electricity. 

Edited July 5, 2020 by NickW

[Walter Faber + 48]

If wind combined with other renewables works out for a country or region depends a lot on the particular conditions.
A wide area with access to different natural resources combined with a capable grid connecting them is great for renewables. Solar&Wind on their own and locally are unreliable, but if combined with hydro and geothermal and Solar&Wind from an entire continent, the fluctuations in available power generation capacity reduce drastically, and you need much less storage capacity. 
These condition is usually met for densely populated, geographically diverse regions like Europe, because i) it is worth setting up the extensive grid network due to sufficient market and ii) you have the diversity needed for energy security.

On the other hand, an isolated city in Siberia will better be supplied by a classical powerplant, preferably nuclear. 

I believe both sides need to cool down in the debate. Renewables won't be the solution everywhere and always, but they can be very useful and even sufficient on their own for some countries or continents. If someone tells you they always work or never work, you have likely encountered an incurable ideologue. 
 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Walter Faber

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,537]

15 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

I remain nonplussed as to why you should think this was so funny.  This is perfectly straight-forward physics. A flywheel stores energy as a function of the square of its rotational speed and a linear function of its mass.  The energy losses are the result of friction in the bearings and air displacement as it turns.  Thus a flywheel made of some high-strength material such as carbon fibers, spinning in a vacuum and supported by magnetic bearings, will hold its charge energy for months.   Place copper wires inside the wheel core and a set of field wires in the circumference and you have an electric motor - generator combination.  Power the wheel up by applying an electric current, store it in the rotational energy, and remove the energy by tapping into the field coils.   The engineering is rather straight-forward. 

These solutions are entirely doable.  What holds them back is the politics, not the physics.  Flywheels were used in ancient Mesopotamia for storing water and wind energy for grinding grain.  They were sued to store energy in windmill applications in Holland, for operating sawmills.  They were used in maranged-steel form for storing energy in flywheel-powered buses in Belgium and Switzerland a hundred years ago. The old designs did not have the advanced materials available today and thus did not have the energy time retention demanded today; but the principles remain the same. 

Laugh all you like; flywheels work fine, and they are the energy-storage workhorses.  They beat batteries hands down. 

The laugh or humor was expression for myself as what am I walking into here. 

Notice I did state other than centrifugal forces..which as you state are fundamental concepts in energy scavenging is the word I will use.

I have a son who is a environmental engineer professionally who has a obsession with physics. Often he tries to explain energy storage systems to me aka batteries. Which I coin a energy conversion system...his responses to my perception are unique. Hence the laugh...which is not directed at your thought process.

 

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Eyes Wide Open

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

17 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

Actually, there is.  The basic design has been around for centuries.  It is called a Flywheel. 

Flywheel storage has been researched and implemented for many years. The problem with flywheels is energy storage density.  To increase stored energy, you increase angular momentum. For the same mass, you get more angular momentum by spinning faster or by using a larger diameter. As the diameter increases, the centripetal force increases, research has found that you maximize energy density by using strong threads radiating from then axis instead of any sort of solid disk. (With a solid disk or similar, some of the mass fails to contribute to the strength that resists the centripetal force.) Storage density is then limited by the tensile strength of the threads. Even with the strongest threads, (e.g., Kevlar) the energy density does not match modern batteries.

[BradleyPNW + 282]

Berkeley Lab's flywheel so they don't knock out the power in the Bay Area when they play with their toys. Used for bursts of energy. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

By the time countries can build a lot of wind and solar (2030+) our economic structure and geography will change. Google is a good example of what the future of geographic energy demand will look like because they shift their workloads (energy demand) to chase cheap and clean electricity. 

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-tests-shifting-data-center-loads-to-capture-grids-clean-energy#:~:text=Google's%20highly%20ambitious%20goal%20to,its%20global%20data%20center%20fleet.

At present, our professional skill cognitive work is performed in cities so that's where we send our energy. Which means that's how we think about energy. Over time our professional skill cognitive work will be performed by computers. Google, AWS, Azure/whatever, will pick up cities worth of professional cognitive work and send it around the world. 

If you talk about wind and solar on a large scale you should talk about them in terms of the world where they will live. It isn't a question of whether or not wind/solar can power our world because they *won't* power our world. They will power a future world where stuff works differently. 

Bottom line: you can't make confident predictions about how various energy sources are either a dead end or a sure thing. Although, at present I believe the Green propaganda douches make the better arguments which means they probably have long run politics on their side. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

3 hours ago, BradleyPNW said:

By the time countries can build a lot of wind and solar (2030+) our economic structure and geography will change. Google is a good example of.....

Reality of where oil is used...

https://mobile.twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/1279080503509991425/photo/1

EDIT: Hrmm why won't the picture post... grr...  Oh well you guys will have to click on the link...

No, there will be very little shifting of electrical demand between regions.  The number of countries/regions who could even attempt to do this tiny shifting of energy demand is numbered on less than ONE hand and only limited to tiny things like data centers.  Mining operations? Transportation? Heavy Manufacturing?  None of these will time shift.  Trying to do so makes no economic sense, let alone logistical sense, reliability sense, national security sense. 

EDIT: Here is NG use in USA https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_cons_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm

Note vast majority of it cannot be time shifted: Residential/Commercial/industrial is heating which leaves 35% of the NG use in the USA which is used for electrical production which may be time shifted such as water heating.

Of course all of this time shifting is much more expensive than today.  SO, until you can create power MUCH cheaper than today, no one will put up with time shifting their power requirements unless they are filthy rich and have nothing better to spend their money and time on.  Why?  Vast majority will not willingly lose their comfort/economy of scale to accommodate time shifting electrical demand.  Those that do?(people living on RV's/boats) do so for need and simplicity because they are all .... RETIRED.  No one else can do so.

Edited July 6, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[markslawson + 1,042]

13 hours ago, NickW said:

however Germany is a net exporter of electricity. 

The "tend" may be correct on the seasonal, big picture scale you pointed to, but its all but useless in managing a grid. As for the net exporters point, sure - what happens is that when a lot of renewable power comes on the grid, Germany can't shut down the brown coal plants which make up the backbone of its power supply (they take a whole day to restart), so they export the surplus and then claim that they are using the renewable energy and sending off the brown power.  The point about interconnecting is that when the renewable power goes away they can draw electricity from elsewhere, so the usual enormous problems of renewables are reduced.. anyway, leave it with you..  

[markslawson + 1,042]

1 hour ago, BradleyPNW said:

By the time countries can build a lot of wind and solar (2030+) our economic structure and geography will change. Google is a good example of what the future of geographic energy demand will look like because they shift their workloads (energy demand) to chase cheap and clean electricity. 

Bradley - this is straight green wishful thinking. Only a tiny fraction of the energy load, at best, can be shifted around in this way. The bulk of electricity demand, for example, is stuff like heating or cooling or running aluminium smelters. For proper shuffling we need a network of DC transmission lines and that's big money, big expense. While on the subject of costs I note you added "cheap" to green. There is now considerable experience with green power and the only place that such power has reduced consumer costs in the long term is in activist's imaginations. The more common result, as in places like German and Denmark, has been very expensive power. 

[BradleyPNW + 282]

2 hours ago, markslawson said:

Bradley - this is straight green wishful thinking. Only a tiny fraction of the energy load, at best, can be shifted around in this way. The bulk of electricity demand, for example, is stuff like heating or cooling or running aluminium smelters. For proper shuffling we need a network of DC transmission lines and that's big money, big expense. While on the subject of costs I note you added "cheap" to green. There is now considerable experience with green power and the only place that such power has reduced consumer costs in the long term is in activist's imaginations. The more common result, as in places like German and Denmark, has been very expensive power. 

I don't care if the energy is supplied by nuclear, natural gas, or renewables. I'm energy agnostic in terms of my personal desire. I'm only interested in what's going to wind up happening and I think the greenies have the best arguments right now. 

I used the Google example because it impacts skills clustering which is the contemporary value of cities. Historically, energy infrastructure followed labor. But now the type of labor that holds cities together -- highly skilled labor -- is decoupling from people. 

People should make energy predictions but it should be in the form of scenario planning that considers economic spatial geography as well as structural changes to the economy as a whole. That means there's a lot more uncertainty than not. 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,537]

36 minutes ago, BradleyPNW said:

I don't care if the energy is supplied by nuclear, natural gas, or renewables. I'm energy agnostic in terms of my personal desire. I'm only interested in what's going to wind up happening and I think the greenies have the best arguments right now. 

I used the Google example because it impacts skills clustering which is the contemporary value of cities. Historically, energy infrastructure followed labor. But now the type of labor that holds cities together -- highly skilled labor -- is decoupling from people. 

People should make energy predictions but it should be in the form of scenario planning that considers economic spatial geography as well as structural changes to the economy as a whole. That means there's a lot more uncertainty than not. 

You do understand that you have just endorsed Donald Trump. Bringing jobs back to America.