Awesome wind map

See it here.

Better energy storage?

Via Geoff Styles, a very intriguing idea: Windfuels, i.e. "storing wind power in gasoline."

Doty Windfuels has been working on a system called RFTS, or Renewable Fischer Tropsch Synthesis. The process looks to use off-peak excess wind energy to recycle CO2 into standard fuels that work seamlessly in the one billion cars and trucks on the road around the world. The chemistry is fundamentally simple and well understood.

Geoff doesn't seem all that enamored of the idea (put off in part, he admits, by the inventor's excessive negativity toward seemingly all other energy alternatives). I'm a bit more positive. There's a lot to be said for building almost entirely on proven technologies (in this case, chemical pathways; the only step not commercialized is reducing CO2 to CO). Even if the economics get worse as other energy storage technologies like CAES begin to compete up the price of off-peak electric power, it certainly wouldn't be a bad thing for there to be one more storage technology in the mix. And even if this specific idea doesn't bear fruit, it encourages further investigation of storing off-peak power as chemical energy (rather than mechanical, e.g. compressed air, or thermal, e.g. molten salt), an avenue I hadn't thought of much, and one which makes a lot of intuitive sense.

Energy back-of-the-envelope of the day

Geoff Styles calculates that the newly-approved Cape Wind will generate only slightly more energy than is leaking from the single well drilled by Deepwater Horizon:

Cape Wind and the Macondo prospect that the Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling into represent opposite poles of the energy spectrum, and not just because the latter is now leaking oil into the marine environment at a rate that the latest estimate puts at 5,000 barrels per day, much higher than initially thought. Cape Wind would tap into the clean and renewable, but extremely diffuse energy sources that surround us. After taking into account the restrictions imposed by DOI, its 130 turbines would on average generate as much electricity as a gas turbine power plant consuming a quantity of natural gas equivalent to 6,000 bbls/day of oil. In other words, it takes a very large array of offshore wind turbines to match the energy in the oil currently leaking from a single well. Platforms similar to what BP might have been planning to install after successfully completing the exploration of Macondo routinely produce up to 20 times that much oil.

Can't quit "dirty power" cold turkey

In response to an over-enthusiastic Earth Day petition, the always-thoughtful Geoff Styles thinks through the following:

What would it mean if every power plant burning coal, oil or natural gas shut down today and remained idle? The short answer is chaos and social collapse, but let's take a quick look at why.

Here are a few of his facts for the numerically inclined:

As it turns out, all renewable sources plus nuclear generated a bit over 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) last year... Unfortunately, it's also less power than the US has generated in any year since 1966.

If we adjust for energy:GDP, then 1979, with its net generation of 2.25 trillion kWh, looks like a more appropriate basis of comparison to the economic work that our current zero-emission power output could do. The problem is that the US population has grown by 84 million people since then, and our economy, expressed in constant dollars, is more than twice as big as in '79--even after last year's contraction.

The wind, solar and geothermal power sources we've focused intensely on expanding accounted for just 2% of the electricity we used last year. Double them, and then double them again (10 years?) and that's still only 8%, compared to the 69% we got from fossil-based generation last year.

The argument almost makes itself, but he makes it well. And rightly doesn't even bother with the triviality of a similar argument for fossil transportation fuels.

Wind power in Africa

Interesting – I wasn’t aware of Africa’s largest wind project.

Kenya’s Lake Turkana Wind Power project – set to become Africa’s largest wind farm – looks to be back on track after securing financing through a new shareholding structure.

The project now appears to be co-funded by private sector firms and the African Development Bank.

The 300-megawatt, $625 million project is expected to begin providing 50 megawatts of power to the Kenyan national grid by June 2011. Once in full operation, the project could provide roughly a third of Kenya’s current peak demand of 1,089 megawatts.

Not at the scale of Desertec, of course, but worth keeping an eye on. I predict that if it does get up and running, the intermittency will nevertheless frustrate some locals.

Via Green Inc.

Wind farm wakes

Via David Mackay; mostly I just love the photo:


(Oh yeah, and being downwind can easily reduce the power generation of a turbine by 20-30%, or even more. One more thing to keep in mind when calculating the magnitude of renewable energy potential.)

Cape Wind

Yet another major renewable energy project is facing siting challenges:

The Wampanoag — the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims in the 17th century and is known as "the people of the first light" — practice sacred rituals requiring an unblocked view of the sunrise. That view won't exist if the Cape Wind project's 130 turbines, each over 400 feet tall, are built several miles from the Cape Cod shore across a 25-square-mile swath of federal waters. The turbines would be visible to Wampanoag in Mashpee and on Martha's Vineyard.

Without passing judgment on the relative legitimacy of this particular alternate claim to the land, I'll note that there are very few renewables solutions which will make absolutely everyone happy.

Via Geoff Style' 2010 outlook - worth reading.

Economics of cap-and-trade

Michael Roberts kindly sketches out the economics of cap-and-trade (and specifically its impact on energy markets and prices) through a classic supply-demand framework. I tend to believe that formalizing these sorts of things into models is a very effective way of thinking through issues and effects, so many thanks to Michael for taking this direction.

It still doesn't feel intuitively correct to me that oil and coal would benefit from cap-and-trade, even in the short term; here's my first thought on where the model might be off:

Thanks for writing this out - much more cogent than my first attempt.

The one thing I'm not sure it captures fully is the interaction with existing low-carbon energy technologies (as opposed to future innovations). The demand for total energy is inelastic in the short term, but the demand for carbon-based energy is probably more elastic because as prices climb higher, broader swathes of existing low-emission technologies (wind, solar, nuclear, etc.) become economically viable.

There may be other tools from the Econ 101 toolkit that can include price-based substitution into the standard supply-demand framework (besides embedding in the demand curve) - if anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears.

"Green jobs" preventing green energy?

Geoff Styles on the uproar over the proposed wind project in Texas involving Chinese investors...

The chief complaint about the project in question is that it might be eligible to take advantage of a key energy provision of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009--this year's stimulus bill--that allows the developers of a qualifying renewable energy project to collect an up-front cash grant from the US Treasury equal to 30% of the cost of the project. In this case much of that money, along with the funds provided by the US and Chinese partners, would go to pay for wind turbines imported from China. As a result, most of the jobs this project would create would be in China, not the US. On the face of it, this looks like a colossal loophole that some high-profile legislators--who incidentally voted for the stimulus bill including this feature--are rushing to plug. However, this only looks like a nasty unintended consequence of a hastily-crafted law if you misunderstand the mechanics and purpose of the Treasury renewable energy grant program.

You guessed it, the program was passed to stimulate renewable energy projects in the wake of Lehman's collapse. Which it seems to be doing... unless the green jobs argument gets in the way.

Here's Geoff's conclusion, with which I whole-heartedly agree:

The wind industry has already developed a globalized supply chain, similar to many other industries, and no one should be stunned if wind turbines from China show up in Texas, any more than China should be surprised that its nuclear power plant construction projects are creating jobs in the US. Our assessment of the value of renewable energy sources such as wind power should hinge on their efficacy at providing reliable and cost-effective energy supplies and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not on domestic jobs creation--even in a recession.

Chart of the day: water needs of power plants

Wow - the difference between solar thermal and biofuels on one hand, and solar PV and wind on the other, is striking. The water intensity of biofuels is widely recognized (1, 2, 3), but and the solar thermal/water one had never occurred to me before (and I think about resource interdependencies a fair amount).

The losses, illustrated through interesting anecdotes from Nevada and California in this NYT story, come from the evaporation that happens when steam, heated to turn a turbine, is "wet cooled" to become water again (and be reused). Unsurprisingly, "dry cooling" technology exists, and costs:

An alternative, dry cooling, uses fans and heat exchangers, much like a car’s radiator. Far less water is consumed, but dry cooling adds costs and reduces efficiency — and profits.

There is also an effort to use reclaimed water in California, but this also adds costs (and takes energy, if the reclaimed water is available in a different location).

Given the increasingly looming water shortage in many parts of the world, this will certainly dampen any warm and fuzzy feelings I might associate with CSP.

Hat tip to Environmental Economics, which notes sagely that "True water pricing would push RPS portfolio to wind over solar." The chart is from this presentation.

Biofuels still the hungry little sibling for government funds

DOE just announced $21 million in funding for five projects in second-generation biofuels research. Sounds nice, but that kind of money won't get anywhere near bringing second-generation biofuels across the Valley of Death - a single commercial-scale plant costs upward of $100 million.

Second-generation biofuels players like Range Fuels are likely looking jealously at the wind power sector, which has secured government support on a different scale:

Big banks including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup are underwriting wind farms worth more than $100 million each.

That’s partly a result of new government policy: For the first time, wind-farm developers have the option of receiving 30% of the cost of the project in cash, rather than getting tax credits over the life of the wind farm.

30% of $100 million is the kind of money that would definitely help a demonstrated second-generation biofuel build a commercial-scale plant... and it's more than the recent DOE grant in its entirety.

Update: Environmental Capital has the numbers on the wind grants. $500 million in total, with $294 million swept up by Iberdrola for five projects, or almost $60 million each on average.

Granted wind projects have much more commercial certainty than a first-of-its-kind commercial-scale plant for second-generation biofuels, but that's also an argument that the private sector should be able to bear the burden on its own. The next generation of biofuels is unproven, so there are broader public benefits of the "Valley of Death" being crossed, and the rationale for government intervention is stronger.

Maybe the government can take equity rather than give a guaranteed loan, in order to avoid accusations of favoritism towards one of the many second-gen biofuel companies out there?

Wind/solar GHG payback period

I found myself wondering what the GHG payback period for wind and solar power was. That is, say X tons of CO2e are emitted mining the silicon, manufacturing the solar panel, transporting and installing, etc., and after that the solar panel generates electricity essentially emission-free. How long does it take an existing coal plant to emit X tons of CO2e (a.k.a. how long does it take the renewable technology to "break even")?

Wind is pretty good - less than one year, according to one source.

I wasn't able to find that exact number for solar (most discussions of payback are around financial payback for people interested in installing solar panels on their houses), but this page calculates the energy payback time (slightly different, but a reasonable proxy) to be ~1.5-2 years in southern Europe.

Obviously both of these numbers depend on the capacity factor of the renewable power installation (i.e. how often does the wind blow/sun shine), the technology used, the source of energy used in manufacturing, and the type of power generation it is displacing (the best baseline in my opinion is an existing modern coal plant).

History repeats

In view of our diminishing returns of coal and petroleum, the utilization of wind-power deserves careful attention. The available water power in this country is very limited, and the development of it generally requires so great a capital outlay that the standing charges more than equal the cost of the coal required to produce the same results by means of gas or steam.

Sounds like a well-informed commentator on modern energy and environmental issues, right? Well, it was... in 1909.

P.S. The astute commentator even nails the intermittency/storage issue:

It is only when windmills become are used for providing a constant supply of electric current that storage becomes costly and troublesome, and conditions must be favourable to enable wind to compete successfully with other sources of power in this case.

NIMBY, or anywhere else

Britain and its manufacturing workers are dismayed that energy giants like BP and Vestas are giving up on wind power in the U.K. and moving on to bigger and better places like the U.S. and China. David Mackay shines light on why with two strikingly similar maps. One shows areas within 2k of human habitation, which are of course too close for wind farm development. The other shows areas with high wildlife sensitivity, which are or course also not suitable for wind farm development. As he says, "Wind farm development is to be encouraged in all other areas on the map."

And what about offshore?

For Tony Hayward, CEO of BP PLC, the company’s preference for onshore wind is just a question of logistics. An onshore wind farmer can drive up in his 4×4 to fix his turbine if it conks out; if it’s in the middle of the North Sea he’ll need a big boat and crew. And he’ll struggle to find one suitable. “There’s no supply chain to service offshore wind farms,” he told reporters Tuesday.

He also doubts the technology exists to build a wind turbine that would survive for 20 years in the extreme conditions north of the Shetland Isles, Britain’s remotest point. That coming from a company that operates drilling platforms in some of the world’s deepest waters and stormiest seas is a pretty bleak assessment.

Downwind Faster Than The Wind

The speed of wind seems like a plausible upper bound on the speed of a vehicle powered by that wind, and David Mackay thought so even though he knew of wind-powered vessels which can sail directly upwind. But he is delighted to discover that he is wrong (here is proof and explanation).

His reaction and reflection on his mental processes is interesting:

What intrigues me philosophically about the wind-powered-travel expositions is that it reveals how fragile and weak "understanding" can be: I thought I understood wind-powered travel, and I already knew about wind-powered vessels that can sail directly upwind (eg, Revelation II, pictured). But I got the answer to the question "is DWFTTW possible?" wrong! - even though the principle by which upwind travel works is just the same as the principle of DWFTTW travel. So it seems that when I "understood" upwind travel, what I really did was append to my stack of physics heuristics another heuristic, permitting upwind travel; I didn't add a piece of knowledge that was capable of working in new situations.

I find this encouraging not because the specific discovery is cool (although it is), but rather because seeing “obvious” truths overturned bodes well for the prospect of technological energy advances that we have not imagined today. A lot of economic analyses of renewable energy potential work from back-of-the-envelope uppers bounds on the resources available given “reasonable” tech advancement; while they conclude, I think rightly given that starting point, that renewables won’t make up a major part of energy production for decades, this gives reason to believe that “unreasonable” tech advances could help us get closer.

Now, I wonder if we could solve the intermittency problem with wind power by engineering the equivalent of a wind turbine atop a giant treadmill?

Debunking wind energy twaddle

No one does it better than David Mackay:

The Torygraph has actually published this "startling" (and false) meme a second time, this time in an "Analysis" piece authored by "Dave Andrews, head of the Claverton Group", published on 16th July 2009. He writes of onshore wind that "it needs an area of only 70 square miles to generate Britain's total power requirements". Crikey. Did the copy-editor do this to make the Claverton Group look like a bunch of fools? Apparently so - The Claverton site says the article as submitted said "a 70-mile by 70-mile square". Yes, that would be 70 times more accurate! For the record, (see my survey of UK wind farms if you want, where I show that UK wind farms, whether onshore or offshore, generate roughly 2.5 watts per square metre, on average), 4900 square miles of windfarms would generate about 32 GW on average, which is close to Britain's average electricity consumption (it's about 42 GW). If you want to produce "all Britain's energy consumption today" (ie transport and heating too) then you need about nine times the area, since Britain's primary energy consumption is about 300 GW.

The bottom line - the Daily Mail article is off by a factor of 825, and the Telegraph's rendition of Clavertonism is off by a factor of 70 or 630, depending on whether you allow energy to be confused with electricity.

His Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air is required reading for anyone interested in alternative energy. I only wish that 1), he would do this more often (perhaps he is too busy teaching Britain's "best and brightest"), and 2), we had someone like this in the U.S. to lay down some factual outer bounds - to renew-o-philes and enviro-skeptics alike - on how much of American electricity demand alternative energy could potentially satisfy. The public debate would benefit from understanding and agreeing that the answer is somewhere in the range of "some, but not most."

Can Wind Farms Change the Weather?

Apparently the answer is yes, in theory, if they are sufficiently massive:

Kirk-Davidoff and his UMD colleague, Daniel Barrie, used a global general circulation model of the atmosphere (similar to the models used to predict climate change) to calculate the effects of blanketing the Midwest with a grid of interconnected wind farms with thousands of wind turbines. On average, the study found that wind speeds were lowered by 5.5-6.7 miles per hour immediately downwind. More significantly, the wind turbines caused large-scale disruptions of air currents, which rippled out like waves that appeared to trigger substantial changes in the development and track of storms over the North Atlantic.

Given that "the areal coverage and density of wind turbines in the study are admittedly unrealistic," I'm going to file this away under problems to deal with once they appear in real life.

The trick is in the transmission

Transmission line worries have claimed another victim, T. Boone Pickens' monster West Texas wind farm:

Last year, Pickens announced that he would build a 1,000-megawatt wind farm in Pampa, Texas. The problem a lack of a transmission line to bring the juice to population centers, Pickens said in an interview last week.

"I don't think the first place we build, though, is where we thought we would because we don't have the transmission," he said.

Remember that idea he had to build his own transmission line? "It was a little more complicated than we thought," he said.

The Pickens Plan envisioned a Midwestern "wind corridor" powering America and displacing foreign oil (natural gas would become our primary transportation fuel), but power lines are starting fights all over rural America, according to DTN's Chris Clayton. And wind is not the only renewable where the optimal generating locations don't coincide with population centers - California's Sunrise Powerlink also ran into stiff environmental opposition despite its potential to deliver clean solar and geothermal energy to San Diego.

The huge political challenge of siting and permitting new transmission lines is part of why people get excited about decentralized solutions like distributed solar. Ultimately, though, there are environmental complaints about every type of power generation - manufacturing solar panels emits powerful greenhouse gases, wind power kills birds, hydro power kills fish, etc. Negawatts can only take us so far, so ultimately there will need to be a compromise and trade-offs will be made.