Wind Power Could Blow Jobs Tohokufs Way

[Russell]

TOKYO (Nikkei)–The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has prompted much debate over the use of alternative energy. One option that is both cheap and could create many jobs, especially in the devastated Tohoku region, is wind power.

More...

[Coligny]

TOKYO (Nikkei)–]More...[/URL]

I would have thought the hot hair from Tokyo's diet would be enough to power Japan for years to come... covering peak and base load especially since the Fukushima accident...

[Catoneinutica]

I would have thought the hot hair from Tokyo's diet would be enough to power Japan for years to come... covering peak and base load especially since the Fukushima accident...

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Coligny again.

[Mock Cockpit]

Fuck Tohoku, how about some blow jobs my way?

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Fuck Tohoku, how about some blow jobs my way?

We do think in a disturbingly similar manner....

Actually, I knew Japan would be thinking of wind power in the Forbidden Zone...but they're not power generators, they're really huge fans aimed at blowing all the radiation over the Korean Peninsula and Asian mainland...

[cstaylor]

Actually, I knew Japan would be thinking of wind power in the Forbidden Zone...but they're not power generators, they're really huge fans aimed at blowing all the radiation over the Korean Peninsula and Asian mainland...

Stop pimping your book!

[Samurai_Jerk]

I would have thought the hot hair from Tokyo's diet would be enough to power Japan for years to come... covering peak and base load especially since the Fukushima accident...

Colingy for the win!

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Stop pimping your book!

Oh, bugger...Foiled again!
Well, subtlety has never been my forte....

[Doctor Stop]

[Russell]

TOKYO Aug 5 (Reuters) - A utility in western Japan said on Friday it will limit planned operations at its first wind farm to take account of residents' concerns about noise, highlighting a snag in the nation's efforts to encourage renewable energy.

Kansai Electric Power Co said it would cut the capacity of the wind farm on Awaji Island, about 70 km (40 miles) west of Osaka, to 14 megawatts using seven turbines, and limit nighttime operations to four of the turbines.

The utility, which serves Osaka and surrounding areas in western Japan, had originally planned to build 12 turbines generating 24 megawatts at the wind farm, which starts commercial operations next February.

more...

[Coligny]

TOKYO Aug 5 (Reuters) - A utility in western Japan said on Friday it will limit planned operations at its first wind farm to take account of residents' concerns about noise, highlighting a snag in the nation's efforts to encourage renewable energy.

Kansai Electric Power Co said it would cut the capacity of the wind farm on Awaji Island, about 70 km (40 miles) west of Osaka, to 14 megawatts using seven turbines, and limit nighttime operations to four of the turbines.

The utility, which serves Osaka and surrounding areas in western Japan, had originally planned to build 12 turbines generating 24 megawatts at the wind farm, which starts commercial operations next February.

more...

nimby... in Japan... the land where you have bosozokuz blasting all night long and nobody gives a sh1t but some fans making a buzing sound justify an airstrike...

I love the wind turbine we got around there... they look pretty cool...

[Russell]

[SIZE="5"]Japan firms plan wind farm near Fukushima: report[/SIZE]

A group of Japanese firms led by trading house Marubeni Corp. plans to build a large floating experimental wind farm off the coast of Fukushima prefecture, which was hit by a nuclear disaster last year, a report said Tuesday.

The project aims to generate around 12,000 kilowatts of power, which would supply the needs of more than 100,000 households [Ed by Russell: this should be 10,000 households], and is hoped to go into operation by 2016, Jiji Press news agency reported, quoting Marubeni officials.

Marubeni plans to begin the experiment by the end of March, supported by Japan's industry ministry with financing from a supplementary budget for reconstruction following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami which triggered the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Nippon Steel Corp and Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding Co are in the consortium along with Marubeni, Jiji said, adding that an official announcement was expected in the following week.

The energy-hungry nation has virtually no natural resources of its own and relied on atomic power for around a third of its electricity before March 11.

Since the disaster the vast bulk of nuclear plants have been shut down as local authorities blocked their being restarted following routine safety checks or maintenance, forcing the country to seek alternatives, in particular renewable sources of energy.

Source.

[Russell]

[Typhoon]

[Coligny]

Perhaps Japan can get a wind power scheme to work as no one else can seem to do so . . .

http://goo.gl/FRffG

There are few kind of news sources that make you look bad...

The top spot being Weekly world news...

and after there's the english tabloids...

Then there's the amurikun pundits (O'Reilly, Sean Hanity, Michelle Malkin -who at least is bangabul- and friends...)

But I dont know if these news make their audience or if the already present demographic create the business opportunity...

Now... coming from a country where Sarkozy was legally elected I should STFU... (At least, W Bush needed Diebold for his reelection...)

[Typhoon]

There are few kind of news sources that make you look bad...

The top spot being Weekly world news...

and after there's the english tabloids...

Then there's the amurikun pundits (O'Reilly, Sean Hanity, Michelle Malkin -who at least is bangabul- and friends...)

But I dont know if these news make their audience or if the already present demographic create the business opportunity...

Now... coming from a country where Sarkozy was legally elected I should STFU... (At least, W Bush needed Diebold for his reelection...)

Non sequitur

[Coligny]

Non sequitur

No, let me explain in simplier words:

your source is shit.

That's certainly why you felt the need to hide the URL with a shortener... Usually just seing "http://www.spectator.co.uk" is a sufficient warning to avoid wasting time with the article.

And dwelled by single digit dweebs:

"windmills above a critical level of average demand in steam grids where wind has priority produce more CO2 than for no windmills at all"

Oh yeah... I'd like to see the math beind this one...

Maybe nuclear power would not have such a bad press these days if it was not managed by greed and promoted by morons...

I mean... I'm totally pro nukular(*) and seriously scared by people claming with a straight face that climate change is man made and that WE SHOULD TOTALLY try to control it actively(**). But i'd rather not be associated the the clique of bottom feeder cretins that usually and unfortunately loudly appears to have the same views.

(*) nukular is a bad good idea that can be managed by responsible people whose main goal is not making a quick buck and running away with it.
(**) Yes trying to limit as much as possible polution and restrict unmanaged industrial use of earthly ressource should be a priority. Now using glacier melting as an excuse to go back to stone age is as stupid as the chinese cultural revolution.

[Typhoon]

No, let me explain in simplier words:

your source is shit.

That's certainly why you felt the need to hide the URL with a shortener... Usually just seing "http://www.spectator.co.uk" is a sufficient warning to avoid wasting time with the article.

And dwelled by single digit dweebs:



Oh yeah... I'd like to see the math beind this one...

Maybe nuclear power would not have such a bad press these days if it was not managed by greed and promoted by morons...

I mean... I'm totally pro nukular(*) and seriously scared by people claming with a straight face that climate change is man made and that WE SHOULD TOTALLY try to control it actively(**). But i'd rather not be associated the the clique of bottom feeder cretins that usually and unfortunately loudly appears to have the same views.

(*) nukular is a bad good idea that can be managed by responsible people whose main goal is not making a quick buck and running away with it.
(**) Yes trying to limit as much as possible polution and restrict unmanaged industrial use of earthly ressource should be a priority. Now using glacier melting as an excuse to go back to stone age is as stupid as the chinese cultural revolution.

Non sequitur.

[jingai]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing news of this wind farm. We're starting to see offshore wind proposals get serious traction of the US east coast (Rhode Island, NJ, MD, etc.)

[Coligny]

Non sequitur.

Cool, lucky I tought you that word...

Unlucky you didn't understand the meaning...

You have to be japanese to be able to canibalyse foreign words call them yours with a straight face and give them a quasi totally unrelated meaning that will be forgotten before the current prime minister term is over...

[Russell]

Non sequitur.

Non sequitur.

You are not going to convince anybody here by these phrases, not even the Romanians reading this forum.

[jingai]

You are not going to convince anybody here by these phrases, not even the Romanians reading this forum.

I believe you mean Latin Americans.

[Russell]

I believe you mean Latin Americans.

No, I mean Romanians. Their language is the closest to Latin.

[jingai]

No, I mean Romanians. Their language is the closest to Latin.

Oh dear...

[Coligny]

I knew a Romanian gurl in Nagoya... she tried to kill me when she learned my grandpa worked on the drivetrain of the Dacia 1300, but aside from the crazyness quite cool... and th3 hot...

[Typhoon]

You are not going to convince anybody here by these phrases, not even the Romanians reading this forum.

Well, if they're easily convinced by other's content free posts, then that's their choice.

Discounting an argument, based solely on the source of publication filtered through one's political-social prejudices and preconceptions and without addressing the points raised in the article, may work for you, but is completely unconvincing to me.

"The beginning of the end of wind power"

http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/beginning-end-wind



To which I'll add the cost of maintenance.

If a conventional power station has six units each with a reliability of 99% or 0.99, then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^6 = 0.94 or 94%.
Each unit is independent of the others.

If a set of windmill has 100 units each with a [unrealistically high] reliability of 99% or 0.99, then then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^100 = 0.36 or 36%.
So at any given time, one can expect a large percentage of the windmills to be under repair.

There are good reasons for our ancestors to have switched from wind power to hydro and carbon fuel as soon as they had the technology to do so.

[Coligny]

Well, if they're easily convinced by other's content free posts, then that's their choice.

Discounting an argument, based solely on the source of publication filtered through one's political-social prejudices and preconceptions and without addressing the points raised in the article, may work for you, but is completely unconvincing to me.

.

No the argument is also shit, wordly shit, but shit... the source is just the cherry on the cake.

Now, me and Darwin are perfectly fine with you being unconvinced. You excessively overestimate your importance if you think you are relevant enough to deserve to be convinced or not. One only thing I will ask is either to find arguments a little less insulting to people having a 2 digit+ IQ or stay in forums where the population share your low standards.

[Russell]

Well, if they're easily convinced by other's content free posts, then that's their choice.

Discounting an argument, based solely on the source of publication filtered through one's political-social prejudices and preconceptions and without addressing the points raised in the article, may work for you, but is completely unconvincing to me.

I am a very open minded person, but when I read something (whether on the Internet or not) I always ask myself whether the source has a hidden agenda. Admittedly, I did not know the source you were quoting, but it appears to state some numbers without backing them up with hard facts. For example, they state that maintenance costs of off-shore wind-mills are higher than on-shore. I know that. What they do not mention is that there is more wind available off-shore than on-shore, and this makes up for the higher maintenance costs.

If a conventional power station has six units each with a reliability of 99% or 0.99, then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^6 = 0.94 or 94%.
Each unit is independent of the others.

If a set of windmill has 100 units each with a [unrealistically high] reliability of 99% or 0.99, then then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^100 = 0.36 or 36%.
So at any given time, one can expect a large percentage of the windmills to be under repair.

OK, let's talk Probability Theory. I love it!
What you calculate is the probability that all of the units are operational (on-line) at the same time. So, your point is?!?
The overall reliability you talk about has nothing to do with the calculations you make. A system of units will still provide output if a few units are down.

In fact, the reliability of a system will be higher if more units are involved, because there are more combinations by which this can take place (in case you are interested, technically we are talking here about the summation of binomial coefficients multiplied by probabilities). So, the probability that at least 90% of your conventional power plants are on-line is actually lower than the probability that at least 90% of your windmills are on-line, given the basic probabilities that you give above.

Now, the whole picture is of course more complicated. The probability of a single unit being on-line is likely different for conventional power plants on one hand and wind mills on the other hand. Add to that the times they are expected to be off-line, and you get yourself in mathematical modeling.

My point is:

1. if you engage in simple back-of-the-envelop calculations, then at least make sure it is correct what you are doing,
2. keep in mind that reality is often more complicated than simple back-of-the-envelop calculations. They only give a first approximation, that is, if they are correctly done in the first place!

There are good reasons for our ancestors to have switched from wind power to hydro and carbon fuel as soon as they had the technology to do so.

The energy sources chosen in a generation do not only depend on technology, but also on availability and economics among other factors. I leave out the climate change discussion here, because in my opinion it is distracting attention from the most important point that the current course of using carbon-based resources is not sustainable.

[jingai]

Well, if they're easily convinced by other's content free posts, then that's their choice.

Discounting an argument, based solely on the source of publication filtered through one's political-social prejudices and preconceptions and without addressing the points raised in the article, may work for you, but is completely unconvincing to me.

"The beginning of the end of wind power"

To which I'll add the cost of maintenance.

If a conventional power station has six units each with a reliability of 99% or 0.99, then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^6 = 0.94 or 94%.
Each unit is independent of the others.

If a set of windmill has 100 units each with a [unrealistically high] reliability of 99% or 0.99, then then the overall reliability is back-of-the-envelope (0.99)^100 = 0.36 or 36%.
So at any given time, one can expect a large percentage of the windmills to be under repair.

There are good reasons for our ancestors to have switched from wind power to hydro and carbon fuel as soon as they had the technology to do so.

There are some basic misconceptions here.

One- wind was used to grind grain in a windmill or pump water in the old days, not produce electricity. The first power plants were steam engines, and I'm going to guess that the fuel sources were coal, wood and water if it was available.

Second, you're confusing operation and maintenance costs with capacity factor. O&M is the amount of money spent keeping the unit working- whether it's staff or replacing parts. Solar has very little O&M and wind more, but not significantly more than normal power plants (which are relatively complex, require full time staff and security and have multiple points of failure.)

Capacity factor is a different issue. If a wind turbine is rated at 1.5 megawatts but the wind only blows at optimal speeds 1/3 of the time, it would have a 33% capacity factor. That should be known before the unit is constructed- usually a tower is set up to take airspeed measurements. I've seen a system that does something similar from the ground using sonar.

Traditional power plants have capacity factors all over the place, with nukes in the 85% and up range, coal plants a bit less, and modern oil or gas plants able to cycle on and off quite quickly. In a modern grid it's a problem that nuclear and coal plants have difficulty ramping down their power output, especially at times sources like wind are strong, and means that some entities like NRG in Texas were actually trying to promote night electric vehicle charging just to have a place to dump their unwanted energy. Modern gas turbines can ramp their power up very quickly, making them better suited to deal with sudden spikes in demand or drops in renewable production.

Unlike gas, coal or oil, with wind there are no fuel costs, and that is significant. Like with solar and nuclear the economic game is basically to pay off fixed capital costs. Unlike nuclear the project sizes are small so capital costs are also relatively small (and financeable) and construction times are short so risk to investors are also less that the plant won't be needed a decade when it's finally done.

Finally, if you mix technologies like on-shore wind, off-shore wind, solar, biomass and peaking fossil generation (and eventually work in energy storage) over a regional area your intermittency issues largely go away as when one wind turbine isn't spinning another one is.

If you want to compare the costs of units apples-to-apples you need to account for the useful economic life, capital cost, risk, capacity factor, efficiencies/ heat rate, fixed and variable O&M (fuel), and construction lead times.

One source of levelized costs is the US DOE. These numbers are a few years old and in some ways unrealistic (advanced coal/nuke capital costs unrealistically low, solar/wind capital costs higher than reality)
http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/2016levelized_costs_aeo2010.pdf
On wikipedia they include estimates from other countries too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

[Typhoon]

[YT]I2NscsOj2AY[/YT]