BIG WIND

Wind is big. And it’s important to say so, over and over, until everybody responsible for making decisions about the energy infrastructure of the 21st century hears and understands. Wind is big.

The Economist, Britain’s venerable business-oriented weekly, added its stamp of approval this week to the growing chorus of traditional voices acknowledging wind power as a viable major source of electricity generation .

As the article points out, there is ample wind to power the world. Total wind resources are about 5 times greater than present world electricity demand. In 2007, there were 94 gigawatts of installed capacity, about 1% of global grid supply. That is expected to triple to 290 gigawatts (2.7% of world power) by 2012 and keep on growing until it is providing 6% of world power in 2017. But that’s just the beginning.

Wind is big. (click to enlarge)

The European Union (EU) will rely largely on wind power as it reaches to generate 20% of its electricity from New Energy sources by 2020. The Department of Energy (DOE) says it is entirely feasible for the U.S. to get 20% of its power from wind by 2030. And Asia is expected to build more wind than either.

Along with its assessment of where wind is growing to, The Economist has a terrific summary of where wind energy’s technology came from.

It recounts wind’s emergence in the 1970s and 1980s as a technology distinguishing it from 19th century windmills. The U.S. and Denmark pioneered today’s modern towering giants.

Early on, turbine design was far from standard. There were vertical- and horizontal-axis concepts, 2- and 3-blade rotors, rigid and soft structures and lots of other engineering experiments.

Sandy Butterfield, chief engineer, National Wind Technology Center: “The vertical-axis machines were not as aerodynamically efficient as the horizontal-axis machines, so they had to sweep out more area to capture the same amount of power and energy…”

Today’s harder, vertical-axis, 3-bladed turbines – mostly the product of Danish design choices – emerged by trial and error, a process that also developed quieter machines more compatible to the wildlife and suitable to the landscapes in which the tubines are situated.

The first wind installations were built in the early 1980s in California but Denmark, in response to being hit hard by 1970s oil embargoes, sustained its commitment to wind development and took over world leadership.

One of the keys to wind’s success story is that it has essentially achieved (considering tax credits and feed-in tariffs) grid parity (price competitiveness) with traditional forms of electricity generation like coal and natural gas. As costs for the emissions associated with those traditional sources begin to be assessed in the fight against global climate change, wind emerges as the most economic choice, even without tax credits and feed-in tariffs. (Hence the approval of The Economist)

The article does not skirt the challenges wind power must still face if, toward the middle of the century, it is to become an even greater source of electricity generation. To grow it must expand its supply chain greatly and there is nowhere in the world where it does not need much more and smarter transmission.

Much is made of wind’s intermittency but, as The Economist points out, more is made of it than is really the case. Supply and demand both vary and system operators are readily able to manage both. Wind is now almost entirely predictable and therefore fits well in power system integration schemes with other sources of generation.

Wind installations are almost always met with detractors. Criticisms of noise and environmental harm are mostly in the past because newer technologies and improved methods of site selection tend to minimize such complaints.

The detractors are not expected to prevent wind’s growth into the mainstream of grid supply. 35% of new U.S. electricity-generating capacity in 2007 came from wind power and that pattern will continue as new coal and nuclear plants are eschewed because of unacceptable costs and emissions. Going forward, 60% or more of new electricity generation in the EU will be wind and by 2030 it will produce 14% of EU electricity.

One of the most important points the article makes is how wind is moving from the land to the sea. Onshore turbines are reaching 3 megawatts in capacity but engineers are thinking about 10-megawatt deepsea turbines. These energy behemoths will facilitate offshore capacity's growth from 1.1 gigawatts to 8.2 gigawatts in the next 4 years.

Butterfield, National Wind Technology Center: “When you’ve spent the money to put in a very expensive foundation in the seabed, it pays to put the largest piece of equipment on top of it which you possibly can…”

In addition to more and better wind, offshore installations provide sites that minimize objections from an inevitable, inescapable minority about aesthetics and about low level harms to animal life and habitat. But without the contribution of wind power, the devastations of global climate change and the environmental degradations of the fossil fuels industries are also inescapable. It is not a difficult choice to make and a wide range of environmental and animal rights groups, therefore, favor the further responsible development of wind energy.

The biggest resistance to wind power seems to now come from the conservative elements among those responsible for making decisions about the energy infrastructure of the 21st century. They keep repeating the cliché that wind can’t possibly be important because right now it only supplies a small percentage of world power. They don't understand how fast wind can and will grow and what its potential is. They haven’t yet heard: Wind is big.

Not only is wind big, it’s getting bigger. (click to enlarge)

Wind of Change; Wind power has established itself as an important source of renewable energy in the past three decades. The basic idea is ancient, but its modern incarnation adds many new high-tech twists
December 4, 2008 (The Economist)

WHO
Authorities cited in the article include: Sandy Butterfield, chief engineer, National Wind Technology Center (NWTC); Edgar DeMeo, co-chair, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 20% wind advisory group; Victor Abate, vice-president of renewables, GE Energy; Robert Thresher, wind-research fellow, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); Maria Sicilia, International Energy Agency (IEA); Robert Poore, DNV Global Energy Concepts

WHAT
Wind is big. Even The Economist, Britain’s century-and-a-half old business and politics weekly, says so.

Wind is a big part of electricity generation in the U.S. now. (click to enlarge)

WHEN
- 2,000+ years: Windmills have been used for things like grinding grain and pumping water.
- Late 19th century: Windmills used to produce electricity, mostly in rural areas.
- After the 1973 oil crisis: Birth of modern wind power when countries wanted energy from non-fossil fuel sources.
- 1970s: Boeing and NASA began designing large, multi-megawatt machines
- Mid-1970s: Standardized Danish architecture (3-bladed, horizontal-axis, etc.).
- Early 1980s: First wind farms w/turbines of tens of kilowatts and a rotor diameter of 15 metres, small by today’s standards.

WHERE
- Denmark was entirely dependent on foreign oil for electricity and hurt bu the 1973 embargo. It has one abundant energy resource, wind. So it became the 1970s pioneer.
- First U.S. wind farm: Altamont Pass, near San Francisco. Some early turbines are still in use.
- World: Wind is ~1% of electricity. 20% in Denmark, 10% in Spain and ~7% in Germany. - U.S.: Wind capacity grew 45% in 2007 (17 gigawatts).
- China: Doubled capacity every year.
- Offshore installations cost around 40% more than onshore ones, are 1% of wind power.

WHY
- Sunlight heats the Earth and atmosphere. Hot air rises. Cooler, heavier air rushes in to fill its place, creating wind.
- Wind is widely available, renewable, free of pollution and climate-changing greenhouse gases. Turbines need no fuel but wind.
- Global wind-energy potential (according to Stanford’s 2000 study): ~72,000 gigawatts, 5 times total world energy demand.
- Engineering and scaling up of capacity have driven the cost of wind-generated electricity down from 30 cents/kilowatt-hour (in the early 1980s) to (in 2007) 10 cents (without incentives).
- If CO2 costs $30/tonne (tax or cap-and-trade) wind would cost about the same as fossil fuel electricity without subsidies.
- New turbines have 1.5-2.5 megawatt capacities, 30-to-50 times the early Altamont Pass turbines, with rotor diameters as great as 100 metres.
- Modern wind turbines are computer controlled and aerodynamically efficient.
- The technology is already in use that would make it possible to integrate wind as a 20% share of U.S. power. It would raise electricity costs 2%, or 50 cents per household per month, through 2030, a cost likely to be offset by rising costs of other sources of generation.
- Offshore installations can be near densely populated areas where power demand is high.
- Offshore installations can also be positioned where they are barely be seen from land and cannot be heard, preventing NIMBY opposition.
- Eliminating noise opposition will allow the use of noisier but 15% cheaper 2-blade turbines.

Wind is moving offshore now, in a big way. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- From the article (on how a turbine generates electricity): “Turbine blades are shaped like aerofoils, with one side curved and the other almost flat. This shape causes the air to flow more quickly over the curved side than the flat side, and the fast-moving air results in an area of low pressure on the curved side of the blade, which causes the blade to move and the rotor to turn. The blades are attached to a rotor hub, which is in turn connected to a drive shaft. But this shaft spins quite slowly, so a gearbox is used to get the drive shaft to turn a second shaft at a much higher speed, suitable for spinning a generator to produce electricity. In a wind farm, the electricity from multiple turbines is collected and fed into the grid.”
- From the article (on why wind): “From a zero-fuel-cost, zero-carbon perspective, notes Victor Abate, vice-president of renewables at GE Energy, wind power is currently the most cost-effective and scalable technology available to mankind.”