Still waiting for the magical future of free wind energy • Increase that capacity?

From CONTRARIAN MANHATTAN

Francis Menton

Wind power: It’s clean. It’s free. It is renewable. Google the topic, and you’ll quickly find fifty articles claiming that electricity from wind is now cheaper than electricity from those nasty, dirty fossil fuels. So why don’t some countries get all their electricity from wind?

In fact, despite decades of rapidly building wind turbines, no country seems to be able to derive even half of its electricity from wind when averaged over the course of a year. and no country has even really begun to tackle the problem of needing full backup when the wind isn’t blowing.

Germany is currently the world champion in trying to get electricity from the wind. (It also gets a small contribution from solar panels, but since it’s the world’s cloudiest country, those don’t help much.). Based on Clean Energy Wire, December 2022, in 2020, Germany has 45.2% of its electricity from wind and solar. Then that number drops to 41% in 2021 due to a lack of wind. By 2022, they appear to have rebounded to 46%. Germany has enough wind turbines to produce large surpluses of electricity when the wind blows at full capacity. But they still have not broken the threshold of meeting 50% of the electricity demand thanks to the sun and wind during a year.

There is nothing better than in the British crusader co-climate territory. Despite a collapsed program to build wind turbines (which also come with a few solar panels), the UK’s share of electricity from wind in 2022 is 26.8%, according to the report. fox BBC on January 6, 2023. Solar increased by 4.4%.

Well, maybe this project isn’t as easy as the central planners think. Last week’s news brought to light some more speed bumps on the road to utopian energy.

at the site Not Many People Know It, Paul Homewood on June 21 presents a calculation for the UK of the wind turbine capacity needed to supply all of the nation’s electricity needs by building more wind capacity and using it to electrolyze water into hydrogen. The original calculation was prepared by a man named John Brown and provided to Paul. For those interested in reviewing the calculation, Mr. Brown can be emailed at [email protected].

For starters, Homewood notes that the average demand in the UK is 29 GW in 2022 and the country already has a wind turbine capacity of 28 GW. As you can immediately see, the fact that 28 GW “capacity” provides only 26.8% of the average demand of 29 GW suggests an average power factor of less than 30% for wind turbines. Total demand for the year was 262 TWh, but the wind turbines produced only 62 TWh.

Brown then calculates the wind turbine power needed to generate enough electricity to supply all needs, either directly or by electrolyzing water to generate hydrogen and burn hydrogen. He gives the total required output of 370 TWh from wind turbines — 262 TWh to supply current needs and another 108 TWh for various losses during the electrolysis and subsequent combustion of hydrogen. The capacity of 370 TWh is about 6 times the current UK wind turbine capacity. House wood:

The reason why the total required generation capacity, 370 TWh, is so much higher than the demand is because the hydrogen process is hopelessly inefficient. John has assumed that the electrolyzers operate at 52% efficiency and that the combustion of hydrogen in the heat generator operates at 40% efficiency. Both assumptions seem reasonable. In other words, the efficiency rate for the entire cycle is 20.8%. Simply put, you need 5 units of wind power to make 1 unit of energy from hydrogen.

Brown and Homewood did not go into detail about the cost of this project, other than noting that the cost of wind turbines to the UK alone would be around £1 trillion (or 1.3 trillion pounds). billion USD). Since the United States has five times the population, that means more than $6.5 trillion to us. And that’s before you factor in the cost of building electrolyzers for hydrogen, the cost of transporting and storing the substances, etc. Let alone deal with doubling the demand on the grid by electrification. all heating in homes, cars, vehicles, etc. Multiplying the cost of electricity by a factor of 5 to 10 would be a good rough estimate.

In other words, this will never happen. The only question is how far we can go before unplugging. As I wrote in my energy storage report, the only thing that can be said about hydrogen as a back-up to the decarbonization economy is that it is less stupid than using batteries as a means of transport. backup facility.

And in other news regarding the future utopia of wind energy, we have a June 23 Wall Street Journal article titled, “Clean Energy’s latest issue is squeaky Wind Turbines.” The first sentence is “The bad wind blowing towards clean energy windmills is getting stronger and stronger.” The article reported that shares of German wind turbine giant Siemens Energy fell 36% on Friday after the company withdrew profit guidance for the rest of the year and announced that parts of their installed turbines is wearing out much faster than previously anticipated. Therefore, the cost of performing the warranty will increase a lot; In addition, the expected replacement cycle for the turbines needs to be shortened. The writer (Carol Ryan) commented, “This news is not only a blow to the company’s shareholders but also to all investors and policymakers who are betting on the rapid deployment of renewable energy.”