Study Suggests Generating Capacity of Wind Farms At Large Scales Overestimated 209
First time accepted submitter AchilleTalon writes "Research by Harvard professor David Keith suggests that the global capacity for energy generation from wind power has been overestimated, and that geophysical / climate effects of turbines will reduce the benefits of large-scale power installations. 'People have often thought there's no upper bound for wind power—that it's one of the most scalable power sources," he says. After all, gusts and breezes don't seem likely to 'run out' on a global scale in the way oil wells might run dry. Yet the latest research suggests that the generating capacity has been overestimated."
Old news (Score:4, Interesting)
The UK already figured out that wind power claims are exaggerated [bbc.co.uk]. By a lot. "Fuel poverty" [bbc.co.uk] is now an 'issue' that appears regularly in the UK press. It's killing people [thesun.co.uk].
Don't believe any of it; they're all oil company shills. Yay saving the planet.
Re:Cue the "Keith's owned by big oil!!" accusation (Score:3, Interesting)
People have been predicting cheap energy for longer than I can remember. Energy is going to get more expensive, not less.
The renewables (solar, wind) have fundamental reliability issues. They require an energy storage system, and that energy storage system is expensive.
Nuclear is expensive too, but for different reasons.
Oil and coal will likely stay the cheapest energy storage source for a long time to come. In part, because the concrete and steel to make the nuclear plants and the chemicals to make the solar cells come from heavily energy based sources that use oil and/or coal.
Realistically, investing in different conservation schemes gets way better payback than some renewable energy approaches. It doesn't take much computation to show that switching from always-on incandescent to motion-activated LED light bulbs yields a better return on investment than purchasing solar cells. As gas prices rise and climate change issues increase, North America will simply have to get better at conservation.
Missing the point as to why we need renewables (Score:2, Interesting)
We're not going to replace all our generating capacity with wind. Or solar. Or wave. Or hydro. Or biofuels. None of them are even close to the scale of hydrocarbon energy as we use it now, nor will they ever be.
If we manage to build about 2500 nuclear plants ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [wikipedia.org] ) over the next 50 years, and get batteries worth a shit, we might be able to replace hydrocarbon energy in a useful way, particularly if new nuke plants run on relatively safe, common, thorium, however, at the moment, we're still depleting industrial-scale energy much faster than we're building new sources, so I'm doubtful that this reasonably plausible scenario will play out. It would take the kind of foresight, political will and money that most of the world no longer has.
The likely reality is that we need wind, hydro, solar and geothermal so that there will be *some* sort of local, maintainable, electrical power left after hydrocarbons, particularly oil, stop being useful as an industrial-scale energy source (i.e. having enought net energy to run a civilization and at a price that's affordable).
When hyrocarbons cease to be useful, and the international, interdependent web of "just-in-time" supply chains starts breaking down, and we can no longer affordably transport the materials necessary to find, extract, refine and distribute the natural gas, oil or coal to the power plant, what we'll have left is nuclear (which we won't be able to maintain), hydro, wind and solar.
So, if you have grandchildren, or children, you want this. It won't be much. It won't be nearly enough, but by 2050 through 2100, a few less people will be shivering in the dark.
Re:Cue the "Keith's owned by big oil!!" accusation (Score:5, Interesting)
We've got to play the cards we're dealt
We've long since played cards we've dealt ourselves. That's why there is a vast cloud [nasa.gov] of pollution drifting out of China. We've feathered our environmental pressure group nest at home and shipped our industry and its energy demands out of "the environment."
new-mexico-utility-agrees-to-purchase-solar-power-at-a-lower-price-than-coal
Mexico doesn't have a Feinstein to wreck [latimes.com] their solar build outs. For purposes of this discussion Mexico isn't in "the environment" either. It's just another destination for refugee industries evacuating the US.