Wind turbines
Have you ever noticed how that whenever a post about renewable power comes up there is always a group of people saying the same old negative things which are either out of date, wrong or both.
Rather than have to write the rebuttals out again and again I thought I should record them in one handy blog post for future copying and pasting. I hope this is also of some use to others.
The UK has invested pretty heavily in the wind industry as I am writing this there are huge multi gigawatt scale projects being constructed in the North Sea. Not too far from where I live you can see at least 20 wind turbine bases in construction in a production line that are getting shipped offshore as fast as they can be built. Now if they didn’t work this represents a pretty big mistake on the part of the government and industry.
- Wind Turbines don’t work and have to be backed up by 100% spinning reserve.
The power generated by wind has been increasing year on year. This can be monitored on a minute by minute basis here:
Or if you like statistical publications.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes
Some key charts showing where our power comes from:
DUKES 2020 Chart 5.6 shares of electricity generation by fuel
But how much power did they really generate? Well in 2019 a record 121TWh.
Strangely the amount of fuel used in electricity generation is coming down in line with the increase in renewable power. So it looks like the renewables don’t have to be backed up with 100% spinning reserve.
2. Wind power is too expensive
Historically yes, 5 years offshore wind was expensive with the CFD price paid at around £140/MWh. However the ones being built now are in fact quite a bit cheaper than gas with a strike price £39.6 to £41.6/MWh. You can see the results of the round 3 CFD awards here:
How does this compare with gas?
Have a read yourselves:
3. Wind turbines never pay for themselves
Consider a typical 6 MW offshore turbine. Its availability factor is 39.6% and it has a 25 year life. Therefore during its life it may generate of 520GWh at a strike price of £41.6 /MWh this turbine will generate £21.6 Million in revenue.
Now if it is like Hywind which recently reported availability of 65% then the revenue is up to £47.4 Million. The total Hywind project cost is reported at £120 million for 5 turbines in total. With an expected lifetime revenue of £237 million.
Hornsea 2 1.4 GW capacity strike price is £57.5/MWh lifetime revenue generation at 39.6% availability = £6.98 billion
For projects commissioning in the next 5 years it looks like the UK government expect that large scale wind and solar is significantly cheaper than the latest design of gas turbine power stations. So if wind turbines don’t pay for themselves then no other form of power generation does either.
4. Wind turbines consume more power to make than they produce in operation.
Consider a typical 6MW offshore turbine. The entire structure weighs around 1000-1500 tonnes. During its life it may generate of 520GWh of power or 1873238.4 GJ The energy cost of steel production is around 19 GJ/tonne. 98591 tonnes of steel can be produced by this one turbine. Or enough to produce 66-99 equivalent turbines.
In fact the turbine pays back its energy debt in 0.4 years.
5. Wind turbines produce more carbon dioxide than they save
Same as above. The wind turbine produces enough energy to replicate itself multiple times without any additional fuel, so this cannot be true.
6. Wind turbine blades cannot be recycled and will fill up our landfills
Wind turbine blades going to landfill is a problem. To solve the problem we need two things.
- Reliable feedstock of used turbine blades
- Suitable technology to dispose of them.
We won’t have a good feedstock for a few years yet as the amount of blades in landfill are too small however, this will come. As to the technology, there are multiple options in development.
See:
Generous by Design 