[Thanos]

Tricks Tricks:

Thanos Thanos:

The perpetually angry man on the AM radio talk show told me so!

Holy shit, I'll listen to talk radio from time to time in the GTA. I could make a bingo card of how much stupid spews on that station on daily basis. It's highly entertaining.

I blame local talk-radio here in Calgary as much as I do FOX for making it impossible to talk to my mom about politics and public money issues in her last decade or so of life. That perpetual anger machine took a person that was fairly reasonable for most of her time on earth and turned her into someone I couldn't get through to anymore because her viewpoint had gotten warped too much by their anger, deceitfulness, and one-sided "conservative" propaganda.

[Coach85]

Tricks Tricks:

Just starting? Wind installations only picked up in the last decade, and it's already providing 4% of world power, and about 11% in ontario. And it's growing exponentially as the technology advances. That's not too bad for only a decade of real development and deployment.

I believe it makes up for 4% of the power in Ontario but represents about 20% of our monthly bills.

Ontario pays double for wind power over nuclear, water, etc and it's a source of energy that's not reliable.

Sure, it's a start but I think 20-25 years from now, we'll look back think it wasn't worth starting.

[Tricks]

Thanos Thanos:

Tricks Tricks:

Thanos Thanos:

The perpetually angry man on the AM radio talk show told me so!

Holy shit, I'll listen to talk radio from time to time in the GTA. I could make a bingo card of how much stupid spews on that station on daily basis. It's highly entertaining.

I blame local talk-radio here in Calgary as much as I do FOX for making it impossible to talk to my mom about politics and public money issues in her last decade or so of life. That perpetual anger machine took a person that was fairly reasonable for most of her time on earth and turned her into someone I couldn't get through to anymore because her viewpoint had gotten warped too much by their anger, deceitfulness, and one-sided "conservative" propaganda.

I just love how much blatant misinformation there is. They also hate young people. Everyday, a story about something completely unrelated, and the guy will take a shot at millenials before going into the story. It's unreal how much he twists himself to crap on young people.

And anything about technology? Forget about it, they're some of the most ill-informed and short sighted people I've ever heard talk on the vast majority of topics. Then followed by them asking people to call in makes it even more entertaining, when you get dummies like shocky calling in.

[Tricks]

Coach85 Coach85:

Tricks Tricks:

Just starting? Wind installations only picked up in the last decade, and it's already providing 4% of world power, and about 11% in ontario. And it's growing exponentially as the technology advances. That's not too bad for only a decade of real development and deployment.

I believe it makes up for 4% of the power in Ontario but represents about 20% of our monthly bills.

Ontario pays double for wind power over nuclear, water, etc and it's a source of energy that's not reliable.

Sure, it's a start but I think 20-25 years from now, we'll look back think it wasn't worth starting.

It could be 4% produced vs 11% capacity for sure, didn't have number for actual production.

http://www.ieso.ca/learn/ontario-supply ... y-capacity

That shows the installed capacity breakdown.

I agree 100% on the cost. Something happened there and we are on the hook for it now. That money would probably have been better spent getting the reactors up to snuff instead of shutting them down and buying us 20-25 years of proper development of alternative sources and slowing phasing it in instead of ramming them up as fast as possible.

However, if we are smart, we might be able to look back 100 years from now and say "Thankfully we did that."

[N_Fiddledog]

Tricks Tricks:

Coach85 Coach85:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Another well-known climate denier who takes money from the coal industry. The arguments he makes sre pathetic: wind doesn't currently contibute much to worldwide power generation, ergo its a failure. Count the idiocies in that one premise alone.

If it's not a failure, what exactly would you classify it as?

Just starting? Wind installations only picked up in the last decade, and it's already providing 4% of world power, and about 11% in ontario. And it's growing exponentially as the technology advances. That's not too bad for only a decade of real development and deployment.

Not sure where your figure of 4% comes from. 97.9% of solar comes from Photo Voltaic (PV)

$1:

Worldwide growth of photovoltaics is extremely dynamic and varies strongly by country. By the end of 2016, cumulative photovoltaic capacity increased by more than 75 gigawatt (GW) and reached at least 303 GW, sufficient to supply 1.8 percent of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

As to wind power in Ontario, the problems there are massive and well documented:

http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/

It can't survive without government subsidy and best guess would be you can kiss your 11% goodbye after the next election.

Then there's Trump...

Are you expecting the same contribution to solar and wind businesses they received during the era of the Obama gift give-aways?

[N_Fiddledog]

Another problem with any expectation of increase in solar and wind share of power production is the increased availability and decreased expense of natural gas.

I imagine solar and wind will continue to increase in China, but in the West keep an eye out for the term 'Bankruptcy.'

[Tricks]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Not sure where your figure of 4% comes from. 97.9% of solar comes from Photo Voltaic (PV)

I don't know what solar energy production has to do with wind's total world wide.

[N_Fiddledog]

Tricks Tricks:

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Not sure where your figure of 4% comes from. 97.9% of solar comes from Photo Voltaic (PV)

I don't know what solar energy production has to do with wind's total world wide.

Damn, and you know what? I even caught myself on that towards the end of my last post, but I didn't go back far enough to correct.

Very well, Wind Power.

$1:

Wind power's share of worldwide electricity usage at the end of 2014 was 3.1%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_by_country

One of the big problems with wind power though is it only works when the wind is blowing and the graph on the page makes it look like they're just talking about "installed capacity." When the wind's not blowing the power in the plant comes from other sources such as coal. To be fair though, they do say batteries are improving.

I don't know how I got switched over to solar there. Same thing only different, I guess. In any case, the other observances I made on wind power specifically, still stand.

[Tricks]

Damn you wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

Says 4% The cited source seems more legit on yours so I'm willing to take that.

And I'd imagine that soon it won't require subsidies as companies like Tesla move forward with more renewable energy initiatives. Those new solar shingles look fucking sick.

[herbie]

$1:

When the wind's not blowing the power in the plant comes from other sources such as coal.

Yeah for every new wind plant there's a new coal fired backup, so that proves wind power is bad. And don't forget they chop up bald eagles too. And the retarded kid keeps pissing in the pool so why do the rest of us have to stop?

[BartSimpson]

Yeah. If you accidentally hit a protected bird with your car in the US you stand a chance of going to prison if you're stupid enough to call anyone and confess.

But wind turbines get a free pass on killing birds.

[N_Fiddledog]

Tricks Tricks:

Damn you wikipedia!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power

Says 4% The cited source seems more legit on yours so I'm willing to take that.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

They're the same source. They're different articles in Wikipedia.

Mine says 3.1%. Yours has rounded that off with some sort of special Wikipedia editor approved math to what they call "around 4%"

[N_Fiddledog]

But now let's talk about "installed capacity". Both your Wikipedia article and mine use the term.

Let's hear from Reuters:

$1:

Winds are notoriously footloose and hard to predict, but for grid operators keen to keep their customers' lights on and hold down costs, agreeing on a method to measure the reliability of the fast-growing electricity source is vital.

Policymakers and operators around the world have come up with a range of ways to estimate wind power and a bunch of terms to measure wind power reliability, including capacity credit, capacity value and availability factor.

Capacity value is the proportion of a power plant's installed capacity that can be absolutely relied upon for security of supply.

For a coal plant that figure is around 85 percent but for wind can range from zero to 30 percent, depending on which methodology you choose.

The range partly reflects actual differences across regions - for example in wind speed, interconnection and the share of wind power in wider generation.

But it also reflects different methods of calculation, and highlights the need for more consistency to avoid blackouts if wind power is over-estimated or spending too much on reserve capacity if it is under-estimated.

Specific measurements are vital to gauge the proportion of installed capacity that can be reasonably relied upon at any one time, whether during predictable demand surges or unexpected events such as an unplanned nuclear outage.

HERE'S THE MATH

Estimating capacity value, whether for variable renewable or conventional coal and gas-fired capacity, provides a systematic way to measure security of supply.

The risk of not meeting demand - called "loss of load" - can be expressed in various ways.

One standard term among grid planners is "Loss of Load Expectation" (LOLE).

According to a recent report by the British energy regulator, Ofgem, LOLE "represents the number of hours per year in which supply is expected to be lower than demand under normal operation of the system. Importantly, this is before any intervention by the System Operator, so does not represent the likelihood of customer disconnections."

Capacity values are key in estimating the impact of new power plants on LOLE, pinpointing how much of the installed capacity can be relied upon.

In the case of wind, it is estimated to lie in the range of 0-30 percent of installed capacity, compared with more than 80 percent for baseload conventional, gas, coal, nuclear and hydro power.

BRITISH EXAMPLE

Ofgem last month calculated the reliability of wind power capacity in its six-year outlook for security of supply.

Britain in the near-term faces a greater risk of limited blackouts than historically, as the country shuts down polluting coal and ageing gas plants.

As a result, Ofgem is interested in capacity values during periods of peak demand, for example in January when heating and lighting needs are higher.

The regulator obtained local wind speeds from a re-analysis of NASA satellite weather data - a standard academic procedure to work around a lack of direct observations of wind power generation.

It converted wind speeds into power generation using observations from a sample of actual wind farms.

It then generated probability distributions for wind power output during peak demand annually through 2019, taking into account a doubling of wind power capacity over the period.

It added expected conventional generation and electricity demand to calculate what it terms the "Equivalent Firm Capacity" of wind power, which it found to be in a range from 17-24 percent of installed capacity.

SEE ALSO

The range refers to different assumptions for the amount of installed wind power.

Perhaps paradoxically, the greater the share of wind power in the generation mix the smaller the proportion which can be relied upon, because on still days with no wind there will be a greater risk of a loss of load.

UNCERTAINTY

Uncertainty about how to measure wind power capacity values is a concern.

Even within Britain, Ofgem calculated a very different value over the next five years (17-24 percent) than the country's transmission operator National Grid for the winter of 2011/12 (8 percent).

Ofgem says the National Grid's calculation method - direct observation of wind power generation - contrasts with its statistical modelling of all supply and demand, and is inappropriate for assessing security of supply.

"The large difference in these numbers reflects two very different approaches. The (National Grid's) Winter Outlook approach is based on observations of the output of wind at peak times. By its nature this is a small number of observations, and it is therefore possible that the wind output at the time of observation could have been very different.

"We do not consider this approach appropriate for a capacity adequacy analysis, as it represents a pessimistic estimate of the availability of wind in isolation from the rest of the system," Ofgem said last month.

In Europe, estimates among transmission system operators for wind power capacity value during peak demand vary from zero (in Austria, Cyprus and Estonia) to up to 30 percent (in France and Portugal), according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity.

In the United States, grid planners projected wind capacity values during peak demand in 2019, ranging from 8 percent in the Midwest coordinating region, to 18.5 percent in the western United States and Canada region, called WECC (Western Electricity Coordinating Council). (Chart 2)

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) illustrated the importance of getting capacity values right, with the example of a region projecting 20 gigawatts of wind capacity by 2019.

"If it decreased its capacity value by one percentage point from 12 percent to 11 percent, and had to replace that lost wind capacity in order to meet its target reserve margin, it would require an additional 200 megawatts of capacity resources."

If gas-fired power supplied the difference, that would cost $195 million in upfront capital, EIA estimated in 2011.

But the range is up to 30 - not one - percentage points, underlining how important it is to agree on a consistent modelling approach for a more accurate balancing of demand and supply, to save costs and better ensure grid reliability.

http://www.reuters.com/article/column-w ... 1720130716

[BeaverFever]

Coach85 Coach85:

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

Another well-known climate denier who takes money from the coal industry. The arguments he makes sre pathetic: wind doesn't currently contibute much to worldwide power generation, ergo its a failure. Count the idiocies in that one premise alone.

If it's not a failure, what exactly would you classify it as?

A new technology.

[BartSimpson]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

A new technology.

Speaking of promising new technologies I wonder how cold fusion and perpetual motion are working out?