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- Verified Buyer
I live in MT where wind farms have popped up like weeds. The promises of cheap power have long since given way to higher energy costs. Wind projects in the 300MW range seemed like a great deal until the project managers negotiated with the state public service commission that local power companies - not wind farms - had to pay for the power lines that bring wind power to the grid, and local power companies HAD to include 20% of renewables in their power portfolio. Ironically, hydro is specifically excluded by state law as a renewable 'to encourage new development.' Things like this alienate the locals. After all that, the wind farms haven't lived up to their billing, producing a fraction of the claimed output. We got railroaded.Ozzie Zehner's book Described perfectly what happened to us: Promoters bragged up the 'data tag' capacity of the project but forgot to tell us about 'capacity factor - CF.' Data tag ratings are for ideal conditions. CF is a running average of the actual output because nature's hand is on the throttle, not the hand of the grid manager. A 1000Mw coal plant usually has a CF 0f 95%. Due to poor siting (too windy, built near migratory bird routes or rest stops) some of the wind projects have a CF in the single digits. So the power company has to maintain 'spinning reserve' to pick up the load when wind can't.Ozzie points out that replacing a 1000Mw coal plant with wind gets into some seriously strange numbers. Each tower must be spaced 3 blade diameters from it's neighbor. Blades are pushing 300ft, so we are talking 900 ft tower to tower. Build 1000 1Mw towers to produce 1000Mw to replace the coal plant. But wait, CF for a farm is in the single digits - so one needs 10x that many to replace the coal plant. Pretty soon we are looking at 30 square miles of wind towers to replace one coal plant on ten acres. And they will still need the coal plant as backup in spinning reserve. Increase the number even more if they ever get some sort of battery backup, because the batteries will need charging.Solar projects suffer even more weaknessses because of dirt, heat, sun angle and reduced output with age. It means that the often repeated claim that we could power the whole USA with a small project in the desert is simply untrue.That is just one example of ozzies's book. He addresses hydrogen, biofuels, nuclear, clean coal et al in a similar fashion.Highly recommend.
