Re: Wind power - pro and con

On 23 Nov, 11:42, Lance <LanceG...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
NYT
November 23, 2007
Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws
By MARK LANDLER

MALMO, Sweden -- Steadying himself on the heaving foredeck of an
inspection ship recently, his face flecked by spray, Arne Floderus
pronounced it a good day for his new offshore wind farm.

A 30-mile-an-hour wind was twirling the fingerlike blades of a turbine
380 feet above his head. Around him, a field of turbines rotated in a
synchronized ballet that, when fully connected to an electrical grid,
would generate enough power to light 60,000 nearby houses.

"We've created a new landmark," said Mr. Floderus, the project manager
of the $280 million wind park, one of the world's largest, which was
built by the Swedish power company Vattenfall.

The park, in a shallow sound between Sweden and Denmark, testifies to
the remarkable rise of wind energy -- no longer a quirky alternative
favored by environmentalists in Denmark and Germany, but a mainstream
power source used in 26 nations, including the United States.

Yet Sweden's gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when
wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile
neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape,
but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of
power.

For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it
does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for
electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable,
if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. Moreover,
to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where
the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must
then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in
Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.

In the United States, one of the areas most suited for wind turbines
is the central part of the country, stretching from Texas through the
northern Great Plains -- far from the coastal population centers that
need the most electricity.

In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of
wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of
their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes
in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.

In 2003, Ireland put a moratorium on connecting wind farms to its
electricity grid because of the strains that power surges were putting
on the network; it has since begun connecting them again.

In the United States, proposals to build large wind parks in the
Atlantic off Long Island and off Cape Cod, Mass., have run into stiff
opposition from local residents on aesthetic grounds.

As wind energy has matured as an industry, its image has changed --
from a clean, even elegant, alternative to fossil fuels to a renewable
energy source with advantages and drawbacks, like any other.

"The environmental benefits of wind are not as great as its champions
claim," said Euan C. Blauvelt, research director of ABS Energy
Research, an independent market research firm in London. "You've still
got to have backup sources of power, like coal-fired plants."

Mr. Blauvelt publishes an annual report on wind energy in which he
discusses its flaws. People in the industry would accuse him of
propagating myths, he said. Now, the criticism is more tempered.

"One of the big problems with wind is that people tend to get hyped up
about it, very emotional," Mr. Blauvelt said. "The difference is that
the arguments are becoming more rational."

None of this is to say that wind power has peaked. On the contrary,
Mr. Blauvelt figures the industry is adding capacity at a five-year
compound annual growth rate of 26.3 percent. That is faster than
hydroelectric power in its early days and twice the recent growth rate
of nuclear energy.

The United States, which is considered a pioneer in wind, added more
generating capacity in 2006 than any year on record. With 11,575
megawatts, the United States is the world's third largest wind
country, after Germany and Spain, and it is adding more capacity than
any other.

Among new countries with significant wind capacity are Britain,
Canada, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands.

"What we're seeing is a second wave of countries, which are starting
to invest more heavily," said Christian Kjaer, the chief executive of
the European Wind Energy Association in Brussels.

He said wind energy would benefit from two parallel trends: rising oil
prices and a global push to tax carbon-dioxide emissions. "It's very
good way of hedging against volatile oil prices and potentially
volatile carbon costs," Mr. Kjaer said.

In Germany, where 20,000 wind turbines generate 5 percent of the
electricity, advocates say wind will be critical to meeting the
government's goal of generating at least 20 percent of all power from
renewable methods by 2020. But the industry's growth is slowing for a
variety of reasons.

Germany is running out of places to put the turbines because of
restrictions on the location and height of the devices. And rising raw
material prices are making wind farms more expensive to build.

"Under the current circumstances, Germany's climate protection targets
are not achievable," said Hermann Albers, the president of the German
Wind Energy Association.

Open land is not a problem in the United States, but wind parks have
faced resistance, particularly in scenic locales near the shore. A
private developer, Cape Wind, wants to erect 130 turbines in Nantucket
Sound, off Cape Cod. It has drawn protests from some well-connected
locals, including the Kennedy family.

Cape Wind said it hoped to obtain all the necessary permits by next
year, which would enable it to be up and running by 2011. "It's been a
long road," said Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for the developer.

For a socially conscious society like Sweden, wind turbines exert a
fashionable appeal.

Today, they account for less than 1 percent of Sweden's electricity
generation. But the government wants to increase annual wind power
production to 10 terawatt hours, or 10 trillion watt hours, by 2015
from less than 1 terawatt hour now (the park off Malmo will produce a
third of a terawatt hour).

Vattenfall hopes to develop an even larger off-shore park in the
Baltic Sea, between Sweden and Germany. In all, the government has
identified 49 sites that are suitable for wind parks.

Sweden has historically invested little in wind projects because it
has two reliable sources of energy, nuclear and hydro, which each
supply roughly half its power. And because hydro is renewable, Sweden
already does well on the environmental balance ***.

But these energy sources have their vulnerabilities: hydro, to low
water levels; nuclear, to technical breakdowns. The Swedish government
has also pledged not to build any new nuclear power plants.

"One of the key energy priorities for Sweden is to establish a third
leg of energy production," said Anders Nyberg, political adviser in
the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications.

Of course, Sweden does not need to build wind parks to get wind power.
It could simply buy more surplus wind power from Denmark, which it
uses, as does Norway, to pump underground water into elevated
reservoirs. The water is later released during periods of peak
electric demand to drive hydroelectric stations.

In this way, hydro acts as a form of storage for wind energy --
addressing one of wind power's biggest shortcomings. Sweden's strength
in hydro makes it a good candidate for greater development of wind
power, according to analysts.

Sweden is subsidizing wind power through "green" certificates, which
favor the use of renewable energy. The small extra cost is passed on
to consumers.

While Swedes staunchly support wind energy, they are as susceptible to
the not-in-my-backyard opposition as people elsewhere. For years,
residents opposed the wind farm near Malmo, known as Lillgrund,
particularly after the builders obtained permission to raise the
height of the towers. But the campaign to block the project failed.

Still, Mr. Floderus said the process took far too long, and Vattenfall
is urging the government to speed up the approvals next time.

As his inspection ship followed a zigzag course through a field of 48
turbines, Mr. Floderus pointed to Malmo's two other landmarks, visible
in the distance: Oresund Bridge, a 10-mile engineering marvel that
connects Malmo with Copenhagen, and the Turning Torso, an eye-popping
54-story skyscraper designed by the Spanish architect Santiago
Calatrava.

Soon, Mr. Floderus said, the whirling blades of the Lillgrund wind
turbines would take their place alongside those landmarks as symbols
of the modern age.

Sarah Plass contributed reporting from Frankfurt.


This proposed scheme would address the problem of reliability of
supply:

http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3194088.ece

Dave
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