This sounds a bit half-cooked, RP.

Has the coal industry been so successful in delaying the imposition of tougher regulations on coal burning plants that the development of a market for extreme coal emissions scrubbing technology has been delayed? That's the way it looks to me. Are local authorities in the United States so hampered by the national government from imposing tougher emissions controls on fossil fuel burning power plants that the local authorities turning in frustration toward wind power? Again, that is the way it looks to me. Am I right or wrong in these beliefs?

The rest of the posting is interesting, but you must resist the urge to over-editorialize before you've had a chance to fit the pieces together. Does my paranoia make sense to you? Who cares?

BTW, there's an interesting discussion at WindsofChange.net about censorship in science journals against scientists who refused their globalwarming lobotomies.

Raja,

I didn't add in some facts that would motivate this editorializing in part because I was too lazy to google up some relevant info that I've read in the past and in part because the post had already gotten too long.

To give it some context: First, the federal government imposes air quality regulations on states and regions. Second, the federal government tries to preempt states from imposing emissions regulations on certain industries that are tougher than federal regulations on those industries. Then the states have to try to meet their goals without imposing emissions cutbacks on politically powerful polluters.

A case in point are the coal electric generators and the Bush Administration's deal with them. NY State and a bunch of other states have threatened to file suit against the federal government (and may even have done so) over the Bush Administration coal emissions regulation deal (a deal I oppose as a sell-out of the interests of the public at large btw). NY State and some other states were making deals with the coal generators to achieve much greater emissions reductions when the Bushies stepped in and gutted tough coal regs that were in the process of being imposed by the Clinton EPA.

I do not understand the politics of environmental regulation well enough to state my opinions with certainty. But from a lot of reading (most of which I have not posted about) I have formed my suspicions and state them as suspicions with question marks.

Since environmental regulation affects the relative cost of different energy sources and since I'm interested in energy technology (as well as being really fond of clean air) I want to know more about what does not get written about clearly and am hoping that by posing certain questions some of my more knowledgeable readers can point us all to good sources of answers. I keep looking for insightful commentaries on the intersection of energy, pollution, and regulation by people who really really know what they are talking about. Not finding the quality of answers I'm looking for though.

As for science journal censorship: Are you talking about Benny Peiser's latest flap with Science? I'm on Benny's mailing list and am about to write a post about the whole "global warming consensus" flap.

Well as you said a municipal authority can afford such projects where a private utility could not normally get backing. I can't find any stats that I deem trustworthy to ague for or against. I can only note that if there was a really big margin the utilities would be planting the things everywhere that was practical. I do wonder thought about offshore rigs for California. Are they so concerned with "visual pollution" that they'll allow the coast to be un-utilized? Or is the margin so close or even negative that the more expensive offshore towers would be to much to bear? The west coast is a far more financially safe area to develope offshore than the gulf or the east with their more extreme weather potential (I have yet to find any reference to a hurricane safe offshore wind generator. If you have one please post).

Los Angeles actually has well run public services. Why seems a mystery. Perhaps everything must happen somewhere in the universe.

The cost of wind power is fairly well settled. Notice that this project will spend $1K-$2K/home to build. Or $100-$200/year/home for capital. Take the high end - $16/month. The operations cost is rather low, say $.10/kwh. The site itself costs little and I assume it is near a power grid to deliver the power. To me the parameters seem reasonable as fossil fuel costs go up.

One merit of wind is that any given generator can stop without concern. The service crews can schedule orderly overhauls and service. Steady repetitive procedure reduces unit cost. When a massive facility such as a coal burner stops it must be put back online ASAP. This is quite expensive.

Los Angeles has historically generated power at low cost and sometimes makes a profit by selling excess energy.

For off-shore wind you need to build transmission to shore. Tower and base cost is higher, so is maintenance, and probably storm damage.

Joseph,

The California state government requires public utilities in California to increase their use of renewable sources.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced it has signed up an additional 158 megawatts (MW) of clean, renewable wind energy resources to help meet its customers' future electricity needs. All together, generation from these new renewable energy resources will add enough generation to supply nearly 120,000 PG and E customers.

...

The 2005 RPS solicitation will be PG and E's third competitive solicitation for renewable energy since 2002. Since then, it has entered into contracts for 368 MW of renewable power from wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydro resources, including the three agreements being submitted today to the CPUC.

California's RPS Program requires each utility to increase its procurement of eligible renewable generating resources by 1% of load per year to achieve a 20% renewables goal. The RPS Program was passed by the Legislature and is managed by California's Public Utilities Commission and Energy Commission.

So we are going to see a huge growth in wind power in California. But what is the real cost of these deals?

KenS,

But you do not know what what percent max capacity those wind towers will be operating at on average.

I'm thoroughly annoyed at all the glorious annoncements of wind power installations being put up by government fiat where the real cost per kwh is not reported. Nor do these announcements project what the average wind speed is on hot summer afternoons and early evenings when there is peak electric demand.

If they can't make wind power profitable in Mojave, which is god-awfully windy place, I wonder where it would be profitable? Kerguelen Island?

Steve,

Check out this map of where the wind blows most heavily in America.

Randall, your annoyance with "propagandistic" announcements about wind power projects is shared. Flawed announcements leave readers with inaccurate perceptions because they only present "peak power" measurements. Yet "peak power" tells the reader the power a project generates on days with excellent wind conditions. One must multiply by a “capacity factor” to find a more appropriate measurement that accounts for days of poor wind.

The website of "The American Wind Energy Association" (www.awea.org) says the following about the "capacity factor" of wind turbines, "Although modern utility-scale wind turbines typically operate 65% to 80% of the time, they often run at less than full capacity. Therefore, a capacity factor of 25% to 40% is common". Hence, some readers of flawed articles that only list "peak power" will believe that a wind installation is generating twice as much energy or four times as much energy as it actually generates.

I do not know the precise capacity factor of the LA wind project. The news coverage is incomplete. On the other hand, announcements of nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants sometimes only give “peak power”. A coal plant, for example, might have a capacity factor of 80 percent.

Here">http://www.awea.org/projects/california.html">Here is a web page that presents data on wind energy projects in California. It presents megawatts of installed capacity for several wind projects. More importantly, it gives the estimated annual energy output.

Steve Sailer

Not saying Mojave isn't useable for wind turbines, it is however a bit sporadic. That's why I mentioned offshore potential. More expensive but the winds should be steadier and easier to predict.

But the primary point is valid. If your city needs say 1k megawatts baseload you can of course supply a great part with solar or wind but you have to have traditional powerplants available to take the load when needed. It would be easier if a good commercial power storage system was available (whatever happened to that British scheme to use tanks of zinc(?) solution for charging and dis-charging?). You really need the systems spread over very large areas to give reaction time for weather changes. But as in the origional post the area used has shrunk appreciably so simple local changes would shut the whole array down with little lead time to fireup the standby traditional plants. It's not impossible but it's a pain in the tail. The larger the area the more easily a dailey average could be predicted for planning purposes, impact of variables is lessened. But then your maintenance costs escalate. I don't know enough about the price points and T/D to argue either way. Simply looking at it from a practical standpoint.

As long as there is plenty of oil, natural gas, and coal around, these well-intended government schemes for alternative energy will be huge money losers. Winds do not blow all the time, at just the proper speeds. You cannot predict the output well enough to base your power production. You must have dependable sources of production that you can count upon. Many persons make the mistake of projecting the oil demand of China into the indefinite future as if China's economy were based upon sound financial principles. They will be very surprised if they are heavily invested in China. Russia is imploding but no one cares. When China implodes people will care.

According to recent estimates, the dollar figure is something like 4.5 cents/kWh for wind, and GE thinks they can get that below the current costs for coal with their next gen 7 MW turbines.

Rob,

A few points:

1) The cost per kwh depends on average load.

2) The value of a kwh is far greater in the afternoon and early evening of hot summer days than during the rest of the year. Well, what times of the day and what seasons of the year does wind blow most strongly? Is wind blowing more at night or morning or afternoon? Is it blowing more in the spring or the summer? The answers to these questions greatly effect the economic value of wind power.

At least photovoltaics (which still cost far too much) will produce more during peak air conditioning season. However, even solar is not ideal for this purpose because the days get shorter after the first day of summer and get summer gets hotter in July and August. Plus, the air remains hot in the evening as the sun goes down.

3) Large numbers of people are migrating to the Southeast of the United States which, if you click on my link above to the wind map for America, you will see does not have much wind. I happen to be in Florida at the moment and I do not see the trees blowing in the wind very much.

Garson,

Using your link to California wind farms capacity and output one can calculate the average percentage of capacity which is achieved. There are 8760 hours in a non-leap year. So 1 MW capacity translates into 8760 MW hours of potential production per year.

Taking the first one on the table, Altamont Pass has 548.32 MW capacity. So it potentially could produce 548.32 * 8760 MW hours per year or 4.8 Million MW Hours per year. The table quotes the production as 637 M kWh (1998) which would be .637 Million MW Hours per year or only 13.3% utilization.

But I'm not sure that this calculaton tells us anything. The chart has a footnote stating that the capacity of each site includes projected future capacity and the production for each site is for some earlier year.

I'm still left wondering what the utilization rates are for the various California wind tower sites.

Again on why California electric generators are making deals to provide wind power, here is an article from July 2004 about the California state government's requirement that state electric utilities gradually increase their use of renewable energy sources.

The fundamental feature of California's new program is the requirement that all major utilities in the state buy 1 percent more renewable energy each year so that at least 20 percent of their total electric supply portfolio is made up of renewable generation by 2017. This requirement could result in procurement of up to an additional 21,000 GWh of renewable energy each year.

Under the new rules, the utilities must use a bidding process for selecting renewable resources, and all generators selected will be offered long-term power purchase contracts (10 to 20 years). The utilities must pay renewable generators a contract price based on the cost of a new conventional generating resource, and the state will separately pay renewable generators an amount intended to cover any "above-market" costs. One of the new laws enacted creates a fund of $70 million a year to help cover this above-market cost.

So any wind power project in California comes under the category of "probably being built to satisfy a state government mandate".

In E-P's post on wind power he makes the point that high wind days in cold areas will likely be days where greater heating energy is needed. But I don't see wind power as practical for heating. If it is converted to eletricity, well, we already know that electricity is an incredibly expensive way to heat. But if it is used to directly generate heat the problem is that big wind mills are not sited near housing and small wind mills are going to have terrible economics. So how does wind power work for heating?

Plus, the bulk of heat energy is needed in the winter. Wind is already so expensive that it has to be useful all year around if it is going to pay for itself.

First, Los Angeles becomes the Second City. Now it's aiming to be the Windy City (or at least the Wind-Powered City). Is there no limit to their malice? We here in Chicago protest!

I am a little surprised that the project is so highly distrusted. I don't like wind simply because I dislike the towers. But taste is personal. Wind will not be a major player, let it work where it can and don't expect miracles.

I like solar because the output approximates the demand curve. So that is what I would subsidize. But I would do it indirectly; raise taxes on carbon fuels and both conservation industries and alternative energies will benefit. It is quite hard to evade taxes by smuggling fossil fuels.

My attitude about subsidies/mandates for alternative energy is simple. Imported fuel is subsidized with enormous military and diplomatic costs needed to insure our supplies. This strategy is not plotted by evil oil billionaires, it arises more from a sense that the world economy is hostage to politics in distant places: Arabia, the Mideast, Central Asia, West Africa, the Artic, Southeast Asia.

When we make our own energy we shed that military and politcal cost. We also gain a sense of self reliance from solving our own problems.

KenS,

My harsh tone about this wind installation is because I'm responding to the arguments made in some quarters that wind power is competitive now. People making these arguments often point to various big wind installations as evidence to back up their claim. My point here is that those big wind installations are evidence of government intervention in the energy market and not of competitive wind power. Now, maybe that intervention will eventually lead to cheaper wind power as GE builds successive new generations of rotors and turbines. But it is not competitive now.

If there are major wind installations that are not the product of government intervention then someone please point them out.

BTW, I share your dislik of wind power because I don't want wind towers dottind the landscape. But since solar is more expensive than wind and since nuclear faces so much political opposition I expect to see continued growth in the wind tower market.

As for the uninternalized costs of getting energy from the Middle East: I totally agree with you. But look at the very high taxes on fuel in Europe. The Europeans have not ended their reliance on Middle Eastern oil as a result. I interpret this to mean that we need big technological advances to be able to end our use of Middle Eastern oil.

Also, look at the run-up in oil prices from $12 a barrel in 1998 to over $50 per barrel. Demand for oil has been growing briskly while this price run-up has been happening. A government tariff on oil might need to put its price well over $100 per barrel in order to put us on a path toward energy independence. Well, I do not expect the American public to sign up for such a high tariff - or any tariff for that matter.

To end our use of oil we need battery technology dense enough and cheap enogh to allow cars to operate totally off of batteries. Then we need either a thousand more nuclear plants or a thousand more coal plants to allow powering of transportation with domestic energy sources.

Afternoons tend to be the windiest time of day, which is good from the perspective of peak power demands.

Something they might be able to do to store energy at the Mojave site is to use wind-generated electricity at times of low demand to pump water up into a reservoir in the southern Sierra mountains, then let the water rush down past turbines during peak demand periods. It's a net loss, of course, but economically it can make sense because it might be cheaper than building more power plants to deal with peak demand.

Of course, the environmental degradation of building lots of big towers and a reservoir might be worse than in old fashioned systems! But, still, there are lots of places in the upper Mojave desert that nobody in his right mind goes to enjoy nature.

Europe uses far less oil than we do. They still use a lot of coal. Considerable nuclear. They use less fuel in cars, air condition less, etc. Some of this is demographic and some economic. They are buying fuel mostly from the old USSR regions.

Europe gets less sunlight - their best bet for solar would be to pay Italy, Spain, and Greece to capture it for them. Distances in Europe are short and power lines can pump it North.

The best wind sites are competitive now. But such sites are scarce. Wind only works where it works. If we make the turbines in China and build enough towers the economics of scale will help little. The limiting resource is not equipment.

After 60 years of futility the right batteries are arriving. I pissed in the general direction of electric cars (not hybrids) for 30 years because the batteries were not good enough. Soon, my friend!

No one is going off fossil fuels. The goal is to slash usage. Positive subsidies promote graft and incompetence. That is why I prefer taxing fossil rather than handing money to alternatives. Will we do it? Probably not!

KenS,

The Euros use less energy than America because they have lower per capita GDPs and can not afford as much energy. Also, they have denser populations that do not have to drive as far to work on average.

Yep the biggest choke point is currently battery tech. This applies for both transportation and the effective use of renewables. I think I rattled on in a past post on batteries but I believe when/if they can produce 150+ watt hour per kilogram batteries we're about there. All depends on costs though. Yep, looking forward to recharging my electric 4x4 truck off a grid powerd by a gen IV molten salt thorium burner:)

Seriously though, after more reading I'm still disturbed. At least 25 years developement, and yes they've made progress, but the wind industry advocates still insist they must have commercial subsidies to be "competitive." Subsidies simply mean the users (an many others) are paying higher utility bills by another method. If the tech was as good as they claim they should be competitive now and future developements should only be icing on the cake for bigger profit margins. In some markets it might make sense when load leveling (by way of effecient power storage) is used but I wouldn't want my IRA's invested in it.

KenS:  man, do I ever hear you on the subsidies issue.  US ethanol subsidies are probably one of the worst debacles for net energy and the environment, but because ADM reaps so much money from them we're going to have the devil's own time getting rid of them (or forcing ethanol producers to internalize all their costs, which will do the same thing).

Steve Sailer:  You don't need pumped storage for all needs.  California uses a lot of power for A/C, so it makes sense to use wind power when it's available to freeze water and have cooling "on tap" for windless times.

Randall:  PV isn't the only solar technology, though it's the simplest.  Energy Innovations was talking up a concentrating-solar Stirling system a while back (they don't say anything about why they've put this on the back burner), and researchers were working with 10%+ efficient solar vapor turbines back in the early 1960's.  My favorite concept is a "triple threat" system, heating e.g. monochlorobenzene vapor to drive a small turbine and then using the heat of condensation to provide both DHW and air conditioning via an absorption chiller.  If the available sunlight and the seasonal demand don't match exactly, no biggie; you can either use conventional power to make up the difference or build excess capacity and expect to discard some.  That last wouldn't be likely to occur for quite some time.

It's true that batteries are the weak link in electric vehicles.  That's been true since the end of the 19th century, and it's just now beginning to change.  But Prius+ hackers at CalCars are proving what I've been saying for years:  if all you want is to offset a lot of fuel use with electricity instead of all of it, lead-acid is good enough.

What automaker is going to be the first to build a "battery agnostic" hybrid car which comes from the factory with a NiMH pack, has the option of a PbSO4 battery (removeable for long trips or extra cargo capacity) for local cruising without starting the engine, and can be field-upgraded to lithium-ion when the cost comes down far enough?  My bet is on Toyota, because they're almost all the way there already.  I wish I could say Ford, but Detroit is fixated on big trucks (and may stay that way to the graveyard).