The Validity of Wind — More
My school friend “isn’t having” my contention that wind energy makes sense, but instead of refuting my point about the attractive EROI (energy return on investment), he writes: An Enercon E82 costs about $7M to build and install. It generates about 2.5 MW which sell for an average of $30/Mwh. How long would it have to run to hit the break even point? Then there is maintenance. Fortunately us tax payers fund most of the up front cost through subsidies.
A) Your point concerned the energy required, not the cost.
B) The cost of an Enercon B82 appears to be less than half of your quote.
The more important issue here, of course, is the environmental footprint associated with fossil fuel consumption, which is largely offset by wind. Incredibly, our society still doesn’t price in the externalities of coal plants: death and disease, climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, etc. Once these factors are taken into consideration, wind becomes the deal of the century.
I really wish the trolls would spend a fraction of the time they spend whining to actually do the damned math.
“How long will it take?”
Easy. The Enercon B82 is is a 2 MW nameplate capacity turbine. In a favorable location, a large 100m hub wind turbine will get a capacity factor of somewhere between 35-45%. Let’s assume 40%.
At 40% cf, a 2 MW turbine will produce 7008 MWh/yr. At $30/MWh, that is $210,240/year. It therefore would take about 30 years to pay back the original build price without subsidies.
So, sans subsidies, the wind turbines would indeed be a bad economic investment… at $30/MWh. It’s important to note that $30/MWh is an extremely low price for energy. There is no other form of energy that could be provided through new construction that comes anywhere close to that price point. No other form of energy that could even come in at double that price point from new construction.
The subsidies make it profitable at the absurdly low price offered to force penetration against the simple fuel and upkeep costs of existing coal plants, and those subsidies are far lower than the cost to society of the externalities that you mentioned… But that is not comparing the cost of wind verses the cost of a new construction of a different platform. That’s comparing wind energy over 35 years with the cost of simply the fuel and maintenance on an existing plant.
The existing plant was, of course, heavily subsidized.
Glenn,
People aren’t “Trolls” , simply because they question aspects of your beliefs !
Your own “maths” are to say the least very peculiar and completely erroneous !
There is no “standard” price or average “production” efficiency, certainly not at 40% (even GE only claims an ‘expectation’ of 30%).
You fail to state whether your calculations are based on off-shore or on-shore installations. Nor do you include the cost of environs-studies, planning permits, insurance, royalty payments to land holders,(or land purchase cost) etc, etc.
What about transmission costs ? Building additional infrastructure, grid compatibility, adaptations to existing infrastructure etc.
You blithely mention “subsidies” without taking into consideration all the different types of subsidies in existence. Subsidies vary widely, depending on the location of the Wind installation. Subsidies including mandates to force the purchase of wind energy as a priority, emission trading credits, incentives schemes, direct payments, subsidized government power pricing, grant, interest free finance, loan guarantees, government guarantees on profit and energy purchase pricing, etc. ( the list is very extensive).
With the exception of a few very favorable locations, Wind power installations remain completely uneconomic without massive government/consumer subsidies and guarantees.
In contrast to those areas with access to low cost Natural Gas, Wind remains noncompetitive and uneconomic. A Natural Gas installation has 5 times the life of a Wind Turbine, but will also supply 24 hour, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year low cost, reliable production.
That’s the whole point ! Natural Gas, Advanced Nuclear, Coal etc, provides “power on demand” to industrial societies. Power on demand is beyond the capacity of intermittent sources like wind. In fact, from a purely economic point of view, the cost of supplementary conventional power sources( even hydro) should be added to the cost factor of Wind power installations !
The only justification for Wind power (except in certain rare locations)is environmental.
Even then, the justification on environmental grounds remains dubious. The enthusiasm for Wind power is largely generated by idealist activists with little practical knowledge and intense lobbying by giant corporations to support mistaken belief in an impractical, but politically fashionable, technology.
Those dissenting voices are not “whining ” , unlike you, they’ve done the “real” math !
Analysis requires the discipline to objectively gather and test all available information and every aspect before reaching a conclusion. Cherry picking only favourable information to support a preconceived belief, isn’t analysis, just propaganda.
Marcopolo,
Believe it or not, there are many (MANY) people who know more about this subject than you. I happen to be one of them.
Capacity factor has nothing to do with efficiency (Actually knowing the definition of a term might go a long way towards making you look like less of a moron when you attempt to insult someone).
It has to do with the energy output verses the ideal expected output of a generator that produces the nameplate capacity 100% of the time. Ergo, a turbine with a cf of 40% would produce – on average – it’s nameplate capacity * 9.6h per day, because 40% of 24 hours is 9.6. This is EXTREMELY basic stuff, btw… if you aren’t familiar with it, then you should probably seek to learn more and troll less.
This IS simple math. The question itself gave the assumption of $30/MWh. So, if you know the cf (again, this EXTREMELY COMMON metric has nothing to do with efficiency, so please stop making a fool out of yourself), then this becomes a middle-school level algebra problem. It gets much more complex when you add in wind farm O&M, discount rate for profit, taxes, yield rate on the bonds or interest rate on the investment loans, secondary land use losses due to easement and access roads, royalty payments for land not owned by the wind installer, etc… and of course the actual subsidies which as you correctly mention come in multiple forms.
But the question that the person asked of Craig was something that could easily appear on a middle-school algebra exam.
Glenn,
There would appear to be a glitch in my reply appearing
Looking into this question, I have found that in 2016, installed costs per MW for wind are around $1600 par kW. This would put the cost per 2MW turbine at around $4 million not 7 million. In Europe, typical wholesale electricity prices are around 40 to 45 euro per MWh, approximately $50 and typical capacity factors for recently installed turbines of slightly over 40%. This would give revenue of $350,400 per annum and a simple payback period of just over 11 years assuming no reduction of capacity factor or change in wholesale electricity cost.
Sorry, writing tired, capital cost around $3.2 million, payback time just over 9 years.