An Essay on the Feasibility of Wind
Farms. Wind Farm Composition
May I take this opportunity to outline the
justifications for my repeated public support of the efforts of the
wind industry to deliver clean and sustainable electricity from an
inexhaustible and indigenous energy supply. It
seems to me that there are far too few occasions when I read about
the benefits of wind energy in the local papers, and far too many
negative articles perpetuated by a tiny number of serial letter
writers who claim to represent the opinions of the many, when in
actual fact they only represent a flawed opinion of reality.
Firstly, my support of
wind farms is largely founded on the
principle that any minor negative environmental impacts are far
exceeded by the beneficial impact of the enormous amount of clean
energy that the wind farm will produce over the course of its life —
enough for 17,000 domestic homes every year. This figure of course
takes into account variability in wind resource.
This is a significant amount of energy, especially when the
energy consumed in manufacturing and construction will be recovered
in around six months of operation of the wind farm.
The support
renewable energy comes from the acknowledgment that we need to move
away from producing electricity from resources that are finite and
are rapidly declining; where the vast majority of resources are
located in geographically distant and politically unstable regions;
and where the resources are unequivocally having a detrimental
effect on the world's environment — either from CO2 emissions or
from radioactive waste. I suspect that the relatively small number
of opponents to wind energy dislike how wind farms look and this is
the principal reason for their opposition.
Wind farms will also
be significantly effective
against global warming although nobody is
claiming that wind farms in alone will prevent global warming
and climate change. What we are saying is
that wind farms represent an important step on a long international
journey to prevent us devastating our global environment. In time,
many other renewable technologies will become
feasible, and with careful planning and education, we can
become more energy efficient. We must do
what we can today to be responsible in our energy generation and
use. I will take this opportunity to address an important technical
wind farm issue that many "engineers" apparently seem unable to
grasp. This is the issue of intermittency, as it is the source of
much misinformation about wind energy. Wind farms are regularly
criticized for the natural intermittency
of the wind resource. It has been inferred that this intermittency
means wind turbines are inefficient, and require permanent back-up
from conventional power stations. Wind energy is therefore assumed
to be almost useless.
To make such a leap in logic might seem
intuitive to some but, just for clarification, it is plainly wrong.
Wind is actually quite predictable. It is unlikely that the back-up
required to manage a national portfolio of wind generation would
give rise to instantaneous power changes as large as those currently
managed. As more wind farms are built, they will be widely spread
over the country and so the power swings will be generally quite
gentle. In any case this is really only an issue for one group alone
— the system operator, National Grid. They are quite relaxed about
accommodating wind and stated in their Seven Year Statement that:
"Current levels of frequency response and short term reserve are
believed to be sufficient, even if the Government's 2010 goal of 10
per cent of electricity supplies sourced from renewable fuels were
all to be met by, say, wind technologies".
Researchers
have looked at the question in some detail have similarly concluded
that variability is unlikely to cause any significant problems. In
terms of financial costs. study shows that
up to 20% of wind energy would have "very modest associated costs",
and 20 per cent capacity of intermittents would only increase costs
by around 0.2p/kWh. The fact remains that wind farms produce a large
amount of valuable carbon-free indigenous energy and thereby help to
combat climate change and secure our energy supplies.
Public opinion surveys repeatedly show the
vast majority of people are in favour of wind farms because they
recognise that they are important to the energy needs of our
society.
So, the next time anyone
cast doubts on the viability of wind farms, we can all be
comforted by the fact that they are not fooling the public and that
the majority see wind farms as a necessary and responsible step
forward in meeting electricity demand in the 21st Century.
Contributor: Lee Ann-Hui
(Shanghai)
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