Anyone close to a wind farm?

Sorry, Lou. I must have just come back from the political Forum. I gotta quit peeking over there!

Maintenance isn't the problem, Dave. They're not efficient because of the initial cost to build vs the energy produced over the 10-12 year lifespan, and not reliable because if the wind don't blow, they don't generate anything. Life cycle cost/megawatt generated for wind power is a trailing third to nuclear (lowest cost) and coal (second lowest cost)

Edited by GBACBFan - 25 Nov 2010 at 11:07am

I agree, GB, that if the wind doesn't blow, they generate nothing.  I doubt the 10-12 year lifespan- while one could put a 10-12 year on the velocity of obsolescense, the Gen II units from the mid '80's are STILL generating.  When I was out in Tehachapi, I was talking with a crew about the units they're taking down... they'd NEVER been down for rebuild, and most were selling and going back into private service with essentially bearings and seals.

But re. the subsidy issue:  If it were not for subsidies, there would be NO nuclear production whatsoever.  Initial subsidy for the greatest start of nuclear experimentation started with  Alfred Loomis, and it wasn't until most of the Manhattan project was done, that the government even CONSIDERED using nuke for generation.  Advance 15 years, and you'll see that you and I spent an incredible amount (and I mean REALLY incredible) on funding development and installation of nuclear generating plants, as well as rural electrification and a really big grid.  Development of large scale power plans has NEVER been without subsidiary support- it is an economy of scale much larger than calculable profit.

Unfortunately, while nuclear power is very low in cost per KWH, that cost is NOT static... eventually, it will be overrun by the cost of dismantling, containing, and storage (not disposal) of 'hot' waste.  Not saying that I don't like it, but it's reality... nothing is free.

I can tell you this much:  Run a nuke plant at full bore... now shut it down, totally.  Cost to operate that nuke plant, when down, totally invalidates it's economic fortitude... you still need containment crews, security, and maintenance.  When the windmills stop, you need lights.

What I'm saying here... is that aside from burning wood, windmills predate EVERY other kind of modern power we have.  Most people call it 'alternative' energy, but historically, it's seriously not.  Long before the Dutch ground wheat and pumped water out of their fields, boats sailed the Mediterranean... and my grandpa got his water for free.

Thank you for reminding me, Dave, you touched on another concern that needs to be considered when building a wind farm... the grid. There is one wind farm just completed, in Minnesota, I believe, that is ready to go, but has no current link to the grid. The alignment with the grid requires the same robust planning and approvals as the wind farms themselves, and is not on overnight process. Anyone involved with a windfarm in their area should confirm the developer or utility has a plan in place to utilize the power the windfarm can generate.

The politics and economics of the first- and second-generation California 'farms' has much more to do with politics and economics, than technology.  Consider the voracious appetite for Colorado River electricity and water that goes to support the bankrupt state, and it's not hard to see why they're so messed-up.  I'm not sure who's worse, but Illinois and California are definitely holding a competition.

The Hawaii installation is a load-calculation fiasco in-and-of itself.  There are THREE states that have their OWN electrical utility grid administration, sovereign from DOE.  Those states are Alaska, Hawaii, and Texas.  Hawaii being pretty populous, but from an AC grid perspective, very small, and load-wise, rather volatile.  Using high-volume synchronous generation there is risky at best, because neither the load, nor the source is dense or distributed enough to be substantially self-stabilizing.  Having substantial wind-farms along the island makes regulation (frequency and voltage) a nightmare, especially prior to the latest generation of high-power inverter-based multi-megawatt machines.


Grid connection IS an important consideration.  For those of us that live in states that DON'T have net-metering laws, and don't have utility board support of individuals who own their own private mills, the economics are heavily outclassed.  If I were to install my own personal mills, and desire to 'sell off' my excess, I would have to register as an "Independant Power Producer", identify my capacity, then constantly state my market price, and ALWAYS have that capacity available, which means if I have 250kw of griddable power, I'd need some other form of backup capacity.  Big utility companies HAVE that capacity by virtue of fossil plants... NG and coal.  Big utilities can also offset lack of wind output by 're-buying' at a higher rate, and eating the difference in cost.

Many people who get 'sucked into' the concept of buying small 'grid tie' systems don't have a clue how little return they'll actually get... and that's why I noted that if I had a pair, I'd use 'em strictly to heat water...  I couldn't SELL that energy (especially under IPP designation) and make enough to offset the propane I'd otherwise burn...  but if I"m heating water when it's -25 and a 35mph NW wind, I can certainly offset that fuel, and THEN some.

And as it sits, I STILL have three emergency generators here to keep power to the house when our primary utility lines get ripped down by storms.  When we get a wintertime outage (and we usually get about 3.5 weeks of accumulated outage each year), I shut down the burner on my furnace...  and the backup generator engines (which have no radiators) take over by sending what would otherwise be waste heat... into heat exchangers and hydronic grids in the house.

And with that in mind, I don't have a bend against drilling... I just like utilizing all my available resources to best available benefit, and for some reason, this farm has LOTS of wind.

But anyway, his question was about the whoosh... and my answer is... no- the new, large, slow-speed turbines with closed pylon bases... effectively silent.

The Bournes factory in Ames used to buy virtually no electricity from the city, which annoyed the city fathers immensely.  The had four natural gas powered generators which they ran three at a time to provide factory power, heat, and cooling. There were no radiators and the exhaust was also water jacketed. The oil was probably also water cooled to gather that heat. They used electricity to run the factory, and the engine heat to heat and cool the factory with adsorption refrigeration for summer time cooling. It was odd to see that factory covering maybe 200,000 square feet with a 3 kva pole pig for its electric service. By using virtually all the "waste" btus from the engines they got really good use of their fuel penny.

With utilities that don't do net metering, but accept small scale generation the best they will pay is their avoided fuel cost on the outbound meter (they usually require two meters each ratcheted to measure power flow in only one direction) often a mere 3 cents a KWH. When you figure in maintenance and cost of acquisition, no power plant can produce electricity that cheap. The only thing that has a slight chance of paying is to generate just enough to stop the incoming meter, thereby displacing the energy that you would buy at 8 to 15 cents a KWH and its really hard to compete with BLM hydrogeneration in the Pacific NW or along the upper Missouri River.

The wind generators are actually pretty much of an albatross on the power companies because they have to keep steam plants of the same power capacity spinning ready to supply customer loads when the  wind changes and it changes a lot, that part is quite predictable. How its going to change is a real problem, the available weather models do poorly on the details in the Plantary Boundary Layer, expecting the conditions to be uniform over a typical grid of 40 km and computing once an hour. Worse some of the models compute x and y components on different sides of the grid and don't admit how they came up with the x and y pairing. I need to work on that by my client isn't paying much and I've been busy moving. Maybe next month I'll invent something better or apply something better to the data extraction software.

Distribuited generation has been the nemesis to power system stability until the advent of the electronic inverter that can be forced to follow the local power line, so it won't warp the frequency control in its area.

Connection to the grid often limits wind systems, I know of one locally owned group in Iowa that can't run all the turbines at the same time because they don't have a strong enough utility connection. And I see the field near here completely shut down on some days of NWS wind forecasts no more than 20 mph.

Loading the wind machine with resistance heating tends to work poorly because the wind machine output is highly variable but if it holds constant voltage, the resistance load is also constant which the machine can't supply unless seriously derated. Polk County Iowa tried that at their county road department 25 years ago. I was asked to bid on the engineering study, but they wanted a bid bond which most consulting engineers don't do. I suspect a wind turbine vendor was the only bidder (the request for bids book took an hour to read, I may still have it) and so found the wind data good for wind generation. The installed wind machine lasted two or three years but when it left it left completely, there's not even divots in the yard where it sat. Independent data that I checked indicated the average wind there was too low to be economical and I think some independent wind machines like at the Nevada IA Schools have proven that except that they were donated to the schools.

Putting wind energy to stored heat, the voltage needs to be allowed to vary with the wind speed so the load power can vary as well.

Gerald J.

Champion Seed at Ellsworth tossed up a small one last year and I rarely see it runing. Many times when its not runing I drive by and see a ladder up to the base of the tower. I've not seen it spin except in a really high wind for a couple months. I presume it has self destructed repeatedly.

Story City has one without a gear box. Its had its problems too with at least one replacement of the generator in its first year of use.

There used to be a Grumman wind machine just off north Dayton Road NE of Ames hooked to the REC, but I've not noticed it for the last couple years. I think its been taken down. I hardly ever saw it spin.

I've not tried wind seriously, though I do have the propeller for a small wind generator in the barn. I did try an air heating solar collector for a few years. Got me about 100,000 BTU per sunny day whether I needed heat or not from a 24 x 8 collector, 192 square feet. From that experiment, I concluded insulation paid far better than the active system.

Gerald J.

I mistakenly said that the attorney representing our local Road Commisioners in negotiations with the Windmill companies said, "they will promise anything a RC wants to hear and try to weasle out of it during and after construction".

Brad,  Here is an article about one over here.  It is a couple years old.  It also identifies the municipalities.  You may want to get with them and find out any pros and cons of the whole deal.  Why reinvent the wheel?

Probably not as much near the surface wind change as if the prairies were covered in forest.

Gerald J.

I have one of the largest windfarms in the USA just 6 miles north of me, in benton and white county indiana(actually 3 companies/farms but all are within site of each other) and they are still building.  The is no noise problems, I have been up to the base of several and can't hear the blades over the wind.  The companies in benton county have treated the counties residents very well.  The repaired the road to a condition far better than when they started, even blacktopping some original chip and seal roads, and reconstructed some gravel roads using paving machines to lay down the gravel.  Very nice!. 

The contracts there are set up that they will return everything to original condition (take down tower, take up gravel lanes, ect) if they decommission them and don't install a new tower/head within a year. 

They even pay the farmers some money that for some reason or another skip them and don't  install a tower on their field(usually a small field to close to another field with a tower) 

The only problem we have is the lights.  My wife refers to it as the "red light district"  Before they synchronized them they were insanely annoying, but now they are not to bad, still? 

One group of them they have just the perimeter towers lights on, for some reason the other two groups they haven't done that but they are still building there right now. 

They are also considering a farm in pulaski county (Dads farm is included in it) but it is on hold now as the company some how missed the fact that it is a military training area for grissom air force base. 

I looked into a personal small tower and it would work out well financially if we had net metering but Indiana law states that REMC's are exempt from net metering so they will only purchase it at 3-3.5 cents a kw and then I have to purchase all electricity at 13.5cents a kwhr which make a very poor investment.  The law states that investor owned utilities have to provide net metering with is a pointless law as the investor owned utilities are in the larger town/cities that would not be very effective or even allow windmill in the area. 

Only observing from the road. One spent a year out of commission, I think due to lightning. They were donated to the school system so they don't have the fundamental cost of ownership but still I hear are marginal with the maintenance in breaking even.

Kind of like having a pickup for work tasks and a hybrid for going to church and after groceries. It looks good, but it doesn't really save money in the long run.

The induction motor style gets around the synchronization problem but requires a close watch on wind speed and power transfer direction because the motor and fan part is just as happy as a motor as a generator.

Gerald J.