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WIND TECHNOLOGY IS OVERBLOWN 1

Aeolus, the prankish Keeper of the Winds in Homer’s Odyssey, must be smiling about
the way limited liability wind companies are nurturing his mythological celebrity in the
arena of electricity production, using a few truths, many half-truths, and the politics of

wishful thinking. 2 Like many celebrities, however, wind is famous for being famous,
not for its actual performance.

The more reliable, affordable, and secure the electricity supply, the more productive the
society. However, in the process of producing electricity, fossil-fueled machines—coal,
natural gas, oil--annually dump over a billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, alarming
many in the scientific community about the prospect of creating a cascading greenhouse
effect that precipitously warms the climate of the earth, with potentially harmful
consequences. To mitigate this practice, those who would profit from it financially and
ideologically propose wind technology as an effective alternate energy source, claiming
that wind would provide abundant power while offsetting significant levels of carbon
emissions, service millions of homes, replace dirty burning coal and gas plants, and keep
the lights on when fossil fuels are depleted.

3These claims are not only untrue; they’re preposterous. There are reasons this Bronze
Age technology has been largely supplanted by more effective systems for transportation,
pumping water and grinding grain. The unpredictably intermittent and highly variable

nature of the wind is inimical to standards of modern electricity production. 4It cannot
provide capacity, it cannot replace conventional power plants, including coal, and,
because of the way its variability must be compensated, it cannot abate meaningful levels
of carbon emissions. To understand why, let’s consider some crucial facts about the
nature of wind energy, briefly review how electricity is produced today, and then
examine the evidence for wind by looking at the way it functions in the real world. Of all
people, environmentalists should embrace the skepticism of science, rather than be
seduced by deceits of fashion and public relations. They should not confuse the trappings

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of science—the engineering grandeur of a huge wind turbine, for example—with the real
work of science, which would insist upon verifying the machine’s performance.

• At industrial scales, electricity must be used immediately. Unlike the water


supply, it can’t be stored. A battery storage system that would sequester energy
for use by millions of people is the Holy Grail of energy production.

• To prevent blackouts and power surges that would damage equipment and
appliances, electricity supply must basis match demand at the right frequency on a
second-by-second, a process made difficult because of the way customers
randomly turn their appliances off and on. Any fluctuation, either from the
demand or the supply side, destabilizes the electricity transmission network—or
grid—making it work harder to maintain the balance. If there’s more demand,
grid operators must instantly dispatch more power to match it exactly; if there’s

too much supply, they must immediately reduce power. 5

• Because of the random, gusty nature of their energy source, wind projects produce
only a fluctuating statistical fraction of their maximum desired performance,
known as the rated or installed capacity. The annual production average for wind
projects, known as the capacity factor, ranges from 18%-35% of their rated
capacity. For the entire United States, it’s around 26%. Generally, a 50-turbine
wind plant rated at 100MW will actually produce an average of only 26MW of
sporadic energy over a year. Looking at a specific project, the hundreds of
turbines within the Bonneville Power Authority in America’s Pacific Northwest,

with a rated capacity of 1600MW, have a capacity factor of 24%. 6 However,


they generate less than that average 60% of the time over a year, and about 20%
of that time, produce virtually nothing, which is typical for large wind
installations everywhere. By contrast, conventional generators—coal, natural gas,
oil, nuclear, and hydro—produce at their rated capacities, or a desired fraction
thereof, when asked to do so and are generally unaffected by external factors.

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• 7A wind turbine’s output varies continuously between zero and 100% of its rated
capacity, always skittering, extremely sensitive to small changes in wind speed.
Since any wind power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed, small
changes in wind velocity affect output enormously. For example, a doubling of
wind speed from 18 km/h to 36 km/h increases power from 6% to 73% of rated
capacity—a 12-fold increase. Of course, the converse applies as the wind
decreases. Large wind turbines typically don’t begin producing energy until wind
speeds reach 14 km/h and shut down (for safety reasons) as wind velocity
approaches 86 km/h. They generally produce their rated capacities at wind speeds
of 50 km/h. In contrast, conventional units produce a steady rate of power, always
predictable; what they do in the past gives an expectation of what they’ll do in

future. 8

• Wind energy is neither controllable nor dispatchable, as is the case for


conventional power. Its variability is continuous, always producing some level of
flux—5MW more than the last minute; 7MW less the next; 12MW more the next,

etc. 9A few wind plants located in wind-rich locations may produce some level of
energy up to 92% of the time; but no one can be sure how much of their energy
will be available at, say, 4:00 PM tomorrow—much less next week, or next
month. The wind machines themselves may be ready for action but if the fuel
isn’t there—that is, if the wind isn’t blowing in the right speed range—the units

will not be available for service. 10 Moreover, even when a turbine is producing
power, it is never certain what the power level will be, since it’s continuously
changing. Past wind behavior can never predict future performance. Weather
forecasting for wind makes astrology look respectable.

• At times, the wind flux will be extremely wide-ranging, with enormous

consequences for grid security. 11 Just a few months ago, the Bonneville Power

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Authority saw wind jump 818MW in 30 minutes, one-half the installed capacity
and, 30 minutes later, it jumped to 1068MW—two-thirds of the installed capacity.
This is not uncommon; such wide swings of wind energy continue to cause
blackouts in Germany, Spain, and Texas.

• 12 Wind projects’ typically don’t follow cycles of demand, often producing most
when demand is least and generating very little, if anything, at times of peak

demand. 13 The Bonneville Power Authority had a stretch in January of over 11


straight days when its wind generation was less than 3% of rated capacity; indeed,
23% of the time over the last year it produced less than 3% of its rated capacity.
In Denmark, wind energy is abundant at night, when demand is minimal. Rather
than spend billions of Euros for compensatory reliable generation to balance the
unnecessary wind energy, the Danes export nearly all of it to Norway and
Sweden, where it displaces hydro, with no savings of CO2 emissions. Denmark
has, with other countries, built expensive transmission lines that enable excess
wind to be carried elsewhere; otherwise, it must be discarded, as is often the case
in Germany.

• Wind produces only energy, not modern power capacity. Physicists define energy
as the ability to do work, while power is the rate at which work is done. Huge
turbines can convert wind energy into electrical power. But they do so with the
same capacity standards that powered sailing craft and water pumps in the early
nineteenth century. Imagine the long lines at filling stations if wind power
pumped the gas. Contrast the ability of sleek clipper ships to deliver small,
typically specialized cargo across the Atlantic in three or four weeks with today’s
freighters that can make the same trip in days, usually on schedule, while carrying
many thousands of tons of diverse cargo: the power (the rate work is
accomplished) of the latter is many times greater, allowing exponentially more
productivity. Although wind technology does provide energy, it is inconsistent,
even incompatible, with modern power performance.

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The ability to convert prescribed amounts of energy at high rates of power at specified
times—what energy experts understand as a machine’s capacity value—is a cornerstone

of modern society and the wellspring of our productivity. 14 Grid networks today
assemble the most dependable, economical, efficient, and controllable sources of power;
forecast demand with 99% accuracy, in real time; and transmit that power at specified
frequencies over a range of distances to a variety of users within their respective regions.
The overall goal is to produce capacity value. Supplying the annually increasing demand
for electricity is much like continuously replenishing a large, leaking tub of water.
Whimsical wind power can add only a few sporadic drops, which cannot even keep pace
with the water loss (demand increases). The real work is accomplished by high-capacity,
precision-tuned machines that reliably pump in just the right amount of water at critical
times to keep the tub from overflowing or from emptying out, much in the way a
conductor orchestrates various instruments over time in a concert.

15 Wind technology provides no capacity value. It is an occasional fuel supplement that


requires a lot of supplementation, wandering on and off the grid like sandpipers at the
beach. As with demand fluctuations, wind’s skittering unpredictable variability
destabilizes the balance between supply and demand. The balance can only be restored
through the agency of reliable, highly flexible conventional generators, working much as
they do to stabilize demand flux--but even more inefficiently. Wind is not a stand-alone
technology; it cannot power any home with modern standards of reliability and
performance. In reality, it is a minor ingredient in a much larger fuel mix, for it’s too

volatile to be loosed on any grid alone. 16 Dance partners must be provided. Which is
the reason the American oil tycoon, T. Boone Pickens, is proposing to augment his
comprehensive wind proposals in the United States with an almost equal amount of
natural gas power. As stated earlier, a 100MW wind project would likely produce an
annual average of 26MW; the other 74MW must come from conventional plants that
operate in a highly responsive manner.

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Since nuclear plants ramp far too slowly to be displaced by or compensate for wind, and
since most grids have so little flexible hydro, the primary compensation for wind
volatility must come from fossil-fired plants not designed to provide such recompense
efficiently, in the process increasing thermal activity on the grid. Typically for older coal
plants, a 20% reduction in performance (from say 100% to 80%) will result in ~40%
degradation in heat rate. Even relatively flexible natural gas plants, which burn 50%
cleaner than coal, are compromised, their performance subverted by a combination of
physical reality and economics.

The best candidates for accompanying and balancing wind flux are natural gas turbines
with rapid starting and stopping capability, able to operate over wide demand cycles.
However, combined cycle gas turbines run more efficiently when dispatched to meet
steady, continuous demand conditions. If asked to follow and balance either the
intermittence of wind or demand fluctuations, they operate less efficiently. Much like a
car in stalled traffic compared to traveling on the open highway, CCGT turbines that
perform even 2% less efficiently, as they would following wind flutter, emit
approximately 16% more CO2 than they would in normal operating mode. Moreover,
because these gas units are flexible, they would be the ones wind would most likely
temporarily replace as it enters the grid, ironically reducing the gas turbines’ capacity
factors and therefore increasing their cost. One might ague that displacing fossil fueled
generation is wind’s purpose. But it does this not by eliminating the need for those
plants—but instead by reducing the utilization rate of plants that are indispensable.

The necessity of balancing wind flux has enormous financial and thermal consequences,
for wind volatility is more unpredictable and in addition to demand flux. Although the
cumulative thermal costs of balancing routine wind flutter are substantial, guarding
against the widest possible energy swings from wind requires the grid to have sufficient

reserve supply readily on hand and synchronized to the right frequency. 17 The more
wind penetration increases on the grid, the more conventional generation that will be
necessary for grid security. E.On Netz, Germany’s largest grid operator, maintains that as
wind approaches a grid penetration of about 10%, additional conventional generation

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must be brought onboard, at 90% of the total installed wind capacity, a situation that
would likely lead to an infinite regression problem, as well as a substantial rise in thermal
activity.

18 Despite the presence of over 70,000 huge wind turbines throughout the world, no
transparent, independent measurement has been done to verify that wind technology has
offset significant levels of carbon dioxide emissions anywhere, including Denmark,
Germany, and California. Any measurement of carbon offsets due to wind must
accurately account for all thermal behavior the technology imposes on the grid—and not
simply assume it is displacing fossil fuels on a one-to-one basis. On most grids, wind-
induced carbon offsets would be relatively miniscule, which is a likely reason that none
of wind’s public subsidies are indexed to actual measured reductions of CO2. No coal
plants have been closed anywhere due to wind technology, while more coal projects are
planned nearly everywhere, including Germany and the United States. Why? Because
coal and all conventional generators produce capacity value. And wind does not.

Consider an analogy between the internal combustion automobile and a hypothetical


windmobile. The auto has a capacity factor of about 20%, limited by a combination of
operator choice (people generally don't drive them 24 hours a day each day of the year)
and by the need for ongoing maintenance and continual refueling. However, when it is
asked to work, it will do so with a high rate of reliability—99.9% of the time. This is its
capacity value.

19 Contrast this with the windmobile, which one can never be sure if it will start or not.
If that wouldn’t be annoying enough, most of the time its speed lurches between
extremes, often stopping without warning. And if the windmobile became popular due to
substantial government financial incentives, there would soon be an array of traffic
accommodations created to enable it, such as requiring new traffic controls and patterns,
not to mention the borrowed cars, buses, taxis, and late appointments involved in going
hither and yon. This activity corresponds to the way the grid is increasingly called upon

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to provide special means to integrate wind’s unreliability—its lack of capacity value.

20 A 1600MW nuclear plant contained within a small area produces a reliable, steady
stream of 1600MW day and night throughout 95 percent of the year, emitting no CO2
and contributing substantially to basic demand needs. Contrast this with a wind plant
consisting of 3000, 150-meter tall turbines, each rated at 2.0MW, stretched out for
hundreds of miles and delivering a skittering annual average of 1500MW—but producing
no capacity value. For what must happen when the wind project produces only 50MW at
peak times, or suddenly ramps up 3000MW in less than an hour?

Although the annual energy contribution of the two facilities would be equivalent on
paper, the wind plant could never replace the nuclear plant in terms of its capacity. In
fact, one should ask how many such wind facilities must be built to equal capacity value
of that single nuclear plant. Or any conventional generating plant. And then one should
ask about the thermal implications, as well as the environmental consequences, of such a
vast enterprise.

Although I understand why well-intentioned people support the wind industry, I’m
mindful the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. Environmental history is the
chronicle of how adverse consequences flowed from the uninformed decisions of the well
intentioned. There is an adage in politics that perception is reality. Belief that something
is true, no matter how preposterous, often results in pretentious public policy. When
perception is wrong, however, reality will ultimately impose itself as itself, often with
rude effect. Trading nuclear, coal, or natural gas for wind is akin to trading Pele, Paulo
Maldini, and Fabio Cannavaro for a third string liceo goalie who made the team because
of his father’s contributions to the alumni fund.

21 Sicily is so beautiful, historically tended with pride by people who enjoy rural
community and are bonded by a love of natural beauty. Wind is a sideshow technology
with potential for mainline environmental harm. Don’t allow corporate hucksters and

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wishful thinking to foul your nest, exploiting your desire to improve the environment
while seeking your approval to wreck it. Realize that if something seems too good to be
true, it nearly always is.

Jon Boone
Presentation at the International Aeolic
Conference: Landscape Under Attack
Palermo
March 27, 2009

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