Windpower is NOT going to provide energy independence

Unless we carpet the country with wind turbines and transmission lines

I found the following article debunking the potential of wind-power to make a significant contribution to our energy resources. Here's the killer quote:

At www.scitizen.com, Kurt Cobb worked the numbers. Generously, he presumed the windmills would use 5-megawatt turbines – generating three times the output of a typical 1.5-megawatt turbine. He compared that with a 500-megawatt fossil-fuel (coal) power plant needed to power a city of 300,000 people. A typical power plant, he noted, would cover 300 acres, but use only 30 of those for the actual facility.

Cobb calculated it would take 233 5-megawatt wind turbines to equal the coal plant's output, since the wind doesn't blow constantly. Each would need to be spaced 2,065 feet away from the others (five times the diameter of their 413-foot rotors). Adding the rotor diameters to the spacing requirement equates to a 110-mile long line of windmills, half a mile in width.
It comes to 55 square miles. That's to provide electricity for a town of 300,000 people.

New York City has 8.1 million residents. Manhattan Island totals 23 square miles. So, based on Cobb's calculations, it would take six and a half Manhattan Islands, each covered totally with windmills, to power one-tenth of New York City. And if standard 1.5-megawatt wind turbines were used, they would take three times more space.

Of course, this analysis ignores the problems of finding enough windy places, creating the transmission capability to deliver the electricity to market, and storing enough energy to cover the problem that wind power is intermittent.

Obama seems like a sensible guy. One hopes he asks for a cost-benefit analysis of wind-power versus, say, clean coal, and understands where the money should be spent. I'm not holding my hopes up.

[0] comments [168] Views | Permalink | [0] TrackBack |