Another 140 megawatts of wind power, enough to power over 38,000 homes, is set to be up and running in Pennsylvania by 2013 thanks to German wind turbine company REPower Systems, which on Wednesday announced it had inked a deal with American wind developer EverPower to provide 68 wind turbines for a planned wind farm in Somerset.
“This is one of the largest single orders for REpower,” said Andreas Nauen, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of REpower Systems, in a statement. “We appreciate the confidence our US customers place in us.”
REPower’s turbines will form the basis for EverPower’s $350 million Twin Ridges wind farm, which was announced in October 2010 as part of the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, which seeks to connect local governments and organizations with renewable energy companies.
The farm is expected to cover an area of 7,700 acres and is projected to employ 200 workers during construction, 10 full-time maintenance workers and inject $5 million worth of construction spending into the local economy, according to REPower.
The 68 REPower turbines are of REPower’s MM92 variety, and will measure in at variously 80 and 100 meters for the project, each generating 2.05 megawatts of electricity.
When completed, the project will increase Pennsylvania’s overall power from wind generation by nearly 20 percent.
The state currently has 751 megawatts-worth of wind power online providing 0.8 percent of the state’s total power generation. But the state’s wind resources, most of which are accessible at the 80 meter height, could provide up to 3,307 megawatts, or 6.4 percent of the state’s energy needs, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
As EverPower CEO (and Pittsburgh native) Jim Spencer told POP City in February: “My concern (with the excitement generated over Marcellus Shale) is the state might overlook a real source of economic growth in renewables,” he says. “There is a very attractive market here. But unless the renewable standards increase, we’re unlikely to see more development and construction here.”
Pennsylvania’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act, signed into law in 2004, requires that 18 percent of the state’s energy needs be met through alternative energy by 2020, but wind power is lumped into a 7.5 percent subcomponent, along with hydropower, geothermal, biologically derived methane, fuel cells, biomass, and coal mine methane, environmental advocacy group PennFuture notes.
EverPower is a New York-based wind developer with 4,500 megawatts worth of windpower across 12 states, including Pennsylvania already, with its Highland wind farm near Krayn.
REPower is a German subsidiary of Indian energy company Suzlon, which is the world’s fifth largest wind supplier, having installed 18,000 MW worth of wind energy capacity in 20 countries.
Carl Franzen
Carl Franzen is TPM Idea Lab's tech reporter. He used to work for The Daily, AOL and The Atlantic Wire (though not simultaneously, thankfully). He's never met a button that didn't need to be pressed. He can be reached at carl@talkingpointsmemo.com.
<i>"Another 140 megawatts of wind power, enough to power over 38,000 homes..."</i>
This is total baloney. For starters, wind turbines rarely have a capacity factor over 25%, meaning that 140 megawatts is actually equivalent to about 35 megawatts, which even if it was consistent and dispatchable 24/7 (which it's definitely NOT) it would be enough to power about 7,000 homes. Given that it's completely undependable (the wind blows when it will), even that's a stretch. Rule of thumb: Anytime you see an article about wind or solar power that says how many homes a project can power, divide it by a lot. Usually the exaggeration is over ten times. This was one of the better ones, believe it or not.
Even if you assume these things will be able to meet a capacity factor of 33% (HIGHLY unlikely), the price still comes to about $7 billion/gigawatt and they're expected to last, what, 20 years (to be charitable)? You could build a modern nuclear plant of 1 GW way cheaper than that (the Chinese are building the state-of-the-art passively-safe Westinghouse AP1000 for about $1.6 billion/GW), it'll last 60 years or more, and it will produce at full capacity 24/7. Instead, you get a flighty power source that's a nightmare for the grid operators to integrate into the system and gives you power when it feels so inclined. Plus, with an actual capacity 1/20th that of a normal nuclear power plant it will be spread over 7,700 acres, while an AP1000 will have a footprint of less than 2 acres.
how exciting
President Lindsay what you say in terms of usable energy generated by windpower seems reasonable, so i'll take it as fact here. you make an argument about cost per GW, but costs are based on supply and demand. if the demand for renewables increase, so will supply and competition, and costs should go down. but regardless, nuclear power isn't viable in the long term.for one, no private insurance company will insure it, which is why congress ends up having to pass enormous government backed insurance programs to sponsor their construction -- "free" market my ass, if that's your cup of tea (and i wonder if insurance costs are factored into your $1.6billion/GW?). second, nuclear power is inextricably tied to nuclear weapons from a technology standpoint, and therefore continues a system of proliferation both legitimately and illegitimately by other countries for good and bad purposes. third, plants are a safeguard risk against willful attacks and natural disasters, where the consequences can be disastrous -- hence, the first point and why insurance companies won't insure them. and fourth, the waste from nuclear power is long lasting and extremely harmful. humanity can't even figure out what to do with a generally innocuous gas like CO2. so a system where nuclear waste is generated seems, to me, outright suicidal.
adam.x.hill Modern systems deal with all those problems. You can learn a lot about it if you spend some time at bravenewclimate.com. As for wind costs, the cost is only part of the problem. Their completely unpredictable intermittency is the reason they'll never be able to supplant baseload sources. In Denmark they haven't closed a single coal plant after at least 3 decades of wind deployment. If wind can't replace fossil fuel plants, then what does it accomplish?
Regarding insurance, utility companies have a lot of insurance. The Price Anderson act, that would cover catastrophic accidents, has never been used. Not a penny has been paid by the government after 50 years of nuclear power use in the USA, and the newer systems are far safer than the old. Do hydroelectric dams carry their own insurance?
If you want to brush up on new nuclear power systems that solve all the problems you mention, check out tinyurl.com/cwvn8n
President Lindsay
I appreciate the literature and hopefully I'll get into it in more detail eventually. The modern systems you speak of, I presume, are fast breeder reactors and Generation IV reactors -- once the research and development is sufficiently complete to meet the stated goals. I did some perusing on the internet and (forgive me) Wikipedia says the G IV plant technology is still 2 decades away, with the claimed improvements being 1) nuclear waste that lasts a few centuries, 2) 100 to 300 times greater energy yield, 3) ability to consume some of the nuclear waste for electricity production, and 4) improved safety.
those are good things, no doubt, but they don't alleviate most of my concerns. modern technology might be better, but things fail unexpected, along with the people operating these systems, and there are plenty of examples of that happening in the history of modern nuclear power plants. i don't think better technology is the silver bullet for nuclear power, because the problems are also social and political.
high-half life waste generated in the nuclear fission processing (using today's technology or those in development) still need long term storage. In the extreme example, Iodine-127 has a half life 17 million years -- in contrast to the fact that modern homosapien is 200,000 years old. Consequently, storage times will exceed the life span of the average human, probably exceed the life span of many governments and states as we know them, and potentially exceed the limits of technology used for storage as they age or become affected by unplanned events. in reality, the storage of nuclear waste is much more than a technology issue: its a political and a social issue that i don't think humanity is ready to tackle -- maybe ever.
the cost of protecting nuclear technology from malicious hands, and protecting nuclear plants and their waste from malicious attacks is not insignificant. not to mention that the consequences of a successful "attack" would be on an epic scale compared to most terrorist attacks. the same can be said about consequences from natural disaster -- we can only build technology as good as for what we plan, and its not economically feasible to plan for everything even if we could predict the future.
(continued in the reply...)
(...continued from above)
aside from catastrophic events, even minor amounts of low-level radiation, which may be harmless as external emitters (e.g. chest x-ray at a doctors office), likely have significant mutagenic affects over time when they are internal emitters (e.g. irradiated particles that are consumed or inhaled). internal emitters have not been studied in-depth until recently, but the long term consequences (+60 years after exposure, and potential to pass damaged DNA onto progeny) is likely associated with increased cancer rates. that means our modern nuclear power systems need to be fail-safe from releasing nuclear waste (b/c that pesky I-127 sticks around for a loooong time), and i don't think that is possible.
there is also the humanitarian, social and political issue of who can have nuclear power because of its inseparability with nuclear weapons. a perfect example is Iran, who ostensibly developed its nuclear power program for its energy generation benefits, but also sought to develop its nuclear weapon capability as well (if you believe certain reports circulating). again, better technology does not solve the issue of certain countries wanting nuclear technology, and what will come of it.
as for an energy policy in the united states, i think it will require a multifaceted renewable energy approach in combination with a focus on efficiency and consumption habits. its not a simple thing and it will be a long process, but for me, the baggage that comes with nuclear power will never make it attractive enough to include in such an energy policy.
The cost of finishing Watts Bar 2 in Tennessee (1.2 GW) is $2.5 billion. It was 80% finished when work ceased the first time around. The Olkiluoto-3 reactor in Finland (1.6 GW) is 4 years behind schedule and $3 billion over budget ($7 billion in total). That one's being built by Areva, and they know a thing or two about building nuclear reactors. The Crystal River plant in Florida was closed down in 2009 for repairs and isn't expected to reopen until 2014, and not until $2.5 billion is spent on repairs. Two other reactors in Florida (2 X 1.1 GW) are expected to cost $14 billion (excluding transmission). A proposed plant in Ontario (2 X 1.2 GW) was expected to cost $23-$26 billion.
Nuclear isn't cheap.
Wind can act as baseload power if you interconnect widely distributed farms (Denmark has a lot of wind but it is smaller than West Virginia). This isn't cheap either, but unlike Nuclear, which as been moribund for decades, the price of wind is coming down.
Still believes in myths and most likely a nonexistent clean coal. It's easy to see your argument of perceived enlightenment is faulty. We will always have unlimited amounts of limited ideas and you pick the later. President Lindsay adam.x.hill
adam.x.hill Agree that we cannot fail to deliver on renewable sources for long term, but your read on safety concerns as it applies to Gen IV thorium MSR, especially LFTR should incorporate more facts behind it. Proliferation concerns are addressed, potential for accidents and environmental harm as well as fuel material supply (US has between 4th and second largest recoverable resources) all speak in favor of it. Again, I feel it would buy us time (a few thousand years), which, IMHO, should be used to further RE methods for a long term sol'n.
US DoE has 3200 metric tonnes of thorium stockpiled in NV. While it shouldn't be the only resource of info, please read the latest DoE NE roadmap. Thorium is a part of it.
cce As quickly as possible, we need to stop building LWR nuclear and get MSR thorium nuclear online as a stop gap to real RE sol'ns. The cost of energy would go down dramatically and would be 100% domestic.
SchoolyTcce 'As quickly as possible' = decades when it comes to nuclear plants.
Flying Squidcce unfortunately (or fortunately, in some cases) true. Odessa, TX HT3R is expected to come online in 2015, albeit primarily for research
http://www.utpb.edu/research-grants/ht3r/
India's Kakrapar-1 & 2 are final test retrofits that went online earlier this year, with 5 more full production units in the queue over the next 3 or 4 years KAPS 3 & 4 at 700MW each are planned to become operational 2015 & 2016).
President Lindsayadam.x.hill
Did Denmark build any new coal plants in the three decades of wind?
By the way, no one has ever saved a nickle on their bill with nuclear generation.
cce "Wind can act as baseload power..."
This is not true. And barring a technology breakthrough, it probably never will.
I understand the appeal of wind power, but let's deal with facts, please.
President Lindsay
Must power plants are never at 100% capacity either. Nuclear reactors in France get turned off for the weekeends and cannot supply peak hour demands. Other reactors are always have two of the reactor cores out of four turned off for maintenance every week. Nuclear power plants do not generate power 24/7 nor run at 100% capacity. Coal power plants do not do it either. Running at 100% capacity means the power plant is being stressed to the max. Also nuclear power plants do not have a sixty year lifespan. It's meant to be 40 years. And also that cost you cite is bunk. It costs way more then that due to decontamination and decommission costs. Plus nuclear power is heavily subsidized because energy companies wouldn't build the power plants since they wouldn't make a profit.
As for the amount of power wind mills generate in Spain wind power often generates far more energy then the entire amount of nuclear reactors in the country. FYI the cost of the wind power network is a tenth of the cost to build all the nuclear reactors in Spain.
There are also battery storage methods to store the excess wind power then pump; it into the grid as needed.
Hey, I don't get why this is even news. Out in Wyoming there are many wind projects being planned, that are much bigger than this. The Chokecherry / Sierra Madre project alone involves 1000 wind turbines. That is, like, 15 times bigger than this little project.
Western Canada was also a "natural" for the production and utilization of wind turbines -- Saskatchewan is one of the windiest places on earth -- but the reactionary right-wing mentality out here chose to invest in tar sands instead. If that isn't a glaringly obvious sign of the decline of Western culture, I'm sure I don't know what is.
Happy American turkey day to you folks.
Too bad they had to use a german company to assist with this project but at least this is a start for energy alternatives. Away from that it is a very very very good thing for Pa and the country as a whole.
But what about a wind-spill? I hear a bad wind-spill is really messy and hard to clean up, better subsidize oil, gas and do some fracking. Not to mention you can't drill wind and the phrase "blow baby blow" has already been over used (at least by me).
This could have been a win win wind situation -- if one tenth the money federal and state governments lavish on Big Oil had been devoted to developing a manufacturing base in wind turbines and associated equipment.
But no, Big Oil reigns, and not just when a Bush-Cheney cabal is in office. The same is true today.
I would like to see my state, Virginia, get on wind power. Offshore wind farms and wind farms in the mountains would set our state's electrical needs. But, unfortunately, we have too many republican idiots electing idiot republican governors that want to drill offshore for oil and put more nuclear plants up.
My only criticism is that I would rather the state own the wind farms rather than another greedy corporation that will just continue to charge ridiculous rates like the current corporate utility companies that are run by coal, nuclear, biomass, and natural gas.
I would rather have seen GE get the contract to supply the equipment. We need all the jobs we can get. I'm sure there were good reasons for a foreign company to get the award.
g.e. just made a $100 million deal with mongolia.
enon.2011 They really need it. They have problems in Mongolia with power outages that have left outlying towns without electricity for weeks at a time.
HarryBowmanenon.2011 Terrific. So now they'll be able to rely on wind to have outages for just days at a time (well, occasionally weeks too).
The more wind farms and solar panel farms the better nationwide. Would end "drill baby drill" and oil dependency rapidly. Even the saudis are investing in it as they know oil will run out.
And how will electricity generation (as unreliable as it is from wind and solar, no less) end oil dependency rapidly? Virtually all the cars on the road today DON'T run on electricity, they run on oil. But with all that sun and sand, what sort of electrical generation system is going to be deployed in the United Arab Emirates? Solar? Not on your life. They're going to build six nuclear power plants.louisegertrude
President Lindsaylouisegertrude I don't understand your argument. You seem to be coming from a position that renewable energy research is stuck in one place and solar cells or windmills, not to mention electric vehicles will never get more efficient. That is silly.
In Europe this wouldn't be news. But in the US, we had the federal government blocking every single wind project on BLM land, because whenever the Bushies saw wind turbines, they wanted to break Big Wind. Beware of Big Wind!
HarryBowman Some believe that wind turbines are eye sores. We have to make up for all the environmental damage that we have caused, so we may have to look at turbines which is still better than completely destroying our children's future.
douchkan1973 The opposition to the Cape Cod offshore wind farm was led by... Charles Koch! I guess it makes sense that HE thought it was disfiguring the views from Martha's Vineyard.
douchkan1973 And I've wondered what these freaks that hate windmills think of Holland...
HarryBowman I did not know that it was Koch brothers. Thanx for enlightening me.
HarryBowman or in Cervantes' Spain.
it's so weird to drive up on one of those fields. western iowa has several wind farms; and you can drive for miles seeing nothing but farmland and then suddenly those towers appear in some field and i swear it's one of the eeriest views. and, the people who maintain them have to climb up that tower.
good for pa. thanks, germany.
Now if they could just find a way to harness the limitless power of NIMBY.
In view of the fact that Corbought wants to permit gas drilling (fracking) within 1,000 feet of a school, this is good news for the state of PA. The bad news is that this industry will not be halfway supported by the Corbought administration unless they can pony up over 1 million dollars in campaign contributions. And at the rate the information is coming out on the Sandusky scandal, Corbought is gonna need another million or two.
"Wind Power Gets Huge Boost"? Really?
This reads like a corporate press release. And while the project may be a good one, and significant for PA, there is nothing about the turbine technology, the location, the business deal or anything else apparent on the face of the article that is a "huge boost" for wind power.
bearclaw Every Franzen article reads like a corporate press release.
With more typos.
Good that PA is getting more wind turbines. Too bad we have to buy them from Germany.
jeffgee The real pity is that it's American technology that we refused to subsidize in the 80s, thanks to Mr. Reagan & Assoc. We still have an opportunity to miss that boat! Let's kill the DOE.
That is some good news following Google's announcement today that along with things like Google Wave and Google Gears they were dropping to focus on beating Facebook, they also have decided to end their 'cleaner than coal renewable energy' program.
Apparently 'do no evil' only applies if it doesn't interfere with beating the competition.
Flying Squid Kind of hard to "do no evil" when you go out of business.
How much good is Yahoo doing these days?
RealWorldProgressive That's not the best excuse in the world to quietly drop your alternative energy program in a huge dump in the hopes that no one would notice.
RealWorldProgressiveFlying Squid No, no I'd have to disagree there. If you go out of business, you can't do evil - you're out of business.
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joshtpm tpm Good night from Brasil.
Speaking of technology and science, the loonies and their corporate-ideological masters are trying to unleash another phony Climate Gate "controversy" upon an unsuspecting world...
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/201...
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