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The advantages of wind power

Some of the advantages that wind power has over other forms of electricity generation are:

• It is environmentally sustainable.
• There are huge areas with excellent wind resources where wind farms could be built, especially in Australia.
• Unlike hydro power, wind farms can be built with little environmental damage and little loss of economically productive land.
• Wind generated electricity, on a level playing field is as cheap as most conventional forms of power generation and cheaper than most of the other sustainable forms.
• Unlike 'clean coal' (coal with sequestration), wind farms can and are be built now.
• Wind farms, once operating, produce negligible greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse gasses produced in the construction of wind farms are 'abated' within the first few months of operation. Coal-fired power stations are one of the largest producers of greenhouse gasses on the planet; in terms of tonnes of CO2 per GWh of electricity, oil fired power stations are less polluting than coal and gas-fired is less polluting than oil, but gas-fired power still produces about half the CO2/GWh of coal.
• Wind farms use a neglible amount of water. By comparison, coal-fired power stations typically use more than a million litres of fresh water for each gigawatt-hour of electricity generated. Many of the larger solar power stations also require significant amounts of cooling water.
• Compared to solar power wind farms use little land. (Solar and wind are compared elsewhere on this site.)

The future of wind power in Australia

Wind turbine at Starfish Hill, Fleurieu Peninsula

Wind, at the present, is the only economically competitive form of sustainable energy ready to take a significant part of the load. (Australia's wind power potential is dealt with on another page on this site.) Using biological waste and methane from land-fill to generate electricity is feasible and is being done, but its capacity is limited. It is looking like solar thermal and 'hot dry rock' geothermal is close to being competitive, but these are not ready yet and will take many years to 'scale-up' to the point where they are major sources of energy. Wave-power, photovoltaics, harnessing algae to produce fuels, and other alternatives seem further away. A decade or two could change that picture.

Limits to growth of the wind industry

1. the lack of electricity transmission lines where they are needed (Governments seem willing to build transmission lines to new mines, but unwilling to build them for the large-scale development of wind farms);
2. lack of certainty due to government's failure to legislate its promised expanded Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET);
3. and a shortage of working capital due to the financial break-down.

Certainly wind power is not 'the answer' to climate change. Only a naïve person would believe that there is a single answer, and only a naïve person would object to wind power because it is not 'the answer'. It is a part of 'the answer'. Other parts are energy conservation, technological innovation, development of other forms of sustainable energy, and education. (I have listed some suggestions in What should be done.)

If the logic in the few sentences above is correct, then wind power must be developed to the maximum reasonable degree and as quickly as possible.

In Australia's wind power potential I argue that the potential installed wind power in Australia is more than 91GW, and the amount of generation then would be more than 241TWh p.a.

Off-shore wind power installations are also quite possible. Turbines can either be set in the seabed in shallow water or they can float and be tethered to the seabed in deap water. Off-shore developments could at least double Australia's wind power potential. The greatest Australian potential for off-shore wind power is near Tasmania, but all the southern coast of Australia could be used.

Whether all of this potential should be developed is another matter.

Will we get sick of the sight of wind turbines? Quite possibly. The alternatives, it seems to me, are either to throw caution (and, I believe sanity) to the wind and continue with fossil fuels, or to totally change our life-styles and enormously cut down on the amount of energy that we use, in our personal lives and in industry. I cannot imagine our society being ready or willing to do that.

The wind farms that were under construction in June 2009 include:

NSW

Capital
Cullerin Range

SA

Clements Gap
Hallett Hill
Waterloo

Tasmania

Musselroe

Victoria

Cape Nelson

Australia's record on wind power, on the world stage, is poor.

Germany has one twenty-first the land area of Australia, yet has about 16 times as much wind power (and hugely more solar power). Spain has about twice the population of Australia, a fifteenth the land area, yet about 11 times as much wind power. Little Denmark, with a quarter our population and 0.6% of our land area has more than twice our wind power.

Even the USA, a nation whose federal administration has, in the recent past, been notoriously against doing anything about greenhouse/climate change, has about 16 times as much wind power as Australia.

Australia has huge potential for developing wind power, but has been notably slow in doing so.

The proportion of electricity that can be generated by wind before problems relating to variability of supply become intolerable has been debated for years. The magazine Wind Power Monthly reported that Denmark generated 31.5% of its power by wind in January 2008 (apparently January is its windiest month) and had generated even more in January 2007 (35.5%). Even more important, the article stated that there had been no need to constrain production from the turbines at any time. (I believe that Denmark has the advantage of power-sharing with neaby Norway which has a large hydro-power resource.)

Twenty percent by 2020

Australia's target of 20% renewable power by the year 2020

Old sustainable energy To the time of writing (2009/03/04) I have not been able to find out exactly how much hydro-electricity is generated in Australia annually, but believe that, together, the Snowy Mountain Authority (SMA) and Hydro Tasmania (HT) generate about 15TWh per year. Installed capacity of all other hydro-generators in Australia is about one third of that owned by SMA and HT, (DEWHA figures) so it is reasonable to assume that generation from them would be about 5TWh/yr; giving a total for Australian hydro-power generation of about 20TWh/yr. (This may be declining because of climate change, reducing rainfall, and hence less run-off and less water to run through turbines.)

The Rudd Government's stated target of 20% renewable energy by 2020 involved adding 20% new renewable energy above the baseline at the time the MRET was promised. If Australia is to reach the target then we will require about 42TWh/yr of new renewable energy and a total of 62TWh/yr of renewable generation by 2020.

Little new hydro capacity is being built, so we can figure on hydro making up no more than 20TWh (see the box on the right) of the 62TWh/yr required by 2020. This leaves a deficit of 42TWh to be generated by technologies other than hydro.

Installed wind power in Australia at the end of 2008 was about 1.5GW. I have not been able to obtain any figures for actual wind power generation for the whole of Australia, but using a capacity factor of 35% we can calculate about 4.6TWh per year from the 1.5GW installed capacity.

It seems unlikely that forms of sustainable energy other than hydro and wind can make up more than 5TWh/yr by 2020, see Sustainable Energy - Overview. Wind currently makes up just over 90% of new renewable energy, so it seems that if we are to reach the target, wind power will have to fill most of the gap. So, if we are to have 62TWh/yr of renewable energy by 2020 it is likely to be made up of about 20TWh (old) hydro, wind at least 37TWh, and other probably less than 5TWh (20+37+5=62).

In Australia's wind power potential I argue that the potential installed wind power in Australia is more than 91GW, and the amount of generation then would be more than 241TWh p.a.

Wind will need to be increased from 4.6TWh to 37TWh if Australia is to reach its 20% by 2020 target. This translates to a total of about 12GW installed wind power; we now have 1.5GW install wind power, we need 10.5GW more to get to 12GW; there are 12 years from the end of 2008 to the end of 2020, so about 900MW will have to be installed each year, or about one 2 or 3MW turbine installed every day.

Considering that governments, both state and federal, are providing only limited encouragement for the development of wind power (as of early 2009), it seems unlikely that we will reach the target, unless our total consumption is substantially reduced (this too seems highly unlikely); obviously then the target, in absolute terms, would be correspondingly reduced.

News

2009/09/07
Noise testing at Waubra; quoting from ABC on-line news, Ballarat

An engineering expert has started testing noise levels at properties near the Waubra wind farm. Some residents close to the farm say low frequency noise from the turbines is damaging their health. Ballarat University engineering lecturer Graeme Hood will do the tests at several locations near the wind farm during the next three weeks. He says he hopes people keep an open mind about the results. "There has been a lot of interest in it and from a long way away as well," he said. "I hope people don't end up disappointed as a result of what we might find or not find, because we are doing a fairly small sort of test, I suppose." "I think there's always the possibility that if the results become inconclusive, some people might be very disappointed."

2009/08/29
Air navigation lights might go

2009/08/29
Wind Turbine Syndrome, by Nina Pirpont

The author's net page is at http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/, a page criticising Pirpont's work is at "http://www.grist.org/article/ 2009-08-03-attack-on-industrial-wind-puffed-with-false-peer-review-claims/".

My impression is that valid questions have been raised about the claim that Pirpont's book was properly peer-reviewed and there seem to be valid criticisms of her methodology; in particular it seems that Pirponts subjects were few (28) and apparently selected because they claimed to have health problems associated with wind turbines, and there was no control group. This is not to say that she is necessarily wrong.

2009/08/24
Turbines to be built for Norwind in Devonport

2009/08/21
Renewable energy target of 20% by 2020 finally passes through Parliament

2009/06/22
Pacific Hydro shelve half a billion dollars worth of wind farm projects because of Rudd's failure to keep promise

2009/06/18
AGL announce purchase of wind farm projects from Transfield

2009/03/31
Suzlon announce contract to build wind farm for AGL

Small wind disadvantaged against solar

This produces an unfair discrimination against the small-scale wind industry. Why would you pay full price for a small wind turbine when you can get a $7500 rebate on solar?

Of wind turbines and steam ships

Both sailing ships and wind turbines are graceful and are works of art, while steam ships and fossil fuel power stations are simply practical and are means-to-an-end.

Both sailing ships and wind turbines are sustainable; steam ships and conventional power stations are not, because of the finite reserves of fossil fuels they burn and the damaging carbon dioxide they dump into the atmosphere.

To anyone who says that a wind turbine is not a work of art I would say go and stand in the middle of a modern wind farm and watch while the sun sets. If you go with an open mind you cannot help seeing their beauty and grace: quietly powering our energy-hungry life styles while doing very little harm to the environment. I don't mind admitting that they fascinate me.

Ironically, steam ships replaced sailing ships, yet wind turbines are, to some extent, replacing fossil fuel fired power stations. With greenhouse and the approaching end of oil, will we one day see the return of sail?

The number of homes supplied by a given wind farm

Company	No. homes per MW	Wind farm
AGL	570	Brown Hill Range (Hallett)
Acciona	740	Waubra
Epuron	400	Broken Hill
Pacific Hydro	500	Challicum Hills
Roaring 40s	500	Woolnorth
Verve	700	Albany
WestWind	571	Lal Lal

Why the variation? Perhaps it is due to the perceived quality of the local wind resource, perhaps it depends on how much power households use in different regions, perhaps it is only due to variations in the estimations of company public relations people?

The numbers above vary from 400 to 700 homes per installed megawatt. If we assume a 35% capacity factor we can calculate that an installed megawatt will generate 350kW on average. If 350kW will supply 400 homes then the assumption is 875 Watts per home; if it will supply 700 homes then the assumption is 500 Watts per home.

How big can wind turbines get?

As of March 2009 the largest wind turbines in Australia are 3MW (3000kW) which are being used at Lake Bonney wind farm. These have steel towers 78m high and fibre glass blades about 44m long.

The technical challenges of lifting loads of nearly 100 tonnes (the Nacelle, including gearbox, dynamo, cooling system, etc.) to heights of around 80m are considerable.

In some European off-shore wind farms, turbines of 6MW are now being used. They have blades of up to about 65m long (the wingspan of a Boeing 747-400 aircraft is 64.67m - that's the length from wingtip to wingtip). When assembling these turbines, instead of raising the whole of the nacelle and its contents in one lift, as has generally been done in Australian wind farms, I believe that the main components of the nacelle are raised in separate lifts for these very big turbines.

The limit to the size of a wind turbine seems to be in the size of the crane needed and the difficulty of lifting very heavy loads to great heights.

Energy return on investment (EROI)

Importantly the EROI for petroleum is declining as more wells have to be drilled, more pumping done, more high-tech processes used, to obtain the same amount of oil.

It has been suggested that if EROI for our most important energy sources gets down to 10:1 it will begin to have a heavy impact on the modern way of life.

Studies on EROI for many of the energy industries have been reported on The Oil Drum and in particular Dr. Cutler Cleveland and Ida Kubiszewski posted an article describing a meta-analysis on the EROI of wind power on The Oil Drum.

From Cleveland and Kubiszewski's data the following can be extracted;

Energy return on investment for wind power
Country	Number of values recorded in each country	Average EROI
Belgium	2	29
Denmark	12	28
Germany	28	17
Japan	9	10
Switzerland	2	4
USA	4	20

It should be noted that there is a huge range of EROI values, indicating that the industry is not mature. As the industry matures businesses will learn to develop wind power in areas and using methods that maximise the EROI value.

Cleveland and Kubiszewski calculated an overall average EROI of 18.1, placing "wind energy in a favourable position relative to conventional power generation".

Unfortunately, Cleveland and Kubiszewski's data did not include any information on Australian wind farms. ESIPC (SA Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council) does not record EROI figures for South Australian wind farms.

Kurt Cobb has posted on EROI in the Energy Bulletin. Some of his figures for energy sources other than wind are in the table below (I added wind):

Energy return on investment
Energy source	EROI or Range	Comment
Wind	Around 18	See above
Crude oil	Around 20	Conventional
Tar sands	1 to 7	Figures vary greatly
Coal	80	but falling
Nuclear	2 to 11	Figures vary greatly
Solar	?	Figures vary greatly
Hydro-electric	very high

EROI x Scale for fossil and renewable energy sources

EROI against total energy

The original of the figure was posted on the Oil Drum. It relates primarily to US data.

The distance the balloons are from the bottom shows increasing energy return on energy invested. The distance from the left shows increasing power obtained from that source.

Click on the image for a larger, clearer, view.

Denmark successfully produces some 20% of its electricity by wind farms and plans to increase this to 40% in the future. The Danish Wind Energy Association has confirmed (pers. com.) the need for detailed wind forecasting if a large component of wind power is to be used. Denmark has the advantage of being part of a large European power grid. Australia, on the other hand, has the advantage of being much bigger than Denmark; a wind change on the west coast of Eyre Peninsula will take a long time to affect wind farms in Victoria or eastern NSW.

The rise of the world-wide wind industry has caused a very competative wind forecasting industry to follow. At present, I believe, wind forecasting in Australia is produced by a single organisation and the forecasts are distributed to all interested parties. It has been suggested that "this discourages competition by being centrally produced and a better solution is a central forecast that is NOT distributed to participants. That way the system operator gets a forecast and they should also require operating schedules from the wind plants – not ones that are as strict as fossil fuel operating schedules, but something none-the-less. This is good for everyone – except maybe the incumbents.

1. Competition will force down prices (if the prices are inflated too much) – we bring our same pricing structure as we use in the very competitive US market.
2. Competition will force the forecasters to continue to improve.
3. The system operator will get a system wide forecast (very useful) but will also get project specific forecasts that are tuned to each wind farm and will likely be more accurate for that wind farm (which in turn helps scheduling transmission).
4. It helps get more wind onto the system as it will be better forecast and easier to control (i.e. there will be an expectation to meet schedules to some extent). This will allow for higher wind penetration."

In regard to the way that wind forecasts are produced, I am informed that: "In a VERY high level overview, good forecasts are created using numerical weather prediction [NWP] models which use global models as inputs (e.g. Global Forecast System) which are derived from observations all around the world. This is the best method 6 hours to almost a week ahead. Shorter time frames use some kind of local observation-based system. This approach is best up to around 6 hour out - primarily because the NWP models take so long to run that they are out of date by the time that have finished operating (and you can get better information by using local observations). The exact overlap of usefulness depends strongly on the location."

Much of the above couple of paragraphs were from a person in the wind forecasting industry who didn't want his/her name published. If others in the industry can add more, I'd be please to hear from them.

Community investment in wind energy

40% of local residents have invested in the Galmsbüll "Citizens' Wind Farm"

Community investment has helped Germany to become the most successful nation for wind power in Europe. At Marienkoog in the North Friesland region, dozens of local people have taken a share in their local wind farm and watched the turbines being constructed for the benefit of the neighbourhood.

When the older wind turbines at Marienkoog were replaced by fewer more powerful models, the local community was offered a third of the shares in the 'repowering' project. Altogether, in the Galmsbüll Bürgerwindpark (Citizens' wind farm), of which Marienkoog is part, a total of 240 residents invested 5 million euros. This represented 40% of the district's adult population.

One result has been general acceptance of the new taller wind turbines in the landscape of this mainly farming region close to the North Sea coast. The local council also receives income from the business tax paid by the wind farm.

Payments to land-owners

There may be a once-off payment for access, and there usually is an annual payment per turbine. Some years ago I heard that a typical payment for one turbine was $4000 per year. More recently I had a confirmed figure of $7000 per turbine per year for one wind farm (the company didn't want it to be commonly known, most of these deals are 'confidential'). I have recently (July 2009) heard, second hand, unconfirmed, that some wind farmers are paying $12 000 to $14 000.

These acknowledgements are arranged in alphabetical order. I am indebted to a number of others who have provided information but have requested that their names not be mentioned (a pity, because I like to ascribe information sources to allow readers to judge credibility). My apologies to any informants who have helped but I have missed acknowledging.

• Ahern, Rodney - TrustPower
• Blair Donaldson - Gippsland Friends of Future Generations
• Bradshaw, Josh - Roaring 40s
• Brennan, Frank - Wattle Range Council (SE SA)
• Brooks, Roger - District Council of Yorke Peninsula
• Delmarter, Clayton - TrustPower
• Durran, Andrew - Epuron/Taurus Energy
• Ecuyer, Danielle - Pamada (Kyoto Energy Park)
• Engelmann, Mark - Information on the interactions between wind farms and weather
• He, Tao Tao - Monadelphous Engineering Pty Ltd
• George, Miles - Infigen Energy, previously Babcock and Brown, Wind Partners
• Jack, Ken - Originally of Stanwell Corp, more recently of Transfield?
• Knight, Steve - Vestas
• Knill, Tim - AGL
• Law, Julian - Macquarie Generation
• Marcheson, Doreen - Wind Prospect
• Nun, Richard - private citizen
• Osmond, David - Windlab Systems
• Reed, Peter - Suzlon
• Ryan, Brendan - Suzlon
• Teoh, Terry - Pacific Hydro
• Whorral, David - Hatch
• Wheatley, Megan - Suzlon

Photo credits

• Argyle County Council - Crookwell wind farm
• Roddom, Wayne - Windy Hill wind farm
• Rose, Sara - Emu Downs wind farm
• Ryan, Brendan - Brown Hill Range, Coral Bay and Emu Downs wind farms

The Australia Institute is an independent public policy research centre funded by grants from philanthropic trusts, memberships and commissioned research. It has a pdf document about The facts and fallacies of wind power.

1. Go to Google Maps;
2. Move the map so that Australia is at the centre of your screen;
3. Search for "NEM Power";
4. Julian's map comes up at the top of the search results.

General electricity links

Footnote on AGL

They also changed my supply back from green to brown electricity without my permission.

About these pages

I (David Clarke, the author of these pages) am independent of any company, lobby group, or government.

All photos on these pages are mine unless otherwise indicated. The background photo for the wind farm pages, and the title photo on this page, are of Wattle Point wind farm, Yorke Peninsula, SA. The title photo on the Wind Victoria page is of the Toora wind farm, that of the Wind SA page is of the Brown Hill Range wind farm and that of the Wind WA page is of the Albany wind farm.


I considered working on the appropriate Wikipedia pages rather than writing these sustainable energy pages, but decided to 'do my own thing' for the following reasons:

• Political comment seems inappropriate in Wikipedia pages on sustainable energy, but I believe critisism of governments is important if Australia is ever to substantially replace its fossil-fuel-based electrical generating systems with sustainable energy systems.
• Any work that I do on a Wikipedia page can be altered or deleted by somebody else.
• I have full control over the format of these pages.
• I can request and receive feedback from readers.
• I can work on the pages without being on the Net.
• I have an ego; having put a lot of work into these pages, I want my name on them.